“You can’t help,” I muttered. “Not this time.”
“Let me try.”
I looked at him, saw the concern in his eyes, and felt almost guilty about doing as he asked. I opened to him not because I thought he could help me but because I wanted him to realize that he couldn’t.
He stayed with me for several seconds, sharing my need, my hunger, my starvation. Sharing it but not diminishing it in any way. Finally he withdrew and stood staring at me bleakly. I went to him for the kind of comfort he could give, and he held me.
“You could take strength from me,” he said. “It might ease your?”
“No!” I rested my head against his chest. “No, no, no. You think I haven’t thought of that?”
“But you wouldn’t have to take much. You could?”
“I said no, Karl. It’s like you said last night. I’m going to have to fight him. I’ll take from you then, and from the others. But not until then. I’m not the vampire he is. I give in return for my taking.” I pulled away from him, looked at him. “God, I’ve got ethics all of a sudden.”
“You’ve had them for some time, now, whether you were willing to admit to them or not.”
I smiled. “I remember Doro wondering before my transition whether I would ever develop a conscience.”
Karl made a sound of disgust. “I just wish Doro had developed one. Are you going out?”
“Yes. To see August.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and I wondered whether he realized this might be my last visit to our son. I finished dressing and left.
I saw August and spent some time strengthening Evelyn’s programming, seeing to it that she would go on being a good mother to him even if Karl and I weren’t around. And I planted some instructions that she wouldn’t need or remember until August showed signs of approaching transition. I didn’t want her panicking then, and taking him to a doctor or a hospital. Maybe I needn’t have worried. Maybe Doro would see that he was taken care of. And maybe not.
I went home and managed to get through a fairly ordinary day. I passed a man and a woman to become heads of houses. They had been Patternists for over a year, and I read just about everything they had done during that year. Karl and I checked all prospective heads of houses. Back when we hadn’t checked them, we’d gotten some bad ones. Some
who had been too warped by their latent years to turn human again. We still got those kind, but they didn’t become heads of houses any more. If we couldn’t straighten them out, or heal them?if healing was what they needed?we killed them. We had no prison, needed none. A rogue Patternist was too dangerous to be left alive.
That was probably the way Doro felt about me. It went with what he had told Karl. “I can’t afford her unless she can obey me.” We were too much alike, Doro and I. What ever gave him the idea that someone bred to be so similar to him would consent?could consent?to being controlled by him all her life?
I passed my two new heads of houses, but I told them not to do anything toward beginning their houses for a week. They didn’t like that much, but they were so happy to be passed that they didn’t argue. They were bright and capable. If, by some miracle, the Pattern still existed in a week, they would be a credit to it in their new positions.
I went with Jesse to see the houses he was opening up in Santa Elena. He asked me to go. I didn’t have to see them. I only checked on the family now and then. And when I did, I could never find much to complain about. They cared about what we were building. They always did a good job.
In the car Jesse said, “Listen, you know we’re all with you, don’t you?”
I looked at him, not really surprised. Karl had told him. No one else could have.
“I just wish we could take him on for you,” said Jesse.
“Thanks, Jess.”
He glanced at me, then shook his head. “You don’t look any more nervous over facing him than you did over facing me a couple of years ago.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think I can afford to broadcast my feelings.”
“With all of us behind you, I think you can beat him.”
“I intend to.”
Big talk. I wondered why I bothered.
There were a few other routine duties. I welcomed them, because they kept my mind off how bad I felt. That night, I didn’t feel like eating. I went to my room while everyone else was at dinner. Let them eat. It might be their last meal.
Karl came up about two hours later and found me looking out my window at nothing, waiting for him.
“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said?just before I could say it to him.
“Okay.” I sat down in the chair by the window. He sprawled on my bed.
“We had a meeting today?just the family. I told them what kind of trouble you were in, told them that you were going to fight. And I told them they could run if they wanted to.”
“They won’t run.”
“I know that. I just wanted them to put it into words. I wanted them to hear themselves say it and know that they were committed.”
“Everybody’s committed. Every Patternist in the section. And all those who don’t know it are about to find out.”
