Doro nodded. “That’s best for all of you. Are you going to help her with her cousins?”
“Help her?”
“I’ve never seen a person born to be a latent suddenly pushed into transition. I’m assuming they’ll have their problems and need help.”
Karl looked at me. “Do you want my help again?”
“Of course I do.”
“You’ll need at least one other person.”
“Seth.”
“Yes.” He looked at Doro. “Are you finished with us?”
Doro nodded.
“All right.” He got up. “Come on, Mary. We may as well have that talk before you get back to Seth and Clay.”
Doro
Doro did not leave the Larkin house, as he had planned. Suddenly there was too much going on. Suddenly things were getting out of hand—or at least out of his hands.
Mary was doing very well. She was driven by her own need to enlarge the pattern and aided not only by Doro’s advice but by the experience of the six other actives. From the probing Doro had made her do and the snooping she had done on her own, she now had detailed mental outlines of the other actives’ lives. Knowing what they had done in the past helped her decide what she could reasonably ask them to do now. Knowing Seth, for instance, made her decide to take Clay from him, take charge of Clay herself.
“How necessary is the pain of transition?” she asked Doro before making her decision. “Karl said you told him to hold off helping me until I was desperate. Why?”
“Because, in earlier generations of actives, the more help the person in transition received, the longer it took him to form his own shield.” Doro grimaced remembering. “Before I understood that, I had several potentially good people die of injuries that wouldn’t have happened if their transitions had ended when they should have. And I had others who died of sheer exhaustion.”
Mary shuddered. “Sounds like it would be best to leave them alone completely.” She glanced at Doro. “Which is probably why I’m the only one out of the seven of us who had any help.”
“You were also the only one of the seven to have a seventeen-hour transition. Ten to twelve hours is more normal. Seventeen isn’t that bad, though, and since your predecessors died whenever I left them alone in transition, I decided that you needed someone. Actually, Karl did a good job.”
“I think I’ll pass on the favor,” she said, “by doing a good job for Clay Dana before his brother helps him to death.” She went to Seth, told him what Doro had just told her, then told him that she, not Seth, would attend Clay at Clay’s transition. Later she repeated the conversation to Doro.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Seth had said. “No. No way.”
“You’re too close to Clay,” she had told him. “You’ve spent more than ten years shielding him from pain.”
“That doesn’t make any difference.”
“The hell it doesn’t! What’s your judgment going to be like when you have to hold off shielding him—when you have to decide whether he’s in enough trouble for you to risk helping him? How objective do you think you’re going to be when he’s lying in front of you screaming?”
“Objective …!”
“His life is going to depend on what you decide to do, man—or decide not to do.” She looked at Clay. “How objective do you think he can be? It’s your life.”
Clay looked uncomfortable, spoke to his brother. “Could she be right, Seth? Could this be something you should leave to somebody else?”
“No!” said Seth instantly. And then again, with a little less certainty, “No.”
“Seth?”
“Look, I can handle it. Have I ever let you down?”
And Mary broke in. “You probably never have, Seth, and I’m not going to give you a chance to ruin your record.”
Seth turned to look at her. “Are you saying you’re going to force me to stand aside?” His tone made the words more a challenge than a question.
“Yes,” said Mary.
Seth stared at her in surprise. Then, slowly, he relaxed. “You could do it,” he said quietly. “You could knock me cold when the time came. But, Mary, if anything happens to my brother, you’d better not let me come to.”
“Clay will be all right,” she said. “I plan to see to it. And I’m really not interested in knocking you out. I hope you won’t make me do it.”
“Then, tell me why. Make me understand why you’re interfering in something that shouldn’t even be any of your business.”
“I started it, man. I’m the reason for it. If it’s anybody’s business, it’s mine. Now, Clay has a better chance with me than he has with you because I can see what’s happening to him both mentally and physically. I’m going to know if he really needs help. I’m not going to have to guess.”
“What can you do but guess? You’re barely out of transition yourself.”
“I’ve got seven transition experiences to draw on. And you can believe I’ve studied all of them. Now it’s settled, Seth.”
Seth took it. Doro watched him with interest after Mary reported the conversation. And Doro caught Seth watching Mary. Seth did not seem angry or vindictive. It was more as though he was waiting for something to happen. He had accepted Mary’s authority as, years before, he had accepted Doro’s. Now he watched to see how she handled it. He seemed surprised when, days later, she gave him charge of her cousin Jamie, but he accepted the responsibility. After that, he seemed to relax a little.
Rachel was on her feet again two days after her attack on Mary. Jesse, more severely weakened, was in bed a day longer. Both became quieter, more cautious people. They, too, watched Mary—warily. Mary sent Rachel to kidnap the Hansons. Forsyth was a small city; Rachel could go across town without much discomfort. She wouldn’t be staying long, anyway.
“Make their parents believe they’ve left home for good,” Mary told her. “Because, one way or another, they have. You shouldn’t have much tampering to do, though. The parents aren’t going to be sorry to lose them.”
Rachel frowned. “Even so, it seems wrong to just go in and take them—people’s children. …”
“They’re not children. Hell, Jamie’s a year older than I am. And if we don’t take them, they probably won’t make it through transition. If they don’t manage to kill themselves by losing control at a bad time, somebody else will kill them by taking them to a hospital. You can imagine what it would be like to be a mental sponge picking up everything in a hospital.”
Rachel shuddered, nodded, turned to go. Then she stopped and faced Mary again. “I was talking to Karl about what you’re trying to do—the community of actives that you want to put together.”
“Yes?”
“Well, if I have to stay here, I’d rather live in a community of actives—if such a thing is possible. I’d like us to stop hiding so much and start finding out what we’re really capable of.”
“You’ve been thinking about it,” said Mary.
“I had time,” said Rachel dryly. “What I’m working up to is that I’m willing to help you. Help more than just going after these kids, I mean.”
Mary smiled, looked pleased but not surprised. “I would have asked you,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t have to. I didn’t ask you to help anybody through transition because I wanted you standing by for all three transitions in case some medical problem comes up. Jan broke her arm during her transition and you probably know Jesse did some kind of damage to his back that could have been serious. It will be best if you’re sort of on call.”
“I will be,” said Rachel. She left to get the Hansons.
Mary looked after her for a moment, then walked over to the sofa nearest to the fireplace, where Doro was sitting with a closed book on his lap.
“You’re always around,” she said. “My shadow.”
“You don’t mind.”
“No. I’m used to you. In fact, I’m really going to miss you when you leave. But, then, you won’t be leaving soon. You’re hooked. You’ve got to s
ee what happens here.”
She couldn’t have been more right. And it wasn’t just the three coming transitions that he wanted to see. They were important, but Mary herself was more important. Her people were submitting now, all but Karl. And she would overcome Karl’s resistance slowly.
Doro had wondered what Mary would do with her people once she had subdued them. Before she discovered Clay’s potential, she had probably wondered herself. Now, though … Doro had reworded Karl’s question. How many latents did she think she wanted to bring through? “All of them, of course,” she had said.
Now Doro was waiting. He didn’t want to put limits on her, yet. He was hoping that she would not like the responsibility she was creating for herself. He was hoping that, before too long, she would begin to limit herself. If she didn’t, he would have to step in. Success—his and hers—was coming too quickly. Worse, all of it depended on her. If anything happened to her, the pattern would die with her. It was possible that her actives, new and old, would revert to their old, deadly incompatibility without it. Doro would lose a large percentage of his best breeding stock. This quick success could set him back several hundred years.
Mary gave Karl charge of her bald girl cousin, Christine, and then probably wished she hadn’t. Surprisingly, Christine’s shaved head did not make her ugly. And, unfortunately, her inferior position in the house did not make her cautious. Fortunately, Karl wasn’t interested. Christine just didn’t have the judgment yet to realize how totally vulnerable she was. Mary had a private talk with her.
Mary gave Christine and Jamie a single, intensive session of telepathic indoctrination. They learned what they were, learned their history, learned about Doro, who had neglected their branch of Emma’s family for two generations. They learned what was going to happen to them, what they were becoming part of. They learned that every other active in the house had gone through what they were facing and that, while it wasn’t pleasant, they could stand it. The double rewards of peace of mind and power made it worthwhile.
The Hansons learned, and they believed. It wouldn’t have been easy for them to disbelieve information force-fed directly into their minds. Once the indoctrination was over, though, they were let alone mentally. They became part of the house, accepting Mary’s authority and their own pain with uncharacteristic docility.
Jamie went into transition first, about a month after he moved to Larkin House. He was young, strong, and surprisingly healthy in spite of having tried every pill or powder he could get his hands on.
He came through. He had sprained his wrist, blackened one of Seth’s eyes, and broken the bed he was lying on, but he came through. He became an active. Seth was as proud as though he had just become a father.
Clay, who should have been first, was next. He came through in a short, intense transition that almost killed him. He actually suffered heart failure, but Mary got his heart started again and kept it going until Rachel arrived. Clay’s transition was over in only five hours. It left him with none of the usual bruises and strains, because Mary did not try to restrain him with her own body or tie him down. She simply paralyzed his voluntary muscles and he lay motionless while his mind writhed through chaos.
Clay became an active, but not a telepathic active. His budding telepathic ability vanished with the end of his transition. But he was compensated for it, as he soon learned.
When his transition ended and he was at peace, he saw that a tray of food had been left beside his bed. He could just see it out of the corner of his eye. He was still paralyzed and could not reach it, but in his confusion and hunger, he did not realize this. He reached for it anyway.
In particular, he reached for the bowl of soup that he could see steaming so near him. It was not until he lifted the soup and drew it to him that he realized that he was not using his hands. The soup hovered without visible support a few inches above his chest. Startled, Clay let it fall. At the same instant, he moved to get away from it. He shot about three feet to one side and into the air. And stayed suspended there, terrified.
Slowly, the terror in his eyes was replaced by understanding. He looked around his bedroom at Rachel, at Doro, and, finally, at Mary. Mary apparently released him then from his paralysis, because he began to move his arms and legs now like a human spider hanging in mid-air from an invisible web. Slowly, deliberately, Clay lowered himself to the bed. Then he drifted upward again, apparently finding it an easy thing to do. He looked at Mary, spoke apparently in answer to some thought she had projected to him.
“Are you kidding? I can fly! This is good enough for me.”
“You’re not a member of the pattern any more,” she said. She seemed saddened, subdued.
“That means I’m free to go, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. If you want to.”
“And I won’t be getting any more mental interference?”
“No. You can’t pull it in any more. You’re not even an out-of-control telepath. You’re not a telepath at all.”
“Lady, you read my mind. You’ll see that’s no tragedy to me. All that so-called power ever brought me was grief. Now that I’m free of it, I think I’ll go back to Arizona—raise myself a few cows, maybe a few kids.”
“Good luck,” said Mary softly.
He drifted close to her, grinned at her. “You wouldn’t believe how easy this is.” He lifted her clear off the floor, brought her up to eye level with him. She gazed at him, unafraid. “What I’ve got is better than what you’ve got,” he joked.
She smiled at him finally. “No it isn’t, man. But I’m glad you think it is. Put me down.”
He lowered both her and himself to the floor as though he had been doing it all his life. Then he looked at Doro. “Is this something brand-new, or have you seen it before?”
“Psychokinesis,” said Doro. “I’ve seen it before. Seen it several times in your father’s family, in fact, although I’ve never seen it come about this smoothly before.”
“You call that transition smooth?” said Mary.
“Well, with the heart problem, no, I guess not. But it could have been worse. Believe me, this room could be a shambles, with everyone in it injured or dead. I’ve seen it happen.”
“My kind throw things,” guessed Clay.
“They throw everything,” said Doro. “Including some things that are nailed down securely. Instead of doing that, I think you might have turned your ability inward a little and caused your own heart to stop.”
Clay shook himself. “I could have. I didn’t know what I was doing, most of the time.”
“A psychokinetic always has a good chance of killing himself before he learns to control his ability.”
“That may be the way it was,” said Mary. “But it won’t be that way anymore.”
Doro heard the determination in her voice and sighed to himself. She had just shared a good portion of Clay’s agony as she worked to keep him alive, and immediately she was committing herself to do it again. She had found her work. She was some sort of mental queen bee, gathering her workers to her instead of giving birth to them. She would be totally dedicated, and difficult to reason with or limit. Difficult, or perhaps impossible.
Christine Hanson came through in an ordinary transition, perhaps a little easier than most. She made more noise than either of the men because pain, even slight pain, terrified her. She had had a harder time than the others during the pretransition period, too. Finally, hoarse but otherwise unhurt, Christine completed her transition. She remained a telepath, like her brother. It was possible that one or both of them might learn to heal, and it was possible that they, Rachel, and Mary might be very long-lived.
Whatever potential Jamie and Christine had, they accepted their places in the pattern easily. They were Mary’s first grateful pattern members. And their membership brought an unexpected benefit that Jesse accidentally discovered. Now all the members could move farther from Mary without discomfort. Suddenly, more people meant more freedom.
Doro watched and
worried silently. The day after Christine’s transition, Mary began pulling in more of her cousins. And Ada, who knew a few of her relatives, began trying to reach them in Washington. Doro could have helped. He knew the locations of all his important latent families. But as far as he was concerned, things were moving too quickly even without his help. He said nothing.
He had decided to give Mary two years to make what she could of her people. That was enough time for her to begin building the society she envisioned—what she was already calling a Patternist society. But two years should still leave Doro time to cut his losses—if it became necessary—without sacrificing too large a percentage of his breeding stock.
He had admitted to himself that he didn’t want to kill Mary. She was easily controllable in most matters, because she loved him; and she was a success. Or a partial success. She was giving him a united people, a group finally recognizable as the seeds of the race he had been working to create. They were a people who belonged to him, since Mary belonged to him. But they were not a people he could be part of. As Mary’s pattern brought them together, it shut him out. Together, the “Patternists” were growing into something that he could observe, hamper, or destroy but not something he could join. They were his goal, half accomplished. He watched them with carefully concealed emotions of suspicion and envy.
PART THREE
Chapter Nine
Emma
Emma was at the typewriter in her dining room when Doro arrived. He had not called to say he was coming, but at least when he walked in without knocking, he was wearing a body she had seen him in before: the body of a small man, black-haired, green-eyed, like Mary. But the hair was straight and this body was white. He threw himself down on Emma’s sofa and waited silently until she finished the page that she was working on.
“What is it?” he asked her when she got up. “Another book?”
She nodded. She was young. She was young most of the time now, because he was around so much. “I’ve discovered that I like writing,” she said. “I should have tried it years earlier than I did.” She sat down in a chair, because he was sprawled over the length of the sofa. He lay there frowning.
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