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.
Karl snapped back to the reality of the warehouse with a jolt. He found himself holding on to the steel support of some overhead shelving. His hands hurt from grasping it so tightly. He shook his head, saw Doro and the two warehousemen staring at him. The warehousemen looked concerned. Doro looked expectant. Karl spoke to Doro. “I’ve got to get home. Now.”
Doro nodded. “I’ll drive you. Come on.”
Karl followed him out of the building, then blindly, mechanically got in on the driver’s side. Doro spoke to him sharply. Karl jumped, frowned, moved over. Doro was right. Karl was in no shape to drive. Karl was in no shape to do anything. It was as though he were plunging into his own transition again.
“You’re too close to her,” said Doro. “Pull back a little. See if you can sense what’s happening to her without being caught up in it.”
Pull back. How? How had he gotten so close, anyway? He had never been caught up in Mary’s pretransition experiences.
“You know what to expect,” Doro told him. “At this point she’s going to be reaching for the worst possible stuff. That’s what’s familiar to her. That’s what’s going to attract her attention. She’ll get an avalanche of it?violence, pain, fear, whatever. I don’t want you caught up in it unless she obviously needs help.”
Karl said nothing. He was already trying to separate himself from Mary. The mental link he had established with her had grown into something more than he had intended it to be. If two minds could be tangled together, his and Mary’s were.
Then he realized that she had become aware of him, was watching him as he tried to untangle himself. He had never permitted her to be aware of his mental probing before. He stopped what he was doing now, concerned that he had frightened her. She would have enough fear to contend with within the next twelve hours without his adding to it.
But she was not afraid. She was glad to have him with her. She was relieved to discover that she was not facing the worst hours of her life alone.
Karl relaxed for a few minutes, less eager to leave her now. He could still remember how glad he had been to have Emma with him during his transition. Emma couldn’t help mentally, but she was a human presence with him, drawing him back to sanity, reality. He could do at least that much for Mary.
“How is she?” Doro asked.
“All right. She understands what’s happening.”
“Something is liable to snatch her away again any minute.”
“I know.”
“When it happens, let it happen. Watch, but stay out of it. If you see a way to help her, don’t.”
“I thought that’s what I was for. To help.”
“You are, later, when she can’t help herself. When she’s ready to give up.”
Karl glanced at Doro while keeping most of his attention on Mary. “Do you lose a lot of her kind?”
Doro smiled grimly. “She doesn’t have a ‘kind.’ She’s unique. So are you, though you aren’t as unusual as I hope she’ll be. I’ve been working toward both of you for a good many generations. But yes.” The smile vanished. “Several of her unsuccessful predecessors have died in transition.”
Karl nodded. “And I’ll bet most of them took somebody with them. Somebody who
was trying to help them.”
Doro said nothing.
“I thought so,” said Karl. “And I already know from Mary’s thoughts that you killed the ones who managed to survive transition.”
“If you know, why bring it up?”
Karl sighed. “I guess because it still surprises me that you can do things like that. Or maybe I’m just wondering whether she or I will still be alive this time tomorrow?even if we both survive her transition.”
“Bring her through for me, Karl, and you’ll be all right.”
“And her?”
“She’s a dangerous kind of experiment. Believe me, if she turns out to be another failure, you’ll want her dead more than I will.”
“I wish I knew what the hell you were doing. Aside from playing God, I mean.”
“You know enough.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know what I want of you. That’s enough.”
It never did any good to argue with Doro. Karl leaned back and finished disentangling himself from Mary. He would be with her in person soon. And even without Doro’s warning he would not have wanted to go through much more of her transition with her. Before he broke the connection, he let her know that he was on his way to her, that she wouldn’t be alone long. It had been two weeks since their marriage, two weeks since she had called him back to her bed. He hadn’t gone out of his way to hurt her since then.
He watched Doro maneuver the car into the right lane so that they could get on the Forsyth Freeway. Doro cut
