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 backnot as far as Tom would have likedand 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 clearand 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 awareaware 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 theremore 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 thinga 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 parentsher stepparentsthe only people besides Doro whom she could ever remember loving. It had been very important oncethat 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.