“I’ll be able to tell you that after I’ve watched you for a while.”
“But?”
“The thing for you to do now is rest so that you’ll have a better chance of handling your people when they get here. Your transition was several hours longer than normal, so you’re probably still tired.”
I was tired. I had gotten only a couple of hours’ sleep. I wanted answers, though, more than I wanted rest. But he’d made it pretty clear that I wasn’t going to get them. Then I realized what he had just said. “My people?”
“Both you and Karl say you feel as though they’re yours.”
“And both Karl and I know that, if they really belong to anybody other than themselves, it’s you.”
“You belong to me,” he said. “So I’m not giving up anything when I give you charge of them. They’re yours as long as you can handle them without killing them.”
I stared at him in surprise. “One of the owners,” I muttered, remembering the bitter thoughts I’d had two weeks before. “How did I suddenly become one of the owners?”
“By surviving your transition. What you have to do now is to survive your new authority.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Thanks. Any pointers?”
“A few.”
“Speak up, then. I have the feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
“Very likely. First you should realize that I’m delegating authority to you only because you’ll need it if you’re to have any chance at all of staying alive among these people. You’re going to have to accept your own proprietary feelings as legitimate and demand that your people accept you on your terms.” He paused, looked hard at me. “Keep them out of your mind as much as you can. Use your advantage. Always know more about them than they know about you. Intimidate them quietly.”
“The way you do?”
“If you can.”
“I have a feeling you’re rooting for me.”
“I am.”
“Well … I wouldn’t ask why, on a bet. I’d rather think it was because you really gave a damn about me.”
He just smiled.
KARL
Karl had never wanted quite as much as he did now to hurt something, to kill something, someone. He looked at Vivian sitting next to him, her mind ablaze with fear, her face carefully expressionless.
The blast of a horn behind him let him know that he was sitting through a green light. He restrained an impulse to lash back at the impatient driver. He could kill with his ability. He had, twice, accidentally, not long after his transition. He wondered why he refrained from doing it again. What difference would it make?
“Are we going back home?” Vivian asked.
Karl glanced at her, then looked around. He realized that he was heading back toward Palo Verde. He had left home heading nowhere in particular except away from Mary and Doro. Now he had made a large U and was heading back to them. And it wasn’t just an ordinary unconscious impulse driving him. It was Mary’s pattern.
He pulled over to the curb, stopped under a NO PARKING sign. He leaned back in the seat, his eyes closed.
“Will you tell me what’s the matter with you?” Vivian asked.
“No.”
She was doing all she could to keep calm. It was his silence that frightened her. His silence and his obvious anger.
He wondered why he had brought her with him. Then he remembered. “You’re not leaving me,” he said.
“But if Mary came through transition all right?”
“I said you’re not leaving!”
“All right.” She was almost crying with fear. “What are you going to do with me?”
He turned to glare at her in disgust.
“Karl, for heaven’s sake! Tell me what’s wrong.” Now she was crying.
“Be quiet.” Had he ever loved her, really? Had she ever been more than a pet?like all the rest of his women? “How was Doro last night?” he asked.
She looked startled. By mutual agreement, they did not discuss her nights with Doro. Or they hadn’t until now. “Doro?” she said.
“Doro.”
“Oh, now?” She sniffed, tried to compose herself. “Now, just a minute?”
“How was he?”
She frowned at him, disbelieving. “That can’t be what’s bothering you. Not after all this time. Not as though it was my fault, either!”
“That’s a pretty good body he’s wearing,” said Karl. “And I could see from the way you were hanging on him this morning that he must have given you a pretty good?”
“That’s enough!” Outrage was fast replacing her fear.
