I looked at him questioningly.
“It might be because you could use those people against him. You can’t hurt him alone, but if you took strength from some of us?or all of us …”
“He made a point of telling Emma that wouldn’t work.”
“Did he convince you?”
“He didn’t have to. I already knew better than to try anything like that with him.”
“You had no reason to risk trying it before now. Now … you might have to try something. Or let us try. There should be enough Patternists now for us to overwhelm him without your help.”
“No way.”
“It’s never been tried. You don’t know?”
“I know. You couldn’t do it. Not even all fifteen hundred of you together, because, as far as he’s concerned, you wouldn’t really be together. He’d take you one at a time, but so fast you’d fall like dominoes. I know. Because that’s something I could do myself.”
He frowned. “That’s out, then. But I don’t understand why he’s so convinced that you couldn’t defeat him using our strength.”
“He said, ‘Strength alone isn’t enough to defeat me.’ And part of the reason he gave is
that I can’t change bodies. But that doesn’t hold up. I can kill his body with a thought, and
that same thought will force him to attack me on a mental level. My territory.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Yes, but he knows it as well as I do. That means he has some other reason for his confidence. The only thing I can think of is my own ignorance. I just don’t know how to take him. He’s not a Patternist, he’s not a mute?he’s bound to have some surprises for me. If I go after him, the chances are I’ll be dead before I can figure out how to kill him. He knows so much more than I do.”
“But he’s never faced anyone like you before. You’d be as new to him as he is to you.”
“But killing is a way of life to him, Karl. He’s damned good at it. And he has killed people who he thought were dangerous to him before. He claims I don’t even have the potential to be dangerous to him personally.”
“Do you imagine he’s never made a mistake?”
“He’s still alive.”
“No wonder. Look how good he is at scaring the hell out of his opponents before he faces them. If you accept him as all-knowing and invulnerable, you’d better be able to live without recruiting for as long as he says. Because you’ll be in no shape to face him. You’ll have already beaten yourself!”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I could see that he was as worried as he sounded. “You know I’m not going to give him my life,” I said quietly. “Or the lives of my Patternists. If I have to fight him, it will be a battle, not a rout.”
“You’ll take strength from us.”
I winced, looked away. “Some of you at least.”
“The strongest of us. Beginning with me.”
I nodded. To protect them, I had to risk them. They could be killed even if I wasn’t. If I was desperate and rushed, as I probably would be, I might take too much of their strength. And I would be killing them. Not Doro. They were my people, and I would be killing them.
Doro stayed at Larkin House that night. We still kept his room ready for him though he didn’t use it much any more. He didn’t intend to use it that night. Instead he came across the hall to my room. I was sitting in the middle of my bed in the dark, thinking. He walked in without knocking.
He and I hadn’t made love for over a year, but he walked in as though there had been no break at all. Knowing him, I wasn’t surprised. He sat on the side of my bed, took off his shoes, and lay down beside me fully clothed. I was stark naked myself.
“I checked on a few of your searchers,” he said. “I see they’re starting for home.”
I didn’t say anything. I had mixed emotions about his just being there. I had promised Karl that I’d use my “lever,” try to change Doro’s mind. Now looked like a good time for that. But, since he was Doro, I wouldn’t get anything past him that I didn’t mean. If I was going to be able to reach him at all, it had to be with truth.
“I’m glad you’re cooperating,” he said. “I was afraid you might not.”
“I got the message you left with Emma,” I said. “Although I think you laid it on kind of thick.”
“I wasn’t acting. I wasn’t trying to scare you, either. I was honestly worried about you.”
“Why make impossible demands of me and then worry about me?”
“Impossible?”
“Hard, then. Too hard.”
He just looked at me?at what he could see of me in the light from the window.
“Hard on the others, too.”
He shrugged.
“You’ve stayed away from us too long,” I said. “It’s easy for you to hurt us, because you don’t really know us any more.”
