Seed to Harvest: The Complete Patternist Series (Patternist, #1-4)

by Octavia E. Butler

Anyanwu looked away, spoke woodenly. “It is better to be a master than to be a slave.” Her husband at the time of the migration had said that. He had seen himself becoming a great man—master of a large household with many wives, children, and slaves. Anyanwu, on the other hand, had been a slave twice in her life and had escaped only by changing her identity completely and finding a husband in a different town. She knew some people were masters and some were slaves. That was the way it had always been. But her own experience had taught her to hate slavery. She had even found it difficult to be a good wife in her most recent years because of the way a woman must bow her head and be subject to her husband. It was better to be as she was—a priestess who spoke with the voice of a god and was feared and obeyed. But what was that? She had become a kind of master herself. “Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave,” she said softly. “Yes,” he agreed. She deliberately turned her attention to the new things he had given her to think about. Her age, for instance. He was right. She was about three hundred years old—something none of her people would have believed. And he had said something else—something that brought alive one of her oldest memories. There had been whispers when she was a girl that her father could not beget children, that she was the daughter not only of another man, but of a visiting stranger. She had asked her mother about this, and for the firs...

It was said that Anyanwu’s clan, the clan of her mother’s husband, had members who could change their shapes, take animal forms at will, but Anyanwu had seen no such strangeness in them. It was her mother in whom she found strangeness, closeness, empathy that went beyond what could be expected between mother and daughter. She and her mother had shared a unity of spirit that actually did involve some exchange of thoughts and feelings, though they were careful not to flaunt this before others. If Anyanwu felt pain, her mother, busy trading at some distant market, knew of the pain and came home. Anyanwu had no more than ghosts of that early closeness with her own children and with three of her husbands. And she had sought for years through her clan, her mother’s clan, and others for even a ghost of her greatest difference, the shape changing. She had collected many frightening stories, but had met no other person who, like herself, could demonstrate this ability. Not until now, perhaps. She looked at Doro. What was it she felt about him—what strangeness? She had shared no thoughts with him, but something about him reminded her of her mother. Another ghost.

“I used to think you were the devil himself.” Doro laughed again. He had always permitted his people the freedom to say what they thought—as long as they stopped when he silenced them and obeyed when he commanded them. Daly had belonged to him long enough to know this. “Who are you, then?” he asked the slaver. “Job?” “No.” Daly shook his head sadly. “Job was a stronger man.” Doro stopped, turned, and looked at him. “You are content with your life,” he said. Daly looked away, refusing to meet whatever looked through the very ordinary eyes of the body Doro wore. But when Doro began to walk again, Daly followed. He would follow Doro to his ship, and if Doro himself offered payment for the young slave, Daly would refuse to take it. The boy would become a gift. Daly had never taken money from Doro’s hand. And always, he had sought Doro’s company.

Doro shrugged and let the contradiction stand. Woodley knew better than Daly ever could just how much it was the same. He’d worked too closely with Doro’s most gifted children to overestimate his own value. And he knew the living generations of Doro’s sons and daughters would populate a city. He knew how easily both he and Daly could be replaced. After a moment he sighed as Daly had sighed. “I suppose the new blacks you brought aboard have some special talent,” he said. “That’s right,” Doro answered. “Something new.” “Godless animals!” Woodley muttered bitterly. He turned and walked away.

“Is it going to be all right?” “Anyanwu says so—although she was ready to strangle the Sloanes. Even they’ve been here long enough to know better than to let a child suffer that way with her only a few doors away.” Isaac paused. “They’re afraid of her blackness and her power. They think she’s a witch, and the mold-medicine she made some poison.”

Emma shuddered. “How generous of her! She must feel awfully secure in her power. You trained her too well. She’s too much like you.” “Yes,” said Doro. “I know.” She looked at him sharply. “Did I hear pride in your voice?” Doro smiled faintly. “She’s shown me a lot, Em. She’s shown me something I’ve been trying to find out for most of my life.” “All I can see that she’s shown you is what you’d be like as a young woman. I recall warning you about underestimating young women.” “Not what I’d be like as a woman. I already know that. I’ve been a woman I-don’t-know-how-many times. No. What I’d be like as a complete entity. What I’d be like if I hadn’t died that first time—died before I was fully formed.”

She tore strength from the rest of her people. Not one at a time now. This time she took them all at once, the way Rachel had used to take from her congregations. But Mary stripped her Patternists as Rachel had never stripped her mutes. Then, desperately, Mary tried again to grasp Doro. For a moment, she seemed not to realize that she was strong again—that her act of desperation had gained her a second chance. Then her new strength brought her to life. It became impossible for Doro to focus on anyone but her. Her power drew him. Abruptly, she stopped clutching at him and threw herself on him. She embraced him. Startled, Doro tried to shake her off. For a moment, his struggles fed her as hers had fed him earlier. She was a leech, riding, feeding orgiastically.

“Who did Eli have?” Blake asked. “His wife?” “He had nobody. That was the problem. But before I get into that, I want to be sure you understand that there’s no way to leave here without starting an epidemic. The compulsion quiets down a little after you’ve been sick. You should have enough control then to go into town and buy whatever you’ll need that isn’t in that computerized bag Eli says you have.” “Buy medical supplies?” “Yes.” “You’re going to trust me enough to let me go into town?” “Yes, but nobody travels alone. There’s too much temptation to do harm. Blake, you aren’t ever going to be comfortable among ordinary people again.” He didn’t know how he would have felt if he had believed her. But in fact, he meant to take any opportunity to escape that came his way. He did not intend to live his life as an emaciated carrier of a deadly disease. Yet he was afraid. Some of what Meda had said about the disease reminded him of another illness—one he had read about years before. He could not remember the name of it. It was something people did not get any longer—something old and deadly that people had once gotten from animals. And the animals had gone out of their way to spread it. The name came to him suddenly: rabies.

“The Ark? You mean the starship?” “Yeah. Brand-new technology, tested all to hell, and it still blew up when it got back from the Centauri system. People figured the scientists rushed things so they would have something flashy to keep them from losing their funding again. At least, that’s what I read. The Ark came down about thirty miles from here. It was supposed to land at one of the space stations or on the moon, but it came all the way home. And before it blew up, Eli got out.” “Eli … ? What are you telling me?” “His name is Asa Elias Doyle. He was their geologist. In case you haven’t noticed, he can drop that dumb accent of his whenever he wants to. The disease is from the second planet of Proxima Centauri. It killed ten of a crew of fourteen. I think more would have lived, but they began by isolating anyone who got sick. Then they found they had to restrain them to keep them isolated.” She shuddered. “That amounted to slow death by torture.

“Dad, we’re not tied with ropes. That’s probably why I can still feel my hands and feet. We’re wearing cuffs—choke-cuffs.” Blake lay down again heavily. “Shit,” he muttered. Everything the car family did to hold them sealed its doom and increased the likelihood of an epidemic. He tested the cuffs, doing what he could first to slip them, then to pull their bands apart. They were plastic, but felt surprisingly soft and comfortable as long as he did not try to get rid of them. Once he began to struggle, however, they tightened until he thought they would cut off his hands. Pain stopped him. And the moment he relaxed, the cuffs eased their grip. People could be left hobbled as he was indefinitely. Choke-cuffs were called humane restraints. Blake had heard that in prisons—inevitably overcrowded—order was sometimes maintained by the threat of hobbling with such humane restraints. Hobbled prisoners were not isolated. They were left in with the general prison population—fair game. They frequently did not survive. Lying on his back, helpless, eaten alive with frustration and fear, Blake knew how they must have felt.

“No, I couldn’t. Like I said, pre-Pattern children can’t control what’s done to them. Leal—the Schoolmaster—knew he had given me the worst possible second. He did it deliberately because he knew I had already chosen my own second. And he did not approve.” She gave a bitter laugh. “He would have seconded me himself if he could have—if he had been strong enough. He wanted to. He wanted a lot of things that a teacher can’t have.” “You, for instance.” “Oh, he had me, for a while. For my last six months at school. I didn’t mind. But we both knew he was going to have to give me up once I reached my transition. There was no way that I was going to be a teacher. Not with my ancestry. Leal could accept that, but he couldn’t accept Kai, the second I had chosen. The second whose House I would have gone into. Although he might even have been able to stand that if I had been able to hide the fact that I was already in love with Kai. We met when she came to the school on some other business and Leal was the—” “Wait a minute.” Teray turned to stare at her. “She?” “That’s a good approximation of Leal’s tone when he realized what was happening,” said Amber. “I hope you’re not going to react as badly as he did.”

Teray nodded. “Well, Leal had reason to react with jealousy, but I …” “Jealousy, anger, humiliation. How dare I put him aside for a woman? Poor teacher. He had trouble enough trying to compete with men for the women he wanted.” “I don’t see why. He was the Schoolmaster. He should have been able to attract plenty of women.” “Yes, but not the ones he wanted. He could attract women teachers, but he considered them beneath his notice. He could and did attract older girl students, but they always had to either leave him or become teachers. He had the idea that women from outside the school were better. He tried to attract them—and usually failed. But until I met Kai, he had never lost one of his student girlfriends to one of them. It was too much.” “And Kai even had her own House.” “Leal wouldn’t have hated her for that if she had gone to him instead of to me. Prestige. But since she didn’t, her House just became more fuel for his jealousy. He had always wanted a House of his own anyway, and he knew he’d never have one. He was almost too strong to be a teacher, but not nearly strong enough to be a Housemaster.” “A stronger man would have reacted more reasonably.” Teray shrugged. “After all, you’re not that unusual.”

“She pulled me through. But that wasn’t enough. She had to prepare me to leave the sector—to use the abilities I barely knew I had. There wasn’t time to teach me or time to do anything but print me with her memories. She gave me her fifteen years of leading her House. She made me assimilate all of it, not just let it sit the way you did with most of your Jackman memories. It was like becoming part of her—getting a whole new past that was only a few years shorter than my real past. “She made me eat and took away my weariness and healed the bruises and sprains I had gotten thrashing around during my transition. Then she gave me supplies, put me on a horse, and told me to run. I got out just ahead of the group of Housemasters that had finally—twelve hours too late—realized what was happening.” Amber stopped talking and they rode along in silence for a while, urging the horses faster as they came to a stretch of level ground, then slowing to climb another hill. “She loved you,” said Teray finally. “It was mutual. She almost lost her House because of me.”

“When I meet a woman who attracts me, I prefer women,” she said. “And when I meet a man who attracts me, I prefer men.” “You mean you haven’t made up your mind yet.” “I mean exactly what I said. I told you you wouldn’t like it. Most people who ask want me definitely on one side or the other.” He thought about that. “No, if that’s the way you are, I don’t mind.” “Thanks a lot.” “You know I didn’t mean any offense.” She sighed. “I know.” “And I wasn’t asking just out of curiosity.”