“I’ll become an outsider if I don’t leave you now.” She shrugged hopelessly. “I’ll be alone. You and Mary will be alike, and I’ll be alone.” There was no anger or resentment in her, he could see. Her conditioning was holding well enough. But she had been much more aware of Mary’s loneliness than Karl had realized. And when Karl began occasionally sleeping with Mary, Vivian had begun to see Mary’s life as a preview of her own. “You won’t need me,” she said softly. “You’ll only come to me now and then to be kind.”
“Vee, will you stay until tomorrow?”
She said nothing.
“Stay at least until tomorrow. We’ve got to talk.” He reinforced the request with a subtle mental command. She had no telepathic ability at all. She would not be consciously aware of the command, but she would respond to it. She would stay until the next day, as he had asked, and she would think her staying was her own decision. He promised himself that he would not coerce her further. Already it was getting too easy to treat her like just another pet.
She drew a deep breath. “I don’t know what good it will do,” she said. “But yes, I’ll stay that long.” She turned to go out of the room and ran into Doro. He caught her as she was stumbling blindly around him, and held her.
Doro looked at Mary, who had finally straightened herself out on the bed. She looked back at him wearily.
“Good luck,” he said quietly.
She continued to watch him, not responding at all.
He turned and left with Vivian, still holding her as she cried.
Karl looked down at Mary.
She continued to stare after Doro and Vivian. She spoke softly. “Why is it Doro is always so kind to people after he messes up their lives?”
Karl took a tissue from the box on her night table and wiped her face. It was wet with perspiration.
She gave him a tired half smile. “You being ‘kind’ to me, man?”
“That wasn’t my word,” said Karl.
“No?”
“Look,” he said, “you know how it’s going to be from now on. One bad experience after another. Why don’t you use this time to rest?”
“When it’s over, if I’m still alive, I’ll rest.” And then explosively, “Shit!”
He felt her caught up in someone else’s fear, stark terror. Then he was caught too. He was too close to her again.
For a moment, he let the alien terror roll over him, engulf him. He broke into an icy sweat. Abruptly he was elsewherestanding outside in the back yard of a house built near the edge of one of the canyons. Coming up the slope from the canyon was the longest, thickest snake he had ever seen. It was coming toward him. He couldn’t move. He was terrified of snakes. Abruptly he turned to run. He caught his foot on a lawn sprinkler, fell screaming, his body twisting, thrashing. He felt his own leg snap as he hit the ground. But the break registered less on him than the snake. And the snake was coming closer.
Karl had had enough. He drew back, screened out the man’s terror. At that instant, Mary screamed.
As Karl watched, she turned on her side, curling up again, pressing her face into the pillow so that the sounds she made were muffled.
He watched her mentally as well, or watched the ophidiophobe whose mind held her. He thought he understood something now. Something he had wondered about. He knew how Mary’s expanding talent, acting without control, was opening one pathway after another to other people’s raw emotions. And now he realized that when he let himself be caught up in those emotions, he was standing in the middle of an open pathway. He was shielding her from the infant fumbling of her own ability by accepting the consequences of that fumbling himself. That was why Doro had told him to back off. When he was too close to Mary, he was helping her. He was preventing her from going through the suffering that was normal for a person in transition. And since the suffering was normal, perhaps it was in some way necessary. Perhaps an active could not mature without it. Perhaps that was why Doro had warned him to help Mary only when she could no longer help herself.
“Karl?”
He looked at her, realizing that he had let his attention wander. He didn’t know what had finally happened to the frightened man. He didn’t care.
“What did you do?” she asked. “I could feel myself getting caught up in something
else. Then for a while it was gone.”
He told her what he had learned, and what he had guessed. “So at least now I know how to help you,” he finished. “That gives you a better chance.”
“I thought Doro would tell you how to help me.”
“No, I think half Doro’s pleasure comes from watching us, running us through mazes like rats and seeing how well we figure things out.”
“Sure,” she said. “What are a few rat lives?” She took a deep breath. “And, speaking of lives, Karl, don’t help me unless I’m about to lose mine. Let me try to get through this on my own.”
“I’ll do whatever seems necessary as you progress,” he said. “You’re going to have to trust my judgment. I’ve been through this already.”
“Yeah, you’ve been through it,” she said. He saw her hands tighten into fists as something clutched at her mind before she could finish. But she managed to get a few more words out. “And you went through it on your own. Alone.”
She struggled all evening, all night, and well into the next morning. During her few lucid moments he tried to show her how to interpose her own mind shield between herself and the world outside, how to control her ability and regain the mental peace that she had not known for months. That was what he had had to learn to bring his own transition to an end. If she didn’t want his protection, perhaps he could at least show her how to protect herself.
But she did not seem to be able to learn.
She was growing weaker and wearier. Dangerously weary. She seemed ready to sink into oblivion with the unfortunate people whose thoughts possessed her. She had passed out a few times, earlier. Now, though, he was afraid to let her go again. She was too weak. He was afraid she might never regain consciousness.
He lay beside her on the bed listening to her ragged breathing, knowing that she was with a fifteen-year-old boy somewhere in Los Angeles. The boy was being methodically beaten to death by three older boysmembers of a rival gang.
Just watching the things she had to live through was sickening. Why couldn’t she pick up the simple shielding technique?
She started to get up from the bed. Her self-control was all but gone. She was moving as the boy moved miles away. He was trying to get up from the ground. He didn’t know what he was doing. Neither did she.
Karl caught her and held her down, thankful, not for the first time that night, that she was small. He managed to catch her hands before she could slash him again with her nails. The blood was hardly dry on his face where she had scratched him before. He held her, pinning her with his weight, waiting for it to end.
Then, abruptly, he was tired of waiting. He opened his mind to the experience and took the finish of the beating himself.
When it was over, he stayed with her, ready to take anything else that might sweep her away. Even now she was stubborn enough not to want him there, but he no longer cared what she wanted. He brushed aside her wordless protests and tried to show her again how to erect shielding of her own. Again he failed. She still couldn’t do it.
But after a while, she seemed to be doing something.
Staying with her mentally, Karl opened his eyes and moved away from her body. Something was happening that he did not understand. She had not been able to learn from
him, but she was using him somehow. She had ceased to protest his mental presence. In fact, her attention seemed to be on something else entirely. Her body was relaxed. Her thoughts were her own, but they were not coherent. He could make no sense of them. He sensed other people with her mentally, but he could not reach them even clearly enough to identify them.