“Nobody who needed the Pattern to push him into transition can stand against one of us?not when we mean to kill.” Jesse shrugged. “Doro had to breed us to be strong enough to come through without being prodded. After all, when the time came for us, there was nobody who could prod us without killing us.” He stood up. “Look, contact me when that healer finishes with Arlene, will you? I just want to be sure she’s all right.”
Gilroy nodded, stood up. They walked to the door together and Jesse noticed that there were three Patternists in the living room. Two women and a man.
“Your house is growing,” he said to Gilroy. “How many now?”
“Five. Five Patternists.”
“The best of the people you’ve seconded, I’ll bet.”
Gilroy smiled, said nothing.
“You know,” said Jesse as they reached the door. “That Hannibal … he even looks like me. Reminds me a little of myself a couple of years ago. There, but for the grace of Doro, go I. Shit.”
JAN
Holding a smooth, rectangular block of wood between her hands, Jan Sholto closed her eyes and reached back in her disorderly memory. She reached back two years, to the creation of the Pattern. She had not only her own memories of that event but the memories of each of the original Patternists. They had unshielded and let her read them? not that they could have stopped her by refusing to open. Mary wasn’t the only one who could read people through their shields. No one except Doro could come into physical contact with Jan without showing her some portion of his thoughts and memories. In this case, though, physical contact hadn’t been necessary. The others had shown their approval of what she was doing by cooperating with her. She was creating another learning block?assembling their memories into a work that would not only tell the new Patternists of their beginnings but show them.
She was teacher to all the new Patternists as they came through. For over a year now, seconds had used her learning blocks to give their charges quick, complete knowledge of the section’s rules and regulations. Other learning blocks offered them choices, showed them the opportunities available to them for making their own place within the section.
Abruptly, Jan reached Mary’s memories. They jarred her with their raw intensity, overwhelmed her as other people’s memories rarely did any more. They were good
material, but Jan knew she would have to modify them. Left as they were, they would dominate everything else Jan was trying to record.
Sighing, Jan put her block aside. Of course it would be Mary’s thoughts that gave trouble. Mary was trouble. That small body of hers was deceptive. Yet it had been Mary who saw possible use for Jan’s psychometry. A few months after Mary had begun drawing in latents, she had decided to learn as much as she could about the special abilities of the rest of the First Family. In investigating Jan’s psychometry, she had discovered that she could read some objects herself in a fragmented, blurred way, but that she could read much more clearly anything that Jan had handled.
“You read impressions from the things you touch,” she had said to Jan. “But I think you put impressions into things, too.”
“Of course I do,” Jan had said impatiently. “Everyone does, every time they touch something.”
“No, I mean … you kind of amplify what’s already there.”
“Not deliberately.”
“Nobody ever noticed it before?”
“No one pays any attention to my psychometry. It’s just something I do to amuse myself.”
Mary was silent for a long moment, thinking. Then, “Have you ever liked the impressions that you got from something enough to keep them? Not just keep them in your memory but in the thing, the object itself?like keeping a film or a tape recording.”
“I have some very old things that I’ve kept. They have ancient memories stored in them.”
“Get them.”
“Please get them,” mimicked Jan. “May I see them, please?” Mary had taken to her new power too easily. She loved to order people around.
“The hell with you,” said Mary. “Get them.”
“They’re my property!”
“Your property.” The green eyes glittered. “I’ll trade you last night for them.”
Jan froze, staring at her. The night before, Jan had been with Karl. It was not the first time, but Mary had never mentioned it before. Jan had tried to convince herself that Mary did not know. Now, confronted with proof that she was wrong, she managed to control her fear. She wanted to ask what Mary traded Vivian for all the mute woman’s nights with Karl, but she said nothing. She got up and went to get her collection of ancient artifacts stolen from various museums.
Mary handled one piece after another, first frowning, then slowly taking on a look of amazement. “This is fantastic,” she said. She was holding just a fragment of what had been an intricately painted jar. A jar that held the story of the woman whose hands shaped it 6,500 years ago. A woman of a Neolithic village that had existed somewhere in what was now Iran. “Why is it so pure?” asked Mary. “God knows how many people have touched it since this woman owned it. But she’s all I can sense.”
“She was all I ever wanted to sense,” said Jan. “The fragment has been buried for most of the time between our lives and hers. That’s the only reason there was any of her left in it at all.”
“Now there’s nothing but her. How did you get rid of the others?”
Jan frowned. “There were archaeologists and some other people at first, but I didn’t
want them. I just didn’t want them.”
Mary handed her the fragment. “Am I in it now?”
