Wild Seed

Doro frowned, took a swallow of beer. The Sloanes were his newest wild seed—a couple who had found each other before Doro found them. They were dangerous, unstable, painfully sensitive people who heard the thoughts of others in intermittent bursts. When one received a burst of pain, anger, fear, any intense emotion, it was immediately transmitted to the other, and both suffered. None of this was deliberate or controlled. It simply happened. Helplessly, the Sloanes did a great deal of fighting and drinking and crying and praying for it to stop happening, but it would not. Not ever. That was why Doro had brought them to Wheatley. They were amazingly good breeding stock to be wild seed. He suspected that in one way or another, they were each descended from his people. Certainly, they were enough like his people to make excellent prey. And as soon as they had produced a few more children, Doro intended to take them both. It would be almost a kindness.

But for now, they would go on being abysmal parents, neglecting and abusing their children not out of cruelty, but because they hurt too badly themselves to notice their children’s pain. In fact, they were likely to notice that pain only as a new addition to their own. Thus, sometimes their kind murdered children. Doro had not believed the Sloanes were dangerous in that way. Now, he was less certain.

“Isaac …?”

Isaac looked at him, understood the unspoken question. “I assume you mean to keep the parents alive for a while.”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d better find another home for the child—and for every other child they have. Anyanwu says they should never have had any.”

“Which means, of course, that they should have as many as possible.”

“From your point of view, yes. Good useful people. I’ve already begun talking to them about giving up the child.”

“Good. And?”

“They’re worried about what people might think. I got the impression they’d be glad to get rid of the child if not for that—and one other thing.”

“What?”

Isaac looked away. “They’re worried about who’ll care for them when they’re old. I told them you’d talk to them about that.”

Doro smiled thinly. Isaac refused to lie to the people he thought Doro had selected as prey. Most often, he refused to tell them anything at all. Sometimes such people guessed what was being kept from them, and they ran. Doro took pleasure in hunting them down. Lann Sloane, Doro thought, would be especially good game. The man had a kind of animal wariness about him.

“Anyanwu would say you have on your leopard face now,” Isaac commented.

Doro shrugged. He knew what Anyanwu would say, and that she meant it when she compared him to one kind of animal or another. Once she had said such things out of fear or anger. Now she said them out of grim hatred. She had made herself the nearest thing he had to an enemy. She obeyed. She was civil. But she could hold a grudge as no one Doro had ever known. She was alive because of Isaac. Doro had no doubt that if he had tried to give her to any of his other sons, she would have refused and died. He had asked her what Isaac said to change her mind, and when she refused to tell him, he had asked Isaac. To his surprise, Isaac refused to tell him, too. His son refused him very little, angered him very rarely. But this time …

“You’ve given her to me,” Isaac had said. “Now she and I have to have things of our own.” His face and his voice told Doro he would not say any more. Doro had left Wheatley the next day, confident that Isaac would take care of the details-marry the woman, build himself a house, help her learn to live in the settlement, decide on work for himself, start the children coming. Even at twenty-five, Isaac had been very capable. And Doro had not trusted himself to stay near either Isaac or Anyanwu. The depth of his own anger amazed him. Normally, people had only to annoy him to die for their error. He had to think to remember how long it had been since he had felt real anger and left those who caused it alive. But his son and this tiresome little forest peasant who was, fortunately for her, the best wild seed he had ever found, had lived. There was no forgiveness in Anyanwu, though. If she had learned to love her husband, she had not learned to forgive her husband’s father. Now and then, Doro tried to penetrate her polite, aloof hostility, tried to break her, bring her back to what she was when he took her from her people. He was not accustomed to people resisting him, not accustomed to their hating him. The woman was a puzzle he had not yet solved—which was why now, after she had given him eight children, given Isaac five children, she was still alive. She would come to him again, without the coldness. She would make herself young without being told to do so, and she would come to him. Then, satisfied, he would kill her.

He licked his lips thinking about it, and Isaac coughed. Doro looked at his son with the old fondness and amended his thought. Anyanwu would live until Isaac died. She was keeping Isaac healthy, perhaps keeping him alive. She was doing it for herself, of course. Isaac had captured her long ago as he captured everyone, and she did not want to lose him any sooner than she had to. But her reasons did not matter. Inadvertently, she was doing Doro a service. He did not want to lose Isaac any sooner than he had to either. He shook his head, spoke to divert himself from the thought of his son’s dying.

“I was down in the city on business,” he said. “Then about a week ago when I was supposed to leave for England, I found myself thinking about Nweke.” This was Anyanwu’s youngest daughter. Doro claimed her as his daughter too, though Anyanwu disputed this. Doro had worn the body that fathered the girl, but he had not worn it at the time of the fathering. He had taken it afterward.

“Nweke’s all right,” Isaac said. “As all right as she can be, I suppose. Her transition is coming soon and she has her bad days, but Anyanwu seems to be able to comfort her.”

“You haven’t noticed her having any special trouble in the past few days?”

Isaac thought for a moment. “No, not that I recall. I haven’t seen too much of her. She’s been helping to sew for a friend who’s getting married—the Van Ness girl, you know.”

Doro nodded.

“And I’ve been helping with the Boyden house. I guess you could say I’ve been building the Boyden house. I have to use what I’ve got now and then, no matter how Anyanwu nags me to slow down. Otherwise, I find myself walking a foot or so off the ground or throwing things. The ability doesn’t seem to weaken with age.”

“So I’ve noticed. Do you still enjoy it?”

“You couldn’t know how much,” Isaac said, smiling. He looked away, remembered pleasure flickering across his face, causing him to look years younger than he was. “Do you know we still fly sometimes—Anyanwu and I? You should see her as a bird of her own design. Color you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’m afraid I’ll see you as a corpse if you go on doing such things. Firearms are improving slowly. Flying is a stupid risk.”

“It’s what I do,” Isaac said quietly. “You know better than to ask me to give it up entirely.”

Doro sighed. “I suppose I do.”

“Anyway, Anyanwu always goes along with me—and she always flies slightly lower.”

Anyanwu the protector, Doro thought with bitterness that surprised him. Anyanwu the defender of anyone who needed her. Doro wondered what she would do if he told her he needed her. Laugh? Very likely. She would be right, of course. Over the years it had become almost as difficult for him to get a lie past her as it was for her to lie successfully to him. The only reason she did not know of his colony of her African descendants in South Carolina was that he had never given her reason to ask. Even Isaac did not know.

“Does it bother you?” he asked Isaac. “Having her protecting you that way?”

“It did, at first,” Isaac said. “I would outdistance her. I’m faster than any bird if I want to be. I would leave her behind and ignore her. But she was always there, laboring to catch up, hampered by winds that didn’t bother me at all. She never gave up. After a while, I began expecting her to be there. Now, I think I’d be more bothered if she didn’t come along.”