Helix

By Phyl G

If we suppress the impulses that inspire religious terrorism, do we also eliminate the spiritual impulses that lead to transcendent acts? Do they stem from the same source in the human soul, intertwining like the helix of our DNA, condemning us to an endless, deadly either/or choice?

"Helix" puts those questions to Peter Stewart, after the apparent suicide of his twin brother Jon. A century after the world was shaken by global religious wars, a United Nations government has brought peace by taking the teaching of religion out of the hands of families and spiritual institutions, controlling the doctrines taught in school, and not allowing children to declare or practise a religious preference until age 18. But Peter senses that the new peace stems from a deadness of spirit that has infected society, and he finds no inner resources to help him grapple with his twin’s death. Only when he discovers a "religious underground," fighting to bring freedom of religious choice back to the world, does his own spirit seem to revive. But behind this movement looms the prospect of reintroducing the freedom to attack others in the name of one’s own spiritual beliefs. Peter’s exploration of censored history and his struggle with this either/or problem interweave with his ambivalence about the dangerous project of the religious underground throughout the novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phyl G
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987802200

Phyl G

I'm a writer and editor who lives in Toronto with two thousand books and the memories of four beloved cats. I have a BA and an MA in the Philosophy of World Religions.

Book preview

Helix

By Phyl Good

Copyright 2011 Phyl Good

Smashwords Edition

Cover 2011 Kevin Borchers

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Chapter 1

Your brother is dead.

Peter stood at the base of the broad stairway leading up to the entrance of the Hindu temple, and wondered how he could force himself to climb the last few steps and walk into the funeral service. It wasn't just the strangeness of the temple that paralyzed him, out here milling with strangers on the front sidewalk; he would have had just as much trouble making himself go into one of his own Mormon Catholic churches, for a purpose like this.

Suicide, it had been.

Your brother is dead.

Beth, Peter's boss, had told him as gently as possible when she entered his office a week ago in the company of a department nurse. Most people didn't need a nurse when learning of the death of a loved one. But Jon was – had been – his twin. Maybe they'd thought the unusual connection would set Peter reeling beyond repair. Maybe they thought suicide was genetic.

Whatever they'd expected, he had disappointed them.

It was the religion that did it. It probably killed him, you know. Andrea stood at his side, staring up toward the wide arched doorway of the temple, and clenched her jaw as she struggled with her grief. She, at least, had responded normally to the devastating news.

Jon's religion? Peter echoed faintly. How could his Hinduism have 'killed him'? Our religion wasn't that important to us. We hardly ever talked about it. Or rather, he himself hadn't. Once he and Jon and Andrea had made their official Declaration of Religious Preference eight years ago, at age eighteen, he'd thought little more about it. And later, when his brother had occasionally mentioned his interest in the subject, he'd hardly paid attention.

Now he stared at his companion, wondering how she could see any connection between Jon's interest in religion and his decision to kill himself.

Maybe you didn't talk about it, Andrea reminded him, but you know he thought about it a lot more than you did. She turned on her heel and began ascending the steps to the gilded doors, strands of her long, reddish blonde hair lifting as a warm, early summer breeze drifted past. Peter reflected that she seemed to have retained the ability to analyze, despite her sorrow. He almost envied her; his own version of grief was manifesting like every other emotion in his life, locked in almost frozen immobility.

Andrea had been as close to Jon as he had, since they were all in high school together, so maybe she was just trying to find something to blame. Jon had taken a little more interest in religion than his twin or their girlfriend, declaring for Hinduism and then actually participating in it. By contrast, Peter had declared Mormon Catholic, pretty much by default, since that was his mother's preference and had once been his father's. And Andrea was so uninterested that she declared Atheism and never thought about it again. So yes, Jon had a little extra interest, but even taking that into account, religion was so innocuous and unimportant that no one, surely, could blame it for something as extreme and tragic as a suicide.

A crowd milled about in the vestibule, creating a low murmuring backdrop of sound as Peter searched the faces, looking for his parents. He saw more than a few people do double-takes at the sight of him. It had to be a shock to see him wearing their dead friend's face, even though Jon had undoubtedly told them he had a twin. Peter wondered if he should smile at them, to show he understood, but found himself averting his eyes instead, as though guilty of some crime for being the survivor.

He and Andrea located his parents and entered the sanctuary with them, leaving their shoes at the door as instructed. The high domed ceiling looming over the circular room made it feel even bigger than it was. Niches about two feet high all around the cream-colored walls contained small statues – gods, probably? – while several images of what were undeniably deities stood in three large alcoves at the far end of the sanctuary. The place was already crowded enough that Peter and his companions needed to veer to the left, to sit near a wall about halfway into the room.

It surprised him that everyone had to sit on the carpeted floor, which was uncomfortable enough in a suit, but even more awkward for Andrea and his mother in their skirts. He wondered what Jon used to wear when he came here. He looked around the crowd again before he sat down, and saw as many Caucasian faces as Indian. No kids under eighteen, of course, since they couldn't legally be exposed to religion outside the classroom until they were adults. And nationality didn't matter so much these days, when it came to religious preference. But he noted that even the Caucasian men who practiced Hinduism wore the comfortable white tunic and leggings that constituted more traditional Indian garb. They didn't seem as awkward, sitting on the floor, and the women who wore saris appeared equally at ease.

The funeral service began.

Your brother is dead.

He should not be here. Peter looked around as though bewildered, taking in the many-armed statues in their alcoves with their offerings of flowers and fruit and incense, and listening to the music of the sitars and tiny cymbals and bells. And with a deep pang, the strongest emotion he'd felt since Beth walked into his office, he wondered how these things could have appealed to the brother whom he'd known so well in every other respect. What had Andrea meant, about Jon's religion killing him?

The actual funeral service – did they even call it a funeral service in the Hindu religion? – went on for a little while, but Peter hardly heeded what the priest was saying. He stared at the little urn before the altar, thinking, My god, that's him. That's Jon. Those ashes in there. His bones, his hair, his eyes, all gone. My own flesh, my own self, just ashes in a little jar. The thought was as surreal as the images in the alcoves with their many arms and their blue skin and their flowers and companion animals. It would have made him want to scream, if he'd been capable of expressing such a strong emotion.

The brahmin, seated cross-legged on a low dais before the three alcoves at the front, beside an open fire altar in the floor, was dressed in white like the other Hindu devotees in the crowd. He spoke in short paragraphs interspersed with chants in some Indian language, probably recitations of scriptural passages. Peter dutifully tried to focus on the English words of the service. There was some vague talk about reincarnation in a symbolic way, and Jon remaining alive in their hearts, and so on: the same bland, insipid prattle about goodness and peace and niceness that he would have heard in his own Mormon Catholic church if he ever attended.

That was another surreal thing: that his surroundings should be so strange while he listened to the same things he would hear week after week, in any church or mosque or synagogue or temple in the world.

He surveyed his parents, seated on the carpet to his right. Margaret, his Mormon Catholic mother, gazed fixedly at the urn, jiggling the beads of a Hindu rosary that Jon had given her for her birthday two years ago. The Hindu and Catholic rosaries were virtually interchangeable, but she derived more comfort from fingering the Hindu cult object because it had been Jon's. Peter wouldn't begrudge her whatever comfort she could find, even if it came from such a meaningless object.

He stole a quick, uneasy look at his Judaistic father, wearing his yarmulke to honor Jon in his own religious way. The family had had the option of choosing a purely civil ceremony, but David and Margaret Stewart had chosen the Hindu service for their dead son because Jon would have wanted it. They were right, of course. But the weight of all this religious imagery sat on Peter's spirit like a mound of dead, wet leaves in autumn.

'It was the religion that did it,' Andrea had said, but she had to be wrong. Religion was unimportant because it was all the same, everywhere you went. Different gods and objects, but the same old sloganeering. Why people used to fight over it, all those centuries till the middle of the twenty-second, he couldn't imagine. It caused no problems if kept in its place. And surely it would never induce anybody to commit suicide. How could she really believe what she'd said? She sat to his left, clutching his hand and staring blindly at one of the statues, tears streaming down her cheeks. It had to be grief talking; she'd never taken religion any more seriously than he had.

Peter wished he could escape this place. He needed really badly to get away by himself, to try to deal with his own pain and come out of the frozen place where he'd lived for the last week. He needed to seek out some comfort of his own, if it existed anywhere, and find a way to deal with the shock and anguish of his brother's death, the bleak moments of wondering what he would do now without his other half, his other self. He had never hurt so much in his entire life, and all of the pain remained stuck inside, paralyzing him. And sitting in this god-infested place, listening to these religious platitudes, gave him no comfort at all.

The priest was doing something odd now; he seemed to be pouring butter into the small fire in the center of the altar, the liquid spitting slightly as it came in contact with the low flames. That was something you'd never see in the Mormon Catholic church, Peter had to admit, but he couldn't understand the significance of it. Some kind of offering, it seemed, but he didn't know to whom. There were many gods in Hinduism, weren't there? It was Buddhism that had no gods. He got the Eastern religions mixed up sometimes. The basic gist of religions might be the same, but the cosmetics varied.

After a few more unusual ritual acts, at last the funeral was over, except for the reception downstairs where they were apparently going to eat the food offered to the gods. He would like to have skipped that part, but he couldn't leave his parents alone; he was all they had left now. He shied away from that thought, and let Andrea lead him with the crowd as everyone moved downstairs from the sanctuary.

The basement was like any other church basement, with folding tables set up along the sides and church women dishing out food. People moved about and talked in the middle, their voices creating a slight echo, bouncing off the yellow painted concrete walls. Balancing their paper plates precariously with one hand, they ate and plied their plastic utensils with the other, the way worshippers would do at any church social. Peter made his way to a table and accepted a plate of fruit accompanied by rice and a piece of chicken covered in yellowish sauce. He tasted the sauce carefully; it was some kind of curry, with raisins and peanuts in it. Quite good, actually. But he took a piece of flat bread to offset it a little.

As he turned from the serving table, he came face to face with a black-haired young man, dressed in white like his fellows. The man stepped back with a gasp of alarm at the sight of him, even though he immediately caught himself, having realized his mistake.

Peter commented, trying to make it easier, I'm sorry. I'm beginning to wish I'd worn a mask. It might have helped if I had a prominent scar or something.

The other managed a small, wry laugh. We all knew you'd be here, but it doesn't make it easier when we actually see you. I'm sorry if that intrudes on your privacy in any way. I don't seem to be controlling myself very well.

Don't apologize. You knew Jon in ways I didn't, so I know this whole thing is almost as hard for his Hindu friends as it is for me. Especially the way he… Peter shrugged, unwilling to say the devastating words to a stranger.

The way he left us, yes, the other supplied softly. It was unexpected. Did he give you any idea he was going to…do what he did?

His eyes, so brown they were almost black, had fixed on Peter's face as though he expected Jon's twin to be able to unravel the mystery. No. He didn't, Peter said abruptly. And I'm sorry, I don't think I can talk about it.

Of course. Now I really am intruding. Please forgive me and accept my sympathies, in the name of all Jon's friends here. The young man stepped back to allow Peter to get past him with the food.

Peter spotted his mother and father across the room with plates of their own, talking to the white-robed priest. But Andrea found him again, carrying her own plate, before he could join them. They call this 'prasad', she informed him, lifting her fork to take another bite.

This chicken dish? It's really good.

No, this whole act of eating the food the gods give back after an offering. It's called 'prasad'.

How do you know that?

I asked. I've never been in a Hindu temple before, so I thought I'd ask some questions and find out what everything means. It's been a few years since we studied all this in school. She seemed to have regained some of her usual equilibrium. Certainly the strained shadows of grief around her blue eyes appeared to have eased.

Does it really 'mean' anything? Peter wondered, stabbing his chicken a couple of times with his plastic fork.

To some people, yes. It must have meant something to Jon, and maybe that's what is important. Just think, he must have done this quite often, after temple meetings. He might have stood here eating that very same chicken dish, Peter.

A wave of nausea swept over him, and he moved to set the plate on an empty table nearby. Andrea caught his arm, demanding, What's wrong?

I can't bear the thought. Jon in this room, eating in a crowd like this…

It actually makes me feel better, she mused. I didn't expect it to. But think of it, Peter. Jon was here, with many of these people, eating this food just like we are now. Doesn't it make you feel close to him, like you're sharing something with him? I almost feel like he's in the room with us right now.

But he's not. That's the awful part. He'll never be here again. If you feel close to him, it's just your imagination. Maybe you find it comforting, but I don't. He tossed his fork onto the plate in the middle of the sauce. I guess you don't think this religious stuff killed him after all.

She touched his stiff cheek, briefly. I'm really sorry you don't feel comforted. I wish I knew what could help you through this. And…I still think I'm right, but… She looked around the room at the groups of quietly conversing mourners, sharing their ritual meal together. I don't know. I still feel close to Jon here, for some reason. I'm sorry you're having such a hard time.

It's all right, he said automatically. When I get some time to think, I'll be able to sort it out. But I'm glad you feel better, at least. He picked up his plate again, absently. I just had some guy ask if I had any idea why Jon would kill himself. As though, since I'm his twin, I should have special insight.

That was tactless.

But it's not like I haven't asked myself the same thing all week, for the same reason. Peter resolutely put the thought aside and prompted her, So. Why don't you tell me what else you've found out, aside from this pra – pra –

Prasad, she said. I'm not sure…you probably wouldn't like the other thing they told me.

Oh, go ahead. Why not learn as much as we can while we're here, since we probably won't be back? In honor of Jon, let's say.

Andrea hesitated. All right, but you may not… A little shrug. One of the older women told me about a funeral custom they used to have, that her grandfather actually performed when he was young, just before the world governments made all the changes. Hinduism used to have a really strong ancestor component, when religion was still passed down through the family. It was the son's responsibility to see that his father and grandfather and other ancestors were kept in good standing in heaven…or wherever they were thought to be. That was what a lot of the home rituals were about, I guess.

The home rituals. Peter digested the idea a moment. He couldn't imagine doing anything religious at home, with his parents. The idea repulsed him. But you mentioned a funeral ritual, he dragged his thoughts back to Andrea.

Yes. She said that the father's body used to be burned in a funeral pyre…

I remember hearing that. Pretty barbaric.

Maybe not. It's not different from cremation, after all – just more public. But there is a barbaric part to it. After the fire was out, and the bones were left on the pyre, the woman told me that in order to allow his father's spirit to escape to the next world, the son had to smash open his father's skull. She stopped. Peter? Are you okay? I'm sorry, I knew I shouldn't have mentioned it.

He couldn't stop his hands from trembling. Any minute now, he was going to drop everything all over the floor. He backed against the empty table and blindly set the plate on it. Oh Andrea, why did you tell me that? Is that another thing you wish we could share with Jon?

Peter, I'm sorry, I should never – She tried to take hold of him, to calm him down, but he pulled out of her grasp. With a stifled groan he fled the place, taking the stairs two and sometimes three at a time in his desperation to escape.

He went home, having nowhere else to go. As he pushed the door shut and leaned against it, surveying the short front hall and the large living room beyond it, he was actually relieved that he'd never shared this place with his brother. They'd lived together in a two-bedroom apartment until a year ago, when they'd gone separate. So this was a refuge where nothing would bring a sudden keen recollection of Jon, and there were no empty places where it might once have been natural to find his brother waiting. The apartment had been empty from the start, so there were no new gaping voids now.

He undid his shirt partway and flung his suit jacket onto a chair. Phone. Off, he said aloud, and the Off indicator flickered on the desk terminal along the closest wall, between a bookcase and a lamp stand. The last thing he needed tonight was an intrusion into his privacy. Any intrusions, in fact. Door. Lock, he added, listening for the click from the doorway behind him.

He'd realized about halfway home that he shouldn't have dashed off without letting his parents know he was leaving, but it was too late now. He knew Andrea would stay with them until they went home, so at least they hadn't been totally abandoned. He'd call to apologize tomorrow, but he imagined his mother would probably understand.

It wasn't easy putting on a brave show in public for family and friends, and what he wanted most right now was to splash his exhausted face with cool water. Maybe he'd put his whole head under the tap to see if the water could revive him. Maybe he'd put his face in the basin and drown.

Stop it. Stop. That wasn't a thought he could allow himself, even as a joke, even for melodramatic effect. Not after what had happened to Jon. What Jon had done.

He wandered into the bathroom, bleakly surveying its sterile white walls, chrome fixtures, and grey granite tiles. With a little shrug he flicked the light switch, taking his shirt off and draping it over the doorknob. The tap water was cool and soothing as he lifted his hands and splashed it on his face. He could feel it trickling down his arms and dripping off his elbows, into the white oval basin below. It tickled. A very simple, enjoyable sensation after the paralyzing complexity of his feelings in the last week.

He raised his head and looked into the wide mirror behind the sink and faucet. Ah. There was at least one reminder of Jon in this apartment. In this place, and any other place he could ever go. Lit by the two lamps fixed above the mirror, Jon's face stared back at him from behind it: straight, light brown hair tumbling onto his forehead and fringed above his ears, oval face, deep brown, thoughtful eyes. They stared at each other, he and Jon, for a very long moment.

Your brother is dead.

Peter reached without looking, and found his heavy blue ceramic drinking glass. He managed a sardonic smile. Bend forward, he whispered, his voice cracking. So I can smash your head in and send you away for good.

Dammit, his hands were shaking again. He watched the glass fall in slow motion and break into a million pieces in the basin. Strangely, he seemed to be falling with it, and suddenly realized that his knees had given out. He sank helplessly to the floor and found himself leaning against the toilet, his whole body shaking now.

The sobs heaved through him like earthquakes as he cried. He huddled into himself on the cool tile as his grief poured out in a violent flood. If he'd been able to think coherently, he might have wondered if he could ever come back after this tidal wave swept him so far away. But he was beyond thought as his grief at last found a means of escape.

It was a very long time before the flood subsided. He gradually came back to an awareness of himself, curled like a fetus on the floor, whimpering a little as the tide receded. He was drained, as ragged and exhausted as though he'd truly been washed up like seaweed on a beach. With some effort he got up on one elbow, and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. He leaned back against the toilet, looking around and taking a long, deep breath. He hadn't lost control like this for nineteen years. It terrified him.

And yet, for the first time since he'd heard the news of Jon's death, he felt like he could think clearly. With the breaking of the dam inside, the frozen immobility of the last week was gone. It still hurt worse than anything had ever hurt in his life. But now he felt as though he could go on from here, and maybe figure something out. The relief was so palpable he could almost see it hanging around him like a cloud.

Peter closed his eyes and breathed it in, flexing his hands and feet as though the feeling were returning to them after they'd been paralyzed. His breath caught as he sensed something else, and he kept his eyes closed, waiting. For a few poignant seconds, it was as though Jon himself were in the room with him, leaning against the doorframe with that lazy smile of his. Not saying anything, just…being there, as Peter needed him to be. It was a strange, wordless kind of communion. And it was infinitely comforting.

But after a bit, it was gone. And there was only Peter, shirtless, sitting on the floor. He got to his feet, wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, and began cleaning the glass out of the sink.

Chapter 2

Two days after his brother's funeral, Peter trudged back into the grey, square, four-story building in which he worked as a Historical and Statistical Analyst for the U.N. government. Summer was just blooming, and the manicured lawns and flower beds surrounding the Vital Stats building splashed color everywhere in bright contrast to the straight lines and subdued tones of the building.

Even the large paved square before the entrance was punctuated with big round planers of flowers along its edges. He was almost surprised to notice how bright everything was. Life had seemed pretty colorless since the moment a few days ago, when his supervisor and one of the health nurses at work had come to his office to tell him Jon had been found dead that morning.

Peter's supervisor, Beth Sanderson, had given him an extra week off after the funeral, recognizing without being told that trying to deal with a suicide in the family was much more difficult than if the person had died from illness or an accident. But by the second day he was so restless he had to go back to work. He might not be able to concentrate very well, but he knew Beth would give him some leeway. And work would give him a valid excuse for not going to Jon's apartment and cleaning it out. That wasn't something he could face just yet, though he knew he'd have to do it soon. Maybe next weekend.

He was in the middle of a project that didn't require a lot of thought, so full concentration wasn't needed anyway. He was going through the database of residents in the southwest quadrant of the city, correlating their Declarations of Religious Preference with the apportioning of their tax dollars. There had been a backlog of applications for Change of Religious Preference, and someone had accidentally thrown all the forms together into a big bin, so they'd lost track of whose Application had been entered in the database and whose hadn't. Peter had devised a simple program that would scan all the names off the CRP forms, and print them out with their Tax Destinations. That would make it easy to find discrepancies.

Why the government hadn't made these forms available on the Net was a mystery. He supposed it had something to do with counterfeiting and on-line security. It had only been a few years since the Net was re-established as the world's communication system, and there were still a few bugs to fix before it returned to the performance levels of the late twenty-first century.

Peter slipped his suit jacket onto its hook behind the door and rolled up his sleeves to get comfortable. He paused at the door surveying the room: plain walls, hanging plant pots in the two corners flanking the window, and his broad, dark wooden desk facing the door, a couple of neat piles of paper on one side, and a flat monitor tilting on the other. For one quick moment of vertigo, he felt like he'd never been here before. Glancing at the opaque window space almost filling the far wall behind his chair, he adopted the tone of voice required, to change it: Window. Clear. And as he walked behind the desk and stopped at the window, the frosted effect dissolved and the glass cleared, revealing the golf course spread out just north of the Vital Stats building, lush strips of golden-green in the morning sun. He'd requested this third-floor office a couple of years ago when he'd gotten promoted. The greens looked like velvet from up here.

Funny how everything looked the way it had at the beginning of last week. The flowers outside, the plants hanging in his office, the golf course, and everything as he'd left it on his desk. Nothing had changed, yet he felt as though he'd walked through a raging storm and come through it completely disoriented. He'd heard people describe bereavement as something like losing a limb, but in his case it was even worse. For him, it was like losing his shadow, or his mirror-image. As though he would now peer into mirrors the rest of his life and see nothing there.

He sat down in front of his terminal, saw the faint reflection of his face on its dark screen and, with a grimace, slipped his palm-sized computer pad into its slot, bringing the screen to life and obliterating his image. While the pad connected to his work programs, he noticed that someone had remembered to water his plants while he was away. Small things. It would be a luxury, he thought, to be able to worry about small things again.

Tapping his fingers on his desktop, he called up the database and set his program running. He estimated that it would probably take about 15-20 minutes to run through the whole data set. More time to think. Just what he needed.

But a light tap on his open door interrupted his unwanted reverie before it really began. Beth stood in the doorway, holding a huge bouquet of flowers in a vase, eyebrows raised under a fringe of short blond hair.

Hi, Peter, she greeted him softly. When these came for you, I was ready to send them back, but I see I was wrong. Are you all right? I didn't think you'd be in today.

He shrugged awkwardly, leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. Neither did I. But it's hard being at home. I've spent a lot of time with my parents since… But after a while, everybody just wants to be alone, and I felt kind of at loose ends.

And getting back into a routine is comforting sometimes, she nodded. Stepping into the office, she set the vase on his desk, then smoothed a lock of her short blonde hair behind one ear. I won't bother you, but if you need anything, just call. And don't feel you have to stay the whole day if it gets to be too much.

Thanks, Beth, Peter said. She left his door half-closed, probably as a signal that he wasn't to be bothered unless it was absolutely necessary. She was a good person; he didn't know how he'd have handled that first morning if she hadn't come in with the nurse and made a few calls for him in her calm, businesslike way. He wondered suddenly what her religion was. Wiccan, wasn't it, or maybe North American Aboriginal? One tended not to ask, but he thought he'd heard somewhere.

He leaned forward to snag the card from the flowers, and had to smile at the note: I knew you wouldn't last the week. Andrea.

Another person he couldn't have managed without, this past week. She'd been there for him, despite her own grief. Maybe it was the depth of their shared sorrow that had added the extra dimension of comfort. He and Jon and Andrea La Salle had been best friends all through high school and since, and she knew both of them better than anyone else in the world. She'd dated both of them too, off and on, usually simultaneously. They'd been so close that there had never been any jealousy or favoritism among them. A sister and lover rolled into one, forming a perfect triangle with the twin brothers.

So, he wondered, did she have some special insight as a result? Had she actually been on to something when she'd made that remark about religion? 'It probably killed him,' she'd said. What could she have meant? She couldn't mean it killed him directly; religion hadn't been directly responsible for anyone's death since the Religious Wars in the 2140's. So she had to have meant something psychological.

Peter remembered the wave of emotion that had swept over him in the bathroom, after the funeral. And he remembered what had triggered it. That was a psychological reaction, wasn't it? He'd been frozen, like an animal watching the headlights coming and unable to do anything about the looming disaster. He'd needed to break a little – maybe he'd been about to break anyway, and the barbaric religious image had coincidentally been the straw that broke the camel's back. Maybe he would have broken down and cried, seeing his twin's face in the mirror, whether or not he'd heard about the Hindu ritual.

Peter tapped out of his program, leaving it to run unsupervised, and selected another item from the Menu. As a Level Six government employee he could access almost any item in the Archives not classified under State Security. When asked to specify a topic, he keyed in Psychology, but then hesitated. That wasn't quite it; that would cover too much area. So he keyed Religion; Psychology instead, and waited to see what would happen.

This too, was a huge category, including books, articles, sound and visual recordings, documentaries, infomercials, you name the medium, it was represented here. So he added the category Books, scholarly. Which narrowed it down a little, but the list was still huge. He paged down a few times, idly but not hopefully glancing at titles. The Psychology of Religion. Too obvious, and probably too general for what he wanted (and what exactly was that, anyway?). The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud. No, he wasn't wild about Freud's old theories. What about The Varieties of Religious Experience by a guy named William James?

That made him stop and think. "Religious experience? What was that? Peter had always thought of his religion as just part of his I.D., like being a North American citizen. You'd never speak of the North American experience, would you? Well…you probably could, when you really thought about it. If you got acquainted with a lot of different cultures, you'd naturally see that there was a North American experience that was different from the African experience, for example. So was that what this guy James meant – that there was a Mormon Catholic experience that was different from a Hindu experience?"

That was just the problem, though, and it was why Peter had never taken religion seriously. There was no variety of experience in those religions; they were all basically the same. He'd already seen that, at Jon's funeral.

And yet…he had never before experienced anything like what had happened to him in the bathroom. Was that the kind of thing William James meant?

No. He wasn't going to think of it right now. He wasn't going to head off on some wild goose chase because of one thing Andrea had said when looking for something to blame for Jon's death. He'd think more about it later. Not now.

Resolutely, he flipped back to his original task. It took longer to run than he expected; there must be a higher population in the southwest than he'd estimated. When it finally finished, it was almost eleven. Peter paged through the first few screens just to make sure the program had worked properly and produced the results he wanted. Everything seemed fine.

Abdul, Yasmin Fatima. Declared Religion: Buddhist. Change Requested: Mormon Catholic.

Atwater, Joseph Royal. Declared Religion: North American Aboriginal. Change Requested: Oceanic Aboriginal.

Berger, Isaac Benjamin. Declared Religion: Mormon Catholicism. Change Requested: Judaism.

Without thinking why, Peter cross-referenced to the main database on this last one, to see if Mr. Berger gave a reason for the requested change. People weren't required to, and they rarely did. But Peter's father had changed from Mormon Catholicism to Judaism nineteen years ago. Peter wondered what this other man's reasons might be for making a similar change.

Isaac Berger's declared reason seemed to leap from the screen: "The rich history and deep religious experience of the Judaistic tradition." Peter's heart thudded heavily, once, like a drum. He wondered mechanically if Mr. Berger knew he could be investigated for giving such an unusual answer. It sounded as though religion were more important in Isaac Berger's life than it was supposed to be. That tended to raise governmental eyebrows.

Still, there it was again: religious experience. This time being claimed for Judaism, over other religions. As though in Isaac Berger's mind there were something more to this religion than met the eye. Something more than just the sentiments, and the pictures and decorations on the walls of the meeting place.

Peter saved the file and sprang from his chair, grabbing his jacket as he threw his door open. It was close enough to noon that nobody would mind if he left early, and people were giving him some latitude today, anyway. He passed a few of them in the corridor and responded to their subdued greetings with a wan smile, but didn't stop to talk. In a minute he was outside in the sun, jacket draped over one shoulder. He took the flower-bordered walk through the parking lot and stopped at the intersection.

He found what he was looking for, a couple of blocks south, with its golden, trumpeting angel defying gravity atop its spire: the local Mormon Catholic church. He crossed with the green light, and headed in that direction.

Once he reached the church, he crossed the wide vestibule and paused in the doorway of the sanctuary, to let his eyes adjust to the subdued darkness. Gradually the rows of pews emerged out of the murk, and then the figure on the cross at the far end, with several candles flickering in front of the altar beneath him. Five solitary worshippers sat scattered among the pews, while another knelt silently before the altar. Peter didn't really want to be around other people, so he slipped along a side aisle toward the two tiny chapels on the right. He hesitated briefly between them, then did a mental coin flip between the Prophet and the Mother. The Mother won.

He sat in the first of the three small pews before her statue. There were even more lit candles in here than in the main sanctuary; through their tall red glass containers they cast a crimson glow over the polished wood of the pews, and glowing yellow ovals with reddish edges on the low ceiling and walls. There were so many candles, in fact, that the small chapel was a good deal warmer than the main church outside. The Mother herself stood on a low dais, draped in her pastel robes, leaning over her suppliants with a hand extended and a compassionate smile on her face. Peter suddenly remembered one of the images in the Hindu temple: a young god with blue skin, playing a flute, with one foot crossed over the other. He'd been young and smiling and he had, Peter remembered, been leaning against a white bull.

So. Peter was here. So now what?

A candle, he supposed. He reached for one of the long wooden skewer-type sticks plunged into a container of sand, and lit it from one of the candles. Then he chose an unlit candle and leaned the fresh flame into a red container toward the wick.

A prayer for Jon, who was gone. Peter had last seen him in person two weeks ago, when they caught a baseball game together. Peter drove this time, and he remembered how, after Jon had gotten out of the car, he'd leaned over to comment through the open window, This was great. We should do this more often. Thanks for the ride, Peter. See you later. And the little grin, with the customary lift of an amused eyebrow, was the last Peter had ever seen of his brother.

He lit the candle with an unsteady hand, and snuffed the skewer in the sand box. As he sat back in the pew he stared into the little flame, trying to feel something beyond the pain. It wasn't the pain he'd come here for; he could carry that with him anywhere. Wasn't there supposed to be something more? Look into the flame…like the fire that cremated Jon's body…like a Hindu pyre…

They hadn't even seen Jon's body before the cremation. The bastard had been so methodical, he'd actually left instructions for whoever found him, to have him cremated as soon as the authorities had looked things over. Peter still could hardly believe it. Jon was found by a friend and everything was set in motion immediately. By the time Peter was notified, and had rushed over from work, the body had been taken. The family didn't even find out where, or by whom, until after the cremation had taken place.

So his last good-bye to his other self had been a casual wave through the car window. And his twin's last words to him, horribly, had been, See you later. He