Free Repairman Jack [08]-Crisscross by F. Paul Wilson

security?"
    "It's new. We've got an ongoing threat situation here. The Light pisses off a lot of people, so we're always getting one kind of threat or another. But nothing like what's come in since my Dormentalism article." She flashed a nicotine-stained smile. "I now hold the death-threat record. Hallelujah." She turned and motioned him to follow. "Let's retire to my boudoir."
    She led him to a messy little third-floor office that looked like it had been trashed by burglars on PCP. Books, magazines, newspapers, printouts everywhere. As she lifted an elastic-bound pile of papers off a chair, Jack noticed that her right pinkie was only a stub—the last two bones were missing.
    She dropped the papers on the floor. "Have a seat."
    Grant plopped into the chair behind her littered desk and lit a cigarette. Jack noticed how the skin on her right index and middle fingers was the color of rotten lemon rind, but then his gaze drifted again to the pinkie stub. On the way in he'd seen one of those This Is a No Smoking Building signs but didn't bother to mention it now. He couldn't imagine her caring.
    "So," she said, leaning back and blowing a long stream into the air, "you say you're on the trail of a missing Dementedist."
    Without using names, Jack went over everything Maria Roselli had told him about Johnny.
    Her smile was wry as she shook her head. "And you think you're going to find sonny boy by joining the church? Forget it—unless of course you're willing to spend lots of years and lots of bucks."
    "How so?"
    "You'll enter as an RC, the lowest of the low, and you'll have to climb pretty far up the FL before you can get close enough to the TO to sneak a peek at any membership files."
    Jack twisted a finger into his right ear. "I thought we were speaking English here."
    Grant laughed. "Dormentalese. They use initials for everything. I'll translate: You'll enter as a Reveille Candidate, and you'll have to climb a good way up the Fusion Ladder before you can get close enough to the Temple Overseer."
    Jack realized he had more to learn than he'd thought.
    "And the 'lots of bucks'?"
    "This is what you've got to realize about the Dementedist situation: The church is set up to squeeze every last dollar from its members. They promise self-realization, maximization of potential—the goals of a million self-help books—but they go beyond that. At the end of their rainbow is a supernatural pot of gold. But there's one major catch: You can't do it alone. You need to become a member of the Church, you need Dementedist guides to help you along the ten rungs of the ladder to 'Full Fusion.'"
    "That would be FF, I assume?"
    "Keerect. The Fusion Ladder—that's the steps it takes to fuse your xelton with its Hokano counterpart—started out with five rungs, then it went to seven, now it's ten. The instruction sessions, the books, the tapes, and all the other paraphernalia for each new rung cost more than the last. The FAs—that's Fusion Aspirants—are promised increasing powers as they advance along the FL. And then there's the big carrot of Full Fusion where you're promised to be transformed into some sort of demigod."
    "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?"
    "Pretty much. But Dementedism differs from most religions in one important respect: Yeah, it offers everlasting happiness, but it has no good and evil, no good god versus bad god, no Jesus and Satan, no yin and yang. You've been separated from your Hokano xelton, so you can't expect perfection. If you've failed in the past, it's not your fault. All you need do is weather the long process of fusing the two halves of your xelton and your problems will be over. You'll go from homo sap to homo superior."
    "'Not your fault.' I can see how that would go over big."
    "Yeah, the everyone-is-a-victim Zeitgeist has swelled their ranks. But it can cost you about a quarter mil before you're through. To reach the High Council you've got to achieve the tenth level of fusion… hardly anyone