Mind of My Mind (32 page)

material, but Jan knew she would have to modify them. Left as they were, they would

dominate everything else Jan was trying to record.

Sighing, Jan put her block aside. Of course it would be Mary's thoughts that gave

trouble. Mary was trouble. That small body of hers was deceptive. Yet it had been Mary

who saw possible use for Jan's psychometry. A few months after Mary had begun

drawing in latents, she had decided to learn as much as she could about the special

abilities of the rest of the First Family. In investigating Jan's psychometry, she had

discovered that she could read some objects herself in a fragmented, blurred way, but that

she could read much more clearly anything that Jan had handled.

"You read impressions from the things you touch," she had said to Jan. "But I think

you put impressions into things, too."

"Of course I do," Jan had said impatiently. "Everyone does, every time they touch

something."

"No, I mean . . . you kind of amplify what's already there."

"Not deliberately."

"Nobody ever noticed it before?"

"No one pays any attention to my psychometry. It's just something I do to amuse

myself."

Mary was silent for a long moment, thinking. Then, "Have you ever liked the

impressions that you got from something enough to keep them? Not just keep them in

your memory but in the thing, the object itself—like keeping a film or a tape recording."

"I have some very old things that I've kept. They have ancient memories stored in

them."

"Get them."

"Please get them," mimicked Jan. "May I see them, please?" Mary had taken to her

new power too easily. She loved to order people around.

"The hell with you," said Mary. "Get them."

"They're my property!"

"Your property." The green eyes glittered. "I'll trade you last night for them."

Jan froze, staring at her. The night before, Jan had been with Karl. It was not the first

time, but Mary had never mentioned it before. Jan had tried to convince herself that Mary

did not know. Now, confronted with proof that she was wrong, she managed to control

her fear. She wanted to ask what Mary traded Vivian for all the mute woman's nights

with Karl, but she said nothing. She got up and went to get her collection of ancient

artifacts stolen from various museums.

Mary handled one piece after another, first frowning, then slowly taking on a look of

amazement. "This is fantastic," she said. She was holding just a fragment of what had

been an intricately painted jar. A jar that held the story of the woman whose hands

shaped it 6,500 years ago. A woman of a Neolithic village that had existed somewhere in

what was now Iran. "Why is it so pure?" asked Mary. "God knows how many people

have touched it since this woman owned it. But she's all I can sense."

"She was all I ever wanted to sense," said Jan. "The fragment has been buried for

most of the time between our lives and hers. That's the only reason there was any of her

left in it at all."

"Now there's nothing but her. How did you get rid of the others?"

Jan frowned. "There were archaeologists and some other people at first, but I didn't

want them. I just didn't want them."

Mary handed her the fragment. "Am I in it now?"

"No, it's set. I had to learn to freeze them so that I didn't disturb them myself every

time I handled them. I never tried letting another telepath handle them, but you haven't

disturbed this one."

"Or the others, most likely. You like seconding, Jan?"

Jan looked at her through narrowed eyes. "You know I hate it. But what does that

have to do with my artifacts?"

"Your artifacts just might stop you from ever having to second anybody else. If you

can get to know your own abilities a little better and use them for more than your own

amusement, they can open another way for you to contribute to the Pattern."

"What way?"

"A new art. A new form of education and entertainment—better than the movies,

because you really live it, and you absorb it quicker and more completely than you do

books. Maybe." She snatched up the jar fragment and a small Sumerian clay tablet and

ran out to try them on someone. Minutes later, she was back, grinning.

"I tried them on Seth and Ada. All I told them to do was hold these things and

unshield. They picked up everything. Look, you show me you can use what you've got

for more than a toy and you're off seconding for good." The rush of words stopped for a

moment, and when Mary spoke again, her tone had changed. "And, Jan, guess what else

you're off of for good."

Jan had wanted to kill her. Instead, she had thrown her energy into refining her talent

and finding uses for it. Instead, she had begun to create a new art.

ADA

Ada Dragan waited patiently in the principal's office of what was finally her school.

A mute guardian who was programmed to notice such things had reported that one of her

latent foster children—a fifteen-year-old girl—was having serious pretransition

difficulties.

From the office, Ada looked out at the walled grounds of the school. It had been a

private school, situated right there in the Palo Verde neighborhood. A school where

people who were dissatisfied with the Forsyth Unified School District, and who could

afford an alternative, sent their children. Now those people had been persuaded to send

their children elsewhere.

This fall semester, only a month old, was the beginning of the first all-Patternist year.

Ada welcomed it with relief. She had been working gradually toward the takeover,

feeling her way for almost two years. Finally it was done. She had learned the needs of

the children and overcome her own shyness enough to meet those needs. On paper, mutes

still owned the school. But Ada and her Patternist assistants owned the mutes. And Ada

herself was in full charge, responsible only to Mary.

It was a responsibility that had chosen Ada more than she had chosen it. She had

discovered that she worked easily with children, enjoyed them, while most Patternists

could not work with them at all. Only some of her relatives were able to assist her. Other

Patternists found the emotional noise of children's minds intolerable. Children's

emotional noise penetrated not only the general protection of the Pattern but the

individual mental shields of the Patternists. It frayed their nerves, chipped away their

tempers, and put the children in real danger. It made Patternists potentially even worse

parents than latents.

Thus, no matter how much Patternists wanted to insure their future as a race—and

they did want it now—they could not care for the children who were that future. They

had to draft mutes to do it for them. First Doro, and now Mary, was creating a race that

could not tolerate its own young.

Ada turned away from the window just as the mute guardian brought the girl in. The

mute was Helen Dietrich, an elementary-school teacher who, with her husband, also

cared for four latent children. Jan had moved the Dietrichs and several other teachers into

the section, where they could do both jobs.

This girl, Ada recalled, had been a particularly unfortunate case—one of Rachel's

assignments. Her life with the pair of latents who were her parents had left both her body

and her mind a mass of scar tissue. Rachel had worked hard to right the damage. Now

Ada wondered just how good a job she had done.

"Page," said Helen Dietrich nervously, "this is Ada Dragan. She's here to help you."

The girl stared at Ada through dark, sullen eyes. "I've already seen the school

psychologist," she volunteered. "It didn't do any good."

Ada nodded. The school psychologist was a kind of experiment. He was completely

ignorant of the fact that the Patternists now owned him. He was being allowed to learn as

much as he could on his own. Nothing was hidden from him. But, on the other hand,

nothing was handed to him. He, and a few others like him scattered around the section,

were being used to calculate just how much information ordinary mutes needed to come

to understand their situation.

"I'm not a psychologist," said Ada. "Nor a psychiatrist."

"Why not?" asked the girl. She extended her arms, which she had been holding

behind her. Both wrists were bandaged. "I'm crazy, aren't I?"

Ada only glanced at the bandages. Helen Dietrich had told her about the suicide

attempt. Ada spoke to the mute. "Helen, it might be easier on you if you left now."

The woman met Ada's eyes and realized that she was really being offered a choice.

"I'd rather stay," she said. "I'll have to handle this again."

"All right." Ada faced the girl again. Very carefully, she read her. It was difficult here

at the school, where so many other child minds intruded. This was one time when they

became a nuisance. But, in spite of the nuisance, Ada had to handle the girl gently. At

fifteen, Page was not too young to be nearing transition. Children who lived in the

section, surrounded by Patternists and thus by the Pattern, did not need direct contact

with Mary to push them into transition. The Pattern pushed them as soon as their bodies

and minds could tolerate the shock. And this girl seemed ready—unless Rachel had just

missed some mental problem and the girl was suffering needlessly. That was what Ada

had to find out. She maintained contact with Page as she questioned her.

"Why did you try to kill yourself?"

The young mind made an effort to hold itself emotionless, but failed. The thought

broke through, To keep from killing others. Aloud, the girl spoke harshly. "Because I

wanted to die! It's my life. If I want to end it, it's my business."

She had not been told what she was. Children were told when they were about her