Mind of My Mind

Mind of My Mind

Octavia E. Butler

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

GARDEN CITY,
NEW YORK

1977

For all but the first few centuries of his 4000-year life, the Nubian Doro has struggled

to build a new race of men. He has survived as a result of millennia of genetic mutations;

his people exist as a result of nearly 4000 years of controlled breeding he has

masterminded.

Now six of Doro's most promising "actives" have been drawn to the side of his

chosen disciple, Mary. A young woman possessed of an unheard of power: the telepathic

pattern that enables her to regenerate the mutilated discards of Doro's eugenics. A pattern

that forces her into an inevitable struggle against the man who has been her father, her

lover, and her master: Doro.

A frightening, chilling "pre-sequel" to Octavia Butler's first novel, Patternmaster.

Prologue

DORO

Doro's widow in the southern
California
city of
Forsyth
had become a prostitute.

Doro had left her alone for eighteen months. Too long. For the sake of the daughter she

had borne him, he should have visited her more often. Now it was almost too late.

Doro watched her without letting her know that he was in town. He saw the men

come and go from her new, wrong-side-of-the-tracks apartment. He saw that most of her

time away from home was spent in the local bars.

Sometime during his eighteen-month absence, she had moved from the house he had

bought her—an expensive house in a good neighborhood. And though he had made

arrangements with a Forsyth bank for her to receive a liberal monthly allowance, she still

needed the men. And the liquor. He was not surprised.

By the time he knocked at her door, the main thing he wanted to do was see whether

his daughter was all right. When the woman opened the door, he pushed past her into the

apartment without speaking.

She was half drunk and slurred her words a little as she called after him. "Hey, wait a

minute. Who the hell do you think you—"

"Shut up, Rina."

She hadn't recognized him, of course. He was wearing a body that she had never seen

before. But like all his people, she knew him the instant he spoke. She stared at him,

round-eyed, silent.

There was a man sitting on her couch drinking directly from a bottle of
Santa Fe
Port.

Doro glanced at him, then spoke to Rina. "Get rid of him."

The man started to protest immediately. Doro ignored him and went on to the

bedroom, following his tracking sense to Mary, his daughter. The child was asleep, her

breathing softly even. Doro turned on a light and looked at her more closely. She was

three years old now, small and thin, not especially healthy-looking. Her nose was

running.

Doro touched her forehead lightly but felt no trace of fever. The bedroom contained

only a bed and a three-legged chest of drawers. There was a pile of dirty clothes in one

corner on the floor. The rest of the floor was bare wood—no carpeting.

Doro took in all this without surprise, without changing his neutral expression. He

uncovered the child, saw that she was sleeping nude, saw the bruises and welts on her

back and legs. He shook his head and sighed, covered the little girl up carefully, and went

back out to the living room. There the man and Rina were cursing at each other. Doro

waited in silence until he was sure that Rina was honestly, in fact desperately, trying to

get rid of her "guest" but that the man was refusing to budge. Then Doro walked over to

the man.

The man was short and slight, not much more than a boy, really. Rina might have

been able to throw him out physically, but she had not. Now it was too late. She stumbled

back away from him, silent, abruptly terrified as Doro approached.

The man rose unsteadily to face Doro. Doro saw that he had put his bottle down and

taken out a large pocket knife. Unlike Rina, he did not slur his words at all when he

spoke. "Now, listen, you— Hold it! I said hold it!"

He broke off abruptly, slashing at Doro as Doro advanced on him. Doro made no

effort to avoid the knife. It sliced easily through the flesh of his abdomen but he never felt

the pain. He abandoned his body the instant the knife touched him.

Surprise and anger were the first emotions Doro tasted in the man's mind. Surprise,

anger, then fear. There was always fear. Then yielding. Not all Doro's victims gave in so

quickly, but this one was half anesthetized with wine. This one saw Doro as only Doro's

victims ever saw him. Then, stunned, he gave up his life almost without a struggle. Doro

consumed him, an easy if not especially satisfying meal.

Rina had gasped and begun to raise her hand to her mouth as the man slashed at Doro.

When Doro finished his kill, Rina's hand was just touching her lips.

Doro stood uncomfortably disoriented, mildly sick to his stomach, the hand of his

newly acquired body still clutching its bloody knife. On the floor lay the body that Doro

had been wearing when he came in. It had been strong, healthy, in excellent physical

condition. The one he had now was nothing beside it. He glanced at Rina in annoyance.

Rina shrank back against the wall.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Do you think you're safer over there?"

"Don't hurt me," she said. "Please."

"Why would you beat a three-year-old like that, Rina?"

"I didn't do it! I swear. It was a guy who brought me home a couple of nights ago.

Mary woke up screaming from a nightmare or something, and he—"

"Hell," said Doro in disgust. "Is that supposed to be an excuse?"

Rina began to cry silently, tears streaming down her face. "You don't know," she said

in a low voice. "You don't understand what it's like for me having that kid here." She was

no longer slurring her words, in spite of her tears. Her fear had sobered her. She wiped

her eyes. "I really didn't hit her. You know I wouldn't dare lie to you." She stared at Doro

for a moment, then shook her head. "I've wanted to hit her though—so many times. I can

hardly even stand to go near her sober any more . . ." She looked at the body cooling on

the floor and began to tremble.

Doro went to her. She stiffened with terror as he touched her. Then, after a moment,

when she realized that he was doing nothing more than putting his arm around her, she let

him lead her back to the couch.

She sat with him, beginning to relax, the tension going out of her body. When he

spoke to her, his tone was gentle, without threat.

"I'll take Mary if you want me to, Rina. I'll find a home for her."

She said nothing for a long while. He did not hurry her. She looked at him, then

closed her eyes, shook her head. Finally she put her head on his shoulder and spoke

softly. "I'm sick," she said. "Tell me I'll be well if you take her."

"You'll be as well as you were before Mary was born."

"Then?" She shuddered against him. "No. I was sick then too. Sick and alone. If you

take Mary away, you won't come back to me, will you?"

"No. I won't."

"You said, 'I want you to have a baby,' and I said, 'I hate kids, especially babies,' and

you said, 'That doesn't matter.' And it didn't."

"Shall I take her, Rina?"

"No. Are you going to get rid of that corpse for me?" She nudged his former body

with one foot.

"I'll have someone take care of it."

"I can't do anything," she said. "My hands shake and sometimes I hear voices. I sweat

and my head hurts and I want to cry or I want to scream. Nothing helps but taking a

drink—or maybe finding a guy."

"You won't drink so much from now on."

There was another long silence. "You always want so damn much. Shall I give up

men, too?"

"If I come back and find Mary black and blue again, I'll take her. If anything worse

happens to her, I'll kill you."

She looked at him without fear. "You mean I can keep my men if I keep them away

from Mary. All right."

Doro sighed, started to speak, then shrugged.

"I can't help it," she said. "Something is wrong with me. I can't help it."

"I know."

"You made me what I am. I ought to hate your guts for what you made me."

"You don't hate me. And you don't have to defend yourself to me. I don't condemn

you." He caressed her, wondering idly how she could want life badly enough to fight as

hard as she had to fight to keep it. In producing her daughter, she had performed the

function she had been born to perform. Doro had demanded that much of her as he had

demanded it of others, her ancestors long before her. There had been a time when he

disposed of people like her as soon as they had produced the number of offspring he

desired. They were inevitably poor parents and their children grew up more comfortably

with adoptive parents. Now, though, if such people wanted to live after having served

him, he let them. He treated them kindly, as servants who had been faithful. Their

gratitude often made them his best servants in spite of their seeming weakness. And the

weakness didn't bother him. Rina was right. It was his fault—a result of his breeding

program. Rina, in fact, was a minor favorite with him when she was sober.

"I'll be careful," she said. "No one will hurt Mary again. Will you stay with me for a

while?"

"Only for a few days. Long enough to help you move out of here."

She looked alarmed. "I don't want to move. I can't stand it out there where I was, by

myself."

"I'm not going to send you back to our old house. I'm just going to take you a few

blocks over to Dell Street where one of your relatives lives. She has a duplex and you're

going to live in one side of it."

"I don't have any relatives left alive around here."

He smiled. "Rina, this part of Forsyth is full of your relatives. Actually, that's why

you came back to it. You don't know them, and you wouldn't like most of them if you

met them, but you need to be close to them."

"Why?"

"Let's just say, so you won't be by yourself."

She shrugged, neither understanding nor really caring. "If people around here are my

relatives, are they your people too?"

"Of course."

"And . . . this woman I'm going to live next door to-what is she to me?"