Mutant Legacy (13 page)

“I see we can no longer work together, Dr. Akimura. I’m very sorry.”

Without a word, I stood, turned on my heel, and strode out of the room. I might disagree with my brother and his ridiculous private cult but never would I side with enemies who wanted to harm him. Never, never, never.

i tried to
keep an eye on metzger’s movements
—and even went so far as to suggest to my parents that they invest in some private security systems—but I was distracted by a call from Lindy Rotstein, head of Psychiatry at Mass. General.

She was a small, round, ebullient woman of about fifty with graying hair and hazel eyes. Usually she was bursting with high spirits and amusing barbed comments. But not today.

“Julian,” she said. “Brace yourself. I’ve got an enormous favor to ask.”

“For you, Lindy, anything.”

“You may regret those words, my dear. I want you to go to Brazil.”

“What?” I stopped smiling and stared at her, aghast.

“I’ve been asked to put together a special task force for the International Security Agency—to look into the development of a Better World cult in South America. I’d like you to serve on the Brazilian leg of the tour.”

“Me? Why not you? You’re the specialist in the psychology of large groups.”

“To be honest, I’d love to go, but I’m afraid you’re better qualified.”

“How so?”

“You know more about this Better World organization. You’re nationally identified as a critic of it. An expert.”

“Doesn’t that mean I would be too biased in my observations? Tainted?”

“I think they want at least one cold, critical set of eyes on this job.” She paused. “It won’t hurt that those eyes are golden, either.”

“So I’m to be the sacrificial mutant and fill their quota?”

“Looks that way.”

“What about my patients? Consultations? I’m in the middle of research for two court cases—”

“Don’t worry, we’ll cover for you.”

“Lindy, no. It’s out of the question. I simply can’t do it.”

She nailed me wit ^,zil.h her hazel gaze. “Julian, you’ve got to. I simply can’t afford to have the plug pulled on our research funding here, and if we don’t cooperate, well, let’s just say it’s been known to happen to other departments that don’t cooperate with the government.”

“Shit.”

“My sentiments, exactly. But stop pouting, Julian. After all, this isn’t the first time you’ve been tapped to serve on a special research project: those golden eyes of yours make you a natural candidate. So cheer up. I can think of worse places to go than Rio—I’ve been to all of them. And pack for summer. It starts to get warm down there in November.”

Despite Lindy’s resolve, I stubbornly tried to beg off, citing my numerous patients and consultations. I was told, several times, by Lindy, and then by Morton T. Arpel, chief of staff at Mass. General, that I was considered uniquely qualified for this assignment—my familiarity with the Better World issue would prove invaluable. Other doctors would take my caseload and consultations. The I.S.A. needed my help. Case closed.

And so I went to Rio de Janeiro.

I had been there before on holiday and knew it well. Rio is a city of thunderous contrasts: the very beautiful and the very hideous. Wealth and squalor, pleasure and pain. Rio will lull you, lure you, and in the morning you will awaken chastened and changed.

It had that familiar unfamiliar appearance of most third-world cities—Paris after the Holocaust. In cities like Rio there was usually a downtown section of nineteenth-century buildings whose graceful iron balconies were spotted red with rust and through whose windows faded gray curtains blew like so many pale tongues. Gaudy billboards lined the roads that led into town. Half-finished concrete skeletons of buildings dominated weed-filled empty lots on the outskirts of the city. Often, these derelict structures were inhabited by squatters whose strings of laundry were the only touch of color in the area. A fine layer of dust always covered everything. The air was filled with a choking mixture of car exhaust, animal dung, and human effluvia.

Only the few hours before dawn yielded any respite from the daily cacophony: the percussion of traffic and unmuffled motorbikes, the honk and wheeze of horns, the bleat of goats being herded through the streets, the overamplified throb of a radio playing the popular music of the moment, the cries of children and their keepers. Strange faces, everywhere. Strangers to whom I was, at best, an economic opportunity and, at worst, a voyeur.

Nevertheless, I felt the usual arrival euphoria: delighted to be off the shuttle and in the taxi, convinced of the driver’s kindness, charmed by the unfamiliar landscape, amused even by the chaotic driving habits of those on the road. I knew that within half an hour my amusement would sour and fade, and as my stay lengthened I would eventually long for the hyper-cleanliness and homogenized uniformity of American architecture, the beloved, hateful sameness of it all, and the ease—quickly mistaken for pleasure—of hearing English all around me. The daily struggle, despite my implant, to communicate in a strange tongue left me with a constant ache down the middle of my back, as though every inch of me were straining to listen and comprehend.

Eventually, out of self-defense if nothing else, I would come to see this foreign landscape as normal, even appropriate, and would cease to notice its strangeness. Indeed, home would come to appear foreign by comparison. Therefore I always savored my first day or two in a foreign place before the strangeness wore off. I knew that the mind refu cthesionsed to perceive something as continuously, permanently alien and soon, too soon, began its relentless efforts to assimilate and tame.

Brazil was at its most seductive in what I persisted in thinking of as the winter months: their topsy-turvy summer that dazed a November traveler with its skies the color of turquoise, honeyed sunshine, white crescent beaches, and nonstop tropical drumbeat.

There was always a party, a feast for the senses, on the beach at Copacabana: dark oiled skin and swaying hips, the air scented with perfume and coffee, the sound of samba whispering on the breeze. And there was usually famine to be found only a half mile inland. Closer, if you counted the beggars: the ragged families lying numbly, half-conscious, on unraveling blankets placed over the black and white mosaic pavement. They lay there, quietly dying in the warm winter sunlight as bronzed Cariocas stepped over and around them on their way to business, dinner, love, their own private lives. Ancient Rome, at the end, could not have been much unlike Rio in the late twenty-first century.

Our little contingent of observers numbered five: Paula Tremaine, expert psychosociologist; Yuri Kryuchkov, master of theological philosophy; Margot Fremont-Chai, anthropologist; Katarina Otulji, specialist in cults; and yours truly, Better World connoisseur and mutant point man.

I had met Paula Tremaine years before and had, in fact, enjoyed a brief dalliance with her during an international symposium on alternative techniques for healing. She was a tall, robust woman with auburn hair, blue-green eyes, and an infectious laugh. She greeted me warmly and I was glad to see her.

Yuri Kryuchkov was the very picture of the cloistered Russian academician: dark-eyed, bushy-browed, with a fierce, frowning countenance that kept the rest of us at bay. He let us know right away that he didn’t like this Better World, not at all, and saw its spread as a sign of the continued erosion of what passed for civilization in the benighted twenty-first century.

Margot Fremont-Chai I knew of only through her many publications on cultural relativism. She was a dignified woman of about sixty with straight, shining white hair, an unlined face, and cold gray eyes that seemed to take in everything around her and classify it for later use.

Katarina Otulji had the delicate build of a ballet dancer. She was tiny, with intricately coiled golden braids forming a knot atop her head and smooth, coffee-colored skin. She smiled a great deal but spoke little.

As soon as we were settled in at the beachfront Parc Imperium Hotel in Copacabana, our group convened to share notes and suggestions.

“Cults usually penetrate a society slowly,” Katarina Otulji observed. “Then, due to some apocalyptic event, they suddenly gain momentum and new converts.”

“That certainly fits with what my contacts have told me,” said Margot Fremont-Chai. “Apparently, Better World first came to Rio early this year. The Desert Prophet, Rick, appeared here suddenly and performed one of his famous rescues, teleporting three busloads of schoolchildren off a crumbling arm of the mountain road near Corcovado. Then he vanished. But some American tourists recognized him and told the local media about him. The Better World cult began to take root from that moment.”

“What is your proof of this?” Yuri Kryuchkov rumbled.

“A vidtape.”

Kryuchkov shook his head sadly. “First world countries export their worst and ke c wotape.”

Paula Tremaine met my glance and rolled her eyes slightly to show her amusement. “Let’s not make generalizations too soon, Yuri. We’re here to observe, not to judge.”

“It will be the same thing in the end.”

“Maybe so. But that remains to be seen.”

We were kept quite busy: the signs of Better World were everywhere. My brother had ascended to the pantheon of the macumba saints with a boost from a shrewd street merchant. After the school bus rescue, the shopkeeper had designed a batch of idols to look like Rick. These had sold quickly and the crowd had become furious at the man’s limited inventory. The police had to be called.

Now Rick was as firmly ensconced in each macumba ritual as Lemanja, goddess of the waters. He had taken his place among the many deities worshiped by the superstitious Cariocas, and the merchant had become a very rich man.

In banks, on the desks of receptionists, in souvenir stands, and on every bar in Leblon, Copacabana, and Ipanema, ceramic effigies of my brother grinned and nodded, casting their blessings. It was startling at first, then almost comical. I began to wonder whether I should purchase one and send it to my mother, but decided against it. I was certain that Dad would find the statuette funny but I wasn’t sure that Mom would see the joke.

I quickly came to see that Better World was no joke to the poor of Rio—in fact, it was an absolute blessing, far from the cult of personality it seemed to have become in the States. In Rio I saw the tenets of B.W. at work in the streets, in the miserable hovels and alleys that made up the
favelas
where volunteers knelt in the mud to tend the sick, fed the hollow-faced hungry children, and tried to repair tattered shacks and rusty, outdated vehicles. Everything I saw made my respect for B.W.—and Rick—grow. Regardless of why he had started the organization, it was doing some good right here, right now. How could I argue with that? How could anyone?

We watched, we asked questions, and we listened. We took notes, made vid recordings, debated the cultural implications of Better World’s dissemination, and then redebated them.

One night, after a particularly heated discussion following dinner, I headed for the pool on the roof of the hotel. The hour was late and the pool was deserted. Chlorine-scented mist rose in undulating streams, illuminated by the golden pool lights.

I slipped into the deliciously cool water with a sigh of relief. But it took several laps to work off my irritation at Kryuchkov’s dour imprecations, Fremont-Chai’s smug assumptions, and Otulji’s maddening passivity.

A splash and sudden convulsion of the blue-green water announced that I had company. A dark shape moved toward me underwater, stroking powerfully. Then Paula Tremaine broke through the surface, gasping for air, sleek as a seal.

“Can you believe that Yuri?” she said. “He’s like some mad monk. And Margot—I’m ready to wrap Katarina Otulji around her neck and tie her in a bow, if only it will shut her up. Who puts these groups together, anyway?”

“If you’re planning to lodge a formal complaint, get in line,” I said. “But we’ve been shanghaied by the ISA, remember?”

“Gods, it’ll take years to have anything adjudicated.” She sighed theatrically. “Never mind.”

“Paula,” I said. “Tell me truthfully. What do you think—I mean,
really
think—about Better World?”

She smiled wistfully. “I’m almost rooting for them, to tell you the truth. Of all the cults I’ve seen in recent years, it seems the most beneficial, the most innocent.”

“I wish I shared your view.”

“And I wish I could see just where the hidden catch in it is, Julian. You certainly seem to know. But all I see is a group of people uniting in ecstatic communion, providing support groups and services where none formerly existed. What’s so terrible about that?”

“They have a leader they worship as though he were a god.”

“Wait long enough and, most likely, he’ll become one. So what?” Her eyes twinkled but her tone was serious. “You’re mighty grim about this, Dr. Akimura. Something about Better World touches you right where you live.”

You should only know, I thought. But I shrugged instead. “What the hell, enough business. Maybe I’ll never understand cults at all.”

“Spoken like a true man of science. Come on, I’ll race you to the deep end.”

For a time we swam, side by side, in companionable silence. Then Paula triggered the null g-field and we floated easily, staring up at the stars.

“I don’t know what it is about this place,” she said. “I’ve been in a monogamous relationship for two years now. But here, alone with you, well, I’m sort of tempted to relive the past.” She moved closer until she was pressed against me, thighs against mine. I felt a tightening in my groin, and a growing excitement as she rubbed up against me.