At the equipment yard, the crowd outside the fence had grown slowly at first, then after one o'clock more rapidly, despite the baking sun. As always, some were ill or crippled: arthritis, cancer, emphysema, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis . . . The healers with the bus left none of them unhealed, while Jenny Buckels' father and brother watched from the shade of a dump truck.
At two o'clock, Sergeant Lavender called headquarters and asked for reinforcements. His small force numbered eight now, including himself, but there were, he reported, about three hundred people along the fence, both sides of the road, and in the road itself. Most were well-behaved, but Lavender was worried about "militia." "And martial law or not," he said, "I'm not about to start shooting. Too many folks to get hurt."
After a time, three more cruisers pulled up in front, each with two officers.
The healers, including Lor Lu, hung out with the police, one of whom got a toothache healed, and another a groin muscle he'd pulled sliding into third in a police and firemen's league softball game. But the rest of the tour group sat in the bus watching television. They'd all wondered what had become of Dove, so when CNN switched to the front yard of the executive mansion, Art Knowles went outside and informed the others. Most reached the set in time to watch Dove enter the governor's office . . .
. . . And watch the interrogation.
At the climax there was one scream, Lee's. Carl Lavender was at the fence when he heard it, and hurried to the bus to find out what was wrong. It was Lor Lu who told him. "The governor has murdered Dove," he said. Said it through tears, his smile beatific.
Thunderstruck, Lavender strode back to where he could see, then looked horrified at the others, all with tears running down their faces. Hurrying out to one of the patrol cars parked behind the shed, he called department headquarters in Little Rock. A male officer took the call.
Lavender identified himself. "I've got a busload of Millennium folks here, and I need to know what's going on. Can you . . ."
He'd intended to ask whether his orders had changed, but his phrasing opened a floodgate. "Going on?" The officer completely forgot the department's rules of radio etiquette. "Marius went totally bonkers; shot old En-gunda full of holes! Jesus Christ, everyone here saw it! And the guru just stood there, smiling and talking and bleeding. Looked like he was on fire, the way that halo of his flared up. So Marius emptied the whole goddamn magazine into him! Jesus Christ! And he just stood there smiling"the man's voice broke"while the blood pumped out of him!" He paused, struggling for control. "Told old Marius God loved him anyway! Jesus Christ, I never saw anything like it!" Tears were running down the man's face, and again his voice broke, but he continued. "He must have had fifteen, twenty holes in him . . . blood all over the place! Then Marius took out another gun, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger! Oh, God, it was terrible!"
"You mean put it in his own mouth? The governor is dead?"
"Hell yes, the fucker's dead! Jesus Christ! Splashed his brains all over the place! He killed Christ, for God's sake! He should have shot himself!"
The man broke down entirely then. Lavender waited. Someone else got on the line and called the shift commander for him. "Captain," Lavender said, "what do I do with these Millennium folks I got here? And their bus?"
"Just keep them there till we get instructions. Pete MacIlvaine's governor now, but he don't know it yet. He's supposed to have gone fishing today, somewhere on the Upper White. We're trying to get in touch with his wife, to find out just where. Everything okay there now? You got enough men?"
"Boy, I hope so. I surely do. Oh my! This feels bad to me, Captain. If you can send me some more people, I'll surely be grateful to you."
Then the sergeant had his men get the heavier weapons from their cruisersa 12-gauge pump shotgun and an M-16 assault rifle from each. Somehow it seemed like the thing to do.
By that time, the crowd had learned of the killing from radios in cars, and on car and cell phones. A few cars drove away, but most people stayed. There was some wailing and sobbing, but most of the weeping was quiet, wet faces peering through the fence. Others stood dry-eyed but solemn, some talking in undertones.
About 3:40 p.m., three men got out of a newly arrived pickup, assault rifles in their hands, and pushed their way roughly through the crowd. After sizing up the situation through the chain-link fence, they turned and left, apparently not liking the look of the shotguns and M-16s.
Lavender got back on the radio to Little Rock. "Captain," he said, "three militia types just sized us up. They carried assault rifles. When they saw my folks carrying M-16s and shotguns, they left, but they could just as well come back with friends. And all the bystanders along the fence would be like shields . . . which means we can't defend the people we're holding. Or ourselves. 'Cause there's no way in hell I'll have my people shoot into a crowd.
"What I need here is a National Guard infantry platoon. If there's not one available, then martial law isn't worth a hill of shit. Anyway I need a lot more backup, either that or authority to take these Millennium people somewheres else."
The captain said he'd see what he could come up with. Lavender posted one of his troopers on the radio, then reexamined the situation. More of the crowd was leaving, apparently because of the militia visit, but two new vans had just arrived, bringing people to be healed. That made Lavender uneasy too. No telling what someone in a wheelchair might be carrying under their blanket. But he wasn't willing to refuse people healing, not yet anyway. So he gritted his teeth, and hoped for quick action from Little Rock.
The President of the United States sat at her computer, looking at an array of rectangles on her wall screen, each showing the face of one of the persons she was on a conference call with: the attorney general; her newly confirmed director of the FBI; the secretary of Homeland Security; and General Alvarez of the army's Continental Command. Her White House chief of staff stood beside her.
"Those of you who haven't seen or heard what happened in Little Rock this afternoon," she said, "will tune to CNN as soon as this call is over. Telling can't do it justice. The governor of Arkansas not only arrested Ngunda Aran today, he had him brought to his office, and at about three p.m., murdered him with an automatic weapon, on televison. Then he committed suicide. The whole damn countrythe whole damn world!has either seen it or soon will.
"We can expect all kinds of weird crap to follow this, and we need a plan, with specifics. That's what I've called you for. We're going to hammer one out right now, within the hour. We can adjust it as necessary, as we go, but we need a basic plan to start with.
"Anderson, we'll start with you. Give us your considerations."
They hadn't gotten very far when something came up that changed the situation drastically.
Lee's scream had been followed by tears and shock. Now she sat watching TV again. She hadn't seen the militia types, but Art Knowles had, and warned them to be ready to hit the floor.
Then CNN's announcement of a special report snatched their attention.
"Minutes ago, at 4:43 p.m. Eastern Time, an astronomical monitoring satellite reported a rogue asteroid on a course intersect with Earth. The predicted time of impact is 5:52 p.m. Eastern Timethat's 22:52 Greenwich Mean Time and 2:52 p.m. Pacific Timealmost exactly one hour from now." Michael Sandow's black face was as calm as usual. "It is not the doomsday collision that's been speculated on for some unknown date in the futurethe sort of cosmic collision that wrote finish to the dinosaurs, sixty-seven million years ago. But it will be a major astrogeological event, far greater than anything in the previous history of humankind. It is almost certain to cause great losses of lifehow great will depend on where it strikesand will severely disrupt worldwide weather.
"The mass of the roughly potato-shaped asteroid, which is about a thousand feet long, is estimated at forty million tons. It was presumably knocked out of its orbit in the asteroid belt by a collision with another asteroid, and may have been further diverted and accelerated by a close flyby of Mars. It is now approaching at some 21,000 miles per hour, roughly 100 times the speed of a deer rifle bullet.
"It might have been detected months ago, but last year's solar storms damaged surveillance satellites, and severe cuts in NASA's budget have delayed their replacement.
"The odds of all this happening were minuscule, but happening it is, and scientists with the Skywatch Project say there is virtually no chance it will miss us.
"Some of you are wondering if this impending event is in any way connected with the murder of Ngunda Aran earlier this afternoon, by Arkansas' late Governor Marius Cook. Our CNN staff has called up excerpts from speeches by Mr. Aran, in which he predicted that exactly such an event would take place, this year, immediately following the death of a new incarnation of the Infinite Soul." [Sandow looks away from the camera.] "I believe we're ready."
The tour crew knew the approximate content, but watched anyway. The man on the screen was the pre-Assumption Ngunda Aran: kind, wise, and entirely human. They could tell the difference instantly.
Carl Lavender hadn't before heard of the guru's asteroid prediction. It sobered him even more than the collision forecast. When it was over, he went outside to tell the crowd to turn on their car radios to KLRN, or CNN Radio, where surely the meteor report would be playing. But even as he stepped out, he heard someone shouting the news from their car door: "Turn on your radios, folks! To KLRN! God's sending down his revenge! A big old meteor's coming down to hit Little Rock at 4:52 p.m.!"
There was a general exodus from the fence to the vehicles parked along both shoulders. They did not at once drive away though. Instead they turned on radios to hear for themselves. Most, Lavender told himself, would listen, then head home to be with their families.
But the crazies around the country? God only knew what they'd do. Bad things, he told himself, bad things. As he turned to reenter the bus, he hoped headquarters got those reinforcements to him quickly.
Lee had gotten out of the bus, Duke Cochran with her. Parked where it was, all they'd been able to see through its windows was the machine shed on one side and cottonwood trunks on the other.
What was left of the crowd stood around the parked cars and pickups, or sat in them, listening.
"How long do you suppose we'll be held here?" Lee asked.
"I doubt if even the sergeant knows," Duke answered, then shrugged. "The world's going to be a different place, that much I'll bet on." Five fifty-two Eastern Time, he thought. That's 4:52 here. He looked at his watch. Less than an hour. He wondered if it would impact Little Rock, then dismissed the notion. But if it did, would the shock wave reach them here, dozens of miles away? Probably, he thought.
Wherever it hit, a lot of people would die, and what kind of world would the casualties be reborn into? Better in some ways, if Dove's forecasts were right, but there'd be heavy adjustments to make. People would have to abandon a lot of long-held must-haves and must-dos and can'tsa process the Depression and the Green Flu had begun, and the asteroid would accelerate big-time.
If it hit in the Atlantic, the tsunami would probably take out Boston, New York City, and Florida. Funnel up Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac, the Saint Lawrence, and take out Baltimore, D.C., Montreal. And the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark . . . ! And up the Thames through London! Good God! The population of those places totalled scores of millions.
It would be a very different world.
Lee's interests and education hadn't given her a sense of planetary dynamics; her focus was her family. Turning, she reboarded the bus, planning to bug the sergeant and Lor Lu for action on leaving, getting back to the Ranch. And there in his usual front seat was Lor Lu, with the sergeant sitting beside him in conversation. Instead of interrupting, she listened.
" . . . was he really the Messiah? A new Messiah?"
Lor Lu's eyes were steady on the sergeant's. "That is each person's decision to make for themselves. Whenever someone asked Dove that question, he answered them as Jesus of Nazareth had: 'By his fruits shall you know him.' " He paused. "What do you think?"
"I hope he was. We sure could use one. People don't pay much attention to the original anymore, even most that claim to. I've been reading old En-gunda in the newspaper for the better part of a year now. He was interesting, but I didn't pay all that much attention till the last week or so." He paused thoughtfully. "I'm a lot more at home with the Biblethe New Testament anywaythan with what he wrote. Been reading it all my life. But if anyone's a new Messiah . . . I'll tell you, with that aura and all the healings, and how he diedit seems to me he must have been." He gestured toward the sky. "And now this. Is he going to rise from the dead?"
"Not physically. A physical resurrection was useful two thousand years ago. Now it would be counterproductive, and the asteroid will certify his reality. Nor did he intend that people look to him or his death for salvation. The teaching of Ngunda Aran, followed by the visit of the Infinite Soul, were simply to enlighten usto provide new understanding, and inspire us. Which they're doing. And the process will be greatly strengthened by the meteor impact."
Pete MacIlvaine sat in the Marion County Sheriff's Department cruiser, beside the deputy who'd found him. It was parked in the shade of a black oak, doors open to the breeze. The reservoir was some sixty yards away.
"I'm the what?" MacIlvaine said into the radio. "What happened to Marius?" His face fell. "Good gawd! I'll be right down." He shook his head. "And killed himself too. Huh! Probably just as well. It lessens the outrage. . . . Yeah, I'll head south right away. . . . Can you what? Everett, if it's all that urgent, do what you think best. I'll back you on it."
He disconnected. "Deputy," he said, "call your sheriff and tell him I want you to escort me till we meet a state cruiser. Past the county line if need be. Sounds as if I'm needed in Little Rock right now."
Simeon Narezhny put aside his wrench and wiped his hands on a piece of shirt. The mayor of Yakovskij Zaliv was not a paid official. He derived his living from a fishing boat he owned and operated with his son and a nephew. The problems of the village he addressed according to their urgency and the available time. And resources, which in small Kamchatka fishing villages were mostly the ingenuity, strength, and patience of their people.
This morning he'd needed to change the head gasket on the diesel-powered generator that provided the village's electricity. To economize on fuel, it operated only at certain hours, varying with the season, mainly in the evening, and at noon so people could hear the midday news from Petropavlovsk.
He was reaching for the starterand facing the open doorwhen a sleeting flash of light and heat seared him. He raised his forearm as if to shield his eyes.
War! was his first thought. But who would waste a nuclear bomb on this part of the world?
The glare died quickly, and he stepped outside. Even damaged, his eyes, looking eastward over the Pacific, saw a vast wall of somethingsteam, waterclimbing into the sky. A miles-long mushroom cloud! At the institute he'd najored in fisheries science, but had been required to take courses in the Earth sciences as well, and he'd always read. So it seemed to him that he knew what this was, what it had to be, Not a bomb, not any kind of bomb.
Warn the village, he thought, then realized how badly damaged he was. Start the generator! The radio station in Petropavlovsk will warn them! He movd to step back inside, and fell. So he crawled, intent on finding the starter. Nausea seized him, and he vomited violently, as if to expel breakfast; stomach; gullet. When he'd finished, time seemed suspended, his sense of urgency alive but paralyzed. Finally he moved again. He couldn't see at all now, so as he crawled he groped. Outside, he told himself. His hands found the wall, then a doorjamb, and with great and desparate effort, he pulled himself to his feet. His body felt on fire, but the pain was muted, separate from him. Staggering onto the stoop, he fell again, hard, to sprawl stunned in the dirt.
"Simeon! Simeon!"
Who was calling him? The voice wakened him again to his responsibilities, and he made it back onto his hands and knees. "Tsunami!" His intended bellow was a croak. "Tsunami!" He lay gasping like a beached fish. How many minutes did they have? "Tsunami!" he croaked again, sure now his skin was peeling off.
Miraculously the pain stopped. Surprised he looked around, able to see again, and recognized his own body lying in the dirt. There were no flames on it. He saw his cousin Natalya sitting on her stoop like a puppet with the strings cut, leaning against the wall, staring seaward. Dear Natalya, he thought fondly, everyone's friend.
Then the wave hit. Not the tsunami. The shock wave. He saw his body thrown twenty yards, and all eighteen of Yakovskij Zaliv's frame houses knocked flat.
Unknown to Carl Lavender, something more serious than the three departed "militia types" was coming down a tree-lined county road nearbya truck with the logo of a rental company. Michael Shaughnessy sat beside its driver. He'd decided to lead this strike himself, to be sure it was done right. He hadn't been listening to commercial radio, and didn't know about Dove's death or the meteor. The man who'd been directing him via a security band hadn't kept him up with events. He'd simply given directions, guiding Shaughnessy along rural roads. He'd also shown him the equipment yard, an early view from the CNN aerial camera, revealing the bus behind the machine shed.
"It should be the next crossroad," Shaughnessy told the driver. "If there's a sign, it should say Bell Creek Road."
There was, and it did. The driver turned south. A half-mile ahead, some dozen cars were still parked along the road. Shaughnessy raised a microphone to his mouth, talking to the men in the rear of the truck. "We'll arrive in about a minute. When I stop, pile out ready for action. Kill anyone in your way. The local yokels are highway police, with shotguns and automatic rifles. They may take positions behind gravel piles. Finish them off immediately; handling surrenders is too dangerous. Then hang one of the blanket charges on the fence, blow it, get through the opening and take out the bus. Don't leave anyone from Millennium alive. Some of them may hide in the machine shed, so check it out."
He'd gone through the instructions before, en route, giving the men time to get used to them. If they didn't have it now, they never would.
Luther Koskela sat with the others in back. The truck carried more than a stock of weapons. If anyone looked in the rear door, all they'd see were wardrobe boxes and furniture. Behind the facade, sixteen mercenaries had made themselves as comfortable as they could, on sofas, easy chairs and mattresses. Now they got up, quiet, alert and ready. And disgruntled. None of them were happy with the "no prisoners" order. It went seriously against the principles of the mercenary brotherhood. But it was too late to back out.
They were even less informed than Shaughnessy, not even knowing that Dove had been arrested.
Luther had slipped into a dark and dangerous mood. From the beginning he'd hadn't liked this job, but the scrap yard had RIF'd him. Needing work, he'd gone to Minneapolis, where he'd looked up an old buddy from their Nigerian days, and one thing had led to another . . . In a minute or so, there'd be shooting, with civilians in the wayAmericans, bystanders who had no part in this, no fault. Nor did he have anything against police.
A crock of shit, he thought, angry with himself for getting into this.
The truck had slowed. Now it stopped. Masterson, their command sergeant, threw the door lever and lifted. The door slid up and the men piled out, Luther the last of them, M-16s ready. There were cars along both sides of the road, people standing by them. Some of them looked toward the newcomers, shock beginning to register. Luther followed Masterson and the others, for one of the few times in his life reluctant. There was a vicious sputtering of automatic rifles, the boom of a shotgun. A grenade exploded . . .
The Arkansas National Guard Jicarilla was approaching fast from the northwest when its pilot saw the moving van pull up outside the equipment yard. Saw armed men emerge, saw the firefight begin. He carried a squad of riflemen in back, but knew at once he'd have no time to set them down. Instead he accelerated and aimed the helicoper, slanting downward. Saw startled faces turn upward toward him, and fired the multi-barreled 7.62 Thrashers, side-mounted on sponsons. Small-arms fire rattled on his armor, spalled his armor-glass windshield, and ended. He veered off, only then informing the troops of the situation. He would examine his results before putting them down.
He wasn't sure how ready these weekend soldiers were for a firefight, and neither were they, most of them.
Shaughnessy had jumped from the cab as soon as the truck stopped. Focused as he was on the police, he hadn't expected intervention. He heard his men fire. The police in the open were cut down almost before they knew anything was wrong. Others had returned fire. A grenade took out two of them. One of Shaughnessy's men threw the blanket charge on the fence and activated it, but before he could run, rifle fire from behind a bulldozer knocked him down.
Only then did the chopper's beating vanes register on Shaughnessy's hearing. He glanced toward the sound, saw and dove, taking cover beneath the motor block. Fire from the chopper's multibarrelled guns chewed dirt, then men, then ripped into the truck. As the aircraft veered off, the charge on the fence blew.
The gunfire had stopped. Shaughnessy crawled from beneath the cab, then became aware of someone who'd come around the rear of the truck. Turning, he recognized the face.
"Goddamn you, Koskela!" he shouted, and gestured with his pistol. "You're supposed to . . ."
He didn't even have time to be surprised; Luther fired half a magazine into him. Shaughnessy's return shot was purely reflex, the spasm of a dead man. It took Luther through the forehead. Had there been an actual hell, they'd have arrived in a dead heat.
Florence Metzger sat in the Oval Office with Heinie Brock, Willem Enrico Groenveldt, and Andrea Jackson. They were sharing home-made Mexican pizza from the White House kitchen, and watching CNN. The hour and minute had arrived; they were waiting to hear about the geophysical manifestation.
Again it was Michael Sandow who reported. "This just in. The giant meteor has impacted in the Pacific Ocean thirty-four miles east of Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula, in about four thousand feet of water. It has sent a pillar of steam and water some twenty miles in diameter more than four miles into the sky, and is still climbing. That is twenty-plus miles in diameter. Hundreds of cubic milesthat's cubic milesof water have been displaced. We'll bring you more as we get it."
"My God," Heinie breathed. "My God!" Intellectually, he'd realized the enormity of what was going to happen, but only now was it real to him.
The President's phone warbled. For a moment she ignored it, then took it on her handset, for privacy. "Put him through," she said. Then, "David, what can I do for you?" She listened. "I'll be delighted to. I'd sound more enthusiastic, but the rogue asteroid just hit in the North Pacific. It's not just a warning any longer . . .
"You hadn't heard? The warning was on radio and TV an hour ago. Turn your set on, to CNN. And David, the answer is 'yes.' If you're willing to be married to the President of the United States in times like these, I'll be glad to have your shoulder to cry on now and then. When I have time. And let's not put it off. Given the world as it is . . .
"Wednesday? To tell you the truth, I don't know what the legal requirements are in the District. I'd have to check on . . . You already did. I should have known . . . What about right here in the Oval Office? The White House chaplain can take care of it . . . How about just you and me and a few close friends? A dozen or so: half yours and half mine . . . Look, I'll call you back. I've got a major league emergency."
Every eye in the room was on her when she hung up. Mentally she shook herself. "Heinie," she said, "call FEMA and get me in touch with Colonel Cosetta. I want to know the major features of their evacuation plans as soon as she can fax them, complete with time tables. I'm no geophysicist, but there's going to be a tidal wave like nothing ever seen by human eyes."