Mind of My Mind (5 page)

"One of my sons. Not related to you at all, by the way."

"A stranger? Some total stranger and you want me to marry him?"

"You will marry him." He didn't use that tone much with me—or with anyone, I

think. It was reserved for when he was telling you to do something he would kill you for

not doing. A quiet, chilly tone of voice.

"Doro, why couldn't you be him? Take him and let me marry you."

"Kill him, you mean."

"You kill people all the time."

He shook his head. "I wonder if you're going to grow out of that."

"Out of what?"

"Your total disregard for human life—except for your own, of course."

"Oh, come on! Shit, the devil himself is going to preach me a sermon!"

"Maybe transition will change your thinking."

"If it does, I don't see how I'll be able to stand you."

He smiled. "You don't realize it, but that might really be a problem. You're an

experimental model. Your predecessors have had trouble with me."

"Don't talk about me like I was a new car or something." I frowned and looked at

him. "What kind of trouble?"

"Never mind. I won't talk about you like you were a new car."

"Wait a minute," I said more seriously. "I mean it, Doro. What kind of trouble?"

He didn't answer.

"Are any of them still alive?"

He still didn't answer.

I took a deep breath, stared out the window. "Okay, so how do I keep from having

trouble with you?"

He put an arm around me, and for some reason, instead of flinching away, I moved

over close to him. "I'm not threatening you," he said.

"Yes you are. Tell me about this son of yours."

He drove me over to Palo Verde Avenue, where the rich people lived. When he

stopped, it was in front of a three-story white stucco mansion. Spanish tile roof, great

arched doorway, clusters of palm trees and carefully trimmed shrubs, acres of front lawn,

one square block of house and grounds.

"This is his house," said Doro.

"Damn," I muttered. "He owns it? The whole thing?"

"Free and clear."

"Oh, Lord." Something occurred to me suddenly. "Is he white?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Doro. Man, what are you trying to do to me?"

"Get you some help. You're going to need it."

"What the hell can he do for me that you can't? God, he'll take one look at me and . . .

Doro, just the fact that he lives in this part of town tells me that he's the wrong guy. The

first time he says something stupid to me, we'll kill each other."

"I wouldn't pick any fights with him if I were you. He's one of my actives."

An active: One of Doro's people who's already gone through transition and turned

into whatever kind of monster Doro has bred him to be. Emma was one kind of active.

Rina, in spite of her "good" family, was only a latent. She never quite made it to

transition, so her ability was undeveloped. She couldn't control it or use it deliberately.

All she could do was pass it on to me and put up with the mental garbage it exposed her

to now and then. Doro said that was why she was crazy.

"What kind of active is he?" I asked.

"The most ordinary kind. A telepath. My best telepath—at least until you go

through."

"You want him to read my mind?"

"He won't have much choice about that. If you and he are in the same house, sooner

or later he will, as you'll read his eventually."

"You mean he doesn't have any more control over his ability than I do over mine?"

"He has a great deal more control than you. That's why he'll be able to help you

during and after your transition. But none of my telepaths can shield out the rest of the

world entirely. Sometimes things that they don't want to sense filter through to them.

More often, though, they just get nosy and snoop through other people's thoughts."

"Is it because he's an active that you won't take him? No moralizing this time."

"Yes. He's too rare and too valuable to kill so carelessly. So are you. You and he

aren't quite the same kind of creature, but I think you're alike enough to be

complementary."

"Does he know about me?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"He feels just about the way you do."

"Great." I slumped back in the seat. "Doro . . . will you tell me, why marriage? I don't

have to marry him for him to give me whatever help I'm supposed to need. Hell, I don't

even have to marry him to have a baby by him, if that's what you want."

"That might be what I want once I've seen how you come through transition. All I

want now is to get the two of you to realize that you might as well accept each other. I

want you tied together in a way you'll both respect in spite of yourselves."

"You mean we'll be less likely to kill each other if we're married."

"Well . . . he'll be less likely to kill you. The match is going to be pretty uneven for a

while. I'd keep low if I were you."

"Isn't there any way at all that I can get out of this?"

"No."

I felt like crying. I couldn't remember when I'd done that last. And the worst of it was,

I knew that, as bad as I felt now, it was nothing to what I'd be feeling when I actually met

this son. Somehow, I'd never thought of myself as just another of Doro's breeders—just

another Goddamn brood mare. Rina was. Emma was for sure. But me, I was special.

Sure. Doro had said it himself. An experiment. Apparently an experiment that had failed

several times before. And Doro was trying to shore it up now by pairing me with this

stranger.

"What's his name?"

"Karl. Karl Larkin."

"Yeah. When do I have to marry him?"

"In a week or two."

I would have put up more of a fight if I had known how to fight Doro. I never much

wanted to fight him before. I remember, once when he was staying with Rina, an

electronics company out in Carson—one of the businesses that he controlled—was losing

money. Doro had the guy who ran the company for him come to our house to talk. Even

then I knew that was a hell of a put-down to the guy. Our house was a shack compared to

what he was used to. Anyway, Doro wanted to find out whether the guy was stealing,

having real trouble, or was just plain incompetent. It turned out the guy was stealing. Big

salary, pretty young wife, big house in Beverly Hills, and he was stealing from Doro.

Stupid.

The guy was Doro's—born Doro's, just like me. And every dime of his original

investment had been Doro's. Still, he cursed and complained and found reasons why, with

all the work he'd done, he deserved more money. Then he ran.

Doro had shrugged. He had eaten dinner with us, got up, stretched, and finally gone

out after the guy. The next day, he came back wearing the guy's body.

You didn't cheat him. You didn't steal from him or lie to him. You didn't disobey him.

He'd find you out, then he'd kill you. How could you fight that? He wasn't telepathic, but

I had never seen anyone get a lie past him. And I had never known anyone to escape him.

He did have some kind of tracking sense. He locked in on people. Anybody he'd met

once, he could find again. He thought about them, and he knew which way to go to get to

them. Once he was close to them, they didn't have a chance.

I put my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes. "Let's get out of here."

He took me back to his hotel and bought me lunch. I hadn't had breakfast, so I was

hungry. Then we went up to his room and made love. Really. I would call it screwing

when I had to do it with his damn fool son. I had been in love with Doro since I was

twelve. He had made me wait until I was eighteen. Now he was going to marry me off to

somebody else. I probably loved him in self-defense. Hating him was too dangerous.

We had a week together. He decided to take me to Karl when I started passing out

with the mental stuff I was picking up. It surprised him the first time it happened.

Evidently I was closer to transition than he had thought.

Chapter Two

DORO

Actives were nearly always troublesome, Doro thought as he drove his car down Karl

Larkin's long driveway. He already knew that Karl was not in his house, that he was

somewhere in the back yard, probably in the pool. Doro let his tracking sense guide him.

He had thought it would be safest to visit Karl once more before he placed Mary with

him. Both Karl and Mary were too valuable to take chances with. Mary, if she survived

transition, could prove invaluable. She would never have to know the whole reason for

her existence—the thing Doro hoped to discover through her. It would be enough if she

simply matured and paired successfully with Karl. Eventually the two of them could be

told part of the truth—that they were a first, that Doro had never before been able to keep

a pair of active telepaths together without killing one of them and taking that one's place.

This would be explanation enough for them. Because by the time they had been together

for a while they would know how hard it was for two actives to be together without

losing themselves, merging into each other uncontrollably. They would understand why,

always before, actives had been rigidly unwilling to permit such merging—why actives

had defended their individuality, why they had killed each other.

Karl was in the pool. Doro could see him across a parklike expanse of grass and trees.

Before Doro could reach him, though, the gardener, who had been mowing the lawn,

drove up to Doro on his riding mower.

"Sir?" he said tentatively.

"It's me," said Doro.

The gardener smiled. "I thought it must be. Welcome back."

Doro nodded, went over to the pool. Karl owned his servants more thoroughly than

even Doro usually owned people. Karl owned their minds. They were just ordinary

people who had answered an ad in the Los Angeles Times. Karl did no entertaining—was

almost a hermit except for the succession of women whom he lured in and kept until they

bored him. The servants existed more to look after the house and grounds than to look

after Karl himself. Still, he had chosen them less for their professional competence than

for the fact that they had few if any living relatives. Few people to be pacified if he

accidentally got too rough with them. He would not have hurt them deliberately. He had

conditioned them, programmed them carefully to do their work and to obey him in every

way. He had programmed them to be content with their jobs. He even paid them well.

But his power made him dangerous to ordinary people—especially those who worked

near him every day. In an instant of uncontrolled anger, he could have killed them all.

Karl hauled himself out of the water when he saw Doro approaching. Then he leaned

down and offered his hand to a second person, whom Doro had not noticed. Vivian, of

course. A small, pretty, brown-haired woman whom Doro had prevented Karl from

marrying.

Karl gave him a questioning look. "I was afraid you were bringing my prospective

bride."