Mind of My Mind p-2

by Butler, Octavia

  Somehow when the din inside her head lessened she finished with the woman in the wheelchair, sent her away walking slowly, pushing her own chair, and crying.

  Then, without explanation, Rachel handed the service back to Eli and walked away from her bewildered congregation. She shut herself in an empty Sunday-school classroom to be alone to fight the thing that was happening to her.

  Sometime later, she heard Eli in the hall calling her. By then the battle was ended, lost. By then Rachel knew she had to go to Forsyth. Someone had called her in a way that she could not ignore. Someone had made a puppet of her. There was justice in that, she supposed. She reached out to Eli, called him to her to tell him that she was leaving.

  JESSE BERNARR

  Jesse and the girl, this one’s name was Tara, slept late, then got up and drove into Donaldton. It was Sunday and Jesse’s twenty-sixth birthday. He was feeling generous enough to ask the girl what she wanted to do instead of telling her.

  She wanted to get a lunch and go to the park lake. There, though she did not say it, she wanted to show Jesse off. She would be the envy of the female population of Donaldton and she knew it. Best to show him off while she had him. She knew she could only have him until someone else caught his eye. When that happened, he would send her home to her husband and her turn might not come again for months—might not ever come again.

  Jesse smiled to himself as he read her thoughts. Donaldton girls, even shy, undemanding ones like Tara, thought that way when they were with him. They worked as hard as they could to keep him and flaunt him—which was understandable and all right as far as Jesse was concerned. But sometimes Jesse went after girls from the surrounding towns. Girls who didn’t know him even by reputation, and who weren’t quite so eager.

  He and Tara went to a little cafe and had a lunch prepared. There was only one waitress on duty and there were two other customers waiting to be served when Jesse arrived. But they didn’t mind waiting a little longer. They wished him a happy birthday.

  Jesse wasn’t carrying any cash. He rarely did. He never needed it in Donaldton. The waitress smiled at him as he and Tara took the lunch and went back to the car.

  Tara drove to the lake as she had driven into Donaldton. Jesse had wrecked three cars and nearly killed himself before he gave up driving. There was just no future in it for someone who might at any time be hit by mental disturbances from other drivers, pedestrians, whatever. It wasn’t as bad as it had been during his transition, but it still happened. Doro said his mental shielding was defective. Jesse didn’t worry about it. The advantages of his sensitivity outweighed the disadvantages. And Tara was a good driver. All his girls were.

  There were other Sunday picnickers in the park—old people sunning themselves and families with young children. And there was a scattering of young couples and teenagers. Donaldton, Pennsylvania, was small and didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment or recreation. People who would have preferred something more exciting wound up in the park.

  The people were well spread out, though. There was plenty of room. There was so much room, in fact, that Tara was silently annoyed when Jesse chose a place only a few yards from another couple.

  Jesse pretended not to notice her annoyance. “Want to go for a swim before we eat?”

  “Oh, but … we don’t have suits. I didn’t know we were coming here when we left the house …”

  Jesse glanced around, seemingly casually. “That girl over there has a new one that will fit you,” he said, nodding toward the female half of the nearby fully clothed couple.

  “Oh.” He was in one of his moods again, she was thinking. She was going to be humiliated. This wasn’t like taking food from the cafe. That had been more like a gift. But this girl had brought her bathing suit for her own use.

  Jesse smiled, reading her every thought. “Go on. Go get it. And while you’re at it, get the guy’s trunks for me.”

  She cringed inside but got up to do as he said. He watched her walk toward the couple.

  The distance was too great for him to hear what she said to them clearly, so he picked up the conversation mentally.

  “Could I borrow … I mean … Jesse wants your bathing suits.” She could not have felt more completely foolish, but she expected nothing more than that the couple would hand her the suits and let her escape back to Jesse.

  The girl took one look at Tara and at the watching Jesse and started to get her suit out. The man didn’t move. It was his reaction that Jesse was waiting for. He didn’t have to wait long.

  “You want to borrow our what?”

  “Bathing suits.” Tara looked at the girl. “You’re from town, aren’t you? Tell him.”

  “You tell him.” The girl didn’t particularly resent the loss of the suit. Donaldton people never resented giving Jesse what he wanted. The girl resented Tara.

  Tara didn’t want to be there. She didn’t even want the damned suits. If the girl couldn’t realize that … “Never mind. I’ll have Jesse come over and tell him.” She started away.

  “All right, wait. Wait!” When Tara turned back to face the girl, the girl was holding out her own suit and the man’s trunks. But before Tara could take them, the man snatched them away.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  The girl was angry now, and the man was the only one she could take her anger out on safely. “He’s Jesse Bernarr and he wants to borrow our suits. Will you please let me give them to him?”

  “No! Why the hell should I?” He glanced at Tara. “Look, you go back and tell Jesse Bernarr, whoever he is …” He stopped as Jesse’s shadow fell across him. He looked up, confused, and by now angry. He was a big man, Jesse noticed. He would be tall when he stood up. Massive shoulders and chest. He looked a little bigger than Jesse, in fact. And he did not like not knowing what was going on.

  “You’ve got to be Jesse Bernarr,” he said. He paused as though he expected confirmation from Jesse. He got only silence. “Look, I don’t know what the joke is, mister, but it’s not funny. Now, why don’t you take your girl and go play your kid games somewhere else.”

  “I could.” Jesse plucked the man’s name from his mind. It was Tom. “I don’t feel like swimming any more. But there are a couple of things I think you ought to learn.”

  And there was a simple, effortless way of teaching them to him. But sometimes Jesse liked to expend a little effort. Especially with characters like this Tom who took so much inner pride in their physical prowess. Sometimes Jesse liked to reassure himself that even

  without his extra abilities he would still be better than Tom’s kind.

  He said, “You visit a place for the first time, Tom, you ought to be more willing to listen when the natives try to warn you about local customs.” He smiled at Tom’s girl. She smiled back a little uncertainly. “It could save you a lot of trouble.”

  Tom got up, watching Jesse. “Man, you sure want to fight bad. I’d give a lot to know why.” They faced each other, Tom looking down at Jesse from his slightly superior height.

  Tom’s girl stood up quickly and stepped between them, her back to Tom. “He’ll listen to me, Jess. Let me talk to him.”

  Jesse pushed her out of the way gently, casually. If he hadn’t, Tom would have. But Tom resented Jesse doing it for him. Resented it enough to take the first swing. Jesse, anticipating him, dodged easily.

  A stray child saw them, yelled, and people began to take notice and gather around.

  Only people from outside Donaldton who didn’t know the odds against Tom came to watch a fight. Donaldton people came to see Jesse Bernarr having himself some fun. And they didn’t mind. Even Tom’s girl didn’t mind Jesse having a little fun with Tom. What frightened her was that Tom didn’t know what he was up against. He was liable to make Jesse angry enough to really hurt him. If she had been out with a Donaldton man, she wouldn’t have worried.

  As the two men fought, though, it was Tom whose anger grew, silently encouraged by Jesse. Jesse mentally goaded
Tom to fight as though his life were at stake. Then an explosion went off in Jesse’s head and Tom got his chance.

  Jesse was only vaguely aware of the beating his body was taking as he struggled to close out the mental blast. But there was no way to close it out. No way to dull it as it screamed through him. Tom had a field day.

  When the “noise” finally lessened, when it didn’t fill every part of Jesse’s mind, he realized that he was on the ground. He started groggily to get up, and the man whose anger he had mentally encouraged kicked him in the face.

  His head snapped back—not as far as Tom would have liked—and he lost consciousness.

  He didn’t come to all at once. First he was aware only of the call drawing him, destroying any mental peace he might have had before he became aware of the condition of his body. He didn’t seem to be hurt seriously, but he could feel a dozen or two places where his flesh was split and bruised. His face was lumpy and already swollen. Some of his teeth had been kicked in. And he hurt. He hurt all over. He spat out blood and broken teeth.

  Damn that out-of-town bastard to hell!

  The thought of Tom roused him to look around. Somebody from Donaldton was standing over him, thinking about moving him back into town to a bed.

  Not far away, Tom struggled between two more Donaldton men and cursed steadily.

  Jesse staggered to his feet. The crowd was still there. Probably some out-of-towner had gone for the police. Not that it mattered. The police were old friends of Jesse’s.

  Jesse refused to mute his own pain. It came as near as anything could to blocking out the call to Forsyth. And, although Jesse had not yet analyzed what had happened to him, the message of the call was clear—and clearly something he wanted no part of. Besides, he wanted to hurt. He wanted to look at Tom and hurt. He started to smile, had to spit

  more blood, then spoke softly. “Let him go.”

  Jesse moved in, anticipating Tom’s swings, avoiding them. Tom couldn’t surprise him. And as angry as Jesse was now, that meant Tom couldn’t touch him. Slowly, methodically, he cut the bigger man to pieces.

  Now Tom’s strength betrayed him. It kept him on his feet when he should have fallen, kept him fighting, well after he was beaten. When he finally did collapse to the ground, it kept him conscious and aware—aware solely of pain.

  Jesse walked away and left him lying there. Let his girl take care of him.

  The townspeople drifted away, too. They had had a much better show than they had bargained for. To the out-of-towners, Tom seemed to have gotten no more than he deserved. They resumed their Sunday outing.

  A few minutes later, Tara was shaking her head and wiping blood from Jesse’s face with a cold, wet paper napkin. “Jess, why’d you let him beat you up like that? How are you going to go to your birthday party tonight, now?”

  He glanced at her in annoyance and she fell silent. Party, hell! If he could just get rid of this damned buzzing in his head, he would be all right.

  So, somewhere in California, there was a town called Forsyth, and there were other actives there—more of Doro’s people. So what! Why should he run to them, come when they called? Nobody on the other end of that buzz could have anything to offer him that was better than what he had.

  ADA DRAGAN

  They were screaming at each other over some small thing—a party Ada would not attend. Yesterday the screaming had been over the neighbors whom Ada had interfered with. She had sensed them beating their six-year-old brutally, and she had stopped them. For once, she had accomplished something good with her ability. Foolish pride had made her tell Kenneth. Kenneth had decided that her interference had been wrong.

  She could not tolerate large groups of people, and she could not tolerate child abuse. Kenneth called the first immature and the second none of her business. Everything she did either angered or humiliated him. Everything. Yet she stayed with him. Without him she would be totally alone.

  She was an active. She had power. And all her power did, most of the time, was cut her off from other people, make it impossible for her ever to be one of them. Her power was more like a disease than a gift. Like a mental illness.

  She had gone to a doctor once, secretly. A psychiatrist a few miles away, in Seattle. She had given him a false name and told him only a little. She had stopped when she realized that he was about to suggest a period of hospitalization …

  Now she wondered bitterly whether the doctor had been right. It was her “illness,” after all, that had caused her to descend to this screaming. She said things to Kenneth that she had not thought herself capable of saying to anyone. He did not realize the degradation and despair this signified in her. Only one thought saved her from complete loss of control. The man was her husband.

  She had married him out of desperation, not love. But he was her husband nonetheless, and he had served a purpose. If she had not married him, she might be

  saying these things to her parents—her stepparents—the only people besides Doro whom she could ever remember loving. It had been very important once—that she protect her parents from what she had become. She wondered if it was still important. If she still cared what she said, even to them.

  Abruptly she was tired of the argument. Tired of the man’s fury pounding at her mind and her ears. Tired of her own pointless anger. She turned and walked away.

  Kenneth caught her shoulder and spun her around so quickly that she had no time to think. He slapped her hard, throwing all the weight of his big body against her. She fell back against the wall, then slipped silently to the floor to lie stunned, while, above her, he demanded that she learn to listen when he spoke. At that moment, violence, chaos convulsed her treacherous mind.

  Ada was quick. She did not need time to wonder what was happening or to realize that there would finally be an end to her aloneness. She reacted immediately. She screamed.

  Kenneth had hurt her, but suddenly the physical pain lost all meaning in the face of this new thing. This thing that brought her the pain of a hope roughly torn away.

  Since her change, that terrible night three years before, when all the world had come flooding into her mind, she had treated her condition as a temporary thing. Something that would someday end and let her be as she had been. This was a belief that Doro had tried to talk her out of. But she had been able to convince herself that he was lying. He had refused to introduce her to others who were like her, though he claimed there were others. He had said that it would be painful to her to meet them, that her kind tolerated each other badly. But she had looked for herself, had sifted through thousands of minds without finding even one like her own. Thus she had decided that Doro was lying. She had believed what she wanted to believe. She was good at that; it kept her alive. She had decided that Doro had told only part of the truth. That there had been others like her. It was unthinkable that she had been the only person to undergo this change. And that the others had recovered, changed back.

  This hope had sustained her, given her a reason to go on living. Now she had to see it for the fallacy it was.

  She lay on the floor crying, as she rarely did, in noisy, gasping sobs. Others. How had she searched for so long without finding them? It seemed that they had no trouble finding her. And the strength of the first attack, and even of the call that now pulled at her insistently, was far greater than anything she felt herself able to generate. Such power gave the unknown caller a terrible air of permanence.

  Unexpectedly, Kenneth was lifting her to her feet, reassuring her that she was all right.

  Steadying herself enough to sample his thoughts, she learned that he was a little frightened by her screaming. He had hit her before and gotten no reaction other than quiet tears.

  The selfishness of his thoughts stabilized her. He was wondering what would happen to him if he had hurt her. He had long before ceased worrying about her for her own sake. And she had never forced him to do anything more than stay with her. She pulled away from him tiredly and went into the bedroom.


  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.

  JAN SHOLTO

  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.