From Susan Klein, who was a teacher, they also learned that school started at 9 a.m. Lee should bring the girls at 8:30, to register and get a quick tour. Registration would take about ten minutes.
There was also a storage building with surplus furniture and appliances, and a small commissary with a limited selection of basic household supplies, and groceries. The commissary had the use of the Ranch’s helicopter, and twice a week made a shopping run for residents, to City Market in Walsenburg. It was about thirty miles by air.
Susan also told them the name “Ranch” didn’t apply to the “village,” strictly speaking. A newsman had learned that in Malawi, Ngunda meant “dove,” so he’d dubbed this place “the Dove Cote” before it had even been moved into. That was quickly shortened to “the Cote,” and “the Ranch” came to mean the entire, sixteen-square-mile property.
After Susan Klein had left, it occurred to Lee she might adjust to this place pretty decently. The day had gone well, and no one had seemed at all like a fanatic. If only the school was okay. Susan Klein’s personality—pleasant and intelligent—had been reassuring. Cross your fingers, Lee, she said inwardly.
* * *
Supper with Dove also went well. The food was rather simple, mostly low fat, and well prepared. And instead of talking religion or philosophy, the great guru had talked about the school, about the Rockies’ late season skid that had lost them a place in the National League playoffs, and about the Broncos’ rookie quarterback, their first-round draft pick out of BYU. As far as she could tell, he wasn’t putting it on for her benefit. He seemed as knowledgeable and interested as any casual fan might be. Despite his magnetism, though, she couldn’t see why so many people made such a big deal of him. In letters to the editor, he’d even been referred to as the new messiah. Ben said Millennium made no such claim, but it wouldn’t. Bad PR. Let others make it for them.
Obviously a lot of money had been pumped into Millennium, which meant someone hoped to make big money out of it. Perhaps it was his PR image that drew people. He might be nothing more than a magnetic but amiable puppet, mouthing someone else’s scripts. Or the scripts could be his own. Big Money might see him as a resource. Might have moved in on him, providing financing and promotion.
Walking back to the house, Becca and Raquel did most of the talking. Actually, Raquel did seventy percent of it. They “really really liked” the Klein twins. Their eagerness to start school the next day bemused Lee. When she’d been a girl, the prospect of changing schools had given her an upset stomach.
If cult values and ideas were taught, she wasn’t sure she could deal with it.
3
. . . . Many people accept only physical phenomena as real. To them we are born, live awhile, then die, and with death cease to exist. To them, the prospect of death can be especially frightening. But you are, in fact, an undying soul, and your loved ones are undying souls. Death ends neither your existence nor theirs. Each of us survives as a soul, despite war, murder and plague. We would survive collision with a 5-gigaton asteroid that killed every human body on our planet.
While incarnate on Earth, we are a soul united with a primate, in a very close relationship, and the primate has its own reactions to dangers. Because the body does die, and regardless of Church doctrine, is not resurrected. Thus being convinced of one’s soulhood, one’s immortality, does not automatically exempt us from fear.
From The Collected Public Lectures
of Ngunda Aran
The room was dark, except for flickering light from an aged television. Near one side of the room stood a stove made of a 35-gallon oil drum standing horizontally on four legs. Its draft was closed, its damper nearly so. An occasional muted pop sounded from its interior, and around its door a red line glowed, thin and dull. To one side lay a small pile of split pine, on the other a shaggy cattle dog, head on forepaws. In the weak light, it might easily be overlooked. Its eyes were not on the screen, but on two men, seated. Footsteps sounded on the front porch. The door opened and closed, a brief chill wind blowing in. There was a smell of barn boots. The two men did not turn.