Mind of My Mind (20 page)

"Winning your empire. Is there anybody whose life you wouldn't risk for your

Goddamn empire?"

"No."

For a moment, she glared at him angrily. Then the anger faded as though she didn't

have the energy to sustain it. Doro was accustomed to the look. All his people faced him

with it at one time or another. It was a look of submission.

"What I've decided to do," said Doro, "is give you the life of one of the actives if you

need it. If you have to make an example of someone, I'll let it pass as long as you keep

control of yourself and don't go beyond that one."

She thought about that for a long moment. "Permission to kill," she said finally. "I

don't know how I feel about that."

"I hope you won't have to use it. But I don't want you totally handicapped."

"Thanks. I think. God, I hope I'm like Rachel. I hope I don't have to kill."

"You won't find out until you get started on someone."

She sighed. "Since this is all your fault, will you stay around for a while? I won't have

Karl. I'll need somebody."

"That's another thing."

"What?"

"Stop telling the actives that the one show of power you've given them, the one thing

you've done that they can't resist or undo, is my fault."

"But it is . . ."

"Of course it is. And the moment they realize I'm here, they'll know it is. They don't

have to be told. Especially when your telling them sounds like whining for pity. There's

no pity in them, girl. They're going to feel about as sorry for you as you do for Vivian, or

for Rina."

That seemed to sober her.

"You're going to have to grow up, Mary," he said quietly. "You're going to have to

grow up fast."

She studied her hands, large, frankly ugly, her worst feature. They lay locked together

in her lap. "Just stay with me for a while, Doro. I'll do the best I can."

"I had intended to stay."

She didn't bother hiding her relief. He got up and went to her.

MARY

There were incidents as my actives straggled in. I had pried through their minds and

gotten to know all of them except Rachel before I even met them—so that none of them

surprised me much.

Doro beat the holy shit out of Jan almost as soon as she arrived, because she'd done

something stupid. I don't think he would have touched her, otherwise. One of the two

kids she'd had by him was dead and he wasn't happy about it. She said it was an accident.

He knew she was telling the truth. But she panicked.

He was talking to her—not very gently—and he started toward her for some reason.

She ran out the front door. That, he doesn't allow. Don't run from him. Never run. He

called her back, warned her. But she kept going. He would have gone after her if I hadn't

stopped him.

"She'll be back," I said quickly. "Give her a chance. The pattern will bring her back."

I wondered why I bothered to try to help her. I shouldn't have cared what happened to

her. She had taken one look at Rachel and me and thought, Oh, God, niggers! And she

was the one Doro had chosen to have kids by. Surely Rachel and Ada would have been

better parents.

Anyway, Doro waited—more out of curiosity than anything else, I think. Jan came

back in about thirty minutes. She came back cursing herself for the coward she was and

believing that Doro would surely kill her now. Instead, he took her up to his room and

beat her. Beat her for God knows how long. We could hear her screaming at first. I read

the others and found what I thought I'd find. That every one of them knew from personal

experience how bad Doro's beatings could be. I knew myself, though, like the others, I

hadn't had one for a few years.

Now we just sat around not looking at each other and waiting for it to be over. After a

while things were quiet. Jan was in bed for three days. Doro ordered Rachel not to help

her.

Rachel had enough to do helping Jesse when he came in. He was the last to arrive,

because he wasted two days trying to fight the pattern. He came in mad and tired and still

pretty cut up from a fight he'd gotten into on the day I called him. I had found out about

that by reading his mind. And I knew about the little town he owned in Pennsylvania, and

the things he did to the people there, and the way he made them love him for it. I was all

ready to hate his guts. Meeting him in person didn't give me any reason to change my

mind.

He said, "You green-eyed bitch, I don't know how you dragged me here, but you

damned well better let me go. Fast."

I was in a bad mood. I had been hearing slightly different versions of that same song

from everybody for two days. I said, "Man, if you don't find something better to call me,

I'm going to knock the rest of your teeth out."

He stared at me as though he wasn't quite sure he'd heard right. I guess he wasn't very

used to people talking back to him and making it stick. He started toward me. The two

words he managed to get out were, "Listen, bitch—"

I picked up a heavy little stone horse statuette from the end table next to me and tried

to break his jaw with it. My thoughts were shielded so that he couldn't anticipate what I

was going to do the way he did with the guy he beat up back in Donaldton. I left him

lying on the floor bleeding and went up to Rachel's room.

She answered my knock and stood in her doorway glaring down at me. "Well?"

"Come downstairs," I said. "I have a patient for you."

She frowned. "Someone is hurt?"

"Yeah, Jesse Bernarr. He's the last member of our 'family' to come in. He came in a

little madder than the rest of you."

I could feel Rachel sweep the downstairs portion of the house with her perception.

She found Jesse and focused in tight on him. "Oh, fine," she muttered after a moment.

"And me with nothing to draw on."

But she went right down to him. I followed, because I wanted to see her heal him. I

hadn't seen anything so far but her memories.

She knelt beside him and touched his face. Suddenly she was viewing the damage

from the inside, first coming to understand it, then stimulating healing. I couldn't find

words to describe how she did it. I could see. I could understand, I thought. I could even

show somebody else mentally. But I couldn't have talked about it. I began wondering if I

could do it.

Rachel was still busy over Jesse when I left. I went into the kitchen, sort of in a daze.

I was mentally going over a lot of Rachel's other healings—the ones I'd gotten from her

memory. What I had learned from her just now made everything clearer. I felt as though I

had just begun to understand a foreign language—as though I had been hearing it and

hearing it, and suddenly a little of it was getting through to me. And that little was

opening more to me.

I pulled open a drawer and took out a paring knife. I put it to my left arm, pressed

down, cut quickly. Not deep. Not too deep. It hurt like hell, anyway. I made a cut about

three inches long, then threw the knife into the sink. I held my arm over the sink too,

because it started to bleed. I stopped the pain, just to find out whether or not I could. It

was easy. Then I let it hurt again. I wanted to feel everything I did in every way I could

feel it. I stopped the bleeding. I closed my eyes and let the fingers of my right hand move

over the wound. Somehow that was better. I could concentrate my perception on the

wound, view it from the inside, without being distracted by what my eyes were seeing.

My arm began to feel warm as I began the healing, and it grew warmer, hot. It wasn't

really an uncomfortable feeling, though, and I didn't try to shut it out. After a while it

cooled, and I could feel that my arm was completely healed.

I opened my eyes and looked at it. Part of the arm was still wet with blood, where it

had run down. But where the cut had been, I couldn't see much more than a fine scar. I

rinsed my arm under the faucet and looked again. Nothing. Just that little scar that

nobody would even see unless they were looking for it.

"Well," said Rachel's voice behind me. "Doro said you were related to me."

I turned to face her, smiling, a little prouder of myself than I should have been in the

presence of a woman who could all but raise the dead. "I just wanted to see if I could do

it."

"It took you about five times longer than it should have for a little cut like that."

"Shit, how long did it take you the first time you tried it?" Then I thought I saw a

chance to make peace with her. I had been in one argument after another with the actives

since they arrived. It was time to stop. It really was. "Never mind," I said. "You're right. I

did take a long time, compared to you. Maybe you could help me learn to speed it up.

Maybe you could teach me a little more about healing, too."

"Either you learn on your own or you don't learn," she said. "No one taught me."

"Was there anybody around who could have?"

She didn't say anything.

"Look, you'd be a good teacher, and I'd like to learn."

"Good luck."

"The hell with you, then." I turned away from her, disgusted, and went to the

refrigerator to make myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich. I was skinny at least partly

because I didn't usually snack on things like that, but I felt hungry now. I figured Rachel

would leave, but she didn't.

"Where's the cook?" she asked.

"In her room watching soap operas, I guess. That's usually where she is when she isn't