Mind of My Mind (8 page)

three of us off, then headed for L.A. Doro challenged Vivian to a game of tennis. I

walked three blocks to a bus stop, caught a bus, and rode.

I knew where I was going. I had to transfer to get there, so there was no way for me to

pretend to myself that I had wound up there by accident. I got off at Maple and Dell and

walked straight to Rina's house.

Rina was home, but she had company. I could hear her and her company yelling at

each other way out on the sidewalk. I walked around the corner and knocked on Emma's

door. She opened it, looked at me, stood back from the door. I went in and sat down in

the big overstuffed chair near the door. I closed my eyes for a while and the ugly old

house seemed to go around me like a blanket, shutting out the cold. I took a deep breath,

felt relief, release.

Emma laid a hand on my forehead and I looked up at her. She was young. That meant

she had had Doro with her recently. I didn't look anything like her when she was young.

Doro was crazy. I wished I did look that good.

"You were supposed to get married," she said.

"I did. Today."

She frowned. "Where's your husband?"

"I don't know. Or care."

She sort of half smiled in her know-it-all way that I had always resented before. Now

I didn't care. She could throw all the sarcasm she wanted to at me if she just let me sit

there for a while.

"Stay here for a while," she said.

I looked at her, surprised.

"Stay until someone comes to get you."

"They might not even know I've gone anywhere. I didn't say anything. I just left."

"Honey, you're talking about Doro and an active telepath. They know, believe me."

"I guess so. I came here on the bus, though. I don't mind going back that way." I

never liked depending on other people and their cars, anyway. When I rode the bus, I

went when I wanted, where I wanted.

"Stay put. Doro might not have heard you yet."

"What?"

"You've said something by coming here. Now the way to make sure that Doro's heard

you is to inconvenience him a little. Just stay where you are. Are you hungry?"

"Yeah."

She brought me cold chicken, potato salad, and a Coke. Brought it to me like I was a

guest. She'd never brought me anything she could send me after before in her life.

"Emma."

She had gone back to whatever she was doing at her desk in the dining room. The

desk was half covered with official-looking papers. She looked around.

"Thanks," I said quietly.

She just nodded.

Karl came after me that night. I answered the door, saw him, and turned to say good-

by to Emma, but she was right there looking at Karl.

"You're too high, Karl," she said quietly. "You've forgotten where you came from."

He looked at her, then looked away. His expression didn't change, but his voice, when

he spoke, was softer than normal. "That isn't it."

"It doesn't really matter. If you've got a problem, you know who to complain to about

it—or who to take it out on."

He drew a deep breath, met her eyes again, smiled his thin smile. "I hear, Em."

I didn't say anything to him until we were in the car together. Then, "Is she one of the

two?"

He gave me a kind of puzzled glance, then seemed to remember. He nodded.

"Where do you know her from?"

"She took care of me once when I was between foster homes. That was before Doro

found a permanent home for me. She took care of me again when I was approaching

transition. My adoptive parents couldn't handle me." He smiled again.

"What happened to your real parents—real mother, I mean?"

"She . . . died."

I turned to look at him. His expression had gone grim. "By herself," I asked, "or with

help?"

"It's an ugly story."

I shrugged. "Okay." I looked out the window.

"But, then, you're no stranger to ugly stories." He paused. "She was an alcoholic, my

mother. And she wasn't exactly normal—sane—during those rare times when she was

sober. Doro says she was too sensitive. Anyway, when I was about three, I did something

that made her mad. I don't remember what. But I remember very clearly what happened

afterward. For punishment, she held my hand over the flame of our gas range. She held it

there until it was completely charred. But I was lucky. Doro came to see her later that

same day. I wasn't even aware of when he killed her. I remember, I wasn't aware of

anything but alternating pain and exhaustion between the time she burned me and the

time Doro's healer arrived. You might know the healer. She's one of Emma's

granddaughters. Over a period of weeks, she regenerated the stump that I had left into a

new hand. Even now, ten years after my transition, I don't understand how she did it. She

does for other people the things Emma can only do for herself. When she had finished,

Doro placed me with saner people."

I whistled. "So that's what Emma meant."

"Yes."

I moved uncomfortably in the seat. "As for the rest of what she said, Karl . . ."

"She was right."

"I don't want anything from you."

He shrugged.

He didn't say much more to me that night. Doro was still at the house, paying a lot of

attention to Vivian. I had dinner with them all, then went to bed. I could put up with them

until my transition, surely. Then maybe for a change I'd be one of the owners instead of

one of the owned.

I was almost asleep when Karl came up to my room. Neither of us put a light on but

there was light enough from one of the windows for me to see him. He took off his robe,

threw it into a chair and climbed into bed with me.

I didn't say anything. I had plenty to say and all of it was pretty caustic. I didn't doubt

that I could have gotten rid of him if I had wanted to. But I didn't bother. I didn't want

him but I was stuck with him. Why play games?

He was all right, though. Gentle and, thank God, silent. I didn't know whether he had

come to me out of charity, duty, or curiosity, and I didn't want to know. I knew he still

resented me—at least resented me. Maybe that was why, when we were finished, he got

up and went to get his robe. He was going back to his own room.

"Karl."

I could see him turn to look in my direction.

"Stay the night."

"You want me to?" I didn't blame him for sounding surprised. I was surprised.

"Yes. Come on back." I didn't want to be alone. I couldn't have put into words how

much I suddenly didn't want to be alone, couldn't stand to be alone, how much it scared

me. I found myself remembering how Rina would pace the floor at night sometimes. I

would see her crying and pacing and holding her head. After a while, she would go out

and come back with some bum who usually looked a little like her—like us. She'd keep

him with her the rest of the night even if he didn't have a dime in his pocket, even if he

was too drunk to do anything. And sometimes even if he knocked her around and called

her names that trash like him didn't have the right to call anybody. I used to wonder how

Rina could live with herself. Now, apparently, I was going to find out.

Karl came back to my bed without another word. I didn't know what he was thinking,

but he could have really hurt me with just a few words. He didn't. I tried to thank him for

that.

Chapter Three

KARL

The warehouse was enormous. Whitten Coleman Service Building, serving thirty-

three department stores over three states. Doro had begun the chain seventy years before,

when he bought a store for a small, stable family of his people. The job of the family was

simply to grow and prosper and eventually become one of Doro's sources of money.

Descendants of the original family still held a controlling interest in the company. They

were obedient and self-sufficient, and, for the most part, Doro let them alone. Through

the years, their calls to him for help had become fewer. As they grew in size and

experience, they became more able to handle their own problems. Doro still visited them

from time to time, though. Sometimes he asked favors of them. Sometimes they asked

favors of him. This was one of the latter times. Karl, Doro, the warehouse manager, and

the chief of security walked through the warehouse toward the loading docks. Karl had

never been inside the warehouse before, but now he led the way through the maze of

dusty stock areas and busy marking rooms. In turn, he was led by the thoughts of several

workers who were efficiently preparing to steal several thousand dollars' worth of

Whitten Coleman merchandise. They had gotten away with several earlier thefts in spite

of the security people who watched them, and the cameras trained on them.

Quietly, Karl pointed out the thieves—including two security men—and explained

their methods to the security chief. And he told the chief where the group had hidden

what they had left of the merchandise they had already stolen. He had almost finished

when he realized that something was wrong with Mary.

He maintained a mental link with the girl now that he was married to her. And now

that Doro had made clear what would happen to him if Mary died in transition.

Something about the girl's expanding ability had changed. Suddenly she was no

longer passively absorbing the usual ambient mental noise. She was unwittingly reaching

out for it, drawing it to her. The last fragments of what Doro called her childhood

shield—the mental protection that served young actives until they were old enough to

stand transition—was crumbling away. She was in transition.

Karl broke off what he was saying to the security chief. Suddenly he was caught up in

the experience Mary was having. She was running, screaming . . .

No. No, it wasn't Mary who was running. It was another woman—the woman Mary

was receiving from. The two were one. One woman running down stark white corridors.

A woman fleeing from men who were also dressed in white. She gibbered and babbled

and wept. Suddenly she realized that her own body was covered with slimy yellow

worms. She tore at the worms frantically to get them off. They changed their coloring

from yellow to yellow streaked with red. They began to burrow into her flesh. The

woman fell to the floor tearing at herself, vomiting, urinating.

She hardly felt the restraining hands of her pursuers, or the prick of the needle. She

did not have even enough awareness of the world outside her own mind to be grateful for

the eventual oblivion.