Ring Game (32 page)

Beaut, tears streaming from his eyes, did not reply.

Bigg stood up. Crow was walking toward the door. “Where you going?”

“I’m out of here,” Crow said over his shoulder.

Bigg smiled. “Congratulations,” he said to Beaut. “You finally scared him off.”

Crow stopped and turned back. “Don’t forget to have that limo ready. You’ve got the time and place, right?”

Bigg laughed. “Sure I do. I got the time and place. But there’s one thing I don’t have. At least not anymore.”

Crow waited, giving him that flat look.

Bigg said, pointing toward the agonized Beaut, “You’ve just taken out your chauffeur.”

Human beings are able to alter their own cell structures through pure mental effort. It is a proven fact that many practitioners of Zen Buddhism have, through extensive meditation, reversed the “handedness” of their own DNA, becoming mirror images of their former selves. In this respect, human cells are fundamentally different from those of all other living creatures. Except Cetaceans, of course.

—“Amaranthine Reflections” by Dr. Rupert Chandra

R
UPERT CHANDRA WAS AT
home sitting cross-legged on the bed applying his highly focused mental energy to the red mole on his abdomen when he heard the downstairs door open. He looked up, frowned, then refocused his mind on the mole. He was sure that it was a melanoma. A small thing, but something that needed to be dealt with. He had been working on it for several days now but the mole had, if anything, grown slightly larger.

He relaxed his neck muscles, lowering his head to bring his mind closer to the mole. It was an ugly little thing, a tiny red cauliflower, about the size of a baby pea. He explored its perimeter with his mind, willing power into the surrounding cells, creating a psychic barrier to contain the growth. He looked for the shimmering that was a sign of cellular activation.

Over the preceding weeks he had attempted to use negative energy to destroy the growth. That, he now realized, had been a mistake. The negative energy had spilled over onto the healthy cells surrounding the cancer cells, effectively eliminating their power to resist the unwanted tumor. All that negative energy might also explain the nausea that had been bothering him lately, and the tight feeling he’d noticed in his chest. He had ignored his own teachings. The key to cellular regeneration was positive thoughts. Amaranthine theory was not about destroying the old, it was about creating healthy new tissue.

There. He could see it now. The edges of the mole were beginning to shimmer. It seemed to be rising up off the surface. He could sense the power flooding into his cells, surrounding and lifting the mole, creating a shield between his healthy body and the red cauliflower.

The bedroom door opened, breaking his concentration. The mole settled back into place.

Rupe said, “Damn!”

Polly set her bag on a chair near the door. “Contemplating your navel again, Rupe?”

“I almost had it,” he said. “You broke my concentration.”

“Sorry. Let’s have a look.” Polly knelt down beside the bed and examined the spot on her husband’s stomach. “It doesn’t look any smaller,” she said.

“I know that.”

“Maybe you should just have Dr. Bell cut it out while we’re in Rochester.”

Rupe shook his head and stood up. He closed his bathrobe and tied the belt. “That’s Death Program thinking,” he said.

“I call it being practical. He’s going to have to knock you out to do your eyelids anyway.”

Rupe shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”

“How many hours have you spent worrying about that little old mole?”

“I’m not worrying. I’m extracting.”

“Whatever you’re doing, it’s sure taking a lot of your time. I could’ve used you at the meeting today.” She sat down on the edge of the mattress and pulled off her shoes.

“How did it go?” Rupe asked.

“Good.” Polly flashed a smile and rubbed her foot. “Actually, it went great. We’ve got forty-seven new members.”

“Forty-seven!”

“The hair was the kicker. Valerie did a nice job. I gave her a bonus. You should have seen them, Rupe. They took one look at those black roots growing in on her head, and they couldn’t open their checkbooks fast enough.”

The free, heavily advertised Anti-Aging Clinics were what attracted newcomers to the ACO. It was relatively easy to fill seats in the auditorium by offering a free show with refreshments, but turning Pilgrims into Faithful, that was a more difficult undertaking. It was the follow-up meeting, the “Forever Tea,” that truly separated the wheat from the chaff.

Everyone who had attended the post-clinic reception was told that a small percentage of them would be receiving invitations to the Sunday tea, based on recommendations from the ACO staff. Names and phone numbers were gathered, and a few days later the ACO staff phoned every last one of them and invited them to attend the very exclusive Forever Tea, where they would have the opportunity to meet with First Eldress Polyhymnia. They were also promised a free computer-generated personalized “Life Expectancy Report” based on questionnaires they had filled out at the reception.

Typically, about 10 percent of those who witnessed an anti-aging demonstration were sufficiently impressed to return to the church to learn more about the Amaranthines, and to find out how long they could expect to live.

The Forever Tea took place in the more intimate setting of the ACO chapel, an octagonal room with one hundred chairs arranged in five concentric circles around a low platform. After a brief welcome by Polly, the Life Expectancy Reports were handed out.

Each twenty-six-inch-long computer printout showed the Pilgrim’s name at the top, followed by columns of numbers, two complicated-looking graphs, a boilerplate disclaimer and, at the very bottom, in purposefully small print, subject’s projected date of death. It was not unusual for a Pilgrim, upon receiving his or her LER, to become hysterical, or to simply faint dead away.

Although the effect of the LERs was always gratifying, the most powerful element of that morning’s Forever Tea turned out to be the subject of Rupe’s age reversal, Mrs. Veronica Frank. Past seminars had netted from six to ten new paying members, but this time forty-seven of the fifty-three attendees, convinced by Val Frankel’s dark roots, agreed to sign up for the autumn Extraction Event for a minimum donation of four hundred ninety-nine dollars a head.

Later, once they began to enjoy the life-extending benefits of the events, they would be privately encouraged to contribute additional funds to their Life Account to demonstrate their commitment to the Amaranthine Way. Life Account contributions made up the bulk of overall ACO receipts.

Gaining forty-seven new members was unprecedented in ACO history.

“I really think it was the dark roots,” Polly said. “The hair was the one thing they could not deny. It was like watching forty-seven Thomases touching Christ’s wounds.”

Rupe shook his head, smiling sadly. “They reject the truth and embrace the illusion,” he said.

“We’ve always known that. Either way, we bring them life. It’s a case of the ends justifying the means.”

“Only if their commitment is real.”

“It’s no less real to them, and that’s what matters.” Polly walked over to her husband and embraced him. “You gave them reality,” she said. “You showed them what was possible. That’s why they came back.”

“I don’t know. I think I’m getting burnt out. I’m tired all the time. I feel like I’m being squeezed by giants.”

Polly touched the corner of his left eye, traced the crowsfeet with a long pink nail. “The stress is showing on both of us. But not for long.”

Rupe grasped her hand in his. “Age is an illusion, my sweet.”

Polly used her other hand to smooth his forehead. “The wrinkles are real,” she said.

“Four weeks,” Rupe said. “The time might be enough all by itself. Maybe we should go straight to Stonecrop, let nature and the powers of our minds sculpt our bodies.”

Polly laughed.

“I’m serious,” said Rupe. “Your Dr. Bell, with his knives and his lasers, I do not like him.”

“Rupe, we talked about this. It’s just part of the sizzle, a thing we do to make it easier for the Pilgrims to believe. You said it yourself. They embrace the illusion. We have to give them what they want.”

“Perhaps.” Rupe smiled sadly. Polly was right as usual. Cosmetic surgery violated certain of the Amaranthine teachings, but it served to advance a greater Amaranthine Principle, which embraced any and all means to achieving the seven steps of the Amaranth. He had moments when the larger picture escaped him, when he experienced doubts or anxieties over little things, like their scheduled visit to Youthmark, Dr. Bell’s private hospital. Polly always brought him back to ground zero.

Polly said, “I talked to Benjy this morning.” Benjy Hiss, one of the ACO’s charter members, had been placed in charge of building Stonecrop. “They finished the chapel yesterday.”

“Good! What about the house?”

“The house was done last week. All of the furniture is in and the refrigerator is stocked. We had to pay for some overtime.” Polly frowned. “It put us over budget.”

Rupe kissed her frowning lips. “Eternity will provide. Just think, my dear. After tonight’s meeting there’ll be no seminars, no workshops, no teas, no phone calls for four lovely weeks. Just you and me and Stonecrop.” He looked down into his robe at the spot on his belly. “Time to focus on the important things.”

“You know, it’s probably not too soon to see an obstetrician,” Sophie said, leaning forward over the steering wheel to see past a parked minivan.

“Why would I do that?”

Sophie let the Hyundai creep forward a few feet, nosing out of the Litten Paper Company parking lot. “I can’t see,” she muttered. A green pickup truck flashed by, missing her front bumper by inches. Sophie let the car roll out a little farther, then tromped on the gas. The Hyundai’s tires spun on a patch of sand, chirped, and propelled the car out onto Washington Avenue, cutting off an MTC bus.

The back seat of Sophie’s car was filled with paper cups and plates, plastic utensils, and assorted decorations, including expandable crepe wedding bells, large plastic bows, and a twenty-foot-long banner spelling out “Congratulations” in silver glitter letters. Sophie said, “Because you’re pregnant, that’s why.”

“Oh.” Carmen had momentarily forgotten that she was supposed to be pregnant. “I’m not
that
pregnant.”

Sophie reached over and poked Carmen’s belly with her forefinger. “You’re not showing, but you look like you’re holding water.”

“I might’ve gained a pound or two.”

“I hope your dress still fits.”

“It’ll fit.”

“It had better.” Sophie drove for a few blocks, thinking about all the things that could go wrong—in other words about everything from Carmen falling asleep at the altar to Hyatt not showing up at the church to a tornado interrupting the wedding ceremony to the untimely rapture of Reverend Buck Manelli.

Carmen said, “You worry too much.”

“I know that.” Sophie looked over at her daughter. “Tell me again, Carmen. How pregnant
are
you?”

Carmen shrugged.

“When was your last period?”

Carmen thought for a moment, trying to remember what she had told Sophie the last time they’d had this conversation.

“April?”

“Last time we talked you said March.”

“Well I don’t remember.” In fact, she didn’t. It was now August seventh. When had she had her last period? It seemed like a long time, now that she was thinking about it.

Sophie was giving her this frowning look. “Are you really pregnant?”

Carmen was still trying to remember when she’d bought her last box of tampons. She thought it had been just before Memorial Day. Could that be right? Maybe the stress of all this wedding preparation—not to mention worrying over Hyatt’s plan, which seemed crazier every time she thought about it—had thrown off her cycle.

Sophie said, “You just made it up, didn’t you? You’re not pregnant at all, are you?”

Carmen put a hand on her belly and rubbed in a slow circle. A missed period would not be that unusual. But that wouldn’t explain why her breasts had been feeling so full lately, or why she’d puked up her breakfast that morning.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I think that maybe I might be.”

There seems to be some disagreement about the exact origins of the Judge, but basically the option began life as a low cost GTO. By the time everyone had had their say, it had become a rather expensive option on top of the GTO package. The Judge became a parody of the entire musclecar movement.

—Web site devoted to GTOs

T
HE WORST PART OF
traveling outside the country was coming home to the Hubert H. Humphrey International Airport in Minneapolis. Debrowski shuffled forward a few steps, dragging her two suitcases, waiting for her turn with the customs officer, waiting for him to direct her off into one of the inspection rooms so that one of them could paw through her belongings and hammer her with accusatory questions. They might even do a body search. It had happened to her before.

Debrowski had been in and out of the United States more than a dozen times in the past five years and, without exception, her return had excited the interest of the customs inspectors. The first time it had happened she had been flying in from Peru, where she’d gone to spend a few weeks with a group of coca leaf-chewing Indians. That had been during the last months of her druggie days, when she was still trying to convince herself that there was something hip and noble and natural about cocaine. She had gone in search of Native American wisdom and spirituality, but had found only a lot of drug dealers, guns, bad teeth, and poverty. She had returned to the States thoroughly depressed, only to be subjected to a ninety-minute inspection at the airport. She hadn’t been surprised or particularly offended. She figured it must have been the motorcycle jacket that made her stand out. Or the marijuana-leaf design stitched across its back. Besides, it was reasonable that they should suspect her. She might have been transporting a balloon full of coke in her rectum, as had been proposed to her by one of the coked-up Americans she’d met in Lima. Fortunately she had declined, and the customs officers had found nothing.