Authors: Karen Haber
Still no response. I was really worried now.
RICK!
I hear you, for God’s sake. I hear you. Yes. I’m all right. Brother, let’s walk.
Before I could assent I was in a dark, chaotic place, tumbling end over end, stomach rebelling. Then I was standing, shivering, on a high cliff, the wind was blowing fiercely, and my brother stood beside me. He seemed reinvigorated, almost exhilarated by the icy wind.
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“Where the hell are we?” I said between chattering teeth.
“Mesa Chivato, near the old Zuni-Jemez trail,” he said. “Sorry for the quick trip but I had to get us out of there, away from the confusion. And besides, I like it here.”
I stared down at the tormented landscape far below us. Rick
would
like it here, I thought. And why not? It suited his nature. He could range throughout the roughest, wildest spots in New Mexico. Or anyplace else he desired.
“What happened?” I said.
“I dunno. Guess I didn’t get to the airport in time. But it was so close—” His voice, already hoarse, broke and for a moment he said nothing.
“You mean the accident had already occurred?”
“Was happening,” he said. “As I arrived. I was too late. So like an idiot I tried to t-jump back five minutes to see if I could divert one of the planes off the runway.”
“You tried to jump in time?” I gazed at him in amazement. “But I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible, all right,” Rick said. “But it’s hard, even for me. And the displacement of energy really screws up the sequence of events. Not to mention my head.”
I laughed. “If you think you were confused, you wouldn’t believe what I saw.” Quickly I told him about the conflicting visions that had so astounded me.
Rick whistled. “You, too? I don’t know, Julian. Maybe that twin link leaves you open to leaks.” He nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing would, anymore.”
“Hey, at least you managed to prevent the crash.”
“Took everything I had. I got into the cockpit of the 987 and grabbed the pilot in major coercive mode. Made him pull to the right as fast as he could. Jesus, it was hard. I thought I was going to have a stroke or something. And as it was, I couldn’t quite hold it long enough. I could feel it slipping, getting away from me: felt kind of like I’d pushed an elastic band a little bit and then let go. That’s when the plane hit that shack.”
I saw tears in his golden eyes.
“But you did save most of the passengers,” I said. “Gods, Rick, you practically worked a miracle. There were only twenty casualties. If you hadn’t tried to intervene, seven hundred people might have died instead of twenty.”
Rick shrugged and wiped his eyes. “Yeah. But try telling that to the families of the casualties.”
I grabbed him by the shoulder. “Rick, don’t do this to yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. Spare me the therapy, Doctor.” He shook off my consoling grip. “Y’know, when I first had that vision of those two planes hitting, I couldn’t tell when it would happen, or if it
was
happening in real time, right then as I watched. All I knew was I had to get there. For all the good it did.”
“Stop it, Rick. You’re only human.”
My brother smiled at me oddly. “Glad you’re so certain, kiddo.” Then he faded, faded, until all that was left of him was a smile against the tormented clouds in the New Mexican sky. Even after I awoke I could still see his smile against the clouds.
That mornin Sn>Tstrog, I heard about the near-miss at the Albuquerque airport as I dressed for work. Twenty-seven people had died. But a major disaster had been averted.
The phone began ringing immediately and for once I let the answermech take it.
“This is Channel Two. We would like a reaction from a mutant spokesman to the rescue at the Albuquerque airport. Officials at the Mutant Council gave us this number.”
“Chris Rossfeld, Independent Vid, and I’m calling about the miracle in Albuquerque.”
“Dr. Akimura, this is Clayton Pierce. Will you comment?”
“The miracle man of New Mexico—”
“Do you still think he’s a fraud?”
“We need a reaction shot—”
The dream was still too fresh in my mind and my doubts were overwhelming. Had Rick just barely managed to save those two planes? Was he in any way responsible for the deaths that had occurred? And what had I seen? Was my unconscious mind somehow tied into Rick in such a way that I received visions from him? For the rest of that day I didn’t return any calls.
Rick’s media exposure increased threefold. He was peripatetic: curing people, extending his hand in friendship, pouring out good vibes to everybody within the sound of his voice. And his miracles just got bigger and better. If they cost him more in energy, in concentration, in all the tiny special areas that he relied upon to work his magic deeds, he carefully shielded his weakness from the view of others. On video, at least, he was strong and splendid, a demigod for all seasons.
The mountain rescue he performed in the Canadian Rockies made for extraordinary video and he followed that up with a midair levitation and t-jump of survivors from a shuttle crash. Then there was his nifty trick at the Houston Spill, the recovery of the neutronium shipment lost between the Gulf of Aqaba and Dakar, and his plugging of the hole in the seawall of Pacifica II, thirteen miles off the big island of Hawaii, saving the sea colony. As if that weren’t enough, he even extinguished the fire storm on the French/ Saudi orbital platform. By then he was famous. And not merely for his heroics.
Word of Rick’s wondrous sharings had spread throughout the nonmutant community and people were intrigued—and attracted—and most eager to experience the healing qualities of Rick’s special magic. Apparently, a few members of Better World had talked to the vidnews, describing their experiences as transformational, empowering, and even more enjoyable than sex.
Needless to say, Better World was besieged. Half the people in the Western Hemisphere seemed to want to have a transformational, better-than-sexual experience as soon as possible. And each one of them sent money.
I watched these developments with a certain sour uneasiness. Was I jealous? After all, I wasn’t the brother for whom people clamored. I didn’t draw crowds, didn’t trail vid cameras behind me for a block, didn’t require a security force to protect me from the people who loved me. But no, no, I don’t think I was jealous, exactly. More likely, I felt disappointed with Rick for falling under the spell of it all and allowing a documentary crew to accompany him wherever he went.
Everyone seemed to embrace my brother’s philosophy of support, caring, and comfort. The Public Vid Service rushed through a four-part documentary series on Better World narrated by one of the youngest, most sincere, most popular actors i Suland hn the business.
Hollywood loved Rick. So, too, did politicians, students, and white-haired old grandmothers. Why not? He was the perfect hero for a nation starved for icons. Best of all, he had answers. He provided solutions.
Rick easily drew people to him. Originally, Better World had been a loose affiliation of about two dozen folks—ranchers, mostly, some ski bums, a couple of boutique owners, and a miscellaneous handful of ragged homeless folk who had followed Rick in out of the desert.
They were indefatigable do-gooders, and their numbers spread quickly, into the schools, the neighborhoods, the isolated mesas and arroyos, on mountainsides and along river valleys.
At first there had been little evidence of their activities outside of local events: standardized test scores began to go up among the New Mexican schoolchildren. There were fewer petty crimes and much less vandalism in the schools and streets. The sight of a broken-down skimmer was infrequent, a shattered store window even rarer.
Less tangible but more important, the sense of community seemed to improve and flourish: people passing on the street waved, called to one another, were kinder and more thoughtful. Everybody was far happier. Who wouldn’t be, with a private superman and his merry band of helpers always available, always on call? I imagined that this was how the early Christians might have felt and behaved when they began to gather in small, hidden rooms and whisper to one another about a powerful, wondrous savior.
It all worked splendidly for a while simply as a private nonprofit loosely run volunteer service benefiting whoever sent up a distress signal. But word spread quickly.
What had been a ragtag assortment of trailers and campers gathered around B.W. headquarters coalesced into a neighborhood of sorts. This community was codified even further when, through donations, Better World acquired a nearby property: a defunct recreation area whose existing buildings and facilities seemed ready-made for Better World’s needs.
The faithful adapted the place and began to plan more structures. A merchant or two moved in to supply food and other basic necessities. Rick seemed pleased. “That’s the way,” he said. “We’ll take care of ourselves and each other.”
Word of the burgeoning community spread from coast to coast throughout the enclaves of the homeless and disenfranchised. All, all of them, flocked to Taos much to the displeasure of the governor, the mayor, and assorted city officials.
Those immigrants who agreed to participate in Rick’s sharing sacrament were welcomed and few among them saw reason to refuse. The population of Better World swelled. More buildings were needed. More services, supplies, and merchants arrived.
Rick began to see that if he was going to help even half of the people who had already petitioned him for his aid, then he had to do it in a standardized, systematic way. Which led to the official incorporation of the Better World, a privately held service organization.
Its canonization by the media—and its excoriation by all organized religions—is nearly legend now. The Roman Catholic Church, the Mormons, the Moslems, the Protestants, the Jews, and a whole host of various other sects—all complained mightily, noisily, and regularly that Better World was plundering their ever-thinning ranks. The AMA rattled the bars on its cage, citing Rick for practicing medicine and healing without a license. The politicians courted Rick for the votes represented by Better Sed und World membership. And, of course, Better World flourished. It was on the cusp, just beginning its flamboyant and astonishing metamorphosis from community group to international cult. Who could have suspected how huge it would become? No one but me and Joachim Metzger, and I hoped that I was wrong.
The demand for seats at Rick’s sharings became so great that he was forced to hold them in huge sports arenas and theaters. Rick suggested that half of the proceeds from ticket sales be put toward various charities and the rest used to help Better World pay administrative costs. He even designed a subscription series for people who couldn’t get enough of him: five sharings in five cities. The best seats sold out in two hours. After each sharing spectators would come away glowing, satisfied, having gotten their money’s worth and much, much more.
People flocked to the sharings, scalpers made new fortunes, and the public’s appetite for Rick grew. As for Rick, well, I’m not exactly sure how he felt, what he got out of the sharings—perhaps some momentary relief from the guilt that he carried. Certainly each sharing seemed to take more than it gave, extracting a physical toll from him that could be seen in the new silvery strands glinting in his beard and ponytail, and in the whittling down of his muscular frame to sinew and bone. I told myself it was nothing, that my brother was just one of the lucky ones who would only become spare and wiry as he approached middle age.
When I first learned of the plans to dedicate Better City I decided that I had to make one last direct personal appeal to Rick to cease, to desist and go away. Since I lacked farspeech I had to call him, and his line, of course, was busy, so I set the phone to auto redial. The screen glowed red steadily—busy—but ten minutes later it switched to blue and the electronic cricket-cheep told me that my call had gone through.
A familiar measure from an orchestral passage tootled pleasantly, redolent of synthesized clarinets. It took me a moment to recognize the tune: it was from a piece my father Yosh had written in honor of my birth and Rick’s. “Dual Sonata,” he had called it. A playful, spritely work. The music cut off and the screen was filled by a muscular young man with a squarish head, wide neck, and hardly any cheekbones. I couldn’t tell if he was a sim or for real.
“Better World,” he said. “How may we help?” His voice was high and surprisingly gentle. A former fullback who sang countertenor in his spare time?
“I want to talk to Rick.”
The fullback smiled patiently. “Of course you do. Unfortunately, Rick is very busy right now. Perhaps I can help you.”
“Look, I’m his brother.”
The smile broadened. “We’re all his brothers and sisters.”
“No, really. I mean it.” Irrationally, I wanted to wipe that contemptible look off his face and I scrabbled in my pockets, searching for my hospital identification. I had holocard in hand when the screen image dissolved into jagged lightning bolts before re-forming around my brother’s face. He looked a bit three-dimensional, as though his screen were transmitting in holovid.
“Little brother!” Rick smiled broadly. “What’s up?”