Mind of My Mind

by Octavia E. Butler

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.

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.

Could a creature who had to look upon ordinary people literally as food and shelter ever understand how strongly those people valued life?

Clay did not want to die. He was just becoming less and less able to tolerate the pain of living.

But if you were born black, you are black. Still black, no matter what color you take on.”

As Mary’s pattern brought them together, it shut him out. Together, the “Patternists” were growing into something that he could observe, hamper, or destroy but not something he could join.

“Mutes!” He looked annoyed, probably with himself. “It’s a convenient term. People without telepathic voices. Ordinary people.” “I know what it means, Doro. I knew the first time I heard Mary use it. It means niggers!”

“I tell you, you’re out of control, Doro. You’re not one of them. You’re not a telepath. And if you don’t think they look down on us non-telepaths, us niggers, the whole rest of humanity, you’re not paying attention.” “They don’t look down on me.” “They don’t look up to you, either. They used to. They used to respect you. Damnit, they used to love you, the originals. The ‘First Family.’” Her tone ridiculed the name that the original seven actives had adopted.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t exist! If our way is to enslave good people like the Dietrichs and let animals like my parents go free, the world would be better without us.”

How did it feel, after all, to learn that the foster parents you adored, the only parents who had ever shown you love, loved you only because they had been programmed to?

“It might be because you could use those people against him. You can’t hurt him alone, but if you took strength from some of us—or all of us.…”

He envied me for doing what he had bred me to do—because he was incomplete, and he would never be able to do it himself.

With the responsibility she’s taken on for all that she’s built here, she belongs to us, the people. To all of us.”