Mutant Legacy

Mutant Legacy
by Karen Haber. Introduction copyright
©
1992
by
Agberg, Ltd. Text copyright
©
1992
by
Karen Haber.
All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

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we have reached
the fourth and last volume
of
Karen Haber’s saga of the secret mutants in our midst. The mutants, secret no longer, have moved steadily into the mainstream of American life since the time of Volume One—
The Mutant Season
—which saw the election of the first mutant senator, Eleanor Jacobsen.

But now we are a couple of generations onward from that point. The threat of the emergence of a supermutant with virtually invincible powers—every normal human’s paranoid horror story brought to life—came and went, apparently, with the exposure of Victor Ashman’s superabilities as a pathetic hoax in
The Mutant Prime
. But then—in the third book,
Mutant Star
—we discovered that a
genuine
supermutant existed after all, unbeknownst not only to his own people but even, for a long while, to himself.

Six years have gone by since the violent climax of
Mutant Star
, when the troubled and tormented supermutant Rick Akimura, in full possession of his immense powers at last, exploded in a frenzy of wild wrath, bringing grief to his family and posing a monstrous problem for the world of normal humans. Intoxicated by the realization of the scope of his abilities, Rick seemed about to run amok; but Julian, Rick’s fraternal twin brother, had at the last moment been able to recall Rick to his senses and send him into an exile of atonement.

Now, though, Rick is beginning to stir in his desert solitude. The final act in the tale of the mutants’ emergence from self-imposed obscurity is about to begin.

Since medieval times, when the genetic anomaly that created the mutant clan first appeared, this tribe of people equipped with virtually miraculous extrasensory powers had taken care to remain out of sight of the world of normals, fearing that their mutant abilities would awaken the envy and fear of the majority population and call down merciless persecution upon them. But as the age of witch burnings and pogroms retreated into history, the mutants—cautiously, even timidly—allowed themselves to edge forward into sight. Their own scripture tells it:

And when we knew ourselves to be different,

To be mutant and therefore other,

We took ourselves away,

Sequestered that portion of us most other,

And so turned a bland face to the blind eywak pes

Of the world.

Formed our community in silence, in hiding,

Offered love and sharing to one another,

And waited until a better time,

A cycle in which we might share

Beyond our circle.

We are still waiting.

In the introduction to the second of these four novels I compared the emergence in the early twenty-first century of mutants into the mainstream of American life to the emergence, nearly a century earlier, of such political figures as Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, and other leaders of the black drive for racial equality. (I did point out that the parallel was a very approximate one, since the goal of the black civil-rights movement was
equality of opportunity
, whereas the mutants were in fact an advanced form of the human species, not merely equal but essentially superior, and so were faced with the overwhelming task of persuading the far more numerous normal-human population to accept them for what they really were, not simply to allow them the political rights that were due by Constitutional guarantee to any member of society.)

But the two volumes of the series that tell the story of the Akimura brothers provide us with a very different parallel to the course of human history as we know it: for now that the mutants are out in the open, they want to use their powers to heal and comfort the world’s suffering people, whether they be mutant or nonmutant. The kind of healing they will offer, though it has no overt religious content, will inevitably come to take on something of a religious coloration, And so what we begin to see is something analogous to the emergence of early Christianity in the first years of the Roman Empire.

Jesus lived and died during the reign of Tiberius, second of the Roman emperors. Through the decades that followed, Christianity became a powerful underground movement, persecuted and suppressed wherever it ventured into the open. But as the centuries passed, and Christianity was widely embraced throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even Rome itself, the Empire’s attitude toward this subversive religious movement gradually evolved, and finally, early in the fourth century A.D., the emperor himself—Constantine the Great—was willing to claim membership in the Church. He had seen a miraculous vision in the sky—the Cross—bearing the legend,
In Hoc Signo Vinces
—“In This Sign You Shall Conquer”—and that seems to have been decisive in his conversion (which probably also had more worldly political motives).

An edict of Constantine’s issued in the year 313 proclaimed full toleration of all religions and restitution of wrongs done to the Christians by his imperial predecessors. Laws aimed at Christianity were repealed; Sunday was made a public holiday; and, less than fifty years after Constantine’s death in 337, Christianity had become the official religion of the Empire. The astonishing metamorphosis from secret sect to dominant spiritual and political force was complete.

In the four novels of the mutant saga we see something similar beginning to happen. The hidden, wary mutants of medieval times give
way in the more tolerant twenty-first century to ones who will openly admit their powers, and we see the first election of undisguised mu
tants to public office. And now with the advent of Rick Akimura we observe a far more startling development—the beginning of a mighty quasi-religious movement, built around what is essentiallin s esseny a mutant messiah, that will sweep not only the mutant society but move into the world of normals as well.

But this parallel with ancient Christianity, like the other one, is only approximate. Jesus worked some miracles, the gospels tell us, but here we have a whole
race
of miracle-workers. The extrasensory powers of even the most timid and self-effacing mutant are far beyond the mental capacity of any normal. And though it is possible for a normal to be sympathetic to the mutants, even to fall in love with one and marry one, conversion to mutancy is altogether impossible. A Roman emperor could and did become a Christian, but no amount of willingness will turn a nonmutant into a telekinete or a telepath.

Still, some sort of rapprochement between the two branches of humanity is possible, leading to an end to the fears and misunderstandings that have divided them—when the proper leader is at hand. Or perhaps the job will take
two
leaders—one with the charisma of a messiah, and the other—well—

This is his story.