Mutant Legacy (25 page)

It quickly became a war of attrition.

Her obstinacy forced me to cut off her food, water, environmental controls, and access to outside media. For a time she circumvented some of these challenges by levitating supplies through a hole she had made in her own fields of protection. But she couldn’t keep up the effort for long, especially once I hadllyinacy put all food within her range under guard. Alanna was a powerful telekinete but she could not teleport objects through solid matter, over great distances, the way Rick once had. She might be able to levitate a choba roll up three stories and in through an open window but she couldn’t budge an entire locked kitchen.

Finally, after two weeks of this, she emerged from her barricades, ragged and pale. Her voice was matter-of-fact, almost meek, but fury burned in her eyes.

“You win,” she said.

“My offer stands open, Alanna. Let’s bury the hatchet and you can remain at Better World.”

“Under your control? Forget it. Nothing could get me to stay now. Nothing.”

“Alanna—”

“Congratulations, Julian. I hope you enjoy yourself. How thoughtful of Rick—and me—to leave you this lovely toy to play with.”

“If that’s your attitude, I expect you to clear your personal effects before the end of the day. And I’m warning you, Alanna. Don’t try to publish anything else in Rick’s name.”

“Remember the Bill of Rights, Julian? I’m afraid that freedom of speech outstrips even the rules of your little pocket kingdom. Now that I’m no longer a part of Better World, I’ll do what I like. Consider this my resignation, effective immediately.” She turned sharply on her heel.

I had to fight the urge to run after her, to beg her to forgive me, to forget all this, to stay.

Instead, I ordered security to provide an escort for her, and to help her clear her belongings from the premises. In effect, I starved and then drummed her out of Better World. Was I proud of myself? No, not even a little bit.

If only she had given in. Truth be told, once she was gone I almost missed Alanna and our love/hate relationship. For all of her prickly, uncooperative ways, she was still family. And with her no longer there, the only people at Better World who had been close to Rick were Betty and myself. But as the years passed, I grew accustomed to that peculiar loneliness.

Eventually, we hired a bright young man named Donald Torrance to handle public relations. Better World soldiered on, year by year, healing those in pain and experimenting with various healing techniques.

Alanna continued to administer the annual arts competition. There was no way I could have canceled that without enormous public outcry and accompanying media attention.

To my chagrin, Alanna ignored my wishes and went on to publish several more volumes of
Rick’s Way
, a critique of the philosophy of Better World, and a dramatic trilogy based on Rick’s life. Finally, she had achieved the literary prominence of which she had always dreamed.

I didn’t begrudge her the small comfort her success must have provided. Quite the contrary: the more accolades she received, the better I liked it. It enabled me to assuage my own guilt by telling myself that this was the way things had always been meant to be and, in fact, that I had enabled Alanna to achieve her true destiny. Sometimes I almost believed it.

when she left
,
Alanna took a splinter group of

Although she had effectively been banished from Better World headquarters, Alanna figured so prominently in Rick’s legend that I could neither deny her existence nor keep her away completely. On the anniversary of Rick’s death, Alanna always appeared, suddenly, mysteriously, at the Roman theater to lay a white rose upon Rick’s tomb, and she was always cheered lustily by the crowds. But our estrangement was complete.

I hated what she did with
Rick’s Way
, and still do. But time has a way of encysting old torments until I can carry them along with me and, for the most part, ignore them.

The rhythm of the seasons overtook me, kept the machinery of Better World whirring, the group sharings on schedule, the reconstruction of Better World progressing, and soon Alanna’s absence seemed unremarkable, even normal.

I was caught up in the ebb and flow. When my parents died, my mother first and my father three months later, I had them buried beside Rick, mourned them, and went right back to my work and research.

The casework was especially fascinating: the faithful were so trusting that I could gain immediate access to their minds without spending the weeks—and often months—it had usually taken in standard therapy to win the patient’s trust enough to attempt a mindlink.

I encountered the usual narcissistic disorders, horror tales of abuse and deprivation, incest, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Surprisingly, I saw fewer cases of severe depression at Better World than on the outside: especially if the patient had been a regular attendee of group sharings. As I had suspected, the group sharings had enormous long-term therapeutic potential for nonmutants and I was heartened to see my theory apparently being proven before my eyes. I began to organize my notes for a monograph I hoped to publish on the topic.

I saw a variety of mutant patients as well, and although they exhibited much the same positive reactions to the sharings as did the nonmutants, there was a more pronounced physiological effect that I had not anticipated. Cholesterol levels were down, as were blood pressure readings—always a sign of lowered stress. For those mutants who participated regularly in our mixed sharings I found clear signs of a slowing of the aging process. I confess that I had no explanation for it then or now.

Simply put, the mixed group sharings seemed to extend the short mutant life span in a way that the segregated mutant sharings had not.

I wanted to study this more closely but my attention was diverted by a sudden series of alarming delusional cases that began to flood our clinic.

People were claiming to have seen Rick walking the streets of Better City. He occasionally responded to their greetings with a bemused wave. But they could not hear him, even when it was obvious he was trying to talk to them.

At first I ascribed this to too many joysticks on top of wishful thinking.

“Of course you would like to see Rick,” I told the afflicted. “We would all like to see him.”

“No, Dr. Akimura, really. I did see him standing in the middle of the street. I walked right over to him but when I tried to touch him he disappeared.”

I made a quick telepathic probe and saw that, clearly, this man believed that he had seen Rick. He had unshakable faith. And the specter certainly resembled my brother. But how could I trust the memory of an unsettled mind?

The sightings continued and word started to spread of Rick risen from the dead. I began to grow alarmed. What was happening here? Why were so many people hallucinating the same thing? I knew my brother was dead and I didn’t believe in an afterlife. What were these people seeing?

Each mind I probed firmly believed that Rick had returned. Each image I saw looked remarkably like my brother. But that was not possible. I refused to believe it.

Even Betty had an encounter I couldn’t explain. She awakened me early one morning and I saw that she looked transformed, almost beatific, glowing with excitement.

“Julian, he really is here! I’ve seen him. Oh, Julian, the stories are true, all true.”

“Nonsense, Betty. Get a hold of yourself.”

“No, please, Julian, you have to come and see for yourself.”

“It’s two in the morning. You ought to be in bed.”

“Julian, don’t you believe me?”

I didn’t want to be cruel but I didn’t appreciate losing a night’s sleep over this foolishness.

“No. I’m sorry but I don’t believe you, Betty. My brother is dead and has been for years. I’m sorry but I think there’s some kind of group hysteria spreading here. I’ll address it at the next group sharing, which is tomorrow at ten
A.M.
Until then, I don’t want to be disturbed.” And I shut down the screen in annoyance, turned over, and went back to sleep.

The group sharing the next day was well attended as usual. I was halfway through the process of establishing the mental circuit when I saw something out of the corner of my eye: a strange, dark movement in the middle of the air.

Rick.

My brother. Incorporeal, transparent, but Rick nonetheless.

I was surprised into speechlessness. Was I losing my mind? Falling prey to this group psychosis? Was the group sharing spreading this delusion even to me?

Others in the room saw him, too. Whispers became gasps of awe and wonder. “He’s come back!” people began to murmur. “Rick has returned to us.”

And then, just as the sharing threatened to dissolve into complete pandemonium, Rick winked out.

Calm yourselves
, I told the crowd.
We have seen a miracle, a splendid vision of Rick. There is no cause for alarm.

But even my mindspeech, coupled with a coercive wave, could not keep the group calm and in their seats. They were breaking from the mental circuit, jumping up and running down the aisles toward the stage. In another few moments I would be swamped.

Gathering all the strength I had, I pressed a mind command upon them to halt, to return to their seats. At first they didn’t respond. But as I tapped into first one and then another of the mutheesstant minds in the group, my power increased and bit by bit I turned the crowd back.

We all love Rick and miss him. I can’t tell you what has just occurred but I can share my feelings with you. Come. Join with me now
.

We resumed the circle, sharing our amazement and joy. I tried not to question what had happened but merely to accept it as a manifestation of faith on the part of so many minds.

But then I saw Rick again, not very long afterward.

I was alone in my bedroom, sleepless and pondering some old screentapes.

There was a dark movement in the corner, a shifting of shadows. At first I told myself that my eyes were tired. It was nothing. I looked again. My brother stood there, gaping at me.

“Rick!”

Wordlessly, we stared at each other.

But it was not the same man I had seen at the group sharing. He looked younger, much as I remembered him from the days when he rode his jetcycle through the tawny hills of northern California, when his mutant powers were first erupting.

But how was this possible? Why was I seeing different visions of my brother?

I nearly fell out of my seat as the word “vision” occurred to me. Of course. Of course. That was it.

Rick wasn’t making visits from beyond the grave. Rather, he was making visits to us from the past, from his life.

What we were seeing were manifestations of Rick when he was making his first time leaps and seeing his first prophetic visions years ago. I shook my head in wonder. So he actually
had
moved through time as he had claimed. Some of his visions had come true—had, in fact, been real flights into the actual future. What’s more, Rick had said that in the visions he could not communicate, could not connect with anyone he saw. Obviously, that had been true as well. But he had been wrong in thinking that he could not be observed or detected. At least, he could be seen by those who wanted to see him.

Eventually the sightings of Rick came to be considered blessed visitations and piles of white roses marked each spot where a sighting had occurred. For me, the sightings were a reminder of my brother’s unique gifts—and they made me miss him even more. Oddly, I was glad that Alanna was not here to see him. I would spare her this, at least.

To my amused chagrin, these visitations merely added more fuel to the ever more widespread belief that Rick had been truly divine. In fact, they seemed incontrovertible proof. There was nothing I could do about that and I suppose I stopped fighting that particular battle after I had seen my brother’s “ghost” with my own eyes. Even dead, Rick was unpredictable.

As my attention was taken up more and more by the sharings, I found it expedient to delegate other tasks that drained away too much of my energy. I began to feel empty, unfulfilled, gripped by cascading anxieties in the times between the creation of each groupmind. I added sharings to the schedule, hired more functionaries. Nothing must be allowed to take me away from the sharings.

I began to grow less and less interested in casework, delegating much of it to subordinates. I abandoned any of my cases that did not relate directly to the effects of sharings. Slowly but surely I constructed my ivory tower, furnished it, and locked myself in.