“Ben, please! You’re not making this any easier for me. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“It never came up till we met Lor Lu. And after that I knew it would upset you. Probably more than it does now.”
“Mom,” Becca piped up, “I’m old enough to take Life Healing. And Raquel will be when she’s ten. Can we? Please?”
Lee took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, you may not.”
Their response to that worried her. They didn’t plead, they didn’t fuss. They didn’t even say, “But dad did, and it didn’t do anything bad to him.” They simply turned their eyes to the television, though she had no illusions about their ears.
* * *
In bed, two hours later, she asked Ben what Life Healing was like. “You sit in front of an aural field enhancer,” he answered. “It looks a bit like a desk computer with a small antenna. Your guide reads from a list of short questions till he gets a meaningful aural response. Then he asks other questions until you see the event that caused the response. See it for yourself. That’s when it gets hairy. You revisit things that were done to you, or things you did to others, or saw done to others—traumatic incidents that left scars on your psyche. Once you get grooved in, most of them are of past lives, or deaths, because there’ve been so many of them.”
Lee said nothing for half a minute. “On your psyche,” she said at last, her voice brittle. “What does that mean? What good does it do?”
Ben’s answer was soft. “It makes life easier. Among other things, it makes you less vulnerable to things that happen in this life.”
“It’s a cult thing!”
“Not really. It’s a psychotherapy suitable for ordinary people, developed by a licensed psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Verbeek. Synthesized from elements of earlier practices, actually.”
A licensed psychiatrist, she thought. As if that’s reassuring.
“You might try reading some of Dove’s columns and talks,” Ben added.
She tightened inwardly. Not likely. She’d felt Ngunda’s magnetism, probably more effective for being casual. It was easy for some people to be hooked by him. “You’d like the girls to have Life Healing, wouldn’t you?” she said.
“It would be good for them, but it’s nothing I’d lobby for. They’re doing great as they are.”
He peered at his wife in the darkness, knowing she’d lie awake stewing. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you and I get up and watch TV awhile. The African Queen is playing on seventy-four about now. I’ll mix you a Hungarian screwdriver.”
Lee sighed. “We might as well. Or I might as well. There’s no need for you to lose sleep.”
He chuckled. “You’ll need someone to help you through the more exciting parts.”
She snorted. “What parts are those?”
He laughed. “Parts is parts. Whatever parts excite you.”
She hit him with her pillow, then rolled out of bed before he could grab her. “All right,” she said. “But make the drink weak. I’ll want more than one.”
13
Lee was thoroughly in love with her office, and for a lot stronger reasons than the Dial-a-Mug beverage station, or the view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. As much as she enjoyed those, it was the design and equipment that really made it, especially the 5×8-foot wall screen. Ngunda himself had ordered it for her. On it, a command to her computer called up her rough-draft operations chart, as far as she’d gotten on it. Either in standard form, or as interlocking flow charts with call-up overlays. She used it as an easy-to-read working tool, as well as for conferences.
She’d decided to like Ngunda for now, despite his being a guru.
Most people at Millennium headquarters left their office doors open. She preferred hers closed. Thus Larry Rocco knocked and identified himself. When she called, “Come in,” he brought with him a man she’d never seen before.
“Hi, Lee,” Larry said. “This is Duke Cochran, a writer for American Scene. Duke, this is Lee Shoreff, our resident organizational genius.” He turned back to Lee. “You’ve probably read Duke’s articles. He’ll be with us for a while, writing about Millennium and Dove, and I’m introducing him around. He did a great piece on Dove’s Sacramento appearance in the new issue. He may ask you for an interview between tours.”