Doro nodded. “I’ll drive you. Come on.”
Karl followed him out of the building, then blindly, mechanically got in on the driver’s side. Doro spoke to him sharply. Karl jumped, frowned, moved over. Doro was right. Karl was in no shape to drive. Karl was in no shape to do anything. It was as though he were plunging into his own transition again.
“You’re too close to her,” said Doro. “Pull back a little. See if you can sense what’s happening to her without being caught up in it.”
Pull back. How? How had he gotten so close, anyway? He had never been caught up in Mary’s pretransition experiences.
“You know what to expect,” Doro told him. “At this point she’s going to be reaching for the worst possible stuff. That’s what’s familiar to her. That’s what’s going to attract her attention. She’ll get an avalanche of itviolence, pain, fear, whatever. I don’t want you caught up in it unless she obviously needs help.”
Karl said nothing. He was already trying to separate himself from Mary. The mental link he had established with her had grown into something more than he had intended it to be. If two minds could be tangled together, his and Mary’s were.
Then he realized that she had become aware of him, was watching him as he tried to untangle himself. He had never permitted her to be aware of his mental probing before. He stopped what he was doing now, concerned that he had frightened her. She would have enough fear to contend with within the next twelve hours without his adding to it.
But she was not afraid. She was glad to have him with her. She was relieved to discover that she was not facing the worst hours of her life alone.
Karl relaxed for a few minutes, less eager to leave her now. He could still remember how glad he had been to have Emma with him during his transition. Emma couldn’t help mentally, but she was a human presence with him, drawing him back to sanity, reality. He could do at least that much for Mary.
“How is she?” Doro asked.
“All right. She understands what’s happening.”
“Something is liable to snatch her away again any minute.”
“I know.”
“When it happens, let it happen. Watch, but stay out of it. If you see a way to help her, don’t.”
“I thought that’s what I was for. To help.”
“You are, later, when she can’t help herself. When she’s ready to give up.”
Karl glanced at Doro while keeping most of his attention on Mary. “Do you lose a lot of her kind?”
Doro smiled grimly. “She doesn’t have a ‘kind.’ She’s unique. So are you, though you aren’t as unusual as I hope she’ll be. I’ve been working toward both of you for a good many generations. But yes.” The smile vanished. “Several of her unsuccessful predecessors have died in transition.”
Karl nodded. “And I’ll bet most of them took somebody with them. Somebody who
was trying to help them.”
Doro said nothing.
“I thought so,” said Karl. “And I already know from Mary’s thoughts that you killed the ones who managed to survive transition.”
“If you know, why bring it up?”
Karl sighed. “I guess because it still surprises me that you can do things like that. Or maybe I’m just wondering whether she or I will still be alive this time tomorroweven if we both survive her transition.”
“Bring her through for me, Karl, and you’ll be all right.”
“And her?”
“She’s a dangerous kind of experiment. Believe me, if she turns out to be another failure, you’ll want her dead more than I will.”
“I wish I knew what the hell you were doing. Aside from playing God, I mean.”
“You know enough.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know what I want of you. That’s enough.”
It never did any good to argue with Doro. Karl leaned back and finished disentangling himself from Mary. He would be with her in person soon. And even without Doro’s warning he would not have wanted to go through much more of her transition with her. Before he broke the connection, he let her know that he was on his way to her, that she wouldn’t be alone long. It had been two weeks since their marriage, two weeks since she had called him back to her bed. He hadn’t gone out of his way to hurt her since then.
He watched Doro maneuver the car into the right lane so that they could get on the Forsyth Freeway. Doro cut across the lanes, wove through the light traffic carelessly, speeding as usual. He had no more regard for traffic laws than he did for any other laws. Karl wondered how many accidents Doro had caused or been involved in. Not that it mattered to Doro. Had human life ever mattered to Doro beyond his interest in human husbandry? Could a creature who had to look upon ordinary people literally as food and shelter ever understand how strongly those people valued life? But yes, of course he could. He understood it well enough to use it to keep his people in line. He probably even understood it well enough to know how Karl and Mary both felt now. It just didn’t make any difference. He didn’t care.
Fifteen minutes later, Doro pulled into Karl’s driveway. Karl was out of the car and heading for the house before Doro brought the car to a full stop. Karl knew that Mary was in the midst of another experience. He had felt it begin. He had kept her under carefully distant observation even after he had severed the link between them. Now, though, even without a deliberately established link, he was having trouble preventing himself from merging into her experience. Mary was trapped in the mind of a man who had to eventually burn to death. The man was trapped inside a burning house. Mary was experiencing his every sensation.
Karl went up the back stairs two at a time and ran through the servants’ quarters toward the front of the house. He knew Mary was in her room, lying down, knew that, for some reason, Vivian was with her.
He walked into the room and looked first at Mary, who lay in the middle of her bed, her body rolled into a tight, fetal knot. She made small noises in her throat like choked screams or moans, but she did not move. Karl sat down on the bed next to her and looked
at Vivian.
“Is she going to be all right?” Vivian asked.
“I think so.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“If she is, I will be.”
She got up, came to rest one hand on his shoulder. “You mean, if she comes through all right, Doro won’t kill you.”
He looked at her, surprised. One of the things he liked about her was that she could still surprise him. He left her enough mental privacy for that. He had read his previous women more than he read her and they had quickly become boring. He had hardly read Vivian at all until she had asked him to condition her and let her stay with him, help her stay, in spite of Mary. He had not wanted to do it, but he had not wanted to lose her, either. The conditioning he had imposed on her kept her from feeling jealousy or hatred toward Mary. But it did not prevent her from seeing things clearly and drawing her own conclusions.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Both Mary and I are going to make it all right.”
She looked at Mary, who still lay knotted in the agony of her experience. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Nothing.”
“Can I … can I stay. I’ll keep out of the way. I just”
“Vee, no.”
“I just want to see what she has to go through. I want to see that the price she has to pay to … to be like you is too high.”
“You can’t stay. You know you can’t.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, dropped her hand to her side. “Then, let me go. Let me leave you.”
He stared at her, surprised, stricken. “You know you’re free to go if that’s really what you want. But I’m asking you not to.”