The Second Coming by John Dalmas

It was Lor Lu who spoke first. “You have something to say,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “Dove levitated. He really is the Infinite Soul, isn’t he.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“The Infinite Soul incarnate. Yes.”

“I could never have imagined the things I’ve seen,” she said, then paused. “Auras! I didn’t even believe there were such things. Then the night before we left the Cote, Ben and I watched the ‘goodbye cube’ again. It showed Dove with a sort of turquoise aura, flecked with rose and gold.” She chuckled. “The first time I watched it, I didn’t even notice, as if it wasn’t there. But now . . .” She gestured toward Dove. “Now it’s pure gold. What makes the difference?”

His smile softened. “Part of the aura shown on the cube was that of a human soul, Ngunda Aran. Another layer was the body’s aura, and still another was the personality. But now there is simply the aura of the Infinite Soul, and of the body fully adapted to it.”

Lee stared at the Hmong for a long moment, thinking how young he looked and how—ageless he sounded. Nodding, she got up and started toward the rear. A glance showed Dove still upright, unmoving and seemingly unchanged. For just a moment their eyes met, and a wave of unexpected rapture! flowed through her, leaving an afterglow of exaltation, expansion. She reached her seat beaming, took her pillow from the overheard compartment, let the seat back all the way and reclined on it. Almost at once she slept, without thought, without question.

65

The Tour Unfolds

Lee awoke to Lor Lu’s hand on her arm. “You may want to freshen up,” he told her, then walked forward to his “office.”

The bus was moving down a city street. She looked at her watch—7:08 a.m., Central Time. The town, she supposed, was still Davenport. Getting up, she started back toward the women’s restroom. Dove sat upright in the back seat, as before, and she wondered if he’d slept at all—or moved at all—during the night.

She washed, tidied her hair and fixed her face, skipping the shower. The water pressure was too weak to enjoy, and the space a bit tight for dressing and undressing. She might, she thought, try it out when she had more time and greater need.

At an interstate exchange they pulled into a restaurant parking lot. It wasn’t a publicized stop, and there was no crowd. The phoned-in orders were waiting—mostly assorted omelets, ranging from spicy Mexican to American cheese, with buttered toast and half-pint cartons of juices and milk. The bus had its own hot drink and cold drink stations.

The tour crew’s service team went in to pick them up, and Lee went with them to handle the charges. The bus stayed in the lot for nearly thirty minutes, long enough for the TV crews to get their orders, then they all pulled out together. By that time a number of people had come outside to stare at the bus.

Their first healing stop of the day was at a mall parking lot on the fringe of Galesburg, Illinois. West of Galesburg they left the four-lane, and by noon had made scheduled stops at a truckstop outside Monmouth, the village park in Roseville, and outside the high school at Macomb. Here and there along the way, people stood at country crossroads, or on the roadside in front of farmhouses. Once, one of the watchers sat waiting in a wheelchair. On another occasion, one watched propped on wrist crutches. In each instance, Bar Stool had stopped. Dove had gotten out, walked back and healed the person. The network cameras captured all of it.

* * *

During that day and the next three, they wove their intermittent way generally southward. They meandered as far west as Hannibal and Bowling Green, in Missouri, then eastward again, headed for Springfield, Illinois, then southward, with what to Lee was a blur of stops. Meanwhile they’d acquired an ever-lengthening train of companion vehicles that began with the TV trucks. And of course there were the highway patrol escorts, their identity changing with the jurisdiction. More and more other vehicles attached themselves: cars, vans, pickups, retired school buses, a truck with a canvas cover . . . vehicles filled with passengers who wanted to “be in the presence,” as one had said to a TV news anchor.

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