I had come to depend on Doro more now than I ever had before. He was the only person in the house that I could talk to without getting blamed, cursed, or threatened. I
had all but moved into his room. So, one night, about two weeks after my transition, I walked into his room, fell across his bed, and said, “Well, I guess this has gone on long enough.”
“What?” he asked. He was at his desk scribbling something that looked like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics in a notebook.
“Everybody sitting around waiting for something that isn’t going to happen,” I said. “Waiting for the pattern to just disappear.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get them all together and make them face a few facts. And then, after they stop screaming, get them thinking about what they can do with themselves in spite of the pattern.” I sat up and looked at him. “Hell, they’re all telepaths. They don’t have to be able to go miles from home to get work done. And God knows they need something to do!”
“Work?”
“Right. Jobs, interests, goals.” I had been thinking about it for days now. “They can make their own jobs. It will give them less time to bitch at me. Rachel can have a church if she wants one. The others can look around, find out what they want.”
“If they’re reasonable. They might not be, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“They might not stop screaming, as you put it, until they’ve tried to lynch you.”
“Yeah,” I repeated. I took a deep breath. “Want to sit in and see the blood?”
He smiled. “There might not be any blood if I’m there.”
“Then, by all means, sit in.”
“Oh, I will. But it will only be to let them know I’m acknowledging your authority over them. I’m going to turn them loose, Mary.”
I swallowed. “Already, huh?”
“They’re yours. It’s time you jumped in among them.”
“I guess so.” I really wasn’t surprised. I had seen him working up to this. He couldn’t read my mind, but he watched me as closely as I watched everybody else. He questioned me. I didn’t mind. He let the others complain to him about me, but he didn’t question them about me or make them promises. That, I appreciated. So now it was time for me to be kicked out of the nest.
“You’ll be leaving if this works, won’t you?” I asked.
“For a while. I’ll be back. I have a suggestion that might help you both before and after I leave, though.”
“What?”
“Let Karl in on what you’re going to do before you do it. Let him get over some of his anger with you and see the sense in what you’re saying. Then, if I understand him as well as I think I do, he’ll stand with you if any of the others threaten you.”
“Isn’t that just trading one protector for another? I’m supposed to be able to protect myself.”
“Oh, you can. But, chances are, you’ll have to do it by killing someone. I was trying to help you avoid that.”
I nodded. I knew he was still worried that my killing might be a chain-reaction thing. That if I took one of the actives, then, sooner or later, I’d have to take another. And another. I had a feeling that, when he left, he wouldn’t go any farther than Emma’s house. And from there, he’d keep whatever special senses he had trained on me.
“Is Karl alone now?” he asked.
I checked. “Yes, for a change.” Karl had been screwing around with Jan, of all people. He couldn’t have found a better way to disgust me.
“Then, go to him now. Talk to him.”
I gave Doro a dirty look. It was late, and I was in no mood to hear the things Karl would probably say to me. I just wanted to go to bed. But I got up and went to see Karl.
He was lying on his back interfering with the thoughts of some sleeping local politician. I hesitated for a moment to find out what he was doing. He was just making sure that a company he and Doro controlled got a zone variance it needed to erect a building. He had a job, anyway. I knocked at his door.
He listened silently to what I had to tell him, his face expressionless.
“So we’re here, we belong to you, and that’s that,” he said quietly.
“That wasn’t my point.”
“Yes it was. Along with the fact that we might as well find some way to live our lives this way and make the best of it.”
“All I want us to do is settle down and start acting like human beings again.”
“If that’s still what we are. What do you want from me?”
“Help, if you can give it. If you will.”
“Me, help you?”
“You’re my husband.”
“That wasn’t my idea.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. This wasn’t the time to fight with him.
“Doro will back you up,” he said. “He’s all you need.”
“He’s putting me on my own. He’s putting us on our own.”
“Why? What have you done?”
“Nothing, so far. It’s not punishment. He just thinks it’s time we found out whether we can survive without himas a group.”
“Whether you can survive.”
“No, us, really. Because, if things go bad, I’m not about to let the others get me without taking as many of them as I can with me.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I want your help. I’d like to get through this without killing anybody.”
He looked a little surprised. “Are you so sure you can kill?”
“Positive.”
“How can you know? You’ve never tried.”
“You don’t want to hear how I know, believe me.”
“Don’t be stupid. If you want my help at all, you’d better tell me everything.”
I looked at him. I made myself just look at him until I could answer quietly. “I know the same way you know how to eat when you’re hungry. I’m that kind of parasite, Karl. I suppose you and the others might as well face it the way I have.”
“You … you’re saying you’re a female Doro?”
“Not exactly, but that’s close enough.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh yes you do.”
He stared at me silently for a moment. “I didn’t want to believe you could read me through my shield either.”
“I can. That’s part of my ability, too.”
“You have enough abilities not to need my help.”
“I told you why I need you.”
“Yes. You don’t want to kill.”
“Not unless somebody is stupid enough to attack me.”
“But if hunger is what you feel, how can you avoid doing something about it eventually? You’ll have to kill.”
“It’s more like having an appetitelike being able to eat but not really being hungry.”
“But you will get hungry. It seems to me that’s why we’re here. We’re your food supply. You’re gathering people the way Doro does. It just isn’t as much work for you as it is for him.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I’ve been thinking things like that myself. They might be all wrong. But even if they aren’t, I don’t know what to do about it.”
He turned his head, stared at a bookcase. “Short of committing suicide, there’s not much you can do.”
“And I’m not about to do that. But I’ll tell you, as mad as these people make me sometimes, it would be almost as hard for me to kill one of them as it would be for me to commit suicide. I don’t want their lives.”
“For now.”
“And I don’t want anybody forcing me to change my mind. Because, if I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself. I might kill more of you than I mean to.” I got up to leave. “Karl, I’m not asking you to make up your mind now, or promise me anything. I just wanted you to know there was a choice to make.” I started for the door.
“Wait a minute.”
I stopped, waited.
“You’re closed, shielded all the time,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve unshielded once since you did it for me after your transition.”
“Would you if you were living with people who wanted to kill you?”
“What if I asked you to open for me? Just for me. Now.”