by Karen Haber
Alanna was staring at me, lips trembling, eyes wide.
“Together,” I said. “Together we made Better World the true link between mutants and nonmutants. We made the way to bridge humankind’s suffering and pain, loneliness and guilt, differences and fear.
“What’s more, we’ve taught mutants and nonmutants that they need one another. Through the groupmind we have proved that together we are greater and better than apart and fearful. I’m convinced that there are unusual psychological and physiological benefits that can be derived from mixed group sharings. They have to continue, and I must teach others how to hold them. And that’s why we must preserve Better World, maintain it, and control it. Surely now you can see that. It’s not for my sake, for my own desire for power. It’s for all of us. For the sake of the human race, mutants and nonmutants all together.”
“But—”
“No buts,” I said. “We’ve stumbled upon the link between us and if we don’t preserve it no one else will.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, her voice thick with emotion. Tears were spilling down her face. “I see. I understand, Julian. I really do see it.”
Alanna’s thin frame shook as she cried. There were tears in my eyes as well, tears that almost blinded me as I made my way toward her to offer the only comfort I knew: the embrace of her closest surviving relative. For a long, wordless moment we held each other, sobbing in relief and regret.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I was wrong to have chased you away. I was cruel and brutal. All this time I needed you and didn’t know it. I thought our goals would put us on a collision course. But there’s room for every kind of belief in Better World. I should have known that. I know it now.”
Alanna was light in my arms. A bird would have weighed more. And yet I was suddenly convinced that, together, the two of us could lick all comers—anyone who threatened Better World—or Rick’s legacy.
As I held her I felt a great sense of completeness and suddenly I saw a vision of all those who had come before us, our parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and their grandparents, and theirs before them. Every face was smiling, every eye glinted with happiness and approval. And at the front of the group stood Skerry and Rick, beaming proudly.
I was impatient to leave but Alanna insisted on having a mechbot fix her front door lock and I couldn’t really blame her. Luckily, the repair was finished in half an hour. We hurried from the house toward my skimmer. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows between the towering redwoods.
I was in the middle of the road when a sudden dazzling light came out of nowhere and blinded me. I could hear the sound of a skimmer engine growing loud and then louder.
“Julian, get out of the way!”
Colors danced in front of me but I still couldn’t see. The skimmer rocketed toward me, faster and faster, engine roaring.
Abruptly, there was the sound of tires skidding on pavement, the screech of brakes, and then an ugly thud followed by an awful crash in the distance. And silence.
“My God,” Alanna gasped. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” I shook my head and red spots danced against my eyelids. Slowly, my eyesight cleared until I could see my sister’s stricken face. “What happened?”
“That skimmer just came roaring down the road and gunned right for you.” She looked at me, pale and shaken. “I used TK to deflect it but I must have used too much force. It went off the road over the cliff.”
“You didn’t mean to do it,” I said. “They were reckless fools. They were going much too fast. You just acted instinctively.”
“Shouldn’t we see if they need help?”
I made a quick mental scan and shook my head. “They’re beyond help, I’m afraid. There’s nothing we can do for them now.”
“Oh God. I killed them!”
“No, they killed themselves. But we’ll notify the police from the car phone. At the very least we can do that. Come on, let’s get going.”
Somberly, Alanna slipped into the skimmer beside me and we set off into the looming shadows.
17
when we got back to better world it was Thursday, early evening, and the trees were tall purple shapes in the gray twilight. At the front gate I pulled out my ID card. But as I passed it before the scanner’s laser eye nothing happened.
“Perhaps it’s damaged,” Alanna said. “Try it again.”
Once more I inserted the card into the slot. A message flashed across the gatescreen: “Invalid.”
My gate authorization had been canceled. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I’m going to call the security chief.” Quickly I punched up his familiar code on the car phone.
“Hello?” said an unfamiliar female voice.
“Let me speak to Joe Martinez.”
“I’m sorry,” came the prim reply. “He’s at the sharing.”
“Sharing? What sharing?”
“May I take a message?”
“This is Julian Akimura. I can’t get in the gate. Who am I speaking to?”
“Is that supposed to be some sort of sick joke? You’ve got a lot of nerve, mister, especially today of all days.”
“Pardon me?”
“Dr. Akimura was killed in a highway accident. Run down by a skimmer, somewhere in California. We all heard about it only an hour ago. Just about everybody’s at the memorial service in the Roman theater. So take your lousy jokes and go to hell.”
“But—”
The phone buzzed. She had hung up.
I turned to Alanna, dumbfounded. “I’m dead. They all think I’m dead.”
“And you would have been,” she said grimly. “If I hadn’t deflected that skimmer.”
I stared at her. “They must have sent somebody after me who trailed me right to your door and waited.” An icy fury ran through me. Murderers! Assassins. Well, I had survived their ugly plot and now they had a few surprises coming. “Alanna, how strong is your TK range?”
She looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “This is hardly the time—”
“Don’t argue with me.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Do you think you could lift us over the gate and into the complex?”
“Yes, of course. Hold on.”
She shut her eyes. Slowly the skimmer rose up over the trees, rocking a bit, higher and higher. We floated over the gate, over the front wall, and settled behind a thick stand of chamiso near my house. I could see that the lights were blazing inside the building, from the bottom floor to the top.
“Careful,” I said. “Let’s go around the back. Somebody might see us. We’ve got to get to that sharing before we’re stopped.”
It was easy enough to stay under cover and unnoticed in the gloom of dusk. Dodging from shadow to shadow, we picked our way to the rear entrance of the Roman arena.
I had hoped to slip in there but guards had been posted at every door.
“Dammit,” I said. “Now what?”
Alanna gave me a look that was half mournful and half hilarious. “I know what my father would have done. He’d have gotten himself levitated over the wall and descended in a chariot of fire. With a choir of angels singing alleluia in the background.”
I could have hugged her. “That’s it. Alanna, it’s perfect. We’ll knock their goddamned eyes out with our grand entrance. Can you take us up and over?”
“Easy as pie.”
“And then bring us down slowly so that we’re floating just above Rick’s tomb.”
Alanna smiled. “I’m almost beginning to like this.”
I grinned back at her. “Get us in there, and leave the rest to me.”
As easily as if she were floating a feather across a room she took us up and over the antiqued walls, over the heads of the crowd, and into the stadium proper.
As soon as we were over the wall I summoned every ounce of telepathic skill I had to create a massive illusion.
Forming an image for one person is easy but hypnotiz
ing an arena full of people is a different thing entirely. My heart pounded with the strain and my head ached. For a moment I feared I would fail. I gave it everything I had. The crowd looked up, saw us, and gasped.
Encased in a glowing ball of flame, magnificent, stupendous, casting a brilliant red aura that filled the arena, we descended as though borne by angels. True to her word, Alanna brought us to rest just about a foot above Rick’s tomb. We hovered gently above the white marble as my psychokinetic flames turned everything below us orange. I held out my hands to the people below and let them have a good, long look.
Somewhere, Skerry was grinning, I was sure of that.
There was a low murmur of confusion and disbelief. It rose from a whisper to a roar and then the crowd went crazy.
“It’s Dr. Akimura! He’s not dead.”
“He’s returned! Father Julian and the blessed Alanna!”
“It’s a miracle! Rick be praised!”
A wild cheer went up and I waved my arms over my head at the stamping, clapping mob. Just wait, I thought, wait until you see what I’ve got in store for you.
Red and green and golden fireworks exploded above our heads: molten embers of color, completely illusory and startling to behold. I filled the sky with illusory light, and the air with illusory trumpets and the sound of an entire city cheering at the return of its one true ruler.
Ginny Quinlan and Don Torrance stood onstage, with Barsi just behind them. They gazed up at me and turned to one another, dumbstruck. Ginny looked dismayed but Barsi seemed distinctly relieved while Torrance’s expression was one of amazement and chagrin.
Beside them was a golden-eyed young man with curling red hair, a mutant named Matthew whom I recognized from training classes. He had been one of several selected to learn the group sharing techniques. What was he doing onstage? He was a mere apprentice.
Ginny grabbed the microphone. “This is a blessed vision,” she cried. “A group sighting of the late lamented. Praise be! We see dead Julian’s very image! If only Julian himself were still with us! Let young Matthew here help guide us in our grief.” She all but nudged the mutant apprentice forward with her foot.
Alanna muttered, “Who the hell is that kid?”
“A usurper, I think.”
“Let us join together to share our feelings—to express the grief of our great loss,” Matthew intoned.
The crowd ignored him. Despite Ginny’s attempt to divert and mislead they were sure that we were the real thing. People were jumping out of their seats and whirling like dervishes in the aisles. Only a few of the faithful seemed to be even remotely interested in what was happening onstage.
“Join with me,” Matthew said.
No, I thought. Join with me. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t maintain all the telepathic wizardry, the son et lumière show, and also manage to link with the crowd below me.
JOIN WITH ME!
Matthew’s mindspeech was surprisingly compelling. He was far stronger than I’d thought and with dismay I saw a few more of the celebrants turn to face him, glassy-eyed, mouths open. And then a few more. Despite my best razzle-dazzle, I was losing them. More and more of them seemed to be drawn back under Matthew’s control as the sharing’s seductive effects began to spread.
I tried to infiltrate the mind circle but was rebuffed. Tried again, and again and again, and each time bounced off the seamless wall of many minds locked against me. How was it possible? How could Matthew summon so many to him?
Then I saw the truth: it was not Matthew acting alone, but several mutant trainees—an entire cadre—who had set up a crude but formidable mental barrier. How easy it had been for Ginny and her crew to turn all of them against me! But they were fools if they thought that Alanna and I were nothing more than ghosts or some peculiar psychic hallucination.
Inch by inch I probed the barrier. Ah, there: a flaw in the mind wall. I worried it a bit and managed to enlarge the gap but it was maddeningly slow work. I should have been able to cut right through to the groupmind but I was nearly exhausted after my flaming chariot stunt.
I pushed against the barrier, battering with everything I had until sweat ran down my face.
“What’s wrong?” Alanna said. “What’s happening?”
“I’m trying to breach their mental defenses,” I told her, my breath coming in gasps. “But it’s a tough business. I’m not getting anywhere.”
Alanna grabbed my hand. “Use me.”
“But you’re not a telepath.”
“No, but in the past you’ve amplified your own powers by using a mutant mind in concert with your own. Try it now. What have you got to lose?”
I squeezed her hand gratefully and felt fresh energy flow through me. Eagerly, I linked her mind to mine, and shoved once more at the mental wall. Suddenly I could push harder, longer, had energy reserves I hadn’t noticed moments before. With Alanna’s strength to bolster me I began to crack through and into the sharing. The barrier splintered as I battered against it, and with a prolonged searing blast of mental power I burst past it and into the groupmind.
But something was wrong, very wrong. I could tell in an instant. There were strange mental currents running through the sharing, disorienting and confusing, almost nauseating. As I searched for their source I saw Matthew shudder and clutch at his head in obvious pain. He staggered, fell, struggled to get up, and fell over onto his side, curled into a tight fetal ball on the floor of the stage.
The sharing disintegrated into nightmarish horror that had a familiar and terrible resonance. Malformed fire imps sprang up and capered madly above the crowd. Hideous creatures came roaring up out of their subconscious prisons to torment their creators: fanged eels, spiders whose legs ended in six-fingered hands with curling yellow nails, men with horrible clubbed and boil-encrusted penes, gobbling purple vaginal maws lined with row upon row of pointed, blood-stained teeth. It was a Freudian free-for-all. And I was at the center of it.
People were howling, biting themselves in maddened revulsion, tearing at one another trying to get away from their worst terrors made real.
I swooped into Matthew’s mind and saw with sorrow that he had suffered some sort of cerebral accident—perhaps the strain of maintaining the sharing had been too great for him. He was too far gone—there was nothing I could do. I pulled out of him and right back into the midst of the nightmare. All around me were hundreds of minds gibbering wildly. I tried to calm them but it was like grabbing at a thousand flailing ropes and trying to pull them all back together into one knot. And how long could I hold out and avoid being swept up in the brainstorm?
So many minds. How could I reach them all? I felt numb and light-headed. It was hopeless, hopeless. In a moment I would be hallucinating with the rest of them, screaming at horrific images of Rick and Star and Skerry and my mother dancing in a mocking circle around me. Tears filled my eyes and I began to weep helplessly.
“No. Stop it. Julian, hold on!”
Alanna grabbed hold of my arm and shook me fiercely. Pale and horrified, she alone was untouched by the hysteria and I clung to her for sanity, for my very life, it seemed.
“You can do it,” she said. “You will do it, Julian. They need you. Help them. Help them, now!”
Once more I felt her strength steadying me, anchoring me. My head cleared, and drawing upon every inch of power I had, I reached farther, farther still, grabbed hold of the fraying mental circuit and pulled it to me.
Hush. These are dreams. Illusions. They have no substance, none at all.
My mindspeech seemed to have little effect The crowd screamed and roiled below me, oblivious.
LISTEN TO ME! We must be strong. Together we are strong. We must he brave. Together we are brave. There’s no need to panic. No need to flee. Take your seats. Calm yourselves. I am Julian. Share with me now. I am Julian, alive in your midst and with you now. I will keep you safe, safe from these horrors. Was it my imagination or were the screams lessening? The struggles becoming less heated?
And as I mindspoke them in a reassuring murmur, the mob quieted and the hysteria began to pass.
I saw Ginny staring at me, stunned. Beside her, Don Torrance was similarly dazed. Only Barsi was smiling in obvious relief. I would attend to them, soon. But first I scanned the crowd for a doctor and quietly directed him to Matthew’s side. Perhaps there was still something that could be done for the boy. I hoped so.
The regal opening notes of “Rick’s Ode” burst upon the air as, under Alanna’s invisible and inspired guidance, the arena’s mechband began to play.
“Set us down,” I said.
Gently, Alanna lowered us to the stage and I raced to the podium.
“My friends,” I said. “I bring joyous news. Not only have I survived a cruel and treacherous murder plot this very day, but to add to our joy we have among us today one who was dear to the heart of the sainted Rick. As you can see, to join our sharing I have brought Sister Alanna, beloved of the Desert Prophet!”
Cheers and approving whistles rocked the stadium.
Ginny Quinlan broke from her paralysis and began to run desperately for the wings with Don Torrance right behind her. To her credit, Barsi, alone, stood her ground.
Calmly, coolly, as though she were reaching for a cucumber sandwich, Alanna scooped the three of them up in her telekinetic grasp and held them motionless by the edge of the stage. “We’ll deal with you later,” she said. “After the sharing.”
Drawing Alanna to my side, I launched into the traditional steps of the group sharing. “Open your minds,” I said. “Open your hearts.”
“We will,” the group chanted. “We have.”
“Share with me now.”
The mental circuit sizzled with energy as I hopped from mind to mind, sealing the coil behind me. I felt like a young man again, full of juice and ready for anything. We floated together, all of us, wordlessly, blissfully. The familiar pleasure of it dazzled me and for a moment I was lost in wondrous harmony.
