Patternmaster

by Octavia E. Butler

  “Teray,” she said softly, “I have to tell you—” She broke off suddenly as he looked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That can’t mean much to you now, but I am sorry.”

  He stood up and started toward the common-room door.

  “Wait!” She caught his arm again, this time in a grip that he would have had to hurt her to loosen. He stood still, looking down at her, waiting for her to let him go.

  “Leave soon, Teray, if you’re still going. Soon. I said I wouldn’t betray you, and I won’t—not deliberately. But accidentally … Well, I’m with him a lot now, and sometimes he hears things I don’t mean for him to hear.”

  After a moment he nodded and she let him go. But he stayed where he was, watching her, not wanting her to see the pain in his eyes but not able to turn away again. He raised his hand to her face.

  She drew back from him sharply, then turned away and hurried past him into the House.

  Teray stood still for several seconds longer. Finally he shook his head. He reached out to one of his kitchen mutes. The man whose foot he had healed. Silently, with careful gentleness, Teray gave the man orders. Then he reached a stable mute—a mute who was not one of his charges, but who, of course, was obliged to obey any Patternist. He gave orders to the stable mute, then went back up to his room.

  Amber was dressed and having breakfast. Teray realized that he had eaten nothing, and at the same time realized that he had no appetite.

  “When you get through with that, go get your things together,” he told her. “We’re leaving today. I don’t want to spend another day in this place.”

  She looked surprised, but nodded slowly. “All right.”

  “And take as little as possible. Put some more clothes on over those or something. We can’t go out of here looking like we’re running away.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m having a supply of food packed for us and horses readied. And … there’ll only be two of us.”

  She said nothing to that. She went on eating.

  They traveled southwest toward the coast and toward the nearest borders of the sector. Teray had decided to take the coast trail south, if he could. The inland route was easier, less likely to be washed out or blocked, but it was also the most-often-traveled route. It was where Patternist caravans passed and where Clayarks lay in wait for them. The inland route was a little shorter, too, because it did not follow the eccentricities of the coast. But it did go straight through the middle of twenty-one Patternist sectors. The little-traveled coast route went through three.

  There were some Clayarks along the coast route. But then there were Clayarks everywhere, breeding like rabbits, warring among themselves, and attacking Patternists. Teray hoped to find them only in small family groups along the coast.

  Michael, he recalled, had traveled part of his way north along the coast route. Teray had asked a pair of his outsiders about their trip, prying as casually as he could. With his large party, Michael had had little trouble, but he had sensed at least one large tribe. He had gone into a Patternist sector to escape it. And that was something Teray could not do. He had a better chance against the Clayarks than he would have against a group of his own people who decided to earn Coransee’s gratitude by capturing him. Until he reached Rayal’s House, the only Patternist he could trust was Amber.

  She rode along beside him, strangely accepting of his surly mood. But then, she knew the reason for it. He wished she didn’t. She said quietly, “I think we should link, Teray.”

  “What?”

  “I know it will make us closer than it would make most people, and maybe you don’t want me that close to you right now. But we’d be safer linked. If I sense Clayarks, I want you to know immediately—even if you’re sound asleep at the time. If we don’t work together, we don’t have a chance.”

  “Oh hell,” he muttered.

  She said nothing else.

  They rode for several minutes in silence. Finally, without speaking, he opened, reached out to her. Linking was like clasping hands—and did not require even that much effort. Now her alarm, her fear, almost any strong emotion of hers, would alert him. And his emotions would alert her. But beyond that, as he had feared, he was too much aware of the link—aware of a strong, ongoing sense of oneness with her. Normally, a link, once established, became part of the mental background, not to be noticed again until one of the linked people did whatever the link was sensitized to respond to.

  But any kind of contact with Amber had to be different, had to be too close. There was nothing for him to do but accept it—and surprisingly, it was not that hard to accept. He felt himself relaxing almost against his will. Felt the anger and the hurt that Iray had caused him ebbing, not vanishing completely but retreating, shrinking so that it no longer occupied his whole mind. And Amber was not doing it, was not reaching him through the link to offer unasked-for healing. It was her mental presence alone that he was responding to. Her presence was eclipsing emotion that he would normally have taken much longer to get over, and he was enjoying it. He should have felt resentful at even this small invasion. Instead he only felt curious.

  “Amber?”

  She looked at him.

  “What does the link feel like to you?”

  She grinned. “Smooth. How else could it feel between people as close in the Pattern as we are?”

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “No. And neither do you.”

  He considered that, and shrugged. He was too comfortable for her presumptions to bother him. He indulged his curiosity further. “All along you’ve known more about me than I have about you. Now I’d like to know something about you.”

  There was something guarded, almost frightened, in the way she looked at him. “What do you want to know?”

  Her manner confused him. Apparently she had something to hide. But then, who didn’t? “I heard you managed to kill a Housemaster even before your mental abilities matured. You could tell me how you managed that.”

  She sighed, and then kept silent for so long that he thought she was not going to answer. “It was an accident,” she said finally. “The result of being a pre-Pattern youngster with no control over what was done to me. Who told you about it?”

  “Joachim. He didn’t tell me about it, he told me to ask you about it.”

  She seemed to relax. “At least. Well, the Housemaster was my second and he shouldn’t have been. From the beginning, we didn’t get along. And because I was too close to transition to stand mental abuse, he used physical abuse—beat the hell out of me whenever he wanted to until one day I managed to push him so that he fell against the sharp corner of a low concrete wall. He hit it with his head. Died before anybody could contact a healer. Of course, my abilities weren’t mature, so I couldn’t help him.”

  “But none of that makes sense,” said Teray. “Why didn’t you tell the Schoolmaster that you didn’t get along with your second? You could have gotten a new—”

  “No, I couldn’t. Like I said, pre-Pattern children can’t control what’s done to them. Leal—the Schoolmaster—knew he had given me the worst possible second. He did it deliberately because he knew I had already chosen my own second. And he did not approve.” She gave a bitter laugh. “He would have seconded me himself if he could have—if he had been strong enough. He wanted to. He wanted a lot of things that a teacher can’t have.”

  “You, for instance.”

  “Oh, he had me, for a while. For my last six months at school. I didn’t mind. But we both knew he was going to have to give me up once I reached my transition. There was no way that I was going to be a teacher. Not with my ancestry. Leal could accept that, but he couldn’t accept Kai, the second I had chosen. The second whose House I would have gone into. Although he might even have been able to stand that if I had been able to hide the fact that I was already in love with Kai. We met when she came to the school on some other business and Leal was the—”

  “Wait a minute.” Teray turned to sta
re at her. “She?”

  “That’s a good approximation of Leal’s tone when he realized what was happening,” said Amber. “I hope you’re not going to react as badly as he did.”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Teray answered. “Tell me the rest of it.”

  She stopped her horse, causing Teray to stop, then spoke very softly. “You’d better decide before we get into Clayark Territory,” she said. “Leal’s reaction almost got me executed. I’m not going to risk my life with anybody else who’s that hostile.”

  The link betrayed her hurt. She had taken Teray seriously and was waiting for rejection.

  “Do you feel any hostility in me, Amber?”

  She looked at him mistrustfully, then read the message the link held for her—his lack of any emotion beyond surprise and curiosity.

  She relaxed and they started forward again. “I’m touchy,” she said. “Leal taught me to be touchy.”

  “Why did you tell me that part of it?”

  “Because you would have found out anyway. Piece by piece. I would be thinking about it and off guard, and you would pick it up. We’re going to pay a price in mental privacy for our closeness.”

  Teray nodded. “Well, Leal had reason to react with jealousy, but I …”

  “Jealousy anger, humiliation. How dare I put him aside for a woman? Poor teacher. He had trouble enough trying to compete with men for the women he wanted.”

  “I don’t see why. He was the Schoolmaster. He should have been able to attract plenty of women.”

  “Yes, but not the ones he wanted. He could attract women teachers, but he considered them beneath his notice. He could and did attract older girl students, but they always had to either leave him or become teachers. He had the idea that women from outside the school were better. He tried to attract them—and usually failed. But until I met Kai, he had never lost one of his student girlfriends to one of them. It was too much.”

  “And Kai even had her own House.”

  “Leal wouldn’t have hated her for that if she had gone to him instead of to me. Prestige. But since she didn’t, her House just became more fuel for his jealousy. He had always wanted a House of his own anyway, and he knew he’d never have one. He was almost too strong to be a teacher, but not nearly strong enough to be a Housemaster.”

  “A stronger man would have reacted more reasonably.” Teray shrugged. “After all, you’re not that unusual.”

  “Coransee didn’t react too well.”

  He looked at her, startled. “What difference did it make to Coransee? It happened before you met him, and it didn’t keep you from staying for two years with him.”

  “But it made a difference. I didn’t tell him. He found out by snooping through my thoughts just a few weeks ago. That was when he decided that I was more of a challenge than he had thought. That was when he told me he intended to keep me in his House—deny my independence. Most people don’t try things like that with a healer.”

  “Could he have succeeded?”

  “Maybe, with his strength. Frankly, I’m afraid of him. That’s why I’d rather run away from him than fight him.”

  Teray shook his head ruefully. “He has a habit of trying to domesticate people.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m still curious. I want to know how a pre-Pattern child managed not to be executed for killing a person as important as a Housemaster. I’m surprised that his friends didn’t have you declared defective so that you would be destroyed before you gained your adult rights. And I’m curious about you and Kai. But all of that is your business. I don’t want you to tell me because you’re afraid I’ll ferret it out anyway. I won’t.”

  “I don’t mind telling you, but that isn’t what I meant.”

  No. He knew what she meant. “Last night I asked you what you wanted between us, and you said ‘something good.’ I think there was also the implication of ‘something temporary.’ That’s all right for a start, but I might turn out to be as bad as Coransee. I might try for more, too.”

  She laughed. She had a nice laugh. “Don’t do it. One Coransee was enough. Now I’ll tell you the rest of my story. By the way, are you checking wide for Clayarks? I’ve seen them in these hills.”

  “Checking as widely as I can.” They were just getting into the low grassy hills that they had to cross to reach the ocean.

  “All right. I wasn’t executed because Kai talked, bullied, and bribed some of the Housemasters of the sector council into voting to spare me. She didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know—just that the killing was an accident, that I was only days away from my transition and my full rights as an adult, that the man I killed should never have been assigned to me anyway. They knew all that, of course, but they were so outraged, and, I think, so ashamed, that I, technically still a child, had managed to kill one of them … well they were more after vengeance than justice. The lead wife of the man I killed was there to goad them on. Leal was there telling as little of the truth as he could because he knew he was really to blame for the man’s death.

  “Kai got me off, but she couldn’t get me all the way off. Instead of killing me, they exiled me from the sector. They meant for the Clayarks to do their killing for them. Kai was supposed to take me to the sector border and leave me there. Instead, she took me to her House. She induced transition—just a few days early, but early nevertheless.”

  Amber drew a ragged breath, remembering. “I swear I’d rather let the Clayarks get me than go through anything like that again. I kept trying to just die and let it be over, and she kept bringing me back. Did I mention that she was a healer too? Lucky thing. Although I didn’t think so then. She dragged me through all of it—stripped away my childhood shield before I was ready to shed it. Left me mentally naked to absorb all the free-floating mental garbage within miles of me. I got other people’s agony, violent emotions, everything, until I could manage to form the voluntary shield that I wasn’t really ready to form yet. I almost killed her while she was trying to save me. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I turned out to be stronger than she was.

  “She pulled me through. But that wasn’t enough. She had to prepare me to leave the sector—to use the abilities I barely knew I had. There wasn’t time to teach me or time to do anything but print me with her memories. She gave me her fifteen years of leading her House. She made me assimilate all of it, not just let it sit the way you did with most of your Jackman memories. It was like becoming part of her—getting a whole new past that was only a few years shorter than my real past.

  “She made me eat and took away my weariness and healed the bruises and sprains I had gotten thrashing around during my transition. Then she gave me supplies, put me on a horse, and told me to run. I got out just ahead of the group of Housemasters that had finally—twelve hours too late—realized what was happening.”

  Amber stopped talking and they rode along in silence for a while, urging the horses faster as they came to a stretch of level ground, then slowing to climb another hill.

  “She loved you,” said Teray finally.

  “It was mutual. She almost lost her House because of me.”

  “Only almost?”

  “She would have if it hadn’t been for Michael. That’s where I knew him from. She had called for help from Forsyth when I was first charged. Michael was in our area on other business but he had Clayark trouble on his way to us.

  “He arrived and looked at my memories—I was allowed to come back into the sector to be heard. He looked at the truths the Housemasters had ignored, then decided in Kai’s favor. He didn’t make them take me back, but at least he made them leave her alone.”

  “It was too late anyway. You couldn’t have gone back to her then.”

  “I know.”

  “With you stronger than she is and possessing so much of her knowledge and experience … I don’t think she would have dared to take you back.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t have to decide.”

 
; Teray changed the subject abruptly. I think I’ve spotted some Clayarks.” He hadn’t had to say it. She was already looking off in the direction of the Clayarks. They were not visible, but there was definitely a group of them ahead, moving toward Teray and Amber. They were just beyond the next hill.

  “Only a small group,” said Amber. “About twenty. They might go around the hill and pass us by.”

  “Yes, and then they might notice our trail and follow us while one of them goes for reinforcements. Best to kill them.”

  “All right. You take it.”

  She opened to him as no one had since school, giving him access to and control over her mental strength. It was the way people who were close in the Pattern fought best. The way Joachim’s House fought, the way everyone fought in war when Rayal used the power that he held. But only Rayal could pull all the people together, funnel all their strength through his own mind, focus it on Clayarks anywhere from Forsyth itself to the northernmost Patternist sector. Lesser people grouped when they could with whomever they could—with whomever they trusted not to try to make the control permanent.

  Inexpertly, Teray channeled Amber’s strength into his own. Then, almost doubly powerful, he reached out to the Clayarks.

  The new strength was exhilarating, intoxicating. He almost had to hold himself back as he reached the Clayarks. Within one of them he located a large artery that led directly from the heart. He memorized its position so that he could find it quickly in the other Clayarks, then he ruptured the artery. The Clayark stumbled to the ground, clawing its chest.

  Instantly the other Clayarks fled, scattering in all directions, but Amber, otherwise inactive, kept track of them, focusing and refocusing Teray on them until all were dead or dying.

  Several minutes later they began riding past bodies. Amber was closed again—as closed as she could be while they were linked—and Teray had returned to her control over her mental strength. That strength was temporarily lessened, of course, as was Teray’s, but the lessening was slight. One of the dangers of lending mental strength to another person was that the other person might use too much of it, might drain the lender to exhaustion and death. But neither Teray nor Amber was anywhere near death.