“We could do something about making it more of a family,” he said. “We’d be the first ones to try it, too. That would give some validity to our title.”
The Pattern was just over a year old then. I looked at him uncertainly, not quite sure he was saying what I thought he was saying.
“Try that again?”
“We could have a baby.”
“Could we?”
“Seriously, Mary. I’d like us to have a child.”
“Why?”
He gave me a look of disgust.
“I mean … we wouldn’t be able to keep it with us.”
“I know that.”
I thought about it, surprised that I hadn’t really thought about it before. But, then, I had never wanted children. With Doro around, though, I had assumed that sooner or later I would be ordered to produce some. Ordered. Somehow, being asked was better.
“We can have a child if you want,” I said.
He thought for a moment. “I don’t imagine you could arrange for it to be a boy?”
I arranged for it to be a boy. I was a healer by then. I could not only choose the child’s sex but insure his good health and my own good health while I was pregnant. So being pregnant was no excuse for me to slow our expansion.
I was pulling in latents from all over the country. I could pick them out of the surrounding mute population without trouble. It didn’t matter any more that I had never met them or that they were three thousand miles away when I focused in on them. My range, like the distance the Patternists could travel from me, had increased as the Pattern
had grown. Now I located latents by their bursts of telepathic activity and gave a general picture of their location to one of my Patternists. The Patternist could pinpoint them more closely when he was within a few miles of them.
So the Pattern grew. Karl and I had a son: Karl August Larkin. The name of the man whose body Doro had used to father me was Gerold August. I had never made any gesture in his memory before, and I probably never would again. But having the baby had made me sentimental.
Doro wasn’t around to watch us much as we grew. He checked on us every few months, probably to remind us?remind me?where the final authority still rested. He showed up twice while I was pregnant. Then we didn’t see him again until August was two months old. He showed up at a time when we weren’t having any big problems. I was kind of glad to see him. Kind of proud that I was running things so smoothly. I didn’t realize he’d come to put an end to that.
He came in and looked at my flat stomach and said, “Boy or girl?” I hadn’t bothered to tell him I’d deliberately conceived a boy.
So Karl and I sat around and probably bored him with talk about the baby. I was surprised when he said he wanted to see it.
“Why?” I asked. “Babies his age all look pretty much alike. What is there to see?”
Both men frowned at me.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s go see the baby. Come on.”
Doro got up, but Karl stayed where he was. “You two go ahead,” he said. “I was out to see him this morning. My head won’t take it again for a while.”
No wonder he could afford to be indignant at my attitude! He was setting me up. I wished Ada was around to take Doro in. August wasn’t at the school itself, but he was at one of the buffer houses surrounding the school. That was almost as bad. The static from the school and from children in general didn’t hit me as hard as it did most of the others, but it still wasn’t very pleasant.
We went in. Doro stared at August, and August stared back from the arms of Evelyn Winthrop, the mute woman who took care of him. Then we left.
“Drive somewhere far enough from the school for you to be comfortable, and park,” said Doro when we got back to the car. “I want to talk to you.”
“About the baby?”
“No. Something else. Although I suppose I should compliment you on your son.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t give a damn about him, do you?”
I turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street and parked. “He’s got all his parts,” I said. “Healthy mentally and physically. I saw to that. Watched him very carefully before he was born. Now I keep an eye on Evelyn and her husband to be sure they’re giving him the care he needs. Beyond that, you’re right.”
“Jan all over again.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not criticizing you. Telepaths are always the worst possible parents. I thought the Pattern might change that, but it hasn’t. Most actives have to be bulldozed into even having children. You and Karl surprised me.”
“Karl wanted a child.”
