The Second Cure Page 9

  ‘Lord Jesus, we thank you. We thank you for bringing Pastor Jack into our lives. We thank you for bringing him into the lives of our family, of our church, of our state, of our nation. We thank you for helping him plant the seeds of your church throughout the world. And Lord, we humbly ask you to help our brother, to help Pastor Jack, for we know he will face obstacles as he does your work; he will face obstacles in this faithless world. They will fight him, we know that: they will fight him because Satan hates his work. But with you, Lord, with your help and with our prayers, he will prevail! We will prevail! The word of the Lord our God will prevail! The word of Jesus will prevail! Amen!’

  Before the ‘amens’ from the audience had faded, the stage was full again, the band, the dancers, the earlier speaker, and the music roared back into life. Grunge-Jesus sang another rock hymn, the words of which seemed to consist of nothing but ‘Praise Him! Praise Him!’ The lyrics were on the screens, beneath images of the crowds below, joining in, singing, arms outstretched. Marion walked to the edge of the stage and held out her hand to the steps below, then Jack Effenberg joined her, walking to the centre, smiling and waving. The audience was in a frenzy.

  ‘Praise Him! Praise Him!’ they cried out. Whether it was Jesus, God or Jack they were praising, Brigid was not sure. Hand in hand, husband and wife stood together beaming at the crowd, while the music reached its climax, and then, as the lights dimmed, faded away. The stage emptied and the houselights were brought up, and the congregation stood, euphoric and exultant, sharing hugs. It seemed to have ended abruptly, almost anticlimactically, which puzzled Brigid for a moment. Then she remembered the old showbiz adage: leave them wanting more. That way they’ll be back next week.

  Brigid made her way through the departing crowd of congregants smiling (of course) and chatting and saying ‘awesome’ a lot, and walked around to the back of the sprawling building, looking for the stage door the email had referred to. She was reeling a little from what she’d just experienced. There was a small part of her that still had faith, the faith of her parents, although she would never admit it to her mother. That part felt tainted by what she’d witnessed, and she was ashamed for having wished her father had been there. She wanted a wash, and it wasn’t just the humidity of the Queensland tropics to blame. There was something disturbing about the Effenbergs’ acolytes, a psychological capitulation she’d never seen among her parents and their religious peers. This was a different form of worship altogether. On its own, it would be less of a concern, but such power combined with political control?

  She turned a corner and walked into the sunlight. The heat was fierce, the sun baking her skin. She found a buzzer, pressed it, and the door was immediately opened by a security guard so big he filled the doorway. The smiling rule didn’t seem to apply to him. He was dressed in black and armed with a holstered gun and a look of undisguised hostility. The embracing love of the church service was nowhere to be felt on this side of the building. Here, even the sun couldn’t dispel the chill she felt.

  ‘Brigid Bayliss,’ she told him, handing over her business card. ‘I’m here to see Seth Effenberg. He’s expecting me.’

  ‘One moment,’ the guard said, closing the door on her.

  The delay was so long she was tempted to ring the buzzer again. In a place this big, Seth Effenberg might take half an hour to walk from one end to the other, so she restrained herself and instead watched as a large van backed up to a vast roller door nearby. The door cranked up, and young men with long, glossy hair and clear eyes began carrying band equipment out and stowing it in the van. Christian roadies, thought Brigid, and decided the world had turned upside down. She wondered if there were also Christian groupies lurking, hoping to get near the band so they wouldn’t have sex together.

  The stage door opened, and out peered Grunge Jesus. Like the guard, he wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Seth?’ Brigid held out a hand to shake his, but he didn’t take it. Behind him appeared Marion Effenberg, no longer wearing her long white dress, but sporting casual slacks and shirt. Seth stood aside, and she saw Marion was holding Brigid’s business card between thumb and index finger with an expression that suggested it was something faintly rancid.

  ‘Hi,’ began Brigid. ‘I’ve arranged to interview Seth …’

  ‘Seth won’t be talking with you today, or any day,’ she told Brigid. ‘And let me just say that we’ll be complaining to your editor about your behaviour, sniffing around like this, exploiting a mere boy as a means to dig things up about us.’

  A mere boy? wondered Brigid. Grunge Jesus was at least seventeen. ‘Mrs Effenberg, I’m not here under false pretences. I’m perfectly happy for you to sit in on the interview.’

  ‘There is no interview. I know who you are. I’ve read your articles. Left-wing secular rubbish. You are not a friend to our church or our family. Please leave.’

  What a cow. ‘So much for the love of Jeezus, huh?’ said Brigid. ‘What would your adoring fans say about this version of you?’

  There was a flash of pure hatred in Marion’s expression then, something cold. Seth put his hand on his mother’s shoulder, as though to restrain her. Marion was frozen, then seemed to relent. She nodded slightly (to Seth, to herself?) and then the two retreated inside and the door closed. Brigid sighed. A plane trip to Townsville for nothing.

  Or maybe not nothing. The van was unattended. The roller door was still open. No one was around. Brigid slipped between the van and the doorframe, propped her sunglasses on her head, and let her eyes adjust to the gloom within. Here there was none of the sleek chrome and glass of the public areas. Raw concrete and exposed pipes lined the walls of a broad corridor lit by hanging fluorescent tubes. She could hear a distant rumble of air-conditioning, but otherwise there was silence. As she crept along, she found herself checking for security cameras and realised she was holding her breath. She kept close to the walls, hoping she’d be less visible to whatever surveillance they had. She wasn’t welcome before. Now she was an intruder.

  She reached a junction in the corridor and paused, wondering whether to turn left or right. Left would take her deeper into the building, so she turned that way and walked along a narrower passageway with multiple closed doors on each side. Then a sound. Laughter. A door ahead was open, yellow light spilling through against the white of the fluoro. She drew up against the wall near the doorway to listen. Voices within, light conversation. Jack Effenberg and his wife. A few others.

  A vast hand grabbed Brigid’s shoulder, and shoved her against the wall. It was the guard from before. His forearm across her chest pushed her hard against the concrete, forcing the breath from her lungs.

  ‘Sorry, I lost my way,’ Brigid rasped. ‘I was looking for the loo.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ His eyes were small and hard.

  ‘Problem, Bob?’ Jack Effenberg had appeared in the doorway.

  ‘This is the woman who tried to see Seth before,’ said Bob the Guard.

  A broad grin illuminated Effenberg’s face as he recognised Brigid. ‘Well, look at that! It’s Girl Reporter of the Brisbane Chronicle!’

  ‘Congratulations on your elevation, Mr Premier,’ she managed. Bob released her and she filled her lungs.

  Effenberg beamed at her. ‘Can’t say I’m not happy about it because I am.’ He turned to the guard. ‘You can go lock up, Bob – I’ll be fine here with Girl Reporter. We’re old mates.’

  Bob gave her a final look of distrust, then hulked off down the corridor. Effenberg tucked a hand under Brigid’s forearm and escorted her back the way she’d come with all the delicacy of a father giving away the bride on her wedding day. She’d never been so elegantly evicted in her life.

  ‘I feel I owe you a bit of an apology, Brigid,’ he told her. ‘Marion – Mrs Effenberg – is a little sensitive about the kid being in the public eye. When I decided to go into politics, she said to me, “Jack,” she said, “Jack, I am happy to put on the glad rags and be there on your arm when you go hobnobbing with the
great and mighty, but the boy? The boy has to be left right out of it.”’

  This struck Brigid as a bit of a stretch, given that the ‘boy’ had been schooled in proselytising and performing in the Song of Light New Apostolic Church ever since he really was a boy. But under the circumstances, she decided not to demur.

  ‘And just quietly,’ Effenberg continued as they reached the roller door, ‘Marion, when she gets a head of steam up, can be pretty scary. You’re lucky it was Bob who found you skulking about.’ He glanced at her. ‘Oh, sorry. “Looking for the loo.”’

  She managed to smile when he winked at her and decided to chance it. ‘Fair enough. How about an interview with you, then? A one-on-one, exclusive.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Capricornia.’

  He paused. ‘You’re on. At the time of my choosing, but you’re on, Brigid Bayliss of the Brisbane Chronicle.’

  Brigid smiled to herself as she made her way back out to the taxi rank, pleased with what seemed a victory. In retrospect, she should not have been surprised that despite her countless calls to his media office over many years, Effenberg dodged and weaved and pretended he’d never made that promise.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky famously wrote,’ ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ One might equally argue, ‘Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of symbiosis.’

  At first glance, parasitism and mutualism appear to be chalk and cheese. One entails the exploitation of a species by another, often to the extreme of the parasite killing the host individual. Mutualism, the cooperative interaction between species, comprises, by contrast, a bartering of resources – nutrients, a safe haven, transport, cleaning, even ‘preventative medicine’. One individual provides another with a vital resource, often at a cost to itself, but is repaid in kind. They are, however, part of the same continuum and represent an ongoing struggle between the parties in a world of cheaters and punishers, a world where selection rewards the best survival strategy.

  It has been estimated that every species on Earth is involved in at least one cooperative symbiotic relationship with another species. These mutualisms are found between all kingdoms of life and exist in every ecosystem thus far explored. They are vital for a range of crucial mechanisms ensuring reproduction and nutrient acquisition, as well as being critical to broader environmental functions such as the nitrogen cycle and carbon sequestration. Mutualisms made possible the migration of plants onto land and are considered to have been a critical element in the evolution of eukaryotic cells. The ubiquity of mutualisms and symbioses generally has been described as presenting a unifying concept in biological science, without which life as it has evolved on Earth would be impossible.

  Other writers have taken the concept of biological interrelatedness a dramatic step further, suggesting that species on Earth act in concert as a single organism to direct climatic and ecological systems towards an ideal state suitable for life to persist – the much debated and often scorned ‘Gaia hypothesis’. More pragmatically, modern genomics is pointing to the conservation of functionally related genes across species, demonstrating the close evolutionary ties within life over time. Whatever one’s philosophical interpretation of the close connections between species might be, unquestionably the spectacular array of symbioses revealed by the natural world demonstrates profound interactions within the biosphere, a network of cause and effect, and interdependence.

  Zinn, Charlotte, ‘Symbioses’, In: JF Thompson and C Loh, eds, Evolution and Ecology, 2nd ed, Fitzroy University Press, Sydney, 2012

  14.

  Sydney

  ‘I hope you appreciate that there are few men who’d do this,’ said Richard.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘I’m letting your ex-husband stick my head into a huge, noisy machine.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Charlie said, patting his hand. ‘And you are very, very brave, Ricky.’

  Richard gazed down the hospital corridor from their seats against the wall, watching people in lab coats being busy, and his jocularity dissolved. ‘How bad do you think this could be?’ he asked. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I’d be a lot more worried if I hadn’t heard what Shadrack had to say about the effects of Toxo. Sudden neurological changes like that are rarely good news.’

  ‘When do the blood tests come back?’

  ‘In a day or two we should know if you’re infected.’

  Richard nodded, looked back at the clock.

  ‘Oh, and take out your ear stud,’ said Charlie.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because the huge, noisy machine you’re going to stick your head into is essentially a huge, noisy magnet.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He handed it to her and she tucked it in her handbag just as Shadrack appeared. She introduced the two men and they shook hands.

  ‘Great to meet you, Richard.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  Charlie wasn’t sure if she was reading mutual appraisal in their faces as they regarded each other, or whether she was the only one feeling an edge of anxiety about this meeting. Was that handshake just a fraction too long?

  Shadrack led them down the corridor, and then directed Richard into a curtained cubicle. ‘You’ll find a theatre gown in there, so take everything off and put it on. And there’s a basket for jewellery if you’re wearing any …’

  ‘Already done that.’

  ‘Okay, when you’re ready, just come through to the room there to the left.’

  Richard nodded, raised an eyebrow to Charlie, and went behind the curtain. Charlie and Shadrack entered the MRI room.

  ‘So, apart from the MRI, you’re going to do what?’

  ‘We could do diffuser tensor imaging to look at his white matter connectivity – high connectivity is associated with synaesthesia – but that probably won’t be necessary. I expect the MRI will show us what we’re looking for. If we’ve got time, we could do trans-cranial magnetic stimulation. That’s – ah, Richard, come in.’

  ‘You two talking about me behind my back?’ joked Richard.

  ‘Not about you, just your brain.’ She smiled.

  Once Richard was positioned on the table, his head cradled at the opening of the MRI machine and the procedure explained to him, Charlie and Shadrack moved into the control room. Monitors were arrayed above keyboards and other input devices. Shadrack began flicking buttons and typing, and then leant forwards to talk into a microphone. ‘Okay, Richard, can you hear me? Wave your hand if you can.’

  Richard raised a thumb in the affirmative.

  ‘Right, we’re sliding you in now. Remember, keep as still as you can.’

  And Richard’s head vanished as he was inserted into the machine like a loaf of bread into an oven.

  The first fifteen minutes were taken up with baseline measurements. Charlie watched as slices of Richard’s brain appeared on the screen, looking like a Rorschach inkblot test – here a butterfly, here a fox’s face – while Shadrack calibrated the controls.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, pointing. ‘That region there is V4, in the occipital lobe. We’re right at the back of the brain, at the base … Have you got your bearings?’ Charlie nodded. ‘It’s the part of the visual cortex that processes colour and shape, and, as you can see, it’s just gently firing right now because Richard isn’t looking at anything in particular. But now I’m going to give him the input. Music. Watch what happens.’

  Music filled the control room, as well as the MRI room. Mozart, Charlie thought. And just as it began, Richard’s V4 area lit up like firecrackers.

  ‘Whoa,’ breathed Charlie.

  ‘Yes. That’s a massive response,’ said Shadrack. He turned on the mic. ‘You all right there, Richard?’ The upraised thumb reappeared. Shadrack turned off the music and Richard’s V4 went back to normal.

  ‘We’ll do the same with another region of the brain, the precuneus, a part of the superior parietal lobule involved in
imagery.’ He shifted the image to the top of Richard’s brain and repeated the process. More Mozart, more fireworks, this time indicating he was indeed ‘seeing’ the music.

  ‘So, we’ve confirmed he has developed synaesthesia – which we already knew,’ said Charlie. ‘But what about the cause, Shadrack? Can we establish that?’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything here resembling a tumour, but I’ll get our radiologist to go through the images with a fine-tooth comb, I promise.’

  Charlie let out a breath of reprieve. ‘Thank god for that.’

  ‘There is something you should see, though …’

  He went back to his keyboard, typing in coordinates. The image moved again. In among the grey of the image a number of white spots were visible.

  ‘Cysts. Toxoplasmosis cysts.’ Charlie had no difficulty recognising them. She’d seen them in infected mammals many times.

  ‘It’s pretty much what we’re seeing with everyone who is infected and having neurological effects. Interesting that you’re not infected, given you’re having sex with him. Are you using condoms?’

  ‘Shadrack, I’m not discussing my sex life with you, okay? Even in the name of science.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ and he had the courtesy to look embarrassed.

  She looked back at the screen. Despite herself, revulsion churned her stomach.

  ‘I don’t think we should let Richard see this,’ she said.

  Shadrack talked into the mic. ‘We’re finished, Richard. Letting you out now, and my assistant will help you back to the cubicle. You can get dressed.’ He hit a button and the bread slid back out of the oven.

  Charlie took a deep breath and looked back at the final image of the cysts. ‘I’m sorry. Not very clinical of me. But the thought of those lesions inside his brain like that …’