"Like I cared. After my usual rant about how the government was irrelevant—the big word in those days—and how awakening your xelton was the only thing that mattered, he went on to explain how the government did matter and how I'd lose everything and do federal time for tax evasion and all sorts of other crimes if I didn't get my shit together. He said he was the man to straighten things out.
"And damn if he doesn't do just that. Sets up accounts, keeps records, writes letters to the IRS, files all the right forms, and in no time we're 'in compliance,' as the feds like to say."
Jamie watched Jack get up and walk to the front door. The rain was doing drum rolls on the roof. He opened the door and stared out at the storm for a few seconds, then closed it and returned to his chair. He reminded her of a cat when it sensed a coming storm.
She turned to Blascoe. "So now he had your confidence. What did he do next?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, he went from assistant to running the whole show. How?"
Blascoe showed anger for the first time since their arrival.
"How? By being a weasel, that's how! Course I didn't see it at the time. He kept coming to me and saying we needed to spread the word about Dor-mentalism—yeah, he hated the name but we were stuck with it. When he promised greater fame and fortune, I said, 'Cool. Do it, man.'
"And do it he did. Hired someone to expand my original pamphlet into The Book ofHokano and really ran wild with it. I mean, he added a shitload of new stuff I'd never heard of. I might have stopped him if I'd known, or cared. But I didn't. Not really. I was on extended leave from reality—Mr. Spaceman. But if I'd taken a gander at what he was doing, I'm pretty sure that even in my addled state I'd have squawked. It was scary."
"Scary how?" Jack said.
"All the rules, man. The rigid structure. The guy was rule crazy. I mean, he took this nice, easygoing, fun thing I'd begun and started messing it up. All these crazy acronyms and such. He codified everything into steps and procedures. It wasn't anything like what was really going on. I mean, he left out the sex part completely. He made it all self-realization and self-improvement and maximizing potential instead of getting laid.
"I didn't know any of this at the time. And for a while it looked like it wouldn't matter what was in The Book of Hokano because he couldn't find a publisher anywhere in the world that wanted it. But that didn't stop Brady. He made an end run by starting Hokano House and publishing it himself." Blascoe frowned and shook his head. "Hard to believe people would fall for his line of bullshit, but they did. In droves.
"With all the new converts, Brady was able to branch out. He started opening Dormentalist temples all around the country. Christ, templesl Back in Marin we were still doing the commune thing, you know, according to my vision, but everywhere else it was Brady-style regimentation. And on my land!"
"Wait," Jack said. "Your land? Where'd you get land?"
"Given to me. Lots of my followers gave over their worldly possessions to the movement, and pieces of land made up a fair number of those possessions. Brady would sell the pieces we had and buy others, with no rhyme or reason. Like Monopoly for psychos, man. Guy's land crazy. Soon he had temples in all the major cities—New York, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Frisco, L.A., Chicago, you name it—and they were thriving.
"He made his Fusion Ladder thing into a money machine. Made it so you had to take 'courses' to climb from rung to rung. He designed texts for each rung and sold them for rapacious prices. You couldn't afford the price, too bad: You had to have the text to complete the rung. A money grab, that's what it was. One big money grab.
"But he didn't stop with textbooks. He commissioned a series of personal-true-story books about how Dormentalism had changed lives. The first time I got an idea of where my happy little cult was going was when he had me read the books onto tape. I started getting a bad feeling then, but when the books and the cassettes sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and I started seeing the checks rolling in, well…" He flashed Jamie a quick, guilty smile. "You know how it is."
"I can only imagine," she said. But maybe she wouldn't have to imagine when she turned this series of articles into a book.
"But Brady's not through yet. The guy's got endless ideas. He hired some hack novelists to write a series of thrillers under my name starring this Fully Fused detective hero who communes with his xelton to solve crimes."
"The David Daine mysteries," Jack said. "Someone lent me one recently."
Blascoe looked at him. "How far'd you get?"
"Not very."
"Yeah, they were awful, but that didn't stop them from being bestsellers. That's because Brady issued an edict to all the temples that every
Dormentalist had to buy two copies: one for personal use and one to give away. And they all had to buy them the same week. The result: instant bestsellers."
Jamie pumped her fist. "I knew it! Everybody figured that was the case, but no one could prove it."
And here it was, straight from the horse's mouth—or horse's ass, depending on how you wanted to look at it.
"Yeah, it all worked. Dormentalism kept getting bigger and bigger, spreading throughout the world, even to Third World countries—which may not have much money but they've got bodies and their governments practically have FOR SALE signs on their front lawns.
"Then came the time I thought Brady was gonna lose it. When he heard back in '93 that the Scientologists had wrangled themselves tax-exempt status for their church, he went after the same thing. But no way. Got us officially declared a church, yeah, but couldn't get tax-free status. Made him crazy that the Scientologists had something we didn't, but no matter what he tried, the IRS said no way. Which means those Scientologists must have had something super bad on somebody really high up to rig their exemption. So Brady had to be satisfied with starting the Dormentalist Foundation, which ain't as good a tax dodge as a tax-exempt religion, but it gets the job done."
Blascoe dropped his hands into his lap and hung his head.
"Then one day a few years ago I woke up and realized this thing called Dormentalism wasn't at all what I'd had in mind, that its natural harmony had turned into something ugly, the exact opposite of what I'd intended."
Jack shook his head. "Sort of like building a glass house and then hiring Iggy Pop to house sit."
"Just about. Even worse. At least you can fire a house sitter, but me… I had this high-sounding title of Prime Dormentalist, but I was a figurehead. I had no say in where Dormentalism—my thing—was going. Hardly anyone else did either, except maybe Brady and his inner circle on the High Council.
"Like I said, he'd looked like a godsend, but he turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened to Dormentalism. Or to me. I didn't believe in God when I started out, but I do now. Oh, not the Judeo-Christian God, but Somebody watching over things, seeing that what goes around comes around in certain cases. Like mine. I'm full of cancer because I started a cancer known as Dormentalism."
He made a strange sound. It took Jamie a few heartbeats to realize he was sobbing.
"It's not fair! I never wanted this corporate Grendel, this litigious,
money-grubbing monster. I was just looking to gel laid and have a good time." He looked up. 'That's all! Is that so bad? Should 1 have to pay for it by being eaten alive by my own cells?"