The Second Coming by John Dalmas

“Not particularly. And things will settle down. Meanwhile, a ranger platoon is being flown to the Ranch to stay temporarily in the visitors’ lodge—under 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 prepared—more 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 impact—clouds 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 Cook—all 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 did—with 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.

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