Seed to Harvest: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster (Patternist) (47 page)

She would never be well again, never be able to go among people without being bombarded by their thoughts. And facing this, she could not possibly continue her present living arrangement. She could no longer force Kenneth to stay with her when he hated her as he did. Nor would she exert more control over him, to force an obscene, artificial love.

She would follow the call. Even if it had been less insistent, she would have followed it. Because it was all she had.

She would quarantine herself with others who were afflicted as she was. If she was alone with them, she would be less likely to hurt people who were well. How would it be, though? How much worse than anything she had yet known? A life among outcasts.

The neighborhood had changed little in the three years since Jan had seen it. New cars, new children. Two small boys ran past her; one of them was black. That was new too. She was glad her mind had not been open and vulnerable when the boy ran past. She had problems enough without
that
alienness. She looked back at the boy with distaste, then shrugged. She planned only a short visit. She didn’t have to live there.

It occurred to her, not for the first time, that even visiting was foolish, pointless. She had placed her own children in a comfortable home where they would be well cared for, have better lives than she had had. There was nothing more that she could do for them. Nothing she could accomplish by visiting them. Yet for days she had felt a need to make this visit. Need, urge, premonition?

Thinking about it made her uncomfortable. She deliberately turned her attention to the street around her instead. The newness of it disgusted her. The unimaginative modern houses, the sapling trees. Even if the complexion of the neighborhood had not been changing, Jan could never have lived there. The place had no depth in time. She could touch things, a fence, a light standard, a signpost. Nothing went back further than a decade. Nothing carried real historical memory. Everything was sterile and perilously unanchored to the past.

A little girl of no more than seven was standing in one of the yards watching Jan walk toward her. Jan examined the child curiously. Small, fine-boned and fair-haired, like Jan. Her eyes were blue, but not the pale, faded blue of Jan’s eyes. The girl’s eyes had the same deep, startling blue that had been one of her father’s best features—or one of the best features of the body her father had been wearing.

Jan turned to walk down the pathway to the child’s house.

As she came even with the girl, some sentimentality about the eyes made her stop and hold out her hand. “Will you walk to the house with me, Margaret?”

The child took the offered hand and walked solemnly beside Jan.

Jan automatically blocked any mental contact with her. She had learned painfully that children not only had no depth but that their unstable little animal minds could deliver one emotional outburst after another.

Margaret spoke as Jan opened the door. “Did you come to take me away?”

“No.”

The child smiled at Jan in relief, then ran away, calling, “Mommy, Jan is here.”

Jan raised an eyebrow at the irony of her daughter’s words. Jan had once tried to condition the family here, the Westleys, to believe that they were the natural parents of Jan’s children. She had had the power to do it, but she had not been skillful enough in her use of that power. She had failed. But time, combined with the simpler command that she had managed to instill in the Westleys—to care for the children and protect them—had turned her failure into success. Margaret knew that Jan was actually her mother. But it made no difference. Not to her; not to the Westleys.

In fact, the children were such a permanent part of the Westley household that Margaret’s question seemed out of character. The question revived the feeling of foreboding that Jan had been trying to ignore.

Even the feel of the house was wrong. So wrong that she found herself being careful not to touch anything. Just being inside was uncomfortable.

The woman, Lea Westley, came in slowly, hesitantly, without Margaret or the boy, Vaughn. Jan resisted the temptation to reach into her thoughts and learn at once what was wrong. That part of her ability was still underdeveloped, because she did not like to use it. She enjoyed touching inanimate objects and winding back through the pasts of the people who had handled them before her. But she had never learned to enjoy direct mind-to-mind contact. Most people had vile minds anyway.

“I thought you might be coming, Jan.” Lea Westley fumbled with her hands. “I was even afraid you might take Margaret.”

Verbal confirmation of Jan’s fears. Now she had to have the rest. “I don’t know what’s happened, Lea. Tell me.”

Lea looked away for a moment, then spoke softly. “There was an accident. Vaughn is dead.” Her voice broke on the last word and Jan had to wait until she could compose herself and go on.

“It was a hit-and-run. Vaughn was out with Hugh,” her husband, “and someone ran a red light. … It happened last week. Hugh is still in the hospital.”

The woman was genuinely upset. Even through layers of shielding, Jan could feel her suffering. But, more than anything else, Lea Westley was afraid. She was afraid of Jan, of what Jan might decide to do to the people who had failed in the responsibility she had given them.

Jan understood that fear, because she was feeling a slightly different version of it herself. Someday Doro would come back and ask to see his children. He had promised her he would, and he kept the few promises he made. He had also promised her what he would do to her if she was unable to produce two healthy children.

She shook her head thinking about it. “Oh, God.”

Lea was instantly at her side, holding her, weeping over her, saying again and again, “I’m so sorry, Jan. So sorry.”

Disgusted, Jan pushed her away. Sympathy and tears were the last things Jan needed. The boy was dead. That was that. He had been a burden to her before she placed him with the Westleys. Now, dead, he was again a burden in spite of all her efforts to see that he was safe. If only Doro had not insisted that she have children. She had been looking forward to his return for so long. Now, instead of waiting for it, she would have to flee from it. Another town, another state, another name—and the likelihood that none of it would do any good. Doro was a specialist at finding people who ran from him.

“Jan, please understand. … It wasn’t our fault.”

Stupid woman!
Lea became an outlet for Jan’s frustration. Jan seized control of her, spun her around, and propelled her puppetlike out of the living room.

Lea Westley’s scream of terror when Jan finally released her was the last thing Jan was physically aware of for several minutes.

A mental explosion rocked her. Then came the forced mind-to-mind contact that she fought savagely and uselessly. Then the splitting away of part of herself, the call to Forsyth.

Jan regained consciousness on Lea Westley’s sofa, with Lea herself sitting nearby, crying. The woman had come back despite Jan’s heavy-handed treatment. She knew how foolish it would be to run from Jan even if she had known positively that Jan meant her harm. Perhaps, in that knowledge of her own limitations, she was more sensible than Jan herself. Lying still now with the call drawing her, Jan felt unusual pity for Lea.

“I don’t care that he’s dead, Lea.” The words came out in a whisper even though Jan had intended to speak normally.

“Jan!” Lea was on her feet at once, probably not understanding, probably realizing only that Jan was again conscious.

“You don’t have to worry, Lea. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Lea heard this time, and she collapsed weeping with relief. Jan tried standing, and found herself weak but able to manage.

“Be good to Margaret for me, Lea. I might not be able to come to see her again.”

She walked out, leaving Lea staring after her.

California.

Was it Doro calling her somehow with this thing in her mind? She knew he had other telepaths—better telepaths. He might be using one of them to reach her. It was possible that he had somehow learned of his son’s death and struck at her through someone else. If he had, his efforts were paying off. She was going to California.

She felt all the terror that the controlled Lea must have known. She couldn’t help herself. She had to go to Forsyth. And if Doro was there, she would be going to her death.

When Karl left my room, I lay in bed thinking, remembering. Karl and I had sort of accepted each other over the past two weeks. He had gotten a lot easier to talk to—and I suppose I had too. He had stopped trying to pretend I wasn’t there, and I had stopped resenting him. In fact, I had probably come to depend on him more than I should have. And he really had just worked damned hard to keep me alive. Yet, only a few hours later, he had done enough emotional backsliding to sit by and let me almost kill myself—all because of this pattern thing. I wondered how big a mental leap it would be for him to go from a willingness to let me be killed to a willingness to kill me himself.

Or maybe I was overreacting. Maybe I was just disappointed because I had expected my transition to bring me closer to him. I had expected just what I knew Vivian was afraid of: that, after my transition, she would become excess baggage. If I had to be Karl’s wife, I meant to be his only wife.

But now. … I had never felt anyone’s hostility the way I felt Karl’s just before he went out. That was part of what it meant to be in full control of my telepathic ability. Not a very comfortable part. I knew he had gone to see Doro—had gone to roust Doro out of bed and ask him what the hell had gone wrong. I wondered if anything really had gone wrong.

Doro wanted an empire. He didn’t call it that, but that was what he meant. Maybe I was just one more tool he was using to get it. He needed tools, because an empire of ordinary people wasn’t quite what he had in mind. That, to him, would be like an ordinary person making himself emperor over a lot of cattle. Doro thought a lot of himself, all right. But he didn’t think much of the families of half-crazy latents he had scattered across the country. They were just his breeders—if they were lucky. He didn’t want an empire of them either. He and I had talked about it off and on since I was thirteen. That first conversation said most of it, though.

He had taken me to Disneyland. He did things like that for me now and then while I was growing up. They helped me survive Rina and Emma.

We were sitting at an outdoor table of a cafe having lunch when I asked the key question.

“What are we for, Doro?”

He looked at me through deep blue eyes. He was wearing the body of a tall, thin white man. I knew he knew what I meant, but still he said, “For?”

“Yeah, for. You have so many of us. Rina said your newest wife just had a kid.” He laughed for some reason. I went on. “Are you just keeping us for a hobby—so you’ll have something to do, or what?”

“No doubt that’s part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

“I’m not sure you’d understand.”

“I’m mixed up in it. I want to know about it whether I understand or not. And I want to know about you.”

He was still smiling. “What about me?”

“Enough about you so that I’ll have a chance to understand why you want us.”

“Why does anyone want a family?”

“Oh, come on, Doro. Families! Dozens of them. Tell me, really. You can start by telling me about your name. How come you only have one, and one I never heard of at that.”

“It’s the name my parents gave me. It’s the only thing they gave me that I still have.”

“Who were your parents?”

“Farmers. They lived in a village along the Nile.”

“Egypt!”

He shook his head. “No, not quite. A little farther south. The Egyptians were our enemies when I was born. They were our former rulers, seeking to become our rulers again.”

“Who were your people?”

“They had another name then, but you would call them Nubians.”

“Black people!”

“Yes.”

“God! You’re white so much of the time, I never thought you might have been born black.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean, ‘It doesn’t matter’? It matters to me.”

“It doesn’t matter because I haven’t been any color at all for about four thousand years. Or you could say I’ve been every color. But either way, I don’t have anything more in common with black people—Nubian or otherwise—than I do with whites or Asians.”

“You mean you don’t want to admit you have anything in common with us. But if you were born black, you
are
black. Still black, no matter what color you take on.”

He crooked his mouth a little in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You can believe that if it makes you feel better.”

“It’s true!”

He shrugged.

“Well, what race do you think you are?”

“None that I have a name for.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does when you think about it. I’m not black or white or yellow, because I’m not human, Mary.”

That stopped me cold. He was serious. He couldn’t have been more serious. I stared at him, chilled, scared, believing him even though I didn’t want to believe. I looked down at my plate, slowly finished my hamburger. Then, finally, I asked my question. “If you’re not human, what are you?”

And his seriousness broke. “A ghost?”

“That’s not funny!”

“No. It may even be true. I’m the closest thing to a ghost that I’ve run into in all my years. But that’s not important. What are you looking so frightened for? I’m no more likely to hurt you now than I ever was.”

“What are you?”

“A mutation. A kind of parasite. A god. A devil. You’d be surprised at some of the things people have decided I was.”

I didn’t say anything.

He reached over and took my hand for a moment. “Relax. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”

“Am I human?”

He laughed. “Of course you are. Different, but certainly human.”

I wondered whether that was good or bad. Would he have loved me more if I had been more like him? “Am I descended from your … from the Nubians, too?”