The Goodbye Man

So they’d already communicated about him.

“You know what it’s like to have a hard life. That’s an important factor for Selects. And they need to be fit, not the sort who’re easily intimidated. Sometimes people don’t quite appreciate our worldview. There’ve been protests. Even some altercations occasionally.”

“I’ve found, you know, if you speak the truth, that pisses people off.”

“You and Novice Todd are this group’s best choices for Select.”

Shaw recalled Todd from the dinner table. The former military man.

“What exactly would I do?”

“Call it customer relations.”

Recruiting, probably. Going to bereavement centers and funerals. Convincing people to sign up.

“Yeah, I’m kind of up for it. Let me think.”

“Of course. We’ll talk more. Oh, and we’ll keep this between ourselves. Only I and a few others are involved in the Select program.”

“Sure, Master Eli.”

They exchanged the salute and Eli joined the others and walked on.

Shaw and Victoria continued their stroll along the path. She looked at him curiously. “Guess my training’s going okay,” he said.

She seemed to want to ask more but chose not to.

Shaw asked, “Want to get some lunch?”

Victoria hesitated a moment but said, “I should finish journaling.” She held up her notebook, as if she were batting away his invitation.

Shaw studied the appealing, thoughtful face.

Art-house actress...

“So the Process’s working for you?” he asked.

“Every day here there are fewer and fewer bad moments. When I advance in a few weeks,” she said, her face bright, “I know everything’ll be fine.”

The cult-speak amused Shaw; Companions couldn’t say they “graduate” from the training. They had to say “advance.”

He said, “I’ll see you at the Second Discourse.”

“I’ll be there.”

Which wasn’t an acknowledgment that they would in fact meet in the Square.

Without giving the salute they went separate ways, Shaw heading down toward the dining hall for a sandwich and coffee. As he walked he was thinking: The Foundation was odd and unsettling, no question about that, the regimentation, the frenzied political rally tone in the dining hall last night and in the Square this morning, Eli’s ego and need for control. Shaw decided it was safe in labelling the Osiris Foundation a cult.

A dangerous one, though? It was hard to dismiss the murder of the journalist in San Francisco and the beating of the reporter Shaw had witnessed. Those incidents, however, now seemed like outliers, committed by isolated negatives: Harvey Edwards, in San Francisco, and Hugh, the dangerous, renegade head of the Assistance Unit. Edwards’s background suggested he was unhinged. And Hugh? Like rent-a-cops everywhere, he would enjoy flexing his authority — and his muscles, putting his little-used karate moves into practice and bullying and coming on to women.

Eli himself was clearly narcissistic but in an almost comical way. Shaw hadn’t seen a truly dark side. He clearly was devoted to his altruistic mission to help people in pain.

As the deprogrammer had said, Eli might not even know about Hugh’s attack or Edwards’s murdering the journalist.

And the Process itself?

A benign bowl of self-help homilies and off-the-shelf therapy. Shaw had no evidence to blame the Foundation for Adam’s death — the reason he was here. The young man was just plagued with an emotional grid gone astray.

Nor was there any particular risk to Victoria or anyone else that he could see. She seemed buoyed by the Process, coming out of what had to be unfathomable depression at her loss.

Beethoven’s notes hummed through the camp. The woman’s voice then announced, “Master Eli’s Second Discourse is about to begin.” She reiterated that the lecture was mandatory for the Novices and voluntary for the other Companions.

Shaw cleaned away his lunch dishes and soon he was walking along the path to the Square, a dozen others nearby, heading in the same direction.

Shaw was tempted to privately criticize them all as lemmings. But that was unfair; these Companions were like everyone else — just trying to make their way through an often unnavigable world in the truest way they could. Colter Shaw found that route in an itinerant lifestyle, tracking down felons and missing persons, climbing sheer cliffs, catching air on his motorbike — testing limits.

Who had a lock on the right answers?

And who couldn’t use a bit of truing up?

The crowd assembled — trainees in the middle, ringed by ICs, like the morning’s session. Across the Square he saw Walter and Sally. He joined them. Her eyes focused on him and she smiled but cautiously. The men did the shoulder salute. Sally watched, mystified. “Oh, you boys...”