Джеффри Дивер - The Goodbye Man

Eli fired a smile toward Shaw.

“In the forestry business.”

Slick...

“So I sold my companies — at huge profits, by the way. I got every last penny, so I could fund this place. I traveled the world to study philosophy...”

Another voice near Shaw was speaking simultaneously with Eli: “...religion and science and medicine. I worked day and night...”

“I once worked twenty-six hours in one day! How did I do that? Can you imagine how I did that?”

Whispers, “The time zone.”

Eli laughed. “The time zone. I gained two hours flying east to west. I studied all the time. Study, study, study. Some of the beliefs I rejected, some I liked. Everywhere I went I looked for people who were happy and those who weren’t. And finally... finally I learned the secret to overcoming depression and anxiety and that feeling of loss. And I created the Osiris Foundation.”

A wave of clapping, begun by the well-oiled Inner Circle, as coordinated as the Rockettes at Rockefeller Center.

Lifting both his arms, quieting the audience. “Do you know why I’ve named our group after Osiris?”

“Tell us!” came a shout.

“We love you, Master Eli!”

“Ancient Egypt, 2500 B.C., Osiris was a god, murdered by his brother, who cut the body into pieces and scattered them over Egypt.”

Shaw half-expected the audience to start booing Osiris’s evil brother but they remained silent.

“Now, get this. Are you ready? Osiris’s wife and her sister traveled the country, found the pieces and bound them in cloth — that’s where the practice of mummification came from, by the way. So Osiris... after the parts were put back together, he became even more powerful. He became god of fertility and of the underworld. He controlled birth and death. What a gorgeous man!

“That’s why I named our family the Osiris Foundation — because Osiris was dismantled and then reassembled into someone new. Someone stronger, more content, happier. I mean, hey, the god of fertility ? He’d have to be pretty happy with that job, wouldn’t you think? Sign me up for that one!”

Eli was eating up the laughter.

“Well, that’s what I’m going to do for you. I’ve created a way to take you apart and reassemble you into the person you should be. Happy, content, productive, loving and loved. And how do I do that? Somebody tell me. I want to hear it!”

A chorus shouted, “The Process!”

Fierce clapping, not in rhythm to Beethoven or any other piece of music. Just feverish applause.

“And what does the Process help us do? What does it help us get back to? Somebody knows the answer! Somebody out there. The Process helps us get back to our...”

“True Core!”

“See, I said you were the best! I knew it! Our True Core. Some people call it your soul, some people call it your spirit... But those words carry a lot of baggage. Let’s get rid of that and call it your True Core. It’s who you really are, who you were born as. You can look at it like a beautiful garden that over the years has been built on. Now there’s an ugly concrete building, dirty clapboard walls, covered with a rusty tin roof. Graffiti. There’s trash in the yard.

“But the garden’s still there, the roots living under the ground. The Process tears down the clapboard, cuts up the roof, jackhammers the foundation, carts it all away. It opens up the garden once more.

“Through the Process you ‘true up.’ That’s what I call it, tearing down that ugly building and starting over. Like Osiris.”

A chant: “True up, true up, true up!”

The whisper beside Shaw: “From the Yesterday, a better Today...”

Eli called out, “From the Yesterday, a better Today... From the Today, a perfect Tomorrow.”

“You’re our Guiding Beacon!”

“We love you!”

Eli raised his arms over his head again, shouting, “The best... is yet to come. The best... is yet to come!”

The ICs whipped up the frenzy: “The best...”

The crowd responded, “...is yet to come!”

Eli strode off the stage, to his two awaiting bodyguards. Then he vanished. Anja and Steve rose and followed.

The call-and-response chanting filled the valley and, somehow, Shaw felt the words resonating in his chest.

“The best... is yet to come!”

Never be obvious.

In other words: keep a low profile. This is how Colter Shaw was presently following Victoria through the camp.

At the end of the Discourse, he’d noted her eyes wide with adulation, staring at Eli. When he walked from the stage, she turned and clutched her notebook to her chest, then headed to the woods bordering the eastern side of the camp.

Shaw had followed. He watched her in the reflection of windows. Watched her in his periphery. Watched her shadow when he couldn’t watch her actual form.

She now entered the woods and started up the hill, on the top of which was the bluff overlooking fifty miles of majestic panorama, anchored by soaring peaks. Victoria’s head was down, framed by ringlets of hair.

She was climbing steadily to the bluff. The steep incline didn’t slow her. Shaw followed with sufficient distance so that if he happened to step on one of the branches or crisp leaves he was trying to avoid, she probably wouldn’t hear.

Shaw himself now heard a snap; the sound was from behind him. He stopped quickly, crouched and looked back. Though the foliage was thick — sage, holly and serviceberry — it wasn’t so dense that it would obscure the pale blue tops or gray tunics of a Companion or an AU following. Still, he saw nothing. He waited a moment longer. No more noise, no motion. If anyone had been following him, he or she had vanished... or had gone silent.

Should he double back and see? No, he decided.

He glanced up the hill. Victoria was no longer in sight.

He continued east, climbing toward the grassy bluff on the other side of the woods. When he got to the top he spotted her on one of the benches overlooking the view. Her notebook was open, though she wasn’t jotting in it. She was staring out.

Deciding not to walk onto the bluff from the same trail she’d used — she’d think he was following her — he retraced his steps a dozen yards, once again looking for anyone surveilling him. He saw no one. He found another path up to the bluff and hiked up this one, emerging on the bluff well to Victoria’s right.

He walked close to the edge himself, surveying the cliff once more. In the full light, he decided, it was still a bad one for climbing, certainly for a descent. You’d have to rappel. He reflected that the surface was similar to that of Echo Ridge, which he had never climbed but had in fact executed a high-speed rappel to get to the base. He never was quite sure why he did. The body that lay, shattered, in the dry creek bed below was long past saving.

Turning, he glanced Victoria’s way. Her eyes were on him. Her reaction was curious. She looked down to her notebook quickly. His impression was that she felt guilty, as if she’d been caught daydreaming when she should have been writing in the journal.

Shaw squinted and walked closer. “You... from last night.”

“Novice...”

“Carter. And you’re...” Frowning at his feigned defective memory.

“Apprentice Victoria.” They did the shoulder salute; hers was reluctant. She wasn’t pleased at his presence.

He said, “Didn’t remember. This whole place is kind of weird. Or maybe I’m not supposed to call it ‘place.’” Her gray eyes were mesmerizing.

“What do you mean?” Her voice was abrupt. She wasn’t nearly as timid as last night, though Shaw wasn’t the dangerous Hugh or all-powerful Eli.

“Somebody called the Foundation something like that last night and got corrected.”