Mind of My Mind

Karl smiled a little. “I would if you had a chance, Jess. You don’t, you know.”

“Karl, please.” Jan. Sweet Jan. Maybe I could get her, too. “Karl, with you helping us, we would have a chance.”

Karl ignored her, glanced at me. “You are going to try to talk them out of this, aren’t you?”

I nodded, turned to face Jesse. “Man, with three people insisting that they’re going to attack me, I won’t have time to be gentle. No more little cramps. You jump me, and you and Rachel are dead. I might not be able to get Jan, but you two don’t have a chance.”

“Let’s make it even stronger than that,” said Karl. “I don’t want fighting. There’s a possibility that Mary might lose control and do a lot more damage than she intends to do. I’ve read her more thoroughly than you have. I think there’s a real danger that, once she got started, she might take us all. If the three of you are foolish enough to attack her in spite of that possibility, you’d better attack me too.”

The words were goads to Jesse. Abruptly, he dove at me through his strand of the pattern. I had no warning. He acted on impulse, without thinking. And using the pattern that way … Until now, nobody had really used the pattern except me. His strand of the pattern struck at me snakelike. Fast. Blindingly fast.

I didn’t have time to think about reacting. What happened, happened automatically. And it happened even faster than Jesse had moved.

He was mine. His strength was mine. His body was worthless to me, but the force that animated it was literally my ambrosia—power, sustenance, life itself.

By the time Jesse realized what was happening and tried to twist away, there was almost nothing left of him. His strand of the pattern thrashed feebly, uselessly.

I realized that I could leave him that way. I watched him with a kind of detached interest, and it occurred to me that if I let him go he would grow strong again. He was terrified now, and weak, but he wasn’t getting any weaker on his own. He could live, if I let him, if I wasn’t too greedy. He could live and grow strong and feed me again.

I opened my eyes, wondering when I had shut them. I felt higher than I ever had before. I held out my hand and looked at it. It was shaking. I was shaking all over, but, God, I felt good.

Everybody was looking at Jesse slumped in his chair. The surprise they were all radiating told me that he had just lost consciousness. They were not quite aware yet of what had happened. Rachel began to realize it first. She began turning toward me—in slow motion, it seemed—meaning to get her revenge. She thought Jesse was dead. She, a healer, thought he was dead, but I knew he was alive.

She finished turning. She was going to rupture a good-sized blood vessel in my brain.

I took her.

She didn’t hand herself to me the way Jesse had. She fought me briefly. But somehow her struggles only helped me drain her strength. I was more conscious of what I was doing with her. I could see how my mental image of her shrank in proportion to the amount of strength I took. I took less from her than I had from Jesse. I didn’t need anything at all from her—except peace. I wanted her to stop her useless struggling. I wanted her not to be able to do what she wanted to do to me. That was all. I let her know it.

Jesse! Her thought was full of bitterness and anger and grief. I tried to soothe her wordlessly the way I might have handled a frightened child. She struggled harder, terrified, hysterical, giving me more of her strength by her struggles.

Finally, she stopped, exhausted. Jesse. Grief now. Only grief.

He’s alive, I sent.

He’s dead! 1 saw him die.

1 tell you he’s alive. You took too quick a look. I pressed through her grief so that she could see that I was giving her truth. He is alive. 1 didn’t want his life. 1 don’t want yours. Will you make me take yours anyway?

You aren’t going to kill me?

Not unless you make me.

Then, let me go. Let me see Jesse.

I let her go, opened my eyes again. Evidently, closing them was some kind of reflex. Now the others were looking at Rachel, were turning to look at me. I felt better than ever. But steadier now. No more shaking. I felt in control. Before, I’d felt ready to take off and fly across the room. Everybody was staring at me.

“They’re both all right,” I said. “Weak, I guess. Put them to bed. They’ll regain their strength.” Like Rachel’s crowds going away to regain their strength. I remembered Jan suddenly and looked at her.

She stared back, round-eyed.

“How about you?” I said.

“No!” I thought she was going to get up and run out the door again. “No.”

I laughed at her. I don’t think I would have done that if I hadn’t been so high. I might have had a lot more to say to her, but I wouldn’t have laughed.

“What did you do?” asked Karl.

I looked at him, and I could have hugged him for no reason at all. No. There was a reason. A big one. “I found out something,” I said. “I just found out that I don’t have to kill.”

“But what did you do to them?”

Abruptly I was annoyed, almost angry at him for wanting details now, when it was all so new, when I just wanted to sit back and savor what I was feeling. Doro came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and massaged gently.

“Calm down a little,” he said. “I know you feel good, but calm down.”

“High,” I said. I grinned at him. “I feel high. You know.”

“Yes. See if you can rein yourself in enough to tell us what you did.”

“You know.”

“Tell us anyway.”

“Took some of their strength.” I leaned back, relaxed against the couch, pulling my thoughts together. “Only some. I’m not a monster. At least not the kind you made me think I was.” Then, as an afterthought. “I took more from Jesse. I didn’t know what I was doing when he jumped me.”

“Seth, check Jesse,” Doro ordered.

Apparently Seth did. I didn’t pay any attention. “He’s still breathing,” Seth said after a moment.

“Rae,” Doro said, “how do you feel?” Rachel was conscious then. But she didn’t say anything. Curiosity reached me through my private haze. I looked at her.

She was crying. She wasn’t making any noise at all, but her whole body shook. She made a sound of pain as we all turned to look at her, and hid her face in her hands. She was shielded to the others. But to me she radiated shame and defeat. Humiliation.

That reached me and cleared the nonsense out of my head. I stood up, half expecting to find myself staggering. I was steady enough, though. Good.

I went to her and took her arm. I knew she wanted to be away from us. Tears, especially tears of defeat, were private things. She looked up, saw that it was me, and tried to pull her arm away.

“Stop acting stupid,” I told her. “Get up and come on.”

She stared at me. I still had hold of her arm. She started to get up, then realized how weak she was. She was glad enough to lean on me then.

She swallowed, whispered, “What about Jesse?”

What in the name of heaven did she see in him? “The others will see that he gets upstairs,” I said. I glanced back at Doro. “She’ll be okay.”

He nodded, went over and draped Jesse’s big body over one shoulder, then followed Rachel and me upstairs.

Chapter Eight

MARY

The meeting just dissolved. Nobody made me any promises. Nobody bowed or scraped. Nobody even looked scared—or felt scared. I checked. Once they got over their surprise, they were even reassured. They could see that Jesse and Rachel were going to be all right. They could see that all I wanted from them was a little cooperation. And now they knew they would be better off if they cooperated. The atmosphere of the house was more relaxed than it had been since the day of my transition.

Seth Dana came up and grinned at me. “Don’t you get the feeling you should have done this two weeks ago?”