The seven of us became the First Family. It was a joke at first. Karl made some comparison between our position in the section and the position of the President’s family in the nation. The name stuck. I think we all thought it was a little silly at first, but we got used to it. Karl did his bit to help me get used to it.
“We could do something about making it more of a family,” he said. “We’d be the first ones to try it, too. That would give some validity to our title.”
The Pattern was just over a year old then. I looked at him uncertainly, not quite sure he was saying what I thought he was saying.
“Try that again?”
“We could have a baby.”
“Could we?”
“Seriously, Mary. I’d like us to have a child.”
“Why?”
He gave me a look of disgust.
“I mean … we wouldn’t be able to keep it with us.”
“I know that.”
I thought about it, surprised that I hadn’t really thought about it before. But, then, I had never wanted children. With Doro around, though, I had assumed that sooner or later I would be ordered to produce some. Ordered. Somehow, being asked was better.
“We can have a child if you want,” I said.
He thought for a moment. “I don’t imagine you could arrange for it to be a boy?”
I arranged for it to be a boy. I was a healer by then. I could not only choose the child’s sex but insure his good health and my own good health while I was pregnant. So being pregnant was no excuse for me to slow our expansion.
I was pulling in latents from all over the country. I could pick them out of the surrounding mute population without trouble. It didn’t matter any more that I had never met them or that they were three thousand miles away when I focused in on them. My range, like the distance the Patternists could travel from me, had increased as the Pattern
had grown. Now I located latents by their bursts of telepathic activity and gave a general picture of their location to one of my Patternists. The Patternist could pinpoint them more closely when he was within a few miles of them.
So the Pattern grew. Karl and I had a son: Karl August Larkin. The name of the man whose body Doro had used to father me was Gerold August. I had never made any gesture in his memory before, and I probably never would again. But having the baby had made me sentimental.
Doro wasn’t around to watch us much as we grew. He checked on us every few months, probably to remind usremind mewhere the final authority still rested. He showed up twice while I was pregnant. Then we didn’t see him again until August was two months old. He showed up at a time when we weren’t having any big problems. I was kind of glad to see him. Kind of proud that I was running things so smoothly. I didn’t realize he’d come to put an end to that.
He came in and looked at my flat stomach and said, “Boy or girl?” I hadn’t bothered to tell him I’d deliberately conceived a boy.
So Karl and I sat around and probably bored him with talk about the baby. I was surprised when he said he wanted to see it.
“Why?” I asked. “Babies his age all look pretty much alike. What is there to see?”
Both men frowned at me.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s go see the baby. Come on.”
Doro got up, but Karl stayed where he was. “You two go ahead,” he said. “I was out to see him this morning. My head won’t take it again for a while.”
No wonder he could afford to be indignant at my attitude! He was setting me up. I wished Ada was around to take Doro in. August wasn’t at the school itself, but he was at one of the buffer houses surrounding the school. That was almost as bad. The static from the school and from children in general didn’t hit me as hard as it did most of the others, but it still wasn’t very pleasant.
We went in. Doro stared at August, and August stared back from the arms of Evelyn Winthrop, the mute woman who took care of him. Then we left.
“Drive somewhere far enough from the school for you to be comfortable, and park,” said Doro when we got back to the car. “I want to talk to you.”
“About the baby?”
“No. Something else. Although I suppose I should compliment you on your son.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t give a damn about him, do you?”
I turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street and parked. “He’s got all his parts,” I said. “Healthy mentally and physically. I saw to that. Watched him very carefully before he was born. Now I keep an eye on Evelyn and her husband to be sure they’re giving him the care he needs. Beyond that, you’re right.”
“Jan all over again.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not criticizing you. Telepaths are always the worst possible parents. I thought the Pattern might change that, but it hasn’t. Most actives have to be bulldozed into even having children. You and Karl surprised me.”
“Karl wanted a child.”
“And you wanted Karl.”
“I already had him by then. But the idea of having a child wasn’t that repulsive. It still isn’t. I’d do it again. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“Your doing it again.”
“What?”
“Or at least having your people do it. Because that’s the only way I’m going to allow the Pattern to grow for a while.”
I turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m suspending your latent-gathering as of today. You’re to call your people in from their searches, and recruit no more new Patternists.”
“ButBut why? What have we done, Doro?”
“Nothing. Nothing but grow. And that’s the problem. I’m not punishing you; I’m slowing you down a little. I’m being cautious.”
“For what? Why should you be cautious about our growth? The mutes don’t know anything about us, and they’d have a hard time hurting us if they did. We aren’t hurting each other. I’m in control. There’s been no unusual trouble.”
“Mary … fifteen hundred adults and five hundred children in only two years! It’s time you stopped devoting all your energy to growth and started figuring out just what it is you’re growing. You’re one woman holding everything together. Your only possible successor at this point is about two months old. There’d be a blood bath if anything happened to you. If you were hit by a car tomorrow, your people would disintegrateall over each other.”
“If I were hit by a car and there were anything at all of me left alive, I’d survive. If I couldn’t put myself together again, Rachel would do it.”
“Mary, what I’m saying is that you’re irreplaceable. You’re all your people have got. Now, you can go on playing the part of their savior if you do as I’ve told you. Or you can destroy them by plunging on headlong as you are now.”
“Are you saying I have to stop recruiting until August is old enough to replace me if anything happens to me?”
“Yes. And for safety’s sake, I suggest that you not make August an only child.”
“Wait twenty years?”
“It only sounds like a long time, Mary, believe me.” He smiled a little. “Besides, not only are you a potential immortal as a descendant of Emma, but you have your own and Rachel’s healing ability to keep you young if your potential for longevity doesn’t work out.”
“Twenty Goddamn years … !”
“You would have something firm and well established to bring your people into by then, too. You wouldn’t be just spreading haphazardly over the city.”
“We aren’t doing that now! You know we aren’t. We’re growing deliberately into Santa Elena, because that’s where the living room we need is. Jesse is working right now to prepare a new section of Santa Elena for us. We’ve got the school in the most protected part of our Palo Alto district. We didn’t manage that by accident! The people don’t just move wherever they want to. They go to Jesse and he shows them what’s available.”
“And all that’s available is what you take from mutes. You don’t build anything of your own.”