Meanwhile he was getting a good sense of the density, positioning, and movements of ushers. They didn’t carry guns, but there were radios and cans of whatever on their belts. There were also uniformed armed guards of two kinds: police and armed security people hired by the Arena Authority.
Those things would vary from city to city, but probably not by much. He wondered if there might not be police snipers at vantages in the arena, maybe in the press boxes, watching for reaction vortices in the crowd, that might signify the drawing of a smuggled gun or grenade. Snipers ready to swing their telescopic sights to any disturbance. There’d be serious drawbacks to police snipers though. If just one of them’s a nut who wants to shoot the guru . . .
Luther didn’t notice the grotesque irony in the thought.
After the crowd was seated again, the mayor introduced the other dignitaries. But only when Ngunda Aran stepped to the microphone did Lute pay much attention. Even then, for the first minute or so, the words didn’t really register. It was when the guru began to talk about the messiah to come that Koskela paid serious attention.
“Among Christians,” Ngunda said, “the thought that the Infinite Soul will incarnate again has been around since not long after the death of Christ, nearly two thousand years ago. In the first decades after the crucifixion, most Christians expected it to happen in their lifetime. When it didn’t, the anticipation cooled. It heated up markedly near the end of the first millennium, more than a thousand years ago, and again it cooled when nothing happened.
“There was much less expectation in the last decade of the second millennium, but it heated up several years into the third. Beginning with the nuclear destruction of six Middle Eastern cities during the One-Day War—a war which some Christians considered the beginning of Armageddon—and the nuclear fallout that its initiators had failed to allow for adequately.
“Now we have almost enough proclaimed messiahs to play a basketball game, though not all of them are Christian. One need not be familiar with New Testament prophecy to feel that the time is ripe for the Tao to ‘intervene.’
“But what is the nature of this messiah so many hope for . . . ?”
It seemed to Luther Koskela that he could answer that one, though it wasn’t an answer most of these people wanted to hear. They wanted God to send a messiah to save them, so they could go on being a pack of idiots. He’d seen a TV rerun once, of Jesus Christ Superstar, and it seemed to him the Jesus character had said it about right: “Save yourselves!” Then the poor sucker turned right around and got himself crucified.
* * *
Duke Cochran sat much nearer the speaker than Luther Koskela did, and his interest was different. He was quite familiar with Ngunda events now, and with Ngunda’s philosophy. What impressed him most was that so many people, some of them very intelligent, took it seriously. Between tours he monitored the Web for reviews and comments. Every talk the man gave, of course, was on Millennium’s website, along with favorable commentaries. And there were plenty of sites where he was trashed. Political cartoonists had a ball with him. Independent commentaries ranged from thoughtful, through skeptical and cynical, to acutely hostile. Most of the latter were fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists.
He wondered if some writers weren’t actually just a little worried that maybe, just maybe, Ngunda was for real. That someday, with a long memory, he’d sit on a pink cloud and send his more serious attackers to eternal hellfire for sticking it to him too hard. Others, without believing in him as a messiah or a prophet, hoped that what the man taught would have a good effect on the world. At least two he’d read had said as much in writing.
The coming incarnation of the Infinite Soul! Now that Christmas was past, Ngunda’s comments on a new messiah couldn’t be explained away as the season. Interest had jumped when he’d first mentioned it, and it seemed obvious to Cochran that before long the guru would stake his claim. He’d have to. More and more, others were speculating about when, and his coyness would backfire if he didn’t grasp the torch. Besides, any major payoff required it.