by Karen Haber
The memory fragmented, a puzzle coming apart into random pieces and scattering across Rick’s mind.
Outside noises filtered through and I became aware of the room filled with frightened, concerned people. I was bending over me, looking into my eyes and—
I pulled out of Rick’s mind quickly. The parallelism was too dangerous.
“Whew,” he said. “That was a wild ride.”
“How do you feel?”
“Okay.” He got to his feet and sat down. “Now where were we?”
“Rick, don’t you remember what happened?”
“I had a vision,” he said. “It showed a wonderful thing.” His eyes shined and his voice grew buoyant. “I saw a huge sharing taking place in the Roman theater. Everybody was there. You, Lanna. And you, Julian. It was at sunset—the sky was so beautiful. And we were all so happy, together, loving one another.”
“That’s wonderful, Rick,” Betty said. There were tears in her eyes.
I saw Alanna smile with relief. And all around the room people breathed more easily. They believed what Rick had told them. And why not? Perhaps he really had seen what he had described.
But I had seen something else—had somehow penetrated Rick’s long-term memory. To Rick, the sharing had been interrupted by a vision. Everybody else in the room seemed happy to accept that. Only I knew differently—at least I believed I did. Perhaps while Rick was coasting on his vision I had gone right past him with my probe. I don’t know what he really saw and I never will.
“Lanna, Betts, we’ve got to get moving on this right away. A massive group sharing in the Roman arena.”
“Don’t you think you should rest?” I said. “Take a few weeks off, Rick. You look a little pale to me.”
“No way,” he said. “I never felt better. That vision reinvigorated me. I’m reborn, little brother. Can’t you feel it?” And, indeed, he seemed to be sizzling with energy. I couldn’t explain it. But then again, I never could explain much about Rick.
Quickly and efficiently, Alanna and Betty went to work on the plans for the enormous sharing. Rick was impatient, raring to go, but the bomb blasts had damaged the exterior of the arena and because of the special materials involved, a delay of several weeks was required before the grand mass sharing could be held.
Tickets sold out within hours of its announcement: the faithful flocked in from as far away as New Delhi, Paris, and Sydney, filling Better City. They came with shining faces, with outstretched hands, with their faith in Rick glowing like a tangible aura of blissfulness.
Lost amid the swelling hordes, I wandered, strangely restless. Rick was in high spirits, anxious to connect with his followers, racing around the halls of Better World checking on every detail of the preparations. I watched him in amazement, envying his resiliency. When would he ever slow down? But then again, why should he? He was the supermutant. I was merely his twin, filled with strange, fraternal misgivings.
10
although i tried to reason with him, Rick was adamant about holding the sharing as soon as possible.
“The arena will be ready next week,” he said. “I’m going to inaugurate it with a bang, just as soon as the paint dries.”
“Bang is right,” I said. “What if those bombings were a threat to stop the sharings?”
“Then I’d be playing right into their hands if I canceled it, wouldn’t I?”
“But suppose there’s another explosion? Suppose somebody gets hurt.”
“No one is going to get hurt, little brother. I promise you that.”
The sharing went on as planned the following week. By nine the arena had filled, and after a final sound and light check, the lights dimmed and Rick made his way out onto the stage. Without music, without fanfare. A cool wind ruffled his hair. I shivered a bit in the breeze.
He stood there, a thin, wiry figure clad in faded jeans, blue work shirt, and boots, unnoticed by the crowd. He watched the people who had come to see him as they chattered, yelled, laughed, ate, and drank. They were lost, absorbed in their noisy private lives and their din filled the old theater.
Slowly the arena darkened until all the lamps were out save for a lone spotlight that fixed Rick in a bright yellow halo. The crowd grew quiet. Still Rick said nothing.
Almost as one the audience sighed, a great outpouring of breath that mingled longing, anticipation, curiosity, skepticism, and even a bit of fear.
And Rick opened his mind to us.
Will you share with me?
A thousand heads nodded. A thousand minds reached out to him eagerly.
Then join hands. We must do it together. Join hands and share with me now.
Rick closed his eyes.
A thousand strange thoughts hummed and babbled in the mix of the groupmind. French, German, and Italian collided and rebounded against English and Spanish. Yet all was understood, all was accepted and known in the sharing. No one was alone. No one would ever be alone again.
The audience sighed once more, this time, in pleasure and relief.
The hum of the groupmind modulated to a slightly higher key and intensified. It seemed to vibrate up from the white-hot center of the Earth along each bone bead of every vertebrae of every person in the arena, and out of that ancient stadium up into the clear night sky.
Open yourselves to one another. Open your hearts and your minds. We have all been alone, cut off, for too long. The long wait is over. We are one.
As he mindspoke, my brother seemed to give off a dazzling, blinding light. He held out his arms to the faithful and they leaned forward, eyes closed, swaying in his mental embrace.
I took a deep breath, braced myself against the seatback, and closed my eyes. It was like walking into the ocean: the mental tide lapped at me, flowed over, and swept me up.
For a moment I was lost in the egoless depths, floating happily with the others. I was loved and forgiven, understood and accepted. Cherished. Empowered. Then, somehow, I found the surface and broke through, gasping.
I skimmed from mind to mind, briefly touching an essence here, a strange fantasy there. At first it was difficult. Each ecstatic mind tried to lure me in, hold on, weld me into place within the circuit.
A woman to my left was awash in memories of her first sexual encounter. All the passionate, throbbing urgency of it, the wonder and pleasure, flowed from her to me in wave after pulsing wave of rapture.
Two rows behind her, an elderly grandmother was lost in a tumultuous rebirth. She was laughing with joy, weeping with awe and fright, and I wept and laughed with her.
Nearby, a young man no more than twenty relived his first snowfall, capering in the midst of a cold, white, marvelous fairyland. His father, beside him, was struck by the first taste of a ripe apricot. I could savor it clearly, the sweet, tart, pulpy goodness on the back of my tongue. Together, we smacked our lips.
Each person was caught up in his or her own transcendent moment, connected and yet engulfed by private dreams.
As I trolled through the communion I accidentally touched Rick’s mind. It was brimming with rapturous power as he poured himself into the crowd, giving them everything he had.
I floated on his blissful tide for a moment before I noticed a subtle shift in the grand harmony. Strange minor notes emerged and began to dominate. Slowly the sharing moved along an odd, discordant scale I had never heard before.
Rick’s body began to shake and quiver: every muscle stood out as though carved. His lips were drawn back in a horrible grimace. His very head seemed to swell.
I looked into my brother’s mind, and screamed.
People around me began to erupt into flame as though they had each been doused with kerosene and touched by a struck match. The human torches filled the night sky with the stench of burning flesh. Black smoke obscured the stars. The shrieks. Oh, God, the shrieks were terrible, deafening, worse than the worst nightmare.
My brother was still on stage, still on his feet, but he was staggering, collapsing to knees and elbows, c
radling his head in his hands. Alanna was on stage, too, running toward him. But it was all happening so slowly, so very slowly. I could see her dark hair bobbing in the wind as though it were weightless. But she was taking so long to reach Rick. Hurry, I thought. Help him!
A thundercloud swept up and over the arena and began pelting everyone inside with gusting rain. Flames guttered and went out. Thank God, I thought. Rick has gotten control again. But even as I watched, jagged bolts of lightning etched their way across the sky, thunder roared, and rain turned to hissing acid. Wherever it fell, flesh and stone melted away. Where were the arena’s protective canopies, the automatic shields of which Rick had boasted?
“No,” I cried. “Rick. Stop it. No!” I tried to reach him with mindspeech but there was too much interference.
Somehow I fought my way to the front of the arena, elbowed and kicked a path through the crowd, grabbed hold of the lip of the stage, and swung myself up onto it.
Alanna knelt, center stage, holding my brother’s head in her lap, bending over him as tenderly as Mary must once have embraced Jesus.
Rick gasped for breath, rasping and choking deep in his throat. His arms and legs jerked as though they were being pulled by some cruel puppeteer and his face was deep red, almost purple. Nearby, a medic dug frantically through a green medsac.
I fell to my knees beside Rick, touched his shoulder, and—reluctantly, fearfully—reached into his mind.
Rick? Rick, can you hear me? What’s wrong?
At first I heard nothing but an odd, grating mental static. Then, faintly, through the buzzing and humming, I heard Rick respond.
Julian, is that you?
Brother, I’m here.
Help me. My head. Hurts. Hurts so badly. I didn’t think it would hurt so much. I can’t stop it.
What’s happening? What should I do?
I can’t. I can’t—
His thoughts trailed off into gibberish and more static.
Terrified, I searched for his pulse and counted the sluggish, strangely erratic beats again and again while the doctor in me grimly confirmed what the brother refused to believe.
There was a hollow pounding at the center of his being, a muffled drum slowing with each beat. He was ebbing, whirling down into darkness. Rick wasn’t having some sort of seizure or attack. He was dying, his life force swirling away.
For a crazy moment I tried to cling to him, to hold on to his essence and keep him here with me. But even in retreat he was too strong. Even as I clawed for him, Rick pulled farther and farther away, out of my grasp, and I knew that if I didn’t release him I would be swept up, too, and carried away in that same awful outflowing current. A sob caught in my throat as I broke free and let my brother go. Should I have gone with him? Sometimes I think so.
I felt something give way inside me, as though a single, keening note had been struck so hard against such a tightly wound string that the string had broken. The echo of it persisted for a moment, then faded to silence.
“Let me through!” the doctor shouted. He shouldered me aside and thrust a hypo against Rick’s chest.
“Help him,” Alanna cried. “You’ve got to help him. Oh, Julian, please.”
But it was already too late.
Rick was gone, I was still here, and nothing made any sense, nothing. I had let him die. Alone.
“No,” Alanna cried. “No!” She grabbed Rick by the shoulders and shook him as though somehow she believed that she could shake the life back into him. “You can’t go. Don’t leave me here. You promised we’d be together. Rick, you promised!”
Suddenly she stopped, as though the insanity of her words had reached even her own ears. With a convulsive shudder she set Rick down, turned her head away, and was silent although her shoulders shook and shook.
I gazed, disbelieving, into my brother’s face. He seemed shriveled and old, so very old. In six months he had aged years, and in death he resembled Skerry, our biological father, more than himself. His eyes were open but no one was in there looking back out at me. I shut them and a storm of despair and grief brewed within me, churned and billowed, threatening to break loose. But I had no time to mourn.
The stage resounded under the blows of the crowd and the walls of the amphitheater rang with their outraged cries and screams. The audience had rushed toward the front of the arena and in a frenzy began to destroy it—and themselves. They tore floorboards loose, flailing wildly around, striking out at one another, breaking anything that got in their way.
“We’ve got to stop them,” I yelled. “They’ll kill themselves. Us, too.”
Alanna peered over her shoulder at the maddened crowd, stood up, and, like a mech doll, began to take peculiar halting steps toward the edge of the stage. For a moment I wondered what she was about, then I realized that she meant to throw herself from the stage right into their raging midst.
“No!” I grabbed her by the arm and swung her around to face me. “Killing yourself won’t solve anything, Alanna. Is that what Rick would want?”
At first she struggled, trying to break free. Then with a convulsive gasp, she collapsed, sobbing, against my chest and I clutched her in helpless confusion. I felt frozen in place as though I would never move again. Any second now the mob would take the stage and probably bludgeon us to death.
Suddenly Alanna stopped crying, raised her tear-stained face, and stared into my eyes. “You can save them, Julian. You can do it. Reach out. Reach out with your mind and calm them.”
What was she talking about? Had grief completely deranged her? “Alanna, I’m no supermutant, remember? I’m the other brother—a telepath. That’s all.”
She grabbed both my wrists and shook me furiously. “You can do it, Julian. You’re a first-level telepath and I know that you can do it.”
Something about her crazy fervor broke through my paralysis and I allowed her to pull me toward the front of the stage.
With Rick’s death the illusion of the rain had ceased. Below us the mob was shrieking, baying like animals and tearing at one another. Alanna never stopped staring at me. I could see the blood beating in a vein on her forehead.
“All right,” I said desperately. “I’ll try.” Clutching her hand, I linked up with her. Then, telepathically, I reached out beyond us.
At once I fell into a dark maelstrom, submerged in a massive jumble of sorrow, anger, despair, and terror. I was floundering, drowning, losing myself in the emotions of the crowd. In desperation I pulled free. It was beyond my powers to control them. I wasn’t Rick.
“I can’t,” I gasped. “Alanna, I can’t do it.” Smoke swirled around us and her eyes glittered like jewels in the murky darkness. “You’ve got to try again, Julian. Come on, hold on to me.”
I wanted to sob, to cry out, to tell her to stop it and leave me alone. But instead I closed my eyes and reached toward the mob once again.
There. A mindhold. I grabbed it.
Beside me, Alanna poured strength and more strength into me, crushing my hand in hers.
And there, another beacon, another bright and shining mind. I reached for that one, too. And, yes, I felt stronger. Suddenly I could feel their minds glowing, calming, humming in tandem with mine. They were beginning to turn toward me—in wonder, in hope.
Stumbling along I found a receptive mind here, a strong one there, and like a pianist slowly hitting the separate notes of a major chord I pressed upon them all until I heard the right sound, until the animal cries had all died away, the horror had passed, and we were united in our grief and loss, buoyed up above the awful flood.
Grieve with me, I told them. Hold on to me, hold on to one another. Do not move. Do not think. Share with me now.
Incredible strength hummed through me: such power as I had never imagined. But how was this possible? A mass sharing like this was something only Rick could have managed, wasn’t it?
Gently I probed through the circuit. And I felt a subtle difference in one or two of the connectors. They were mutant minds,
I knew it. Powerful telepaths, all. I had no time to learn more, but I knew now how I had managed such a feat.
Together we are strong. We can support one another in our terrible pain and through our dreadful loss. Mourn with me. Mourn with me, now.
Tears ran down my face and I was soaked with sweat. But self-awareness had faded: I only knew that I was a conduit for great energies, and without me, all hell would break loose. Trembling, faltering, I held us all up as together we grieved for my brother. Grieved, and comforted one another as, overhead, untouched and eternal, the stars twinkled and glowed.
11
that night, better city burned.
Apparently, Rick’s death had released all manner of peculiar energies, and one discharge had set fire to a row of apartments. Since there was no one on hand to fight the blaze it rapidly spread until almost half of the city was burning.
As we left the stadium, arm in arm, tearful and pensive, we were greeted by a scene from hell: red sky and black smoke. The alarms sounded, but it was too little, too late. Unfortunately, Rick’s planning had not included the need for a complete metropolitan fire-fighting network and we were sadly, tragically underequipped.
Houses exploded into showers of glass, brick, and metal. Embers drifted across the sky, forming temporary nebulae that floated slowly down to earth, scattering fire like bright seeds bringing flames and panic, hysteria and death.
A howling wind rose, scattering sparks and flaming debris across every corner of the city. Trees went up like giant torches, limbs crackling, trunks detonating.
I was frantic, being pulled in a dozen directions at once, trying to cope with the fire, deal with my own grief, and help coordinate rescue efforts in Better City.
Perhaps the hardest thing I did that awful night was to call my parents. My mother responded to the news with remarkable self-control. Her face was a pale, shocked mask and tears glittered in her eyes but somehow she didn’t crack. It was Yosh, my father, who cried, and I allowed myself a moment of relief, crying with him briefly, before I pulled the grief back inside. I choked out a farewell and promised to call the next day.
