The Second Coming by John Dalmas

“Two months? I’m sure it won’t take that long. One at most.”

“Two months. We’ll want you there to debug it, and groove our people in on it. And we are, after all, an international operation, so there will be some travel. Two months, with extensions as necessary. Then, if you like us and we like you, we may want your expertise on other things.

“Your rates are reasonable enough for short-term jobs of the sort you usually do, but because of the length of the contract, we’ll want to pay you by the month. We were thinking in terms of sixty-five hundred dollars, with credit transfers on the fifteenth and thirtieth.”

He stopped, arms folded now, but the grin was still there. Again she looked at Ben, interested in spite of herself. At Mertens, Loftus, and Hurst, her salary had reached $7,500 a month, but in the fourteen months since she’d quit, she hadn’t come close to that. She’d topped $3,000 only three times. In the month previous she’d grossed just $375, and that by cutting her rate drastically. She was good at what she did, the best, but in times like these, businesses weren’t hiring consultants or anyone else. And effective promotion would cost more than she could borrow. Especially now, with their credit rating down the drain.

Ben spoke then, his tone diffident, but the words to the point. “You said you were interested in hiring me, too. What would I be doing?”

“You’ll be in our accounting office, helping set up procedures that will work efficiently in your wife’s new system.”

Ben gestured. “Have a seat, Mr. Lu.”

They sat. My God, Lee thought, I never asked him to sit down! He’s offering us jobs, and I never asked him to sit down!

“What would my job pay?” Ben asked.

“It would start at thirty-five hundred dollars.”

“On the basis of my posting and a WebWorld chat?”

“I did other research. On both of you.” The Asian gestured casually. “And of course there are your auras.”

Our auras?! Lee thought. Our auras?!

Ben glanced at his wife, then turned to Lor Lu again. “How soon do you need a commitment?”

“My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 8:57.”

“When would we have to be there?”

“There’s a degree of urgency. We need a new OC in place as soon as reasonably possible. We want both of you there by the first of next month.”

“Have you got a number we could call today? This evening? My wife and I need to talk about this.”

The man was grinning again. Like a cat with a mouse under its paw, Lee thought. “I’m at the Veldrome Hotel, at the airport. The number is 614-555-7100, Room 312.” He spelled his name for them. “Call me any time before eleven.”

He left copies of Millennium’s standard employment contract for them to read, then shook their hands and left. It seemed to Lee his grip had some sort of electrical charge.

* * *

She stared after him. What had he said when he’d introduced himself to her? Holy man extraordinary. Good God! And he’d known that Ben was in the basement doing laundry.

“Ben,” she said, “I don’t want to go out there.”

He looked at her. “Why not?”

“Honey, it’s a cult! And you know what happened to Laura.”

He did know. Laura had suicided. Her favorite cousin. “That was the Church of Universal Truth,” he said, “not Millennium.”

“They’re both cults.”

“And because the Truthees screwed some people over, broke up some families, Millennium is dangerous?”

Her lips thinned. “And I’m afraid of that man!”

“Of Lor Lu? Why?”

“He’s—strange!”

Ben smiled. “Strange is what your parents call me. Why they don’t like me. That and because nominally my mother’s Catholic and my father’s a Jew. With a touch of Falasha at that, though they don’t know it. But you married me.”

“And he knew you were in the basement! Doing laundry!”

Ben nodded, a completely inadequate response.

“And Ngunda Aran is a guru,” she went on. “He writes a syndicated new age column. You read it every day.”

“Sweetheart, the term for people who write columns is columnist, not guru. And I don’t read it every day. He only does two a week.”

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