A team from the sheriff's department arrived at the equipment yard just before the ambulances from the county hospital. Two highway patrolmen and six terrorists were dead. Four patrolmen and seven terrorists were wounded, all seriously or critically except the driver of the truck. The bystanders had hit the ditches at the first sign of armed intruders; only one had been killed and one wounded. Two apparently unwounded gunmen had fled across a field. The healers helped the woundedpolice, bystanders, and gunmen. (Later, identification of Shaughnessy's and Masterson's corpses would give a new starting place and direction to the investigation.) The unwounded bystanders who hadn't already left were held as material witnesses.
No tour people had been hurt. They were, however, emotionally drained. The only one of the tour group whose aura was still visible to Lee was Lor Lu, and even his was not as large or strong as it had been.
Sergeant Lavender had been in the bus when he'd first heard the chopper, and had just gotten out when the shooting started. By the time he'd run around the end of the machine shed, pistol in hand, most of it was over. Now he sat in a patrol car, its police radio on.
Another Highway Patrol car pulled in. Lavender was told by radio to work with a team from the Arkansas Bureau of Investigation, who were on their way by helicopter. The newly arrived Sergeant Hood would take charge of the Millennium people.
While they waited for the ABI, Lavender briefed Hood on the Millennium group and their situation, as he saw it. Lor Lu sat in. Shortly after the ABI arrived, the acting governor called via Highway Patrol radio, asking for whoever was in charge.
"This is Sergeant Elrod Hood. . . . Yes, sir, I just took command from Sergeant Lavender. He's been with these Millennium people since they were taken into custody, but he's working with the ABI folks now. The Millennium folks would like to leave, head back home to Colorado. . . . No, sir, they don't appear to. According to Sergeant Lavender, didn't any of them actually see the firefight. They were in their bus, watching the news on television, about the meteor . . . No, sir. The bus was parked behind a big old Butler shed . . . That's a big metal machine shed, sir. All the shooting was on the other side of it . . . Yes, sir. I'll send for him right now."
A week earlier, Sergeant Hood had been hostile toward Millennium, and the healings hadn't conspicuously changed that. They had, however, undermined it at a subliminal level. What had made the crucial difference was what he'd seen and heard on TV at the substation: the guru's enumeration of the governor's felonies, Marius Cook's deadly psychotic break, and finally the asteroid. Now he sent a patrolman to bring the ABI lieutenant over.
The governor spoke briefly with the lieutenant, then asked for Hood again. "Sergeant," he said, "is Mr. Lu with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Mr. Lu, as soon as the medical examiner releases it, the State will turn Mr. Aran's remains over to whomever you designate.
"Meanwhile I'm going to let you folks go, with your own driver. Sergeant Hood and one of his officers will ride with you, and two patrol cars will escort you. The only direction I want you to go is west on I-40. Stop and fuel up at the next truck stop. The sergeant will know where it is. You'll stay there till National Guard helicopters meet you. They'll escort you on west, on the interstate.
"Now I-40 passes through North Little Rock. Do not stop there. Drive right on through. This city has gone totally bonkers. We've got riots, shooting, arson fires . . . Just now it's the insanity capital of the known universe, and it's not a whole lot better in any other large town in the state. I suppose because Arkansas is where Mr. Aran got shot. Anyway, I want you to keep on rolling till you hit Oklahoma. I'll see if I can't arrange with Governor Eagle to provide you with another escort at the state line.
"Sergeant, you-all will need to stop and eat. I'll leave it to your discretion where. When you decide, phone the nearest substation. They'll provide you with extra cover while you're stopped. I sure as hellpardon my French, Mr. LuI don't want these folks to go through any more trauma."
Drained though they were, the Millennium people did not nap. As they rode, they watched CNN. Michael Sandow had several geophysicists on a conference call, talking about actual and probable results of the asteroid impact.
A record tsunami, well beyond anything in recorded history, was forecast for the entire Pacific and associated waters. Evacuation of coastal areas had already begun, an evacuation far larger than any in history. Seismographs worldwide had gone off-scale from the impact. Earthquakes had been triggered around the Pacific Rim and elsewhere. Most of the volcanoes on Kamchatka and the Aleutians were erupting. Hokkaido had been shaken by destructive quakes, and the volcanoes in the central part of the island were in active, though not explosive, eruption.
Sandow replayed the Dove predictions, and asked the experts whether it was reasonable to draw conclusions from them. One answered that he was qualified to discuss only the geophysical aspects. He said, "Considering the impossibility of predicting the impact location, a twelve-hour warning would have been of little more use than the one-hour warning."
Another said that the only rational conclusion was that Ngunda Aran had been connected with a better informed source than anyone else on Earth. And that the odds of the prediction having been fulfilled by chance were small beyond reckoning.
A third said, "Whether or not the two events are parallel manifestations of an intelligent deity, billions of people on Earth will believe they are. Which may be the only good to come out of this."
A police cruiser had taken Steven Buckels and his father back to Steven's car. Steven was anxious to get home to Dorothy and the children. Meanwhile he'd sent them a message via the Southeast Law Enforcement Network.
Lee had sat down beside Jenny, whom she thought might want someone to talk to. But Jenny seemed composed, even tranquil. She'd been reconciled with her father, and felt very good about it. And Dove had completed his mission on Earth as intended. "Now," Jenny added, "we have to follow through without his physical presence. Or Ngunda's. But I don't expect major difficulties, do you?"
Lee shook her head. "I'm reallytoo new a Milli to have much of an opinion yet."
Jenny laughed. "Too new a what?"
"AMilli. Actually I'm not sure I like the term. It just popped out. It doesn't reflect what we are or what we do, and even Lor Lu probably isn't that irreverent."
Jenny laughed again. "I wouldn't bet on it," she said. Then added, "So far as I know, we've never had a nickname, which is surprising now that I think of it. Maybe Lor Lu can ask for candidates." She grinned. " 'Millis' could head the list."
They talked briefly about the Millennium Procedures. It seemed to Lee she needed to do them. But soon Jenny began to sag, and Lee went to her own seat.
While the bus refueled, its personnel received a large assorted take-out order from the truck-stop restaurant. Lee had set it up. Then they rolled westward again toward Little Rock. Meanwhile, Lor Lu had been busy at his laptop, and on the Web and the phone. After a bit he called the governor's office and got authorization to transfer the tour crew to a chartered plane at Fort Smith.
Most of the crew napped, but Lee wasn't sleepy yet. She sat alone, at times paying attention to the television, and at times immersed in thought. It was dusk when they passed through North Little Rock. The air was rank with smoke, and they could see flames, but the fires were isolated. As they continued north and west, Lor Lu seemed unoccupied, so she went to him.
"May I sit by you?" she asked.
"Of course." Smiling, he moved his laptop from the empty seat beside him, and gestured. "I'd hoped you would."
She sat. "What do we do now? Will things continue to be dangerous for us?"
"Not particularly. And things will settle down. Meanwhile, a ranger platoon is being flown to the Ranch to stay temporarily in the visitors' lodgeunder the Anti-Terrorism Act. In a day or two . . . we'll see. Many older vectors have been erased by events, while many new ones are not yet adequately defined. Meanwhile, we have another location preparedmore remote than the Ranch, but less convenient. I doubt we'll need it."
"What about the court summons?"
He laughed. "We have put a series of obstacles in the way of your ex-husband's legal team, repeatedly escalating the level of influence we've used. We were prepared to continue until either Mark or his father decided to drop out. After today's events, however, Judge Falcaro will throw the case out of court." He grinned at Lee, and patted his laptop. "That is one of the things I checked on this afternoon, after our equipment was returned. As of today, Millennium no longer qualifies as a cult."
Above their heads, a voice from the television caught their attention, and they moved back in the bus to see. It was still set on CNN. Reconnaissance planes, flying beneath the clouds, had reached the vicinity of the meteor impact, and were sending back pictures. By the clock it was still day there, but the scene was darkened by a great pall of ash and smoke. The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 700-mile-long range of volcanoes, and to north and south, as far as the cameras could show, its slopes were lit by lava flows and forest fires. While from above, satellite cubeage showed dense clouds of mixed ash, smoke, and water droplets, glowing from beneath with ruddy volcanic light, and pulsing with internal lightnings.
Again CNN had called on experts, this time climatologists, who agreed unequivocally that a season of unprecedentedly bad weather would result. There would be weeks of rains over much of the world, causing extreme flooding and mud slides. Severe crop losses were assured. One voiced concern that methane clathrates might be released from the ocean floor. "If that happens," she said, "the resulting greenhouse warming is likely to prove much more drastic than anything so far predicted. But probably not until after a period of cold, resulting from a major increase in albedo."
"Explain albedo for our listeners."
"Earth's albedo is the reflection of the sun's rays back into space. In this case from the layer of volcanic ash in the stratosphere, and from clouds from the trillions of tons of water converted to steam by the impactclouds that will spread worldwide."
It was dark in Arkansas when the TV announced that the sound wave from the asteroid impact had reached Seattle, 3,500 miles from point zero. Reached there like thunder, 4 hours and 49 minutes after the asteroid impact.
The media were calling it "the Fist of God" now.
Lor Lu laughed ruefully. "One of our jobs will be to reestablish that the Tao is love," he said to Lee. "That the asteroid was not a punishment but a sign." He said it loudly enough for all to hear.
"Not a punishment?" Lee asked. "It wasn't?"
"The asteroid would have arrived even if Ngunda hadn't. Not 'directed' here by the Tao, but simply arriving as part of it. An expression of that part of the Tao which we term the universe, the physical plane. The rest of the scenario was timed to its arrival."
The entire tour group was paying attention now.
Lee frowned. Scenario. The rest was timed. Then "So it was destiny," she said aloud. "It was all preordained. Governor Cookall of it."
Lor Lu shook his head. "There is no 'destiny,' in the usual sense. There are causes and effects, and of course, chaos dynamics apply. Looked at a bit differently, there are events, including human choices, from which grow sprays of potential event vectors, some much more likely than others.
"It was an ability to perceive and evaluate such vectors that permitted the human being, Ngunda Aran, to detect and predict, and thus do much of what he didwith my collaboration; we were an effective team. But the Infinite Soul's ability to perceive and evaluate vectors is infinite. Had Marius Cook not chosen to play the role of messiah assassin, someone else would have. And we would have been there instead. There were various suitable candidates.
"The asteroid, now . . . Asteroids and comets are mechanistic; they do not have choice as we perceive it. Thus, given adequate information, they are far easier to predict. But they are not absolutely predictable. The physical plane has laws of operation, one of which is 'uncertainty,' which goes well beyond what is known by statisticians and quantum and chaos physicists.
"So even this afternoon, it wasn't known where, after its long trip, the asteroid would impact. It could have struck almost anywhereChina, England, America . . . even the Antarctic icecap, in which case the long-term results would have been extremely interesting.
"Meanwhile the human species, along with all of life, the universe, the Tao, continues to evolve."
Lee sat quietly, staring out a window at the lights of an approaching town. "I think I need to sleep on it," she said.
"Good idea. Dreams knit up not only 'the raveled sleeve of care,' to quote the Bard, but sometimes the diverse threads of understanding."
She reclined her seat and closed her eyes. The diverse threads of understanding! Vague memories of dreams moved in softly, dreams she'd seldom remembered for longer than seconds. Then she slept . . .
. . . To awaken groggy and disoriented, when they parked at the Fort Smith airport. Walking to the chartered turboprop, she sorted the dregs of dreams from the reality around her. It was across the aisle from her that Lor Lu chose to sit, and after she tilted her seat back, she spoke quietly to him.
"What are you smiling about?" she murmured.
He countered just as quietly: "You tell me."
"You're smiling because Dove's not dead."
"Not dead? We watched his death on television together."
"He's not dead. He simply vacated his body. I can feel him hanging around."
Lor Lu's smile broadened to a grin. "Really?"
"You're teasing me. You've known it all along. And he's not somewhere 'up there.' He's right here. Heaven . . ." She paused. Not heaven; the word had too much baggage attached. "Wherever he is, it's not 'up there'; it's all around us."
She paused again, then continued thoughtfully. "You know, your old organization chart wasn't very good, but it functioned. My project was useful but not essential, and there are other consultants who could have helped you. Why me? Why fly all the way to Connecticut to recruit Ben and me?"
Lor Lu spoke as softly as she. "You have much to share. You're only beginning to discover how much. And you have been a part of Ngunda Aran's people in other lifetimes, both you and Ben. Also, you had agreed in advance. Thus you were gathered."
She didn't reply, didn't even examine his answer. She simply closed her eyes, and within a minute fell asleep again.
Another dream was waiting.