Mind of My Mind (2 page)

"Your grandmother several times removed."

Rina's terror returned full force. "You mean she's like you? Immortal?"

"No. Not like me. She doesn't kill—at least not the way I do. She's still wearing the

same body she was born into. And she won't hurt you. But she might be able to help with

Mary."

"All for Mary. She must be important, poor kid."

"She's very important."

Rina was suddenly the concerned mother, frowning at him worriedly. "She won't just

be like me? Sick? Crazy?"

"She'll be like you at first, but she'll grow out of it. It isn't really a disease, you know."

"It is to me. But I'll keep her, and move, like you said, to this grandmother's house.

What's the woman's name?"

"Emma. She started to call herself Emma about one hundred fifty years ago as a joke.

It means grandmother or ancestress."

"It means she's somebody you can trust to watch me and see that I don't hurt Mary."

"Yes."

"I won't. I'll learn to be her mother at least . . . a little more. I can do that much—raise

a child who'll be important to you."

He kissed her, believing her. If the child had not been such an important part of his

breeding program, he would not have put a watch on her at all. After a while he got up

and went to call one of his people to come and get his former body out of the apartment.

EMMA

Emma was in the kitchen fixing her breakfast when she heard someone at her front

door. She hobbled through the dining room toward the door, but before she could reach it,

it opened and a slight young man stepped in.

Emma stopped where she was, straightened her usually bent body, and stared a

question at the young man. She was not afraid. A couple of boys had broken in to rob her

recently and she had given them quite a surprise.

"It's me, Em," said the young man, smiling.

Emma relaxed, smiled herself, but she did not let her body sink back into its stoop.

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in New York."

"I suddenly realized that it had been too long since I checked on one of my people."

"You don't mean me."

"A relative of yours—a little girl."

Emma raised an eyebrow at him, then drew a deep breath. "Let's sit down, Doro. Ask

me the favor you're going to ask me from a comfortable chair."

He actually looked a little sheepish. They sat down in the living room.

"Well?" said Emma.

"I see you have someone living in your other apartment," he said.

"Family," said Emma. "A great-grandson whose wife just died. He works and I keep

an eye on the kids when they get home from school."

"How soon can you move him out?"

Emma stared at him expressionlessly. "The question is, will I move him out at all?

Why should I?"

"I have a youngster who's going to be too much for her mother in a few years. Right

now, though, her mother is too much for her."

"Doro, the kids next door really need my help. Even with guidance, you know they're

going to have a hard time."

"But almost anyone could help those children, Em. On the other hand, you're just

about the only one I'd trust to help the child I'm talking about."

Emma frowned. "Her mother abuses her?"

"So far, she only lets other people abuse her."

"Sounds as though the child would be better off adopted into another family."

"I don't want to do that if I can avoid it. She's probably going to have a strong need to

be among her relatives. And you're the only relative she has that I'd care to trust her with.

She's part of an experiment that's important to me, Em."

"Important to you. To you! And what shall I do with my great-grandson and his

children?"

"Surely one of your apartment complexes has a vacancy. And you can pay a baby

sitter for the kids. You're already providing for God knows how many indigent relatives.

This should be fairly easy."

"That's not the point."

He leaned back and sat looking at her. "Are you going to turn me down?"

"How old is the child?"

"Three."

"And just what is she going to grow up into?"

"A telepath. One with more control of her ability than any I've produced so far, I

hope. And from the body I used to father her, I hope she'll have inherited a few other

abilities."

"What other abilities?"

"Em, I can't tell you all of it. If I do, in a few years she'll read it in your mind."

"What difference would that make? Why shouldn't she know what she is?"

"Because she's an experiment. It will be better for her to learn the nature of her

abilities slowly, from experience. If she's anything like her predecessors, the more slowly

she learns the better it will be for the people around her."

"Who were her predecessors?"

"Failures. Dangerous failures."

Emma sighed. "Dead failures." She wondered what he would say if she refused to

help. She didn't like having anything to do with his projects when she could help it. They

always involved children, always had to do with his breeding programs. For all but the

first few centuries of his four-thousand-year life, he had been struggling to build a race

around himself. He existed apparently as a result of a mutation millennia past. His people

existed as a result of less wildly divergent mutations and as a result of nearly four

thousand years of controlled breeding. He now had several strong mutant strains, which

he combined or kept separate, as he wished. And behind him he had an untold number of

failures, dangerous or only pathetic, which he had destroyed as casually as other people

slaughtered cattle.

"You must tell me something about your hopes for the girl," Emma said. "Just what

kind of danger are you trying to expose me to?"

He laid a hand on her bony shoulder. "Very little, Em. If you have a hand in raising

the girl, she should come out reasonably controllable. In fact, I was thinking of giving

you the whole job of raising her."

"No! Absolutely not. I've raised enough children. More than enough."

"That's what I thought you'd say. All right. Just let me move her and her mother in

next door, where you can keep an eye on them."

"What are you going to do with her after she's matured?—if she's a success, I mean."

He sighed. "Well, I guess I can tell you that. She's part of my latest attempt to bring

my active telepaths together. I'm going to try to mate her with another telepath without

killing either of them myself. And I'm hoping that she and the boy I have in mind are

stable enough to stay together without killing each other. That will be a beginning."

Emma shook her head as he spoke. How many lives had he thrown away over the

years in pursuit of that dream? "Doro, they've never been together. Why don't you leave

them alone? Let them stay separate. They avoid each other naturally when you're not

pushing them together."

"I want them together. Did you think I had given up?"

"I keep hoping you'll give up for the sake of your people."

"And settle for the string of warring tribes that I've got now? Not that most of them

are even that united. Just families of people who don't like their own members much even

though they usually need to be near them. Families who can't tolerate members of my

other families at all. They all tolerate ordinary people well enough, though. They would

have merged back into the general population long ago if I didn't police them."

"Perhaps they should. They would be happier."

"Would you be happier without your gifts, Emma? Would you like to be an ordinary

human?"

"Of course not. But how many others are in full control of their abilities, as I am?

And how many spend their lives in abject misery because they have 'gifts' that they can't

control or even understand?" She sighed. "You can't take credit for me, anyway. I'm

almost as much of an accident as you are. My people had been separated from one of

your families for hundreds of years before I was born. They had merged with the people

they took refuge among, and they still managed to produce me."

And Doro had been trying to duplicate the happy accident of her birth ever since. She

had known him for three hundred years now, had borne him thirty-seven children through

his various incarnations. None of her children had proved to be especially long-lived.

Those who might have been were tortured, unstable people. They committed suicide. The

rest lived normal spans and died natural deaths. Emma had seen to that last. She had not

been able to keep track of her many grandchildren, but her children she had protected.

From the beginning of her relationship with Doro, she had warned him that if he

murdered even one of her children, she would bear him no more.

At first Doro had valued her and her new strain too much to punish her for her

"arrogance." Later, as he became accustomed to her, to the idea of her immortality, he

began to value her as more than just a breeder. She became a companion to him, a wife to

whom he always returned. Both he and she married other people from time to time, but

such matings were temporary.

For a while, Emma even believed in his race-building dream. But as he allowed her to

know more of his methods of fulfilling that dream, her enthusiasm waned. No dream was