Patternmaster

by Octavia E. Butler

  And somehow, in spite of his severely lowered opinion of Joachim, he could not quite bring himself to destroy the man.

  He realized that Michael and Coransee as well as Joachim were looking at him as though awaiting his decision. He met their eyes for a moment, then went to a chair at one side of Coransee’s desk and sat down. “What about the other charge?” he said disgustedly.

  Joachim seemed to sag, eyes closed in relief. Michael was impassive, and Coransee seemed almost bored. He toyed listlessly with a smooth cube of stone—probably a blank stone with nothing yet recorded into it. Perhaps he was even recording into it now.

  “The other charge,” said Michael wearily. “Competing for the Pattern before the competition is open.”

  “I deny it,” said Coransee simply.

  Michael frowned. “You deny that you took Teray into your House in order to keep him from competing with you for the Pattern?”

  “Yes.”

  Teray sat up very straight, wanting to dispute, wanting to damn Coransee for the liar he was, but Joachim’s fate had made him cautious. He waited to see how Michael would handle it.

  “Teray,” the journeyman said, “you say Coransee told you he meant to keep you from competing?”

  “Yes, Journeyman.”

  “And how did he plan to stop you?”

  “Either by controlling me as Joachim is controlled, or by killing me—if I refused to be controlled.”

  Michael turned slightly in his chair so that he faced Teray squarely. “Are you controlled, then?”

  “No. I refused control. He’s given me time to change my mind.” Immediately Teray wished he had left off the last sentence.

  “How much time, Teray?” It was Coransee who asked the question.

  Michael looked at him in surprise. “Lord, are you admitting that you used such intimidation?”

  “Yes. Though not for the reason Teray gives. But even if I had threatened Teray as he says … answer my question, Teray. How much time did I give you?”

  There was no point in telling anything but the truth. It was in his memory—and he was not as good at twisting it as Coransee was.

  “Teray?”

  “You gave me as much time as Rayal has left, Lord.”

  “As much time as Rayal has left. And of course when Rayal dies, the competition for the Pattern opens.”

  Teray fumed silently, seeing the look of defeat come to Michael’s face. The second charge had died even more quickly than the first. Teray let his mind go back over that morning, that breakfast with Coransee, trying to find some truth he could tell or twist. There was nothing. He himself could think of arguments to kill any arguments he might make.

  Teray glanced at Joachim. “Thanks for trying,” he said quietly.

  “He’s a hell of a talker,” said Joachim. “Among other things.”

  Michael shifted in his chair, and said to Coransee, “Unless anyone has memories to the contrary, Lord, the charge against you is disproved. But there is something I would like to know for myself. Is Teray still under sentence of death?”

  “He is.”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason Patternmaster Rayal killed the strongest of his brothers and his sister. Even if I win the Pattern, Teray uncontrolled could become a danger to me. He will submit to my controls, or he will die.”

  “I see.” Michael lowered his head for a moment, then looked at Teray. “You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to, Teray, but I’m wondering whether you think you might eventually be able to accept the mind controls.”

  “Not even if he was going to kill me right now,” said Teray. “Especially not after this chance to see him in action.” That was reckless. Teray wondered why he was bothering to talk recklessly while he was still in Coransee’s House. Maybe the Housemaster’s lies had angered him more than they should have. After all, lies were what he should have expected from Coransee in such a situation. But Coransee had prepared for his lies long before he had to tell them. Coransee spoke quietly:

  “Journeyman, if you’re finished with my outsider, I’d like to speak with you privately.”

  And that simply, it was over. Teray and Joachim were dismissed so that Michael and Coransee could discuss more important matters.

  In the common room, Joachim said to Teray, “I owe you thanks, too.”

  Teray shrugged.

  “The trouble I went to to get that Michael here!” Joachim continued. “And then all the lot of us did was give Coransee a few moments of amusement.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Joachim looked at him strangely. “I’m more upset about this than you are.”

  Teray said nothing, his face carefully expressionless. He did not want to lie to Joachim but he could not confide in him. Joachim was Coransee’s man, whether he liked it or not.

  Joachim must have understood. He changed the subject: “What has Coransee promised you if you submit to his controls?”

  “This House.”

  “This!” Joachim only breathed the word. He looked around the huge room. “He must be certain of winning the Pattern.”

  “I think he is.”

  “If you can resist this …”

  “I can. I am.”

  “Teray … most of the time, the controls aren’t that bad. And when he has the entire Pattern to keep him busy, he’ll have even less time to concern himself with you.”

  Teray ignored him, and looked around the room to see whether Amber was still there. She had gone. Good. “Joachim, do you know a woman named Amber?”

  “Teray, listen! You wouldn’t be giving up as much as I did when I submitted. He’s made me a kind of political puppet. But when he’s Patternmaster he won’t have to do such things with you. You’ll be almost independent. And you’ll be alive.”

  Teray shook his head slowly, eyes closed for a moment. “I can’t do it, Joachim. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. A long leash is still a leash. And Coransee will still be at the other end of it, holding on. Now, do you know Amber?”

  “All right, change the subject. Kill yourself. Yes, I know Amber. What do you want to know about her?”

  Teray frowned. “Anything you know about her that isn’t personal. She says she’s an independent.”

  “She is. Strange woman. She’s only four or five years out of school, but she managed to kill a man, a Housemaster, before she even made her transition. You ought to ask her about it. Interesting.”

  “No doubt,” muttered Teray. “But look, how likely is she to go running to Coransee with anything unusual she hears?”

  Joachim shook his head slowly. “Not likely at all. She likes Coransee, but she doesn’t make any special effort to impress him. She does her healing and otherwise keeps out of House business.”

  Silently, Teray hoped he was right. It would be too easy for the woman to pick up something. No matter what happened, he was going to have to leave soon.

  He found himself wishing he could speak privately to Michael, but he knew it would do no good. Even if the journeyman sympathized with him, the law really was on Coransee’s side. Michael could not change that.

  Journeyman Michael stayed two days more, then headed farther north on more of Rayal’s business. North. Forsyth was 480 kilometers south. Teray could not even hope to catch up with Michael and try to attach himself to the journeyman’s party. That might not have been a good idea anyway though, since it would have meant asking Michael to risk his own life by defying Coransee. After all, if things went as Coransee expected, Michael would soon be under Coransee’s direct control.

  Teray would have to go alone. He realized that he was putting off leaving for just that reason—because the journey looked more and more like suicide to him. And what should he do about Iray?

  That was something he did not want to think about. He was afraid to talk to Iray—afraid she might not want to leave Coransee, afraid her apparent interest in Coransee might be real. But even if it was not—she had kept he
r word, after all, she had not changed her name—how could he ask her to risk herself with him again? How could he take her out and perhaps get her killed? Then, strangely it was Amber who gave him hope.

  She was waiting for him in his room the night after Michael left. He walked in and found her staring out his window.

  “Good,” she said as she turned and saw him. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “You came all the way up here to talk to me?”

  “Necessary. I have a message for you from Michael.” And suddenly he was listening.

  “Why would Michael give you a message for me?”

  “Because I offered to carry it. He and I are old friends, so he trusted me. He couldn’t very well give it to you directly.”

  “Why not?”

  “God, you must really be preoccupied with something. Don’t you have any idea how closely Coransee has watched you and Michael for the past two days?”

  Teray went to his bed, sat down, and took off his shoes. “I didn’t notice. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t.”

  “Michael didn’t think you would have lived long if he had shown any particular interest in you. There would be some kind of accident. You know.”

  Teray shuddered. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t even thought about such a possibility. It was true enough, though, that personal attention from Michael could lead to personal attention from Rayal. And surely Coransee would not want Rayal to have the chance to pay attention to another potentially powerful son.

  “What’s the message?” he asked Amber.

  “That there’s sanctuary for you at Forsyth if you can get there on your own.”

  In the moment of utter surprise that followed her words, he did the thing he had feared he might do: He betrayed himself to her. His screen slipped—not far, and only for an instant. Coransee would have been hard put to read anything in so short a time. But Amber, it seemed, knew how to use her closeness to him. She read everything.

  “Well,” she smiled at him, “it looks like I’ve brought you better news than I thought I had. Just the news you need, in fact.”

  Teray dropped all pretense. Now, either she would report him or she would not. And Michael had seen fit to trust her. “What I really need,” he said, “is a few good fighters to go along with me. I counted twelve women and outsiders traveling with Michael.”

  “Fifteen,” she corrected. “Are you taking Iray?”

  “I don’t know yet. It seems to me—” He broke off and looked at Amber. She was still barely an acquaintance. Someone to sleep with, perhaps, but not someone to talk over his personal problems with. But on the other hand, why not? It was so easy. And who else was there? “It seems to me that I’ve done enough to Iray.”

  “I don’t think you’ve done anything to her. Joachim has, and certainly Coransee has. But you’re only about to.”

  “By leaving her—or by taking her?”

  “By deciding for her.”

  “I don’t want to get her killed.”

  Amber shrugged. “If it were me, I’d want to make up my own mind.”

  “I told her once that I wouldn’t leave her here.”

  “Well, it’s between you and her.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what are you trying to build between you and me?”

  She smiled a little. “Something good, I hope.”

  “What about Coransee?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Point to you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You remember telling me you hoped you’d be around the day I tried to leave Coransee?”

  “You tried?”

  “No. But I should have—some time ago. Now I’ve become a kind of challenge to him. Now I’m going to settle here as one of his wives whether I like it or not. He says. Which shows that he hasn’t gotten to know me very well in two years.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The same thing you’re going to do. We’ll live longer if we do it together.”

  He took several seconds to digest this. His main emotion was relief. “Two, or perhaps three, traveling together. That’s better than one—though not much better.”

  “You’re going to ask Iray, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’ll need her.”

  “We.” Teray smiled. “I wish you were just a little harder to accept.”

  “I’ll wish that myself when the time comes for me to leave you. But I don’t wish it now.”

  “You’re staying the night.”

  “What about Suliana?”

  “I just reached her. She’s going to sleep in her old room—or wherever else she wants to.”

  “I’m staying, then.”

  She was a lighter golden color beneath her clothing. Honey-colored. The cap of black hair was softer than it looked and the woman was harder than she felt. He would have to keep that last in mind, if he could.

  Chapter Five

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Teray left Amber asleep in his bed and went down to the dining room, where he had sensed Iray. He would assume that Iray had not changed. He would know nothing that she did not tell him. He would not prejudge her. She was eating with another woman and a man at the end of one of the long tables in the nearly empty room. Most of the House was not awake yet.

  “I have to talk to you,” he told her.

  She glanced at him hesitantly, almost reluctantly. Then she took a last bite of pancake, swallowed some orange juice, and excused herself to her friends. She followed him out to the privacy of the completely empty courtyard where they had last talked. Since then, they had looked at each other, and they had refused to look at each other, but they had hardly spoken at all.

  They sat down on one of the benches and Iray stared at her clenched hands.

  “I’m sorry,” began Teray, “but I have to ask you. … Is there any way … through you, that Coransee will hear what I say?”

  “No,” she said softly. “I’m linked with him, but only so he can be sure that you and I … that we don’t make love.”

  “The link is just an alarm, then?”

  She nodded. “And I won’t tell him anything you don’t want him to know.”

  She was offering him the same loyalty that she had always offered, but somehow, something was wrong. Was it only her link with Coransee that had started her twisting her hands, that made her willing to look at him only in quick glances?

  “Will you open to me?” he asked.

  “You don’t trust me,” she said. There was neither surprise nor anger in her voice.

  “I trust you … trust who you were. I want to trust you now.”

  “You can. I won’t open to you, but I won’t betray you either.”

  “Has he hurt you? Has he done something you don’t want me to …?”

  “No, Teray. Why should he hurt me?”

  “Then what’s happened?”

  “I took your advice.”

  There it was. All his fears wrapped in four words. He could not pretend to misunderstand her any longer.

  “I started out playing a role,” she said. “A hard role. Then …” She faced him, finally, wearily. “Then it got easier. Now it’s not a role anymore.”

  Teray said nothing, could think of nothing to say.

  “He’s not what I thought,” she said. “I thought his power had made him cruel and brutal, but instead …”

  “Iray!” He could not sit still and listen to another woman inventing good qualities for Coransee. Especially not Iray.

  She looked at him solemnly, her shielded mind not quite hiding the fact that she did not want to be there with him. She had stilled her twisting hands, but her very stillness bespoke tension, withdrawal.

  “Iray … what if there was a way out? For us, I mean. What if you didn’t have to stay with him?”

  “Is there?”

  “Yes!” He had to trust her. How could he expect her to believe him if he did not tell her what there was to believe? He had f
ailed her once. Twice. She had reason to be hesitant. He outlined his plan quickly, giving her the assurance that Michael had passed on to him through Amber without mentioning Amber herself. Now was not the time to cloud things further.

  Iray took a deep breath and shook her head. “Clayarks,” she said. “All the way to Forsyth. Hundreds of kilometers of Clayarks.”

  “Not that bad,” he said. “We could make it. We could. …”

  “No.”

  He was silent for a long moment. He could look at her and see that she meant it. Instead, he looked at the ground, at a wall of the House. “All right. I can’t really blame you. I almost didn’t ask you because I didn’t think I had the right to risk your life as well as my own: And I don’t have that right, of course. But I said I wouldn’t desert you. I had to ask you if you wanted to take the risk.”

  “I’d take it. If I wanted to be with you the way I did once, I’d go.”

  He said nothing, only stared at her.

  “You couldn’t accept his controls,” she said. “Even though your own freedom wasn’t all that was involved, you couldn’t accept them.”

  “Would you have wanted me controlled—like Joachim?”

  “No! No, I understand what you did. That’s why I never blamed you, never tried to make you change your mind. I knew you’d rather be dead than controlled. You did what you had to do. Then you told me what I had to do. And you were right both times. Well, now I’ve done what I had to do. And it was good, and I’m home. I’m going to stay here.”

  There was nothing he could say to her that would not twist back and indict him, too. Even his anger was more at his own helplessness, and at Coransee, than at her. He had thought of her with Coransee, even thought of her coming to prefer Coransee. But he had never really believed she would. In spite of all Coransee’s power and apparent attractiveness to women, he had never let himself believe it.

  She touched his arm and he savored her touch for a moment, then moved his arm away. She was still shielding him out and her touch brought her no closer to him. He could have taken more pleasure in Suliana’s touch—the touch of a mute.

  Or Amber’s.