Seed to Harvest

by Octavia E. Butler

  This was a pocket of Emma’s descendants hidden away in a corner of Los Angeles, suffering without knowing why, without knowing who they were. The women in three of the houses were sisters. They hated each other, usually spoke only to trade obscenities. Yet they continued to live near each other, satisfying a need they did not realize they had. One of them still had a husband. All three had children. Rachel had come for the youngest sister—the one whose husband was still with her. This one lived in the third house back, with her husband and their two young children. Rachel looked at the house and realized that she had been unconsciously refraining from probing it. She was going entirely on what Mary had told her. That meant that there were surely things inside that she would not want to see. Mary swept the areas she checked so quickly that she received nothing more than a momentary feeling of anxiety from the latents who were in serious trouble. She was like a machine, sweeping, detecting latents here and there mixed in with the mute population. And the worst ones, she gave to Rachel.

  “Come on, Rae,” she would say. “You know they’re going to die if I send anybody else.”

  And she was right. Only Rachel could handle the most pathetic of Doro’s discards. Or only she had been able to until now. Now her students were beginning to come into their own. The one she had with her now was just about ready to work alone. Miguela Daniels. Her father had married a Mexican woman, a mute. But he traced his own lineage back to Emma through both his parents. And Miguela was turning out to be a very good healer. Miguela came up beside her.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked.

  “You,” Rachel told her. “All right, let’s go in. You won’t like it, though.”

  “I can already feel that.”

  As they went to the door, Rachel finally swept the house with her perception and moaned to herself. She did not knock. The door was locked, but the people inside were beyond answering her knock.

  The top portion of the door had once been a window, but the glass had long ago been broken. The hole had been covered by an oversized piece of plywood.

  “Keep your attention on the boys in the back,” Rachel told Miguela. “They can’t see us from here, but this might be noisy.”

  “You could get one of them to break in.”

  “No, I can do it. Just watch.”

  Miguela nodded.

  Rachel took hold of the overhanging edge of plywood, braced herself, and pulled. The wood was dry and old and thin. Rachel had hardly begun to put pressure on it when it gave along its line of nails and part of it came away in her hands. She broke off more of it until she could push the rest in and unlock the door. The smell that greeted them made Rachel hold her breath for a few seconds. Miguela breathed it and gagged.

  “What’s that Goddamn stink!”

  Rachel said nothing. She pushed the door open and went in. Miguela grimaced and followed.

  Just inside the door lay a young man, the husband, half propped up against the wall. Around him were the many bottles he had already managed to empty. In his hand was one he had not quite emptied yet. He tried to get up as the two women came in, but he was too drunk or too sick or too weak from hunger. Probably all three. “Hey,” he said, his voice slurred and low. “What you think you’re doing? Get out of my house.”

  Rachel scanned him quickly while Miguela went through the kitchen, into the bedroom. The man was a latent, like his wife. That was why the two of them had so much trouble. They had not only the usual mental interference to contend with, but they unwittingly interfered with each other. They were both of Emma’s family and they would make good Patternists, but, as latents, they were killing each other. The man on the floor was of no use to himself or anyone else as he was now.

  He was filthy—not only unwashed but incontinent. He wallowed in his own feces and vomit, contributing his share to the strong evil smell of the place.

  From the bedroom, Miguela cried out, “Mother of God! Rachel, come in here quickly.”

  Rachel turned from the man, intending to go to her. But, as she turned, there was a sound, a weak, thin cry from the sofa. Rachel realized abruptly that what she had thought were only bundles of rags were actually the two children she had sensed in the house. She went to them quickly.

  They were skin and bones, both breathing shallowly, unevenly, making small sounds from time to time. Malnourished, dehydrated, bruised, beaten, and filthy, they lay unconscious. Mercifully unconscious.

  “Rachel—” Miguela seemed to choke. “Rachel, come here. Please!”

  Rachel left the children reluctantly, went to the bedroom. In the bedroom there was another child, an infant who was beyond even Rachel’s ability. It had been dead for at least a few days. Neither Rachel nor Mary had sensed it before, because both had scanned for life, touching the living minds in the house and skimming over everything else.

  The baby’s starved body was crawling with maggots, but it still showed the marks of its parents’ abuse. The head was a ruin. It had been hit with something or slammed into something. The legs were twisted as no infant’s legs would have twisted normally. The child had been tortured to death. The man and the woman had fed on each other’s insanity until they murdered one child and left the others dying. Rachel had stolen enough latents from prisons and insane asylums to know how often such things happened. Sometimes the best a latent could do was realize that the mental interference, the madness, was not going to stop, and then end their own lives before they killed others.

  Staring down at the dead child in its ancient, peeling crib, Rachel wondered how even Doro had managed to keep so many latents alive for so long. How had he done it, and how had he been able to stand himself for doing it? But, then, Doro had nothing even faintly resembling a conscience.

  The crib was at the foot of an old, steel-frame bed. On the bed lay the mother, semiconscious, muttering drunkenly from time to time. “Johnny, the baby’s crying again.” And then, “Johnny, make the baby stop crying! I can’t stand to hear him crying all the time.” She wept a little herself now, her eyes open, unseeing.

  Miguela and Rachel looked at each other, Miguela in horror, Rachel in weariness and disgust.

  “You were right,” said Miguela. “I don’t like this one damn bit. And this is the kind of thing you want me to handle?”

  “There are too many of them for me,” said Rachel. “The more help I get, the fewer of these bad ones will die.”

  “They deserve to die for what they did to that baby—” She choked again and Rachel saw that she was holding back tears.

  “You’re the last person I’d expect to hold latents responsible for what they do,” Rachel told her. “Do I have to remind you what you did?” Miguela, unstable and violent, had set fire to the house of a woman whose testimony had caused her to spend some time in Juvenile Hall. The woman had burned to death.

  Miguela closed her eyes, not crying but not casting any more stones, either. “You know,” she said after a moment, “I was glad I turned out to be a healer, because I thought I could make up for that, somehow. And here I am bitching.”

  “Bitch all you want to,” said Rachel. “As long as you do your work. You’re going to handle these people.”

  “All of them? By myself?”

  “I’ll be standing by—not that you’ll need me. You’re ready. Why don’t you back the van in and I’ll draft a couple of the boys out back to help us carry bodies.”

  Miguela started to go, then stopped. “You know, sometimes I wish we could make Doro pay for scenes like this. He’s the one who deserves all the blame.”

  “He’s also the one who’ll never pay. Only his victims pay.” Miguela shook her head and went out after the van.

  Jesse

  Jesse pulled his car up sharply in front of a handsome, redbrick, Georgian mansion. He got out, strode down the pathway and through the front door without bothering to knock. He went straight to the stairs and up them to the second floor. There, in a back bedroom, he found Stephen Gilroy, the Patternist owne
r of the house, sitting beside the bed of a young mute woman. The woman’s face was covered with blood. It had been slashed and hacked to pieces. She was unconscious.

  “My God,” muttered Jesse as he crossed the room to the bed. “Did you send for a healer?”

  Gilroy nodded. “Rachel wasn’t around, so I—”

  “I know. She’s on an assignment.”

  “I called one of her kids. I just wish he’d get here.”

  One of her students, he meant. Even Jesse found himself referring to Rachel’s students as “her kids.”

  There was the sound of the front door opening and slamming again. Someone else ran up the bare, wooden stairs, and, a moment later, a breathless young man hurried into the room. He was one of Rachel’s relatives, of course, and as Rachel would have in a healing situation, he took over immediately.

  “You’ll have to leave me alone with her,” he said. “I can handle the injuries, but I work best when I’m alone with my patient.”

  “Her eyes are hurt, too, I think,” said Gilroy. “Are you sure you—”

  The healer unshielded to show them that his self-confidence was real and based on experience. “Don’t worry about her. She’ll be all right.”

  Jesse and Stephen Gilroy left the room, went down to Gilroy’s study.

  Jesse spoke with quiet fury. “The main reason I got here so fast was so I could see the damage through my own eyes instead of somebody’s memory. I want to remember it when I go after Hannibal.”

  “I should go after him,” said Gilroy softly, bitterly. He was a slender, dark-haired man with very pale skin. “I would go after him if he hadn’t already proved to me how little good that does.” His voice was full of self-disgust.

  “People who abuse mutes are my responsibility,” said Jesse. “Because mutes are my responsibility. Hannibal is even a relative of mine. I’ll take care of him.”

  Gilroy shrugged. “You gave her to me; he took her from me. You ordered him to send her back; he sent her back in pieces. Now you’ll punish him. What will that inspire him to do to her?”

  “Nothing,” said Jesse. “I promise you. I’ve talked to Mary and Karl about him. This isn’t the first time he’s sliced somebody up. He’s still the animal he was when he was a latent.”

  “That’s what’s bothering me. He’d think nothing of killing Arlene when you’re finished with him. I’m surprised he hasn’t killed her already. He knows I can’t stop him.”

  “There’s no sense beating yourself with that, Gil. Except for the members of the First Family, nobody can stop him. He’s the strongest telepath we’ve ever brought through transition. And the first thing he did, once he was through, was to smash his way through the shielding of his second and nearly kill her. For no reason. He just discovered that he could do it, so he did it.”

  “Somebody should have smashed him then and there.”

  “That’s what Doro said. He claims he used to cull out people like Hannibal as soon as he spotted them.”

  “Well, I hate to find myself agreeing with Doro but—”

  “So do I. But he made us. He knows just how far wrong we can go. Hannibal is too strong for Rachel or her kids to help him. Especially since he doesn’t really want help. And he’s too dangerous for us to tolerate any longer.”

  Gilroy’s eyes widened. “You are going to kill him, then?”

  Jesse nodded. “That’s why I had to talk to Karl and Mary. We don’t like to give up on one of our own, but Hannibal is a Goddamn cancer.”

  “You’re going to do it yourself?”

  “As soon as I leave here.”

  “With his strength … are you sure you can?”

  “I’m First Family, Gil.”

  “But still—”

  “Nobody who needed the Pattern to push him into transition can stand against one of us—not when we mean to kill.” Jesse shrugged. “Doro had to breed us to be strong enough to come through without being prodded. After all, when the time came for us, there was nobody who could prod us without killing us.” He stood up. “Look, contact me when that healer finishes with Arlene, will you? I just want to be sure she’s all right.”

  Gilroy nodded, stood up. They walked to the door together and Jesse noticed that there were three Patternists in the living room. Two women and a man.

  “Your house is growing,” he said to Gilroy. “How many now?”

  “Five. Five Patternists.”

  “The best of the people you’ve seconded, I’ll bet.”

  Gilroy smiled, said nothing.

  “You know,” said Jesse as they reached the door. “That Hannibal … he even looks like me. Reminds me a little of myself a couple of years ago. There, but for the grace of Doro, go I. Shit.”

  Jan

  Holding a smooth, rectangular block of wood between her hands, Jan Sholto closed her eyes and reached back in her disorderly memory. She reached back two years, to the creation of the Pattern. She had not only her own memories of that event but the memories of each of the original Patternists. They had unshielded and let her read them—not that they could have stopped her by refusing to open. Mary wasn’t the only one who could read people through their shields. No one except Doro could come into physical contact with Jan without showing her some portion of his thoughts and memories. In this case, though, physical contact hadn’t been necessary. The others had shown their approval of what she was doing by co-operating with her. She was creating another learning block—assembling their memories into a work that would not only tell the new Patternists of their beginnings but show them.

  She was teacher to all the new Patternists as they came through. For over a year now, seconds had used her learning blocks to give their charges quick, complete knowledge of the section’s rules and regulations. Other learning blocks offered them choices, showed them the opportunities available to them for making their own place within the section.

  Abruptly, Jan reached Mary’s memories. They jarred her with their raw intensity, overwhelmed her as other people’s memories rarely did any more. They were good 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, Ja
n 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.”