—9—
After seeing Soft Stone’s image in the COM terminal, Teresa roamed the streets, full of questions. She did not know where to go or how to focus her quest. What did her teacher want her to do? Had the apparition been only her imagination? She knew that wasn’t true. The old monk had always encouraged her to seek answers within herself and outside in the world.
Eduard and Garth had never been much interested in philosophy, but Daragon had often listened to Teresa work through her thoughts. Now she went to a BTL subdistrict office and asked how she might go about seeing Daragon, but the attendant gave her only a gruff reply. “We are unable to divulge the whereabouts of any particular officer.”
“Oh, but he’s a friend of mine. This is a personal matter.” She smiled at the attendant, who did not smile back.
“The Bureau frowns on its officers having ‘personal matters.’ “ Teresa insisted on leaving a message, which the attendant grudgingly accepted, though he gave no assurances as to whether it would ever find its way to Daragon.
Teresa wandered from place to place, confident that when the answer came, she would see it plainly. “If you want lightning to strike, child, you cannot hide in a cave,” Soft Stone had taught her. “You must plant a lot of lightning rods.”
As she searched the streets, Teresa didn’t even know what she was looking for—until she saw the religious group in the square. They called themselves Sharetakers. The cluster of converts wore colorful clothes to attract attention. They had no actual rented stall—the five volunteers just staked out their territory at an intersection of byways and talked to people who happened to walk by, trying to interest them in the Sharetaker way of life. They tried to sell second-hand possessions to raise money, liquidating worldly goods to scrape up enough credits so they could print more leaflets.
Teresa’s chest tightened. Their devotion and passion fascinated her, and she wondered if this could be the lightning bolt she had been hoping for. Her own meditations always raised more queries about the nature of existence than they answered. Hard facts on the subject eluded her. “Questions are more important than answers, little swan,” Soft Stone had been fond of saying.
The Splinters had coalesced from believers who no longer knew what to believe. Body-swapping and the all-pervasive computer/organic matrix had changed humankind more than anything in the past several thousand years—yet none of the great religious texts addressed the issue. How could any prophet worth his salt miss something that important? Impossible. Doubts had cast many former zealots adrift. Over the course of two centuries, numerous fusion religions had sprung up as people sought new answers.…
Teresa found her feet dragging her across the street toward the Sharetakers. The group consisted of two young men and three women, facing outward with their backs to each other. Flashing smiles, they talked and talked, their words overlapping in resonant syllables.
“We offer a sense of community and acceptance. We welcome newcomers with open arms,” one woman said, utterly convinced of her message.
“Nobody needs to be alone in this world, if only you join us,” said a man. Each spoke a memorized part of the speech, like a rotating information loop.
A second woman looked directly into Teresa’s eyes. Though the words could well have been part of the carefully practiced routine, they seemed to be directed specifically at her. “Are you searching for something? Are you lost? Then come and find us.”
Pedestrians bustled around her, ignoring the proselytizers. The message droned past them, just part of the white noise of the city. But Teresa heard.
“We believe in mutual sharing, bodies and minds, lives and experiences. What is a home without love? What is a society without cooperation? Only by combining our efforts, by building upon each other’s thoughts and sweat, can we rise higher. The Sharetakers are stronger than the sum of our parts.”
When the first woman noticed her interest, she signaled her fellow Sharetakers, who turned from their positions to focus on Teresa. They all came forward, accepting her like a hive organism swallowing her in its welcoming embrace.
Since the loss of Soft Stone, since leaving the monastery, Teresa had felt alone and disconnected in the world. She’d kept in touch with Garth and Eduard, meeting them regularly at Club Masquerade, but still she felt adrift.
“Would you like to hear more?” one of the Sharetaker women said.
Teresa couldn’t stop herself from nodding.…
For an hour, standing among the Sharetakers, she listened to them disseminate their message. When they encountered no other potential converts like herself, the outreach spokesman led her back to their enclave.
Out in front of a nondescript dwelling complex, a square-jawed man greeted the returning missionaries. With flashing eyes and a shock of bristly reddish hair, he carried a passion about him, a more intense focus than Teresa was accustomed to seeing.
“That’s our leader, Rhys,” the spokesman said to her, nodding toward the man. “He joined us from a different enclave in another city. We’ve never seen such all-consuming enthusiasm for our cause. Rhys truly understands what the Sharetakers are all about, how to focus us into a stronger whole.”
The redheaded leader’s presence captivated Teresa. He welcomed the groups back home, asking each Sharetaker what he or she had seen, how many trinkets they had sold, how many new members they had found.
Teresa took a step closer, glad to see a man whose course seemed so clear to him, whose life had a clear-cut path—all the things she was missing in herself.
Rhys’s gaze locked with hers, and she stood like a rabbit afraid of being flushed from the underbrush. It was as if he managed to peel away all of the masks that hid her inner strength from the world. He could look through her, into her mind and heart and see the hunger and vulnerability in her eyes.
“The Sharetakers are not a free ride for lazy people,” Rhys said with a stern edge. “We believe that humans can be complete if they share everything, share their lives, their muscles, their labor. We all work hard so that we can live peacefully together, the way people were meant to exist. One heart, one mind, many bodies. If you join us, you must join us wholeheartedly. Hold back nothing—neither your possessions nor your self. In return, you will receive all that we have, every person, every body, free for the taking.”
Then Rhys smiled, and his expression softened. He reached toward Teresa and grasped her small hands in his, squeezing tightly. He stepped back from the press of people and opened the doors to the enclave. “Come inside, Teresa, and we’ll help you settle in.”
The other Sharetakers focused on the newcomer who had caught their leader’s attention. Then they all came forward, welcoming her, introducing themselves.
Teresa easily succumbed to their overtures. Her concerns and questions about her own life washed away. She followed the Sharetakers through the doorway into the strange building and a brand new life. This place was filled with many more mysteries, but perhaps now she might find the answers … or at least the solace that she sought.