“No, it’s set. I had to learn to freeze them so that I didn’t disturb them myself every time I handled them. I never tried letting another telepath handle them, but you haven’t disturbed this one.”
“Or the others, most likely. You like seconding, Jan?”
Jan looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You know I hate it. But what does that have to do with my artifacts?”
“Your artifacts just might stop you from ever having to second anybody else. If you can get to know your own abilities a little better and use them for more than your own amusement, they can open another way for you to contribute to the Pattern.”
“What way?”
“A new art. A new form of education and entertainment?better than the movies, because you really live it, and you absorb it quicker and more completely than you do books. Maybe.” She snatched up the jar fragment and a small Sumerian clay tablet and ran out to try them on someone. Minutes later, she was back, grinning.
“I tried them on Seth and Ada. All I told them to do was hold these things and unshield. They picked up everything. Look, you show me you can use what you’ve got for more than a toy and you’re off seconding for good.” The rush of words stopped for a moment, and when Mary spoke again, her tone had changed. “And, Jan, guess what else you’re off of for good.”
Jan had wanted to kill her. Instead, she had thrown her energy into refining her talent and finding uses for it. Instead, she had begun to create a new art.
ADA
Ada Dragan waited patiently in the principal’s office of what was finally her school. A mute guardian who was programmed to notice such things had reported that one of her latent foster children?a fifteen-year-old girl?was having serious pretransition difficulties.
From the office, Ada looked out at the walled grounds of the school. It had been a private school, situated right there in the Palo Verde neighborhood. A school where people who were dissatisfied with the Forsyth Unified School District, and who could afford an alternative, sent their children. Now those people had been persuaded to send their children elsewhere.
This fall semester, only a month old, was the beginning of the first all-Patternist year. Ada welcomed it with relief. She had been working gradually toward the takeover, feeling her way for almost two years. Finally it was done. She had learned the needs of the children and overcome her own shyness enough to meet those needs. On paper, mutes still owned the school. But Ada and her Patternist assistants owned the mutes. And Ada herself was in full charge, responsible only to Mary.
It was a responsibility that had chosen Ada more than she had chosen it. She had discovered that she worked easily with children, enjoyed them, while most Patternists could not work with them at all. Only some of her relatives were able to assist her. Other Patternists found the emotional noise of children’s minds intolerable. Children’s
emotional noise penetrated not only the general protection of the Pattern but the individual mental shields of the Patternists. It frayed their nerves, chipped away their tempers, and put the children in real danger. It made Patternists potentially even worse parents than latents.
Thus, no matter how much Patternists wanted to insure their future as a race?and they did want it now?they could not care for the children who were that future. They had to draft mutes to do it for them. First Doro, and now Mary, was creating a race that could not tolerate its own young.
Ada turned away from the window just as the mute guardian brought the girl in. The mute was Helen Dietrich, an elementary-school teacher who, with her husband, also cared for four latent children. Jan had moved the Dietrichs and several other teachers into the section, where they could do both jobs.
This girl, Ada recalled, had been a particularly unfortunate case?one of Rachel’s assignments. Her life with the pair of latents who were her parents had left both her body and her mind a mass of scar tissue. Rachel had worked hard to right the damage. Now Ada wondered just how good a job she had done.
“Page,” said Helen Dietrich nervously, “this is Ada Dragan. She’s here to help you.”
The girl stared at Ada through dark, sullen eyes. “I’ve already seen the school psychologist,” she volunteered. “It didn’t do any good.”
Ada nodded. The school psychologist was a kind of experiment. He was completely ignorant of the fact that the Patternists now owned him. He was being allowed to learn as much as he could on his own. Nothing was hidden from him. But, on the other hand, nothing was handed to him. He, and a few others like him scattered around the section, were being used to calculate just how much information ordinary mutes needed to come to understand their situation.
“I’m not a psychologist,” said Ada. “Nor a psychiatrist.”
“Why not?” asked the girl. She extended her arms, which she had been holding behind her. Both wrists were bandaged. “I’m crazy, aren’t I?”
Ada only glanced at the bandages. Helen Dietrich had told her about the suicide attempt. Ada spoke to the mute. “Helen, it might be easier on you if you left now.”
The woman met Ada’s eyes and realized that she was really being offered a choice. “I’d rather stay,” she said. “I’ll have to handle this again.”
“All right.” Ada faced the girl again. Very carefully, she read her. It was difficult here at the school, where so many other child minds intruded. This was one time when they became a nuisance. But, in spite of the nuisance, Ada had to handle the girl gently. At fifteen, Page was not too young to be nearing transition. Children who lived in the section, surrounded by Patternists and thus by the Pattern, did not need direct contact with Mary to push them into transition. The Pattern pushed them as soon as their bodies and minds could tolerate the shock. And this girl seemed ready?unless Rachel had just missed some mental problem and the girl was suffering needlessly. That was what Ada had to find out. She maintained contact with Page as she questioned her.
“Why did you try to kill yourself?”
The young mind made an effort to hold itself emotionless, but failed. The thought broke through, To keep from killing others. Aloud, the girl spoke harshly. “Because I wanted to die! It’s my life. If I want to end it, it’s my business.”
