They'd recorded it late the day before. It showed a handsome, well-dressed woman in her forties, telling Carlos and Joe what it was she wanted, and answering their questions. Her name was Angela DeSmet. Twenty-one months earlier, her twenty-some-year-old daughter, Gloria, had 'run away' to L.A. and married a guy who worked for the Church of the New Gnosis. The mother had tried to get in touch with her, but the church is—
So Angela DeSmet had hired an investigator from Monterey—the DeSmets lived in nearby Pacific Grove—but the guy couldn't even learn where the daughter was, let alone get to her. He said the church might have sent her to any one of its locations in or out of the country.
Angela had wanted to hire a serious investigation then, but her husband, Alex DeSmet, wouldn't go for it. Gloria was a grown woman, he'd said. She had the right to live her own life, and if she got unhappy with the church, she could always walk out. And come home if she wanted to.
Then DeSmet had gotten a consulting job with the Republic of India, and a few weeks after their daughter left, he and his wife had gone to New Delhi to live. He was a retired technical specialist with the State Department, she said. After a couple of years, India started having severe civil disturbances, the ones that led to it splitting off from ECOTEB, the Eastern Co-Prosperity Technical and Economic Bloc. Splitting off and starting SACU, the Southeast Asian Co-Prosperity Union. Anyway, Alex DeSmet had sent his wife back to the States, and she'd decided it was time to find her daughter. Carlos and Joe had decided I was the one to do it.
* * *
My own case! I had nervous stomach. The first thing I did was sit down at my terminal and call up the accessible information on DeSmet. Which was not a lot, because the case didn't get us access to the State Data Center. It takes a contract from the city or county or state for that. The DeSmet family, I learned, was big in shipping. It also had a family history of public service dating back to Gerhard DeSmet, a New York banker who'd helped finance the colonial army during the Revolution. Every generation of the DeSmet family had had a career officer in either the State Department or the armed forces or both. Alex DeSmet hadn't been in the State Department though, regardless of what his wife claimed. He'd been in the CIA until '96 or '97, when President Haugen took its Office of Special Projects and recreated the old OSS out of it. DeSmet ended up being deputy director there, after the Great Flu killed the guy who'd been holding the job.
I suppose Gloria had grown up mainly with her mother. Odds were that Alex had been away a lot.
Then I keyed up the L.A. City Library and selected a summary article on the Church of the New Gnosis. It was interesting but not particularly helpful. Some of it I'd read before, here and there. Before I'd finish that case and the Christman case, I'd know a lot about the church that the writer hadn't. Meanwhile, the only lead I had on Gloria DeSmet was her married name, Gloria Hamilton.
California has the world's largest concentration of cults, and there are more every year, but the Church of the New Gnosis has got to be the biggest, even bigger then the Institute of Noetic Technology when it was going strong. Its world headquarters—what it calls its 'World Episcopate'—is here in L.A., on what used to be the campus of Pacific Southern University.
I signed out a car and drove over there. I'd never really paid any attention to the place before. It still looked pretty much like a mid-city college, built after real estate got so expensive. After the GPC boomed the economy, and Congress passed the Education Rights Bill. Including its parking lots, the campus covers what originally had been four large city blocks, containing several large buildings. Unfortunately it failed—went bankrupt when the Great Flu and Epidemic Viral Meningitis cut populations, enrollments, and faculty too drastically.
The surrounding neighborhood is mostly post-plague apartment houses, built around security courtyards with swimming pools. The streets are lined with tall Washingtonia palms, and the campus grounds have well-tended lawns, flowerbeds, and night jasmine, with ornamental-orange hedges.
One of the buildings has a sign in front that reads neophyte building. That sounded about right for me, so I went in to ask questions. Careful questions. Sneaky questions. The church has a reputation for secrecy, and I was there to get answers, not thrown out. I had no trouble recognizing staff. They wore one-piece, sky blue space-cadet uniforms, with tapered legs tucked into light weight white boots that had to be a nuisance to keep clean. Also, staff members tend to walk fast or even jog, as if they're in a hurry.
It turned out that the staff who deal with new people are trained to control the conversation. Mostly they seem friendly, but all you learn is what they want you to know. I went along with their pitch, figuring that if I became part of the scene, I'd learn things. I ended up registering for a free introductory lecture that evening. That introductory lecture's about the only thing they don't charge for, and even then they practically insisted that I buy
By the time I'd gotten registered, it was noon. It turned out they have a staff dining room, but some staff members who can afford to, eat out. So I followed a couple of them across the street to a place called the Saints' Deli, carrying my book to mark me as a would-be new member. I figured to get into a conversation, or maybe eavesdrop.
The Saints' Deli is a Gnostie hangout run by Gnosties. It's a strange kind of place for L.A.; it felt as if everyone there, including the waitresses, belonged to a family. And I was an outsider. They had a big menu board on the wall, chalk on green, and I ordered 'Saint's Delight.' It turned out to be cream cheese and ripe olives on sourdough bread, with kosher dills on the side. It was a day for new experiences. Then I got my coffee and number tag, and looked for a place to sit.
Almost everyone was sitting with friends and talking, a lot of them animatedly, most of them wearing civvies. But at a table for two, a skinny guy in his late thirties or so, wearing a staff uniform, sat alone by an empty chili bowl, sipping coffee and reading a paperback. I went over. He drank his coffee black, and from what I could see of the cover, the book was science fiction. His uniform was threadbare and too big for him, but clean except for ring around the collar.
'Mind if I sit here?' I asked.
He looked at me, then at my beginner's book. 'If you insist,' he said, 'but please don't open a conversation with me. I deal with neophytes eight hours a day, seven days a week, and three further hours a day I attend class. On my free time I like to sit alone and relax with some light reading.'
'Class?' I said.
'Staff are required to be on some approved course or other at all times. I'm studying to be a Gnostic counselor. Now if you please . . .'
He withdrew his attention as if I wasn't there. I sipped my coffee and people-watched. Some would stop by a notice board and browse the stuff posted there. After a few minutes a waitress came with my sandwich, dill pickle
