Charisma

by Steven Barnes

  “Maybe homosexual?”

  She considered. “That’s another kind of secret, of course. D’Angelo and Marcus lovers?” She thought and sighed and finally shook her head. “You know, I don’t think so. One of his executives was gay, and mooned over Angel, strange to say. Said he wished Angel was that way, but what he called his ‘gaydar’ said otherwise.”

  “Could have been wrong.”

  “True enough. But something tells me no.”

  “So … Marcus and D’Angelo had a secret. It might have involved women.”

  She shifted uncomfortably. “Something tells me it does. And now Sand’s got my curiosity up, damn him.”

  Why have I never married? Alexander once replied on one of their numbing, innumerable coast-to-coast flights. Because I’m married to my vision. It wouldn’t be right to ask a woman to tolerate my schedule. But there were the endless social engagements, the rumored relationships with actresses and congresswomen, executives and supermodels. Overlapping, short, no hint of intimacy with anyone but his mother, and the Praetorians. And Angel, with whom he disappeared at night. And returned with signs of exertion, and secretive smiles. Angel, who, she felt in her soul, loved nothing more than power. Political power (how much smaller a pond than Diablo could he have found?), physical power (his speed and marksmanship), financial power (exactly how much of this town did he own?). And of course, the power of life and death.

  Especially death.

  Kelly snuggled closer to Bobby Ray. Despite the warmth of the evening air, she suddenly felt very cold indeed.

  68

  TUESDAY, JULY 3

  In the morning, Renny Sand packed his bags and went downstairs for breakfast. It was delicious. Fluffy eggs scrambled with sharp cheddar, crisp juicy bacon and sausage tender enough to cut with a spoon, mountains of homemade scones fresh from the oven, and pots of marmalade sweet and sharp and filled with little bits of fruit peel. It was all served on antique plateware with blue flowering vines winding around the rim, and accompanied by cups of strong, perfect French roast with thickened cream.

  His hosts took their time serving, by their relaxed pace encouraging him to slow down, enjoy every bite, every sip. He couldn’t remember when he had so relished a morning meal.

  “That was just unbelievably good.” He stifled a burp. They nodded happily. “Listen, have you heard of a place called Weinstein’s Folly?”

  Kelly shook her head.

  “It’s up someplace called Prescott. Do you know it?”

  “Sure. About four hours, up the 17 from Phoenix.”

  He did some quick calculations in his head. “Great. I’m heading up there to see a friend.”

  Kelly smiled. “I thought over your request last night, Renny, and maybe I have something for you. You work for his company, and you’re interested in how the man thought. Every few years Marcus would publish sections of his journals in-house. He gave copies to some of his intimates—myself included. Interested?”

  “Am I?” he asked eagerly. “Lead me to it!”

  “It’s just a few chapters, but one of them deals with the whole business in San Francisco. Still interested?”

  In a health exam? Marcus bending over for the rubber glove? Or something else, something very different. Could this be a smoking gun?

  He kept his face calm, but his pulse raced.

  She handed over the box. “I hadn’t looked at this stuff in years. He asked me to check some facts for him, and I just held onto it. I’d forgotten: the whole exam thing was actually kind of interesting. It belongs in the archives, I think.”

  “I’ll take a look at it. Thank you.” He almost succumbed at that moment, almost told her the rest of it, nearly spilled his guts, placed the story of his life in her hands for her to affirm, deny, tear to pieces, cast to the winds.

  But he couldn’t, just couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right, or fair. First Vivian, and then, perhaps, he would return and talk to Kelly, tell her the truth. She and Bobby Ray deserved that.

  So instead of confession, he packed his bags into his car, enjoyed a final glass of Kelly Kerrigan’s famous lemonade, and drove on his way, leaving his hosts waving to him on the porch, arms around each other’s waists.

  But as he turned off their street and toward the highway, he was plagued by the thought: You should have told her.

  69

  As it happened, the package given to Renny Sand contained a relatively innocuous journal. However, in the months that followed Alexander Marcus’s personal effects were scoured, and a more complete and unexpurgated version unearthed. If Renny had read that one, he might well have thought and behaved differently than he did over the next twenty-four hours. Of particular interest might have been an entry about five hundred pages into the six hundred page manuscript, an entry which ultimately found its way into the official record of what became known as the “Charisma Lake Incident.”

  That official document was reproduced in exactly forty-six copies, and was read by exactly that many people, no more, no less.

  The most pertinent passage read as follows:

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF ALEXANDER MARCUS

  Drs. Jorgenson and Dronet made a simple observation, one I could agree with wholeheartedly: we are losing a generation of our best and brightest young men to poverty, racism, latchkey environments and a rigid, outmoded educational system.

  On that day I had initially allotted half an hour for their presentation, but their proposal was a lightning bolt, electrifying my mind with possibilities. I cancelled the next two hour’s appointments, and begged them to continue.

  Dronet was impassioned. “Some people fail no matter what opportunities are available,” he said. “Others will succeed regardless of the obstacles.” I knew this. Everyone knows this, if they study history. The only question is how much of this capacity is inborn, how much learned in environment. Dronet theorized that whatever portion of this was environmental, that part could be taught, or literally implanted in a child’s mind at the subconscious level. Hypnosis, somatropic drugs, neuromuscular re-patterning, subliminals and other disciplines perfected in the fields of psychology, psychological warfare and television advertising, promised to transfer ideas, concepts, values and beliefs more efficiently than at any previous point in human history. We could completely revolutionize education.

  “We’ll consider this ‘teachable’ component the software in the human biocomputer,” he said.

  I wasn’t quite certain what he meant, and the two of them broke it down for me.

  According to Jorgenson, the debate over intelligence generally centers around the question of testability or measurement separate from the cultural context. In other words, whether it is possible to create a completely unbiased aptitude test. Conservatism and liberality take opposite sides in this discussion: Conservatives tend to claim abilities are “hardware” dependent (genetics), liberals look to the “software,” the child’s environment and education.

  All my life I have participated in such discussions, often instigated by social conservatives who think they flatter me by assuming that I am one of “them” and not one of “the others,” the mass of humanity (often black humanity) which, in their opinion, functions at the level of mud. All my life I have watched the scientists and politicians debate these issues as if the very people they were debating were livestock instead of living, breathing human beings with hopes and dreams and emotions.

  According to Jorgenson and Dronet (and I write this after reading the transcripts of our meeting), human beings operate on at least three levels of “programming”—their genetics, their early childhood environment, and their adolescent and adult education. Genetics were unchanging, and current thought said that between forty and sixty percent of innate potential in life simply depended upon choosing the right grandparents. By the time you are an adult, the childhood programming has set like cement. Getting down to that basic “stuff” requires the therapeutic equivalent of jackhammers and nitroglycerine. So the focus had
to be early childhood.

  Those core childhood programs were belief systems, value hierarchies, positive and negative emotional anchors, movement patterns, prejudices, interpretations of memories, unresolved traumas, and the thousand other things we absorb with our mother’s milk, programming so deep it is rarely questioned later in life.

  For instance, if a child grows up in a poor household, with parents who work hard, he can hardly believe that wealth is the result of hard work. If hard work produced money, why didn’t his parents have any? He is most likely to adapt the belief that “money is the root of all evil,” or “you have to have money to make money,” or “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” I bless my mother for going out of her way, on a daily basis, to tell me that I could accomplish anything in the world, for whispering to me as I slept that I was a prince in exile, for showering me with a thousand different stories and fables of boys from humble beginnings who went on to win kingdoms.

  Not that some people do not avoid the trap of poverty even without such a gloriously measured upbringing, but by definition alone, the average person behaves in an average fashion. Most people die in the social class into which they are born, be it high or low. Most people do not escape their environment unless they are extraordinary.

  But it might be possible to teach ordinary, average children to think in extraordinary ways.

  The key lay in reaching children at the preschool level, when the doors of perception were widest, and core behaviors most malleable. Instead of studying subjects, Jorgenson theorized that it would be more useful for children to study the people who have mastered their lives, contributed to society at the highest levels. Then convey the qualities that give these people unending passion and focus, as well as their specific problem-solving strategies. These two scientists believed that they had found a method suitable for extracting such qualities and imprinting them on a young child’s mind, but had run into opposition from the educational establishment (imagine!), and failed to find government backing for such a project. They sought private funds.

  After discussing their project at greater length, I came to the conclusion that this might be the answer to a question I had never dared fully formulate: how in hell do I help those trapped in the system my own obsessive energies had allowed me to escape? I knew I had more intelligence, more energy, more focus than any human being I had ever met. This had been tested on the battlefield, in the corporate world, in Olympic competition. I knew myself to be gifted, and longed to find a way for those less fortunate to escape the same traps that had almost ensnared me, despite all my advantages.

  I urged Dronet and Jorgenson to apply for a grant from Mark-One, one of my charitable foundations, and promised to ease the way for them. If their plans looked sound on paper, they would get their money.

  The plan required a double-blind experiment, with one thousand children chosen from lower economic and social circles. The methodology was to be hidden among the children’s normal daily activities. A national chain of daycare centers was actually looking for a new owner, and could be acquired for a bit over a million dollars. The equipment and apparatus required to stock them would require an additional three million, but these centers were already a money-making proposition. Once acquired, they could produce a substantial portion of operational capital.

  To tell the truth, my mind already buzzed with a dozen ways the chain might actually turn a profit.

  Months later, after we had concluded our third conversation on this issue, I noticed Dr. Dronet looking at me rather strangely. When prompted, he said that since the grant money had been approved, and he could no longer be considered guilty of pandering, he could finally convey his latest inspiration.…

  That I be the initial experiment’s primary role model.

  Taken aback at first, I finally realized that I had conned myself, that I had known all along that I would be recruited. He reasoned that my military and political service, financial success and Olympic medal proved that I would make an ideal initial subject. Flattered, I needed only their assurance that my participation would remain secret: no need for this pilot program to seem more of an ego trip than it actually was!

  And that is how I found myself in San Francisco, at a private health facility, subjected to an exhausting battery of examinations. From CAT to MRI, from batteries of lie-detector-type tests to computer scanning of my movement patterns, from voiceprints to eye movements, they extracted from me every conceivable attitude, belief, response, and value.

  The tests were conducted over three grueling, sometimes painful days. Jorgenson and his crew then pored over the results for months, extracting what they called the “critical path” of my thoughts and behaviors, then devising a thousand ways to imprint my emotions and habit patterns onto children without their conscious knowledge. If it worked, so they told me, a thousand tiny Alexander Marcuses would grow to adulthood, programmed to operate at the very limits of their “hardware,” self-motivated, clear in their goals and values, invulnerable to negative social programming, supremely confident and competitive. It was embarrassing to hear the expectations, but exciting as well.

  For myself, I felt a hunger that had been long repressed within me. I had no children, had chosen a life of service and work. Now, there were a thousand children who carried, not my genes, but my memes, my inwardness. Who would spread the essence of what I have striven to be during my life.

  Immortality, as no other man has ever known it.

  My children, in spirit, if not in flesh.

  Mine.

  70

  Sand followed his sketchy directions west on the 10 to the 17 and then north all the way to the Prescott turnoff. Thoughts, memories and questions swirled in his head, fighting for his attention.

  Road signs warned him to switch off his air-conditioning as he climbed the grade. The sun burned with nightmarish intensity, but as the long miles passed and the elevation climbed into tan, sandy, mountainous terrain, the air mercifully began to cool.

  As it did, his mind slipped back into a troubling groove. What to do? Sand couldn’t blame Miss Kitty for her son’s atrocities, but there was no way she would escape crucifixion by the press and public. And she wasn’t the only one who would suffer: so would the stockholders, executives and employees at Marcus International. God, the whole thing could collapse. And to what end?

  His head swam. He had Kelly’s documents in his briefcase, and with any luck would find a few moments to go through them, to think about it, to puzzle through this mess. Until then, he would put it out of his mind, and allow himself to enjoy a treat.

  She was here, very close. Even if by way of tragedy, Vivian was free, and in her e-mail she had invited him to visit her.

  I would like very much to see you, he had typed.

  So would I, Vivian had replied.

  And for right now, today, that was enough.

  * * *

  His first impression of Charisma Lake was of a slow-mo explosion. His engine labored as he made it up the last stretch of grade, and he could see, but not hear, the children ahead. They scrambled in clusters, in groups more often than pairs or singles. Seemed like a bunch of fairly typical kids herded by a few Gilligan-hatted counselors. There was a “VISITORS” sign hung at one of the cabins, so he stopped off there.

  A short blond emerged to meet him. She had improbably large blue eyes, and a face that was alternately sexy and homely depending on the angle and the light. “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  He exited the car, and spun out of the way as a couple of teenagers sprinted past. There was no real need for concern: without looking up, they veered around him like a pod of radar-equipped porpoises.

  “Hi. My name is Renny Sand.”

  “I’m Janie.”

  They shook hands. “I’m looking for Vivian Emory. Can you point me in the right direction?”

  “Just a minute.” She disappeared back in her
cabin for a minute, and emerged with a clipboard. She peeled back the top sheet and studied.

  “I can’t be sure,” Janie said, “she’s probably off duty. She was up late last night on the sleep-out, and up early this morning with breakfast … I bet she’s taking a nap. Is she expecting you?” Then Janie suddenly paused, and took another careful look at him. “The reporter?” she asked, and that smile was suddenly on her face, the one that turned it from mischievously cute to something close to beautiful.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Counselor’s Cabin ‘B,’” Janie said, eyes sparkling. “Go get her, tiger.”

  * * *

  Vivian couldn’t sleep. She hovered just over that blessed place, hoping to enter and find rest. Again and again she approached slumber, only to find that there seemed a great weight, a massive center to her dreams that seemed to pull all imagery toward it, all of the darkness and the light, as if the very deepest parts of her mind were struggling to resolve some unknown conundrum.

  No matter how long she slept, the puzzle never quite resolved, although her groggy mind kept trying to convince her that just a little more slumber, one more dream might give her answers. At odd times during the day she would remember snatches of dream, and be convinced that if she could just remember them, she would learn secrets and revelations beyond imagining. Worrying about that created a vicious cycle: hard to sleep, hard to awaken, distracted during the day.

  Ordinarily, she would have just shucked it off, but it was almost impossible not to feel that there was something real here, and if she stretched out her arm completely, into the dark, her fingers could just brush the shape, and the shape was—

  There was a knock at the door, and sleep’s inky tides receded. “Damn,” she moaned. “Damn, damn, damn.”