Seed to Harvest

by Octavia E. Butler

  Her sweeps turned the Clayarks’ own brains against them. She used their own energy to stimulate sudden, massive disruptions of their neural activities. The breathing centers in their brains were paralyzed. Their hearts ceased to beat and their blood circulation stopped. They died, almost literally, as though they had been struck by lightning. Or as though …

  Teray frowned. “You know,” he said after a while, “your way of killing Clayarks isn’t that different from the way we Patternists kill one another.”

  “It’s not different at all,” she said. “You just focus differently to kill Clayarks. You focus directly on the Clayark’s body—his brain-instead of focusing on his thoughts.”

  “But … Then why do they teach us in school that you can’t kill a Clayark the same way you kill a Patternist?”

  She shrugged. “Probably because they don’t know any better. Most Patternist nonhealers don’t have any idea why other Patternists die when they hit them in a certain way. And they don’t care, as long as it works.” She frowned, and thought for a moment. “The focus is everything, Teray. Of course, we can’t lock in on Clayarks the way we can on each other. We can’t read their thoughts or even sense that they have thoughts, so we can’t go after one of them the way we’d go after one of our own.”

  “What happens if you try—if you focus on a Clayark by sight, or you sense his physical presence and then hit him as though you were hitting a Patternist?”

  “What would you be hitting?”

  “His head, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said. “You might give the Clayark time to put a bullet through your head. The only people we can hope to kill by just mindlessly throwing our strength at them are mutes and other Patternists. With Clayarks, you have to know exactly what you’re doing, and do it just right, or you’ll get killed.”

  “A Clayark wouldn’t be harmed at all if you hit him?”

  “If you hit him—his head—with all your strength, he might have a seizure. But for most people, nothing.”

  Teray frowned, not understanding but not wanting to question further.

  “Feel the wind?” she said.

  “What?”

  “The wind. There’s a pretty good breeze blowing in from the ocean. There’s a lot of power in the wind—even in a breeze like this. Ask Joachim. His House uses windmills. It doesn’t usually seem like much power, though. Not until you find specific ways to use it, ways to make it work for you.”

  “I understand,” he muttered.

  “If I hit a Clayark as though he were a Patternist, he’d notice it about as much as you noticed the wind before I mentioned it.”

  “I said I understood.”

  “All right.”

  It was the disease again, blocking the way. A disease that protected its carriers and killed their enemies. The disease of Clay’s Ark, brought back hundreds of years before, so the old records said, by the only starship ever to leave Earth and then return. A starship. A mute contrivance that had supposedly ended the reign of the mutes over the Earth they had sought to leave. That part of history had always held a grim fascination for Teray. His own race had been small then, scattered, disunited, a mere offshoot of the mutes. His people had been carefully bred for mental strength—bred by one of their own kind who happened to have been born with as much mental strength as he needed. One whose specialty had not been healing, teaching, creating art, or any of the ordinary talents. The Founder’s specialty had been living. He had lived for thousands of years, breeding, building the people who were to become Patternists. Finally, he had been killed by one of his own daughters—she who first created and held a Pattern.

  And meanwhile, mutes had been building a society more intricate, more mechanized, than anything that had existed since their downfall. Some Patternists refused to believe this segment of history. They said it was like believing that horses and cattle once had mechanized societies. But in Coransee’s House, Teray had seen for himself that mutes were more mechanically inclined than most Patternists. And mutes were intelligent. So much so that Teray would have enjoyed challenging them—letting them have more freedom, encouraging them to use their minds and their hands for more than drudgery. Then he could find out for himself whether the inventive ability that had once made them great still existed. After all, even now it was the mutes who handled what little machinery there was in Patternist Territory. And the Clayarks, who were only physically mutated mutes, were said to use simple machinery in their settlements beyond the eastern mountains. On the western side of the mountains, however, Clayarks produced nothing but weapons and warriors. At least, that was all Patternists had ever known them to produce. Yet Teray found himself thinking about the Clayark he had talked to. The creature had known Teray’s language, at least enough to communicate. But Teray, like most Patternists, knew nothing of the language the Clayarks spoke among themselves. Patternists almost never let Clayarks get close enough to them to hear them talk. Patternists and Clayarks stared at each other across a gulf of disease and physical difference and comfortably told themselves the same lie about each other. The lie that Teray’s Clayark had tried to get away with: “Not people.”

  That night another group of Clayarks drifted near them. Teray and Amber were camped on the beach, back against a hill. Amber had checked the horses over very carefully in what was to become a nightly ritual. She healed any injuries she found before they became serious, seeing to it, as she said, that they did not wind up on foot, and Clayark bait. They saved their rations and ate quail that Teray had mentally lured from one of the canyons in the hills. The Clayarks came into range behind them while they were eating.

  Amber, aware of the danger the moment Teray sensed it, opened to offer him her strength. He accepted it, and used it to extend his range.

  At once, he could sense the entire group of Clayarks walking toward them, moving through the hills rather than along the trail. Very shortly, those in the lead would see the two Patternists’ fire.

  Swiftly Teray reviewed the technique he had learned from Amber, then he swept over them like an ocean wave. A wave of destructive power, killing.

  The Clayarks had almost no time even to scatter. The group was slightly larger than the one they had met earlier. But Teray handled it in a fraction of the time he had needed to handle the first group. He handled it using less energy, since he was not required to puncture or tear anything. And since he handled it so quickly, he did not need Amber to spot potential escapees for him. There were no potential escapees.

  Since he would never see them physically, he swept over them once more to see that they all were dead. There was no movement at all.

  He turned to look at Amber. “Satisfied?”

  She nodded gravely. “I’ll sleep better.”

  “You ought to pass your methods on to the schools—the one in Redhill, anyway. Save some Patternist lives.”

  “Healers usually stumble across it on their own. Most nonhealers can’t learn it even with teaching. They have to either rip or puncture something, or they have to hit as though at a Patternist. My way is somewhere in between. I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to do it.”

  “You didn’t act as though you were afraid.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t want you to try it with the idea that you couldn’t really expect to succeed.”

  He looked at her, shook his head, and smiled slightly.

  “Has anyone ever tried to make a healer of you?” she asked.

  “They taught me what they could in school. I don’t have much of an aptitude for it, though.”

  “So a lot of nonhealers told you.”

  “I don’t, really. I don’t have the fine perception for it. I miss symptoms unless they’re really obvious. Pain, profuse bleeding, no one could miss those. But little things, especially things that are caused by disease instead of injury—I can’t sense them.”

  She nodded. “Coransee has that problem, too, but you might not be as bad as he is. If you want to, when we get
to Forsyth I’ll try teaching you a little more. I think you’re underrating yourself.”

  “All right.” He hoped she was right. It would be reassuring to be able to do something better than Coransee could.

  Travel grew more difficult the next day. They reached the higher mountains and found that the trail lost itself among them, “washed out, as usual,” Amber said. The sectors nearest the coast were supposed to keep it clear, but during Rayal’s long illness such work had become too dangerous. Teray and Amber walked and led their horses more than they rode.

  On the third day they did no riding at all. There was no longer a beach. The waves broke against rocks and the rocky base of the mountains. They knew the canyons and highlands that they had to travel. These they had memorized. There was no chance of their getting lost. But they were losing time. Walking, scrambling over rock and brush, wondering themselves where they and the horses were finding footholds. The trek was physically wearing, but at least they encountered few Clayarks.

  There were deer and quail for hunting, and there were cattle that they left alone. The cattle belonged to coastal sectors whose attention they did not want to attract. On the fourth day they traveled within the boundaries of one of these sectors. They passed through as quickly and carefully as they could. They were farther inland than they wanted to be. At one point they found themselves looking down on a large House comfortably surrounded by its outbuildings, which lay below them in a small valley. They hurried on.

  It was while they were passing through this sector that they became aware of a great tribe of Clayarks. They were well out of sight of the House, riding easily now since the people of the sector took care of their part of the trail. But they didn’t take care of themselves very well if they let themselves be invaded by so many Clayarks.

  The Clayarks were resting—or at least they were not moving. Teray and Amber, their strength united, tried to find out how large the tribe was. They could find no end to it. It extended beyond their double range. Hundreds and hundreds of Clayarks; surely death to any but a large, strong party of Patternists. Teray and Amber detoured widely to avoid any possible contact with them. The Clayarks seemed not to notice, but neither Teray nor Amber could relax again for some hours.

  Midway through the journey—on the ninth day rather than on the fifth, as it should have been—they had to leave the trail entirely even though it was well kept and smooth now. Here, it left the coast and ran through the middle of a large sector. It had only gone through an edge of the sector in which they had found the Clayarks. Now, though, the coast jutted out in a large peninsula while the trail continued on due south. Teray and Amber decided to lose a little more time and stay near the coast. They would not follow it as closely as they had, but they would stay well away from the Houses of the sector. As careful as they were, though, early the next day they suddenly became aware of Patternists approaching them on horseback. Seven Patternists.

  By now Teray and Amber worked together almost instinctively, worked together as though they had been a team for months instead of days. And they both were strong. It was possible that together they could take on seven Patternists and have a chance of winning—if none of those Patternists was Coransee. Amber spoke as though on cue.

  “I don’t think any of them is Coransee. I only got a flash of them before I shielded, but I think I would have sensed him if he had been with them.”

  “People from this sector, perhaps,” said Teray.

  “No matter who they are, we’re fair game.”

  The two groups met in a grove of trees, Teray and Amber on one side, and the seven strangers—four men and three women—on the other. Teray and Amber sat still, tense, shielded from the strangers, joined to each other only by the link. They waited.

  “It would be best for you,” said a small, white-haired woman in the center of the seven, “if you came with us without fighting.”

  The woman’s hair was naturally white, not graying with age, yet Teray knew she was old. He could not have explained how he knew. Her age did not show in any definable way. Either she or her healer had stopped all physical signs of its progress, to leave her looking about thirty-five. Yet Teray had no doubt that the woman had lived more than twice her apparent thirty-five years. Which was unusual for a Housemaster—as this woman seemed by her manner to be. Most Housemasters were killed for their Houses long before they reached this woman’s age.

  “There are seventeen of us,” the woman said quietly. “Ten that I don’t think you’ve noticed yet. We’re all linked. Attack one of us, and you attack us all.”

  Immediately Teray and Amber became aware of the ten others approaching from the opposite direction, only now coming within range of the quick scan that they dared to make. Teray looked at Amber. Amber shrugged, then relaxed into a posture of apparent submission. What could they do against seventeen linked Patternists?

  “What do you want of us?” asked Teray.

  “To pay a debt,” said the woman.

  Teray frowned. “A debt to whom?”

  “Unfortunately for you, young one, to your brother. To Coransee.”

  “You mean to hold us for him?”

  “Yes.”

  Teray relaxed as Amber had, aware of the tension in the link between them. It was not the tension of a thing on the verge of breaking, but of a thing held in check, ready to spring into action.

  “No,” said Teray quietly.

  The ten approaching Patternists came into view from among the trees. Teray ignored them, and felt Amber turn her attention to them, as he had expected her to. She was fast enough to sense any attack from their direction before it could do damage. Teray spoke again.

  “If Coransee catches me, he’ll kill me. So I don’t have anything to lose in defying you.”

  “You have the life of your woman to lose. I can see that you and she are linked.”

  And Amber spoke up: “I’m not eager to have Coransee catch me either. And I’m my own woman, Lady Darah. Now as before.”

  For the first time, the woman took her eyes off Teray. “I was afraid you might be. Hello, Amber.”

  Amber lowered her head slightly in greeting. “You’re right, Lady. We are linked. We’re going to stay linked. And you should be able to guess where we’re going to direct all our power the moment you attack us.”

  Teray picked it up at once, suppressing his surprise that Amber knew the woman. “You know Coransee is my brother, Lady. That should give you some idea of my strength. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice your own life as well as the lives of several of your people, let us go.”

  “I know you’re strong,” she said. “But I don’t believe you could kill me. Not linked as I am with so many. If you think about it, you won’t believe it either.” She signaled the ten riders now waiting a short distance behind Amber and Teray. The ten began to move forward, clearly intending to herd Teray and Amber before them.

  But neither Amber nor Teray moved. Through the link, Teray felt Amber’s slight expenditure of strength an instant before he realized what she had done. Then he understood.

  Six of the horses approaching them—the six closest—collapsed. Shouting with surprise, some of the riders jumped clear. Some fell. All seventeen Patternists had been expecting an attack on themselves, or at least on Darah. This attack on their horses caught them completely by surprise. Amber finished it quickly, giving them no chance to take advantage of the momentary opening in her shield. Teray was instantly on guard to stop any who tried.

  But there was no movement other than that of the fallen riders and their horses picking themselves up from the ground. None of them seemed to be hurt. And as the Patternists remounted, none of them seemed eager to close with Teray and Amber again.

  “Lady,” said Amber softly, “you may have forgotten my skill, but I haven’t. I can kill you here and now, no matter who you’re linked with. I can kill you as easily as I’d kill a Clayark. I’m fast enough to do it to at least one person before anyone reaches me.”
/>
  The woman held Amber’s gaze steadily. “You’d die for it. My people would kill you.”

  “No doubt. But what good would that do you?”

  “You’re not under any death sentence from Coransee.”

  “No.”

  “And … in view of the favor you once did me, I might be willing to let you go. If you go alone.”

  “Might you?”

  “Do you want to die, Amber?” The woman’s voice had become hard.

  “No, Lady.”

  “Then go!”

  “No … Lady.”

  “I don’t believe you’re willing to sacrifice your life for him.”

  Amber smiled. “Yes, you do.”

  “And,” the woman continued over Amber’s words, speaking to Teray again, “I don’t believe you’re the kind to let someone else do your fighting for you.”

  “Do you think I’d be foolish enough to refuse her help against you and sixteen other people?”

  “I just wanted to give you a chance to save her life—since you can’t save your own.”

  “Lady, you choose any three of your people. Keep linked with them and sever with the others. I’ll take the four of you on alone. That’s the kind of chance I’d like.”

  The woman stared at him, then laughed aloud. “Boasting in a situation like this. You’re his brother all right.”

  She didn’t think he was boasting. In fact, Teray thought, in a way she was boasting—assuring him that he was doomed, yet not attacking. Trying to separate Amber from him.

  “Are you ready to die now, Lady?” he asked.

  She said nothing but her people looked more alert.

  He nodded. “I thought not. I have no more time for you.” He whipped his horse forward suddenly, sending it straight into Darah and her companions. He was aware of Amber moving beside him but he kept his attention on Darah and her people. Their horses reacted, leaping aside, startled, half rearing before their riders tightened controls on them, calmed them.