Seed to Harvest

by Octavia E. Butler

  “I didn’t say you should guess,” said Doro. “I said you should know. You can read her every thought, every memory, without her being aware of it. Use your ability.”

  “Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not used to that yet. I guess I’ll be doing it automatically after a while.”

  “You’d better. And when I’m finished with you here, I want you to read them all. Including Karl. I want you to learn their weaknesses and their strengths. I want you to know them better than they know themselves. I don’t want you to be uncertain or afraid with even one more of them.”

  She looked a little surprised. “Well, I can find out about them, all right. But as for not being afraid … if a person like Rachel wants to kill me, I’m not going to be able to stop her just because I know her.” She paused for a moment. “Now I know—I just found out—that Rachel can give me a heart attack or a cerebral hemorrhage or any other deadly thing she wants to. So I know. So what?”

  “What else did you find out about Rachel?”

  “Junk. Nothing that does me any good. Stuff about her personal life, her work. I see she’s a kind of parasite too. It must run in my family.”

  “Of course it does. But she’s got nothing like your power. And you’ve seen a thing you don’t realize you’ve seen, girl.”

  “What?”

  “That you’re at least as dangerous to Rachel as she is to you. Since you can read her through her shield, she won’t be able to surprise you—unless you’re just careless. And if you see her coming you should be able to stop her.”

  “I don’t see how, unless I kill her. But it doesn’t matter. I was reading her again as you spoke. She’s not about to come after me, now that you’ve ordered her not to.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. But I won’t always be standing between you and her. I’m giving you time—not very much time—to learn to handle yourself among these people. You’d better use it.”

  She swallowed, nodded.

  “Do you understand what Rachel does? Do you see that you are to her, and to the others, what she is to her congregations?”

  “A kind of mental vampire draining strength … or something from people. Strength? Life force? I don’t know what to call it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you call it. She has to take it to do her healing, and healing is the only purpose she’s found for her life. Can you see that what she sets up at each of her services is a kind of temporary pattern?”

  “Yes. But at least she doesn’t kill anybody.”

  “She could, very easily. Ordinarily people have no defense against what she does—the way she feeds. If she took too much from her crowds, she’d begin killing the very old, the very young, the weak, even the sick that she intended to heal.”

  “I see.”

  “See, too, that while you can take from her, she can’t take from you.”

  “Because I can shield her out.”

  “You don’t have to shield her out. Let her in if you like.”

  “What do you mean?” She looked at him in horror.

  “Exactly what you think I mean.”

  She frowned. “Are you telling me it’s all right for me to kill now when, just a few hours ago, you said—”

  “I know what I said. And I still don’t want anyone killed. But I’m gambling on you, Mary. If you survive among these people, I have a chance of winning.”

  “Winning your empire. Is there anybody whose life you wouldn’t risk for your Goddamn empire?”

  “No.”

  For a moment, she glared at him angrily. Then the anger faded as though she didn’t have the energy to sustain it. Doro was accustomed to the look. All his people faced him with it at one time or another. It was a look of submission.

  “What I’ve decided to do,” said Doro, “is give you the life of one of the actives if you need it. If you have to make an example of someone, I’ll let it pass as long as you keep control of yourself and don’t go beyond that one.”

  She thought about that for a long moment. “Permission to kill,” she said finally. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “I hope you won’t have to use it. But I don’t want you totally handicapped.”

  “Thanks. I think. God, I hope I’m like Rachel. I hope I don’t have to kill.”

  “You won’t find out until you get started on someone.”

  She sighed. “Since this is all your fault, will you stay around for a while? I won’t have Karl. I’ll need somebody.”

  “That’s another thing.”

  “What?”

  “Stop telling the actives that the one show of power you’ve given them, the one thing you’ve done that they can’t resist or undo, is my fault.”

  “But it is. …”

  “Of course it is. And the moment they realize I’m here, they’ll know it is. They don’t have to be told. Especially when your telling them sounds like whining for pity. There’s no pity in them, girl. They’re going to feel about as sorry for you as you do for Vivian, or for Rina.”

  That seemed to sober her.

  “You’re going to have to grow up, Mary,” he said quietly. “You’re going to have to grow up fast.”

  She studied her hands, large, frankly ugly, her worst feature. They lay locked together in her lap. “Just stay with me for a while, Doro. I’ll do the best I can.”

  “I had intended to stay.”

  She didn’t bother hiding her relief. He got up and went to her.

  Mary

  There were incidents as my actives straggled in. I had pried through their minds and gotten to know all of them except Rachel before I even met them—so that none of them surprised me much.

  Doro beat the holy shit out of Jan almost as soon as she arrived, because she’d done something stupid. I don’t think he would have touched her, otherwise. One of the two kids she’d had by him was dead and he wasn’t happy about it. She said it was an accident. He knew she was telling the truth. But she panicked.

  He was talking to her—not very gently—and he started toward her for some reason. She ran out the front door. That, he doesn’t allow. Don’t run from him. Never run. He called her back, warned her. But she kept going. He would have gone after her if I hadn’t stopped him.

  “She’ll be back,” I said quickly. “Give her a chance. The pattern will bring her back.” I wondered why I bothered to try to help her. I shouldn’t have cared what happened to her. She had taken one look at Rachel and me and thought, Oh, God, niggers! And she was the one Doro had chosen to have kids by. Surely Rachel and Ada would have been better parents.

  Anyway, Doro waited—more out of curiosity than anything else, I think. Jan came back in about thirty minutes. She came back cursing herself for the coward she was and believing that Doro would surely kill her now. Instead, he took her up to his room and beat her. Beat her for God knows how long. We could hear her screaming at first. I read the others and found what I thought I’d find. That every one of them knew from personal experience how bad Doro’s beatings could be. I knew myself, though, like the others, I hadn’t had one for a few years.

  Now we just sat around not looking at each other and waiting for it to be over. After a while things were quiet. Jan was in bed for three days. Doro ordered Rachel not to help her.

  Rachel had enough to do helping Jesse when he came in. He was the last to arrive, because he wasted two days trying to fight the pattern. He came in mad and tired and still pretty cut up from a fight he’d gotten into on the day I called him. I had found out about that by reading his mind. And I knew about the little town he owned in Pennsylvania, and the things he did to the people there, and the way he made them love him for it. I was all ready to hate his guts. Meeting him in person didn’t give me any reason to change my mind.

  He said, “You green-eyed bitch, I don’t know how you dragged me here, but you damned well better let me go. Fast.”

  I was in a bad mood. I had been hearing slightly different versions of that same song from
everybody for two days. I said, “Man, if you don’t find something better to call me, I’m going to knock the rest of your teeth out.”

  He stared at me as though he wasn’t quite sure he’d heard right. I guess he wasn’t very used to people talking back to him and making it stick. He started toward me. The two words he managed to get out were, “Listen, bitch—”

  I picked up a heavy little stone horse statuette from the end table next to me and tried to break his jaw with it. My thoughts were shielded so that he couldn’t anticipate what I was going to do the way he did with the guy he beat up back in Donaldton. I left him lying on the floor bleeding and went up to Rachel’s room.

  She answered my knock and stood in her doorway glaring down at me. “Well?”

  “Come downstairs,” I said. “I have a patient for you.”

  She frowned. “Someone is hurt?”

  “Yeah, Jesse Bernarr. He’s the last member of our ‘family’ to come in. He came in a little madder than the rest of you.”

  I could feel Rachel sweep the downstairs portion of the house with her perception. She found Jesse and focused in tight on him. “Oh, fine,” she muttered after a moment. “And me with nothing to draw on.”

  But she went right down to him. I followed, because I wanted to see her heal him. I hadn’t seen anything so far but her memories.

  She knelt beside him and touched his face. Suddenly she was viewing the damage from the inside, first coming to understand it, then stimulating healing. I couldn’t find words to describe how she did it. I could see. I could understand, I thought. I could even show somebody else mentally. But I couldn’t have talked about it. I began wondering if I could do it.

  Rachel was still busy over Jesse when I left. I went into the kitchen, sort of in a daze. I was mentally going over a lot of Rachel’s other healings—the ones I’d gotten from her memory. What I had learned from her just now made everything clearer. I felt as though I had just begun to understand a foreign language—as though I had been hearing it and hearing it, and suddenly a little of it was getting through to me. And that little was opening more to me.

  I pulled open a drawer and took out a paring knife. I put it to my left arm, pressed down, cut quickly. Not deep. Not too deep. It hurt like hell, anyway. I made a cut about three inches long, then threw the knife into the sink. I held my arm over the sink too, because it started to bleed. I stopped the pain, just to find out whether or not I could. It was easy. Then I let it hurt again. I wanted to feel everything I did in every way I could feel it. I stopped the bleeding. I closed my eyes and let the fingers of my right hand move over the wound. Somehow that was better. I could concentrate my perception on the wound, view it from the inside, without being distracted by what my eyes were seeing. My arm began to feel warm as I began the healing, and it grew warmer, hot. It wasn’t really an uncomfortable feeling, though, and I didn’t try to shut it out. After a while it cooled, and I could feel that my arm was completely healed.

  I opened my eyes and looked at it. Part of the arm was still wet with blood, where it had run down. But where the cut had been, I couldn’t see much more than a fine scar. I rinsed my arm under the faucet and looked again. Nothing. Just that little scar that nobody would even see unless they were looking for it.

  “Well,” said Rachel’s voice behind me. “Doro said you were related to me.”

  I turned to face her, smiling, a little prouder of myself than I should have been in the presence of a woman who could all but raise the dead. “I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

  “It took you about five times longer than it should have for a little catlike that.”

  “Shit, how long did it take you the first time you tried it?” Then I thought I saw a chance to make peace with her. I had been in one argument after another with the actives since they arrived. It was time to stop. It really was. “Never mind,” I said. “You’re right. I did take a long time, compared to you. Maybe you could help me learn to speed it up. Maybe you could teach me a little more about healing, too.”

  “Either you learn on your own or you don’t learn,” she said. “No one taught me.”

  “Was there anybody around who could have?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Look, you’d be a good teacher, and I’d like to learn.”

  “Good luck.”

  “The hell with you, then.” I turned away from her, disgusted, and went to the refrigerator to make myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich. I was skinny at least partly because I didn’t usually snack on things like that, but I felt hungry now. I figured Rachel would leave, but she didn’t.

  “Where’s the cook?” she asked.

  “In her room watching soap operas, I guess. That’s usually where she is when she isn’t in here.”

  “Would you call her down?”

  “Why?”

  “I made Jesse sleep when I finished with him, but I could feel then how hungry he was.”

  I froze with my sandwich halfway to my mouth. “Is he? And how do you feel?” I didn’t have to ask. I could read it from her faster than she could say it.

  “Fine. Not drained at all. I—” She looked at me, suddenly accusing. “You know how I should be feeling, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  I was surprised to realize how much I didn’t want to tell her. None of them knew that I could read them through their shields, that nothing they could do would keep me out. They hated me enough already. But I had already decided not to hide my ability. Not to act as though I were ashamed of it or afraid of them. “I read it in your mind,” I said.

  “When?” She was beginning to look outraged.

  “That doesn’t matter. Hell, I don’t even remember exactly when.”

  “I’ve been shielded most of the time. Unless you read it just now while I was healing … you were reading me then, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You watched what I did, then came in here to try it on yourself.”

  “That’s right. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you don’t feel drained?”

  “We’ll get back to that. I want to find out more about your snooping. I didn’t feel you reading me just now.”

  I took a deep breath. “I could say that was because you were so busy with Jesse, but I won’t bother. Rachel, you’ll never feel me reading you unless I want you to.”

  She looked at me silently for several seconds. “It’s part of your special ability, then. You can read people without their being aware of it. And … you can read people without thinning your shield enough to have them read you. Because you weren’t open just now. I would have noticed.” She stopped as though waiting for me to say something. I didn’t. She went on, “And you can read people right through their shields. Can’t you!” It was a demand or an accusation. Like she was daring me to admit it.

  “Yes,” I said. “I can.”

  “So you’ve taken our mental privacy as well as our freedom.”

  “It looks like I’ve given you something, too.”

  “Given me what?”

  “Freedom from the parasitic need you feel so guilty about sometimes.”

  “If you weren’t hiding behind Doro, I’d show you how much I appreciate your gift.”

  “No doubt you’d try. But since Doro is on my side, shouldn’t we at least try to get along?”

  She turned and walked away from me.

  Nothing was settled and I had one more strike against me. But at least I was starting to learn to heal. I had a feeling I should learn as much as I could about that as quickly as I could. In case Rachel tried something desperate.

  Nobody tried anything for a while, though. There was only the usual arguing. Jesse promised me he was going to “get” me. He was a big, dumb, stocky guy, blond, good-looking, mean—a troublemaker. But, somehow, he was the one active that I was never afraid of. And he was wary of me. He told himself I was crazy, and he kept away from me in spite of his threat.<
br />
  People began to get together in the house to do something besides argue.

  Seth started sleeping in Ada’s room, and Ada, our mouse, started to look a little more alive.

  Jesse went to Rachel’s room one night to thank her for healing him. His gratitude must have pleased her. He went back the next night to thank her again.

  Karl said “Good morning” to me once. I think it just slipped out.

  Rachel told Doro—not me—that I had been right. That she could heal now without taking strength from a crowd. In fact, she said she wasn’t sure she still could draw strength from crowds. She said the pattern had changed her, limited her somehow. Now she seemed to be using her patients’ own strength to heal them—which sounded as though it would be dangerous if her patient was in bad shape to start with. Jesse had merely eaten a couple of steaks when she let him wake up. Steaks, a lot of fries, salad, and about a quart of milk. But Jesse was such a big guy that I suspected that was the way he usually ate. I found out later that I was right. So, evidently, the healing hadn’t weakened him that much.

  I kept to myself during those first days. I watched everybody—read everybody, that is. I found that Rachel had spread the word about my abilities and everybody figured I was watching them. They didn’t like it. They thought a lot of shit at me when I was in a room with them. But I almost never read them steadily when I was with them, talking to them. I had to keep my attention on what they were saying. So it took me a while to realize that I was being cursed out on two levels.

  I was settling in, though. I was learning not to be afraid of any of them. Not even Karl. They were all older than I was and they were all physically bigger. For a while, I had to keep telling myself I couldn’t afford to let that matter. If I went on letting them scare me, I’d never be able to handle them. After a while, I started to convince myself. Maybe I was influenced by the kind of thoughts I picked up from them when they were off guard. Sometimes, even while they were complaining or arguing or cursing at me, they were aware of being very comfortable within the pattern. Jesse wasn’t getting any of the mental static that had used to prevent him from driving a car, and Jan didn’t have to always be careful what she touched—bothered by the latent mental images she had used to absorb from everything. And, of course, Rachel didn’t need her crowds. And Clay Dana didn’t need as much help from Seth as he had before he came to us. Clay seemed to be getting some benefit from the pattern even though he wasn’t a member of it. And that left Seth with more time for Ada.