here thinks you hunted us out to turn us over to the Seekers."
The word sent a shock jolting through me. My jaw stiffened and my teeth cut my tongue. I tasted blood.
"What other reason could there be?" he went on, oblivious to my reaction or ignoring it. "But they're just trapped in fixed notions, I think. I'm the only one with questions... I mean, what kind of a plan was that, to wander off into the desert without any way to get back?" He chuckled. "Wandering-guess that's your specialty, eh, Wanda?"
He leaned toward me and nudged me with one elbow. Wide with uncertainty, my eyes flickered to the floor, to his face, and back to the floor. He laughed again.
"That trek was just a few steps shy of a successful suicide, in my opinion. Definitely not a Seeker's MO, if you know what I mean. I've tried to reason it out. Use logic, right? So, if you didn't have backup, which I've seen no sign of, and you had no way to get back, then you must've had a different goal. You haven't been real talkative since you got here, 'cept with the kid just now, but I've listened to what you have said. Kind of seems to me like the reason you almost died out there was 'cause you were hell-bent on finding that kid and Jared."
I closed my eyes.
"Only why would you care?" Jeb asked, expecting no answer, just musing. "So, this is how I see it: either you're a really good actress-like a super-Seeker, some new breed, sneakier than the first-with some kind of a plan I can't figure out, or you're not acting. The first seems like a pretty complicated explanation for your behavior, then and now, and I don't buy it.
"But if you're not acting..."
He paused for a moment.
"Spent a lot of time watching your kind. I was always waiting for them to change, you know, when they didn't have to act like us anymore, because there was no one to act for. I kept on watching and waiting, but they just kept on actin' like humans. Staying with their bodies' families, going out for picnics in good weather, plantin' flowers and paintin' pictures and all the rest of it. I've been wondering if you all aren't turning sort of human. If we don't have some real influence, in the end."
He waited, giving me a chance to respond. I didn't.
"Saw something a few years ago that stuck with me. Old man and woman, well, the bodies of an old man and an old woman. Been together so long that the skin on their fingers grew in ridges around their wedding rings. They were holding hands, and he kissed her on her cheek, and she blushed under all those wrinkles. Occurred to me that you have all the same feelings we have, because you're really us, not just hands in a puppet."
"Yes," I whispered. "We have all the same feelings. Human feelings. Hope, and pain, and love."
"So, if you aren't acting... well, then I'd swear to it that you loved them both. You do. Wanda, not just Mel's body."
I put my head down on my arms. The gesture was tantamount to an admission, but I didn't care. I couldn't hold it up anymore.
"So that's you. But I wonder about my niece, too. What it was like for her, what it would be like for me. When they put somebody inside your head, are you just... gone? Erased? Like being dead? Or is it like being asleep? Are you aware of the outside control? Is it aware of you? Are you trapped there, screaming inside?"
I sat very still, trying to keep my face smooth.
"Plainly, your memories and behaviors, all that is left behind. But your consciousness... Seems like some people wouldn't go down without a fight. Hell, I know I would try to stay-never been one to take no for an answer, anyone will tell you that. I'm a fighter. All of us who are left are fighters. And, you know, I woulda pegged Mel for a fighter, too."
He didn't move his eyes from the ceiling, but I looked at the floor-stared at it, memorizing the patterns in the purple gray dust.
"Yeah, I've wondered about that a lot."
I could feel his eyes on me now, though my head was still down. I didn't move, except to breathe slowly in and out. It took a great deal of effort to keep that slow rhythm smooth. I had to