. . . . Ngunda Elija Aran is one of the more dangerous men in the world. He is far more dangerous than E. David Hilliard was, not because he appears more plausible—he dosn't—but because he emerged in a much more dangerous time, when increasingly large part of the population is susceptible to such fraud.
Charles Heilemann, D.Sc.
meritus Professor of Physics
California State University, Northridge
Letters page, San Francisco Chronicle
It even began oddly, the door chimes startling Lee, making her jump. Ben was downstairs doing laundry, so she put aside the Times business section, went to the door, and after a moment's hesitation, opened it.
A brown, brightly cheerful face confronted her, topping a small wiry body wearing jeans and a black Tee-shirt. The Tee-shirt was decorated with a running, space-suited figure pursued by a unicorn.
White teeth flashed. "Mrs. Shoreff, I've come to talk with you and Ben. My name is Lor Lu." The figure bowed, palms pressed together in front of him. "Holy man extraordinary," he added, eyes laughing. When she simply stared, he spoke again. "He's in the basement, doing laundry. Would you get him please?"
The strange introduction had deranged her usual poise. "Is —he expecting you?"
"No. We met in the WebWorld."
"Come in," she said uncertainly. "I'll get him."
Turning, she strode through the house, disturbed at her state of mind. It occurred to her she hadn't asked what he wanted to talk to them about. He might, she thought, be a salesman. Or a collection agent! The thought alarmed her.
At the head of the basement stairs, she closed the door behind her and called down. "Ben?"
"Yes?"
"There's someone to see you. Us."
Ben Shoreff came out of the laundry room, sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms thick with dark curly hair. "Did he say who he is?"
Lee frowned. It was unlike her not to remember; she was good with names. "Lou someone." She lowered her voice. "And, Ben, he knew where you were: downstairs doing laundry!"
Frowning, Ben started up, rolling his sleeves down as he came. At the top he paused to button them. His attention was on who the visitor might be, rather than on Lee's odd comment. Lou was a common enough name; he must, he thought, know someone named Lou. Together they went to the living room, where he found an Asian he didn't recall seeing before. Asian-American, he corrected. He stands like an American, holds himself like one.
"I'm Ben Shoreff," Ben said. "Have we met?"
"On the WebWorld. I'm Lor Lu. From Millennium. We chatted."
Ben frowned, not recalling. "And you came here to . . . ?"
The grin reappeared. "I had asked to speak with Mrs. Shoreff. I'd read her business posting." He paused to grin at Lee, then turned back to Ben. "She wasn't at home, but you seemed interesting, so I asked you some questions. We need to expand our accounting office, and I like your skills and experience."
The Asian paused, turning again to Lee. "But it was your business posting I was actually following up on. I'd contacted the references you'd posted, and liked what they said about you."
Lee Shoreff stared, on the edge of being horrified, but interested in spite of herself. From Millennium! A cult! She had an automatic fear of cults, but economic depression had struck worldwide, and her young consulting business was clinically dead. Ben had posted résumés of his own, but meanwhile they were seriously in debt, and the mortgage company had sent a foreclosure notice.
"What—would I be expected to do?" she asked.
"Millennium is expanding rapidly, and our operations chart just sort of grew; we need something a lot better. We've tried adapting generic O.C.s, but they haven't been adequate, so Dove—thats what we call Ngunda—said to get someone who can come in and do the job right. I showed him your posting and the comments I'd gotten, and he told me to hire you."
Lee licked her lips. What in the world did a cult need an operations chart for? And Millennium was out west somewhere: Oregon or Colorado. Why hadn't they talked to her by Web, instead of sending someone all the way across the country?
"I suppose I can handle that," she heard herself saying. "The principles apply to anything. If you saw my posting, you know my fees. I'll give you a questionnaire, so you'll know what information to fax."
Lor Lu shook his head. "That's not how we want it done. We want you on site. Our operations and services are unlike any you've had experience with, and you'll need to be personally familiar with them to handle the job. Get to know the people."
She cast a quick glance at Ben. She was, she realized, afraid of this job. "I— how long on site? I have a husband and two school-age daughters."
Lor Lu gestured. "No problem. Bring them. We'll provide a three-bedroom house, furnished, and we have a state-licensed school on the premises. Our employees consider the school better than average, and you can take your meals in our dining room if you'd like. The cost is nominal." He laughed. "Cheaper than buying groceries, and the kitchen staff takes care of the cooking and cleanup."
Inwardly Lee squirmed, feeling somehow trapped, vaguely desperate. "But—how long?"
"I can write the contract for two months, with extensions as necessary. And we pay transportation, of course, including freight for belongings up to fifteen hundred pounds."
"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, 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."
"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."
"That's beside the point! He is a guru! And this Lor Lu introduced himself to me as a 'holy man extraordinary'! Ye gods, Ben! And he knew you were in the basement . . ."
"Doing laundry. Right."
"How could he have known that?"
He laughed. "Maybe it's the kind of thing holy men know."
"Dammit Ben, it's not funny!"
He nodded. "You're right, it's not. It's about you making sixty-five hundredand, me another thirty-five hundred, which total ten thousand. A month. With the possibility of employment that could last us through the depression."
"He wants us to move out west!"
"We have to move at the end of the month anyway. We're being evicted, remember? Without enough money to move our stuff or store it. And you've already told me you couldn't stand to move in with your folks. Especially with the girls."
Lee cringed at the thought of Becca and Raquel exposed to the judgements and sarcasms of her parents. "But—there's a mob of hippies there, probably smoking dope and screwing one another all over the place."
"I'm sure we won't have to join in."
She glared.
"He didn't invite them, he doesn't cater to them. And their camp is miles from Millennium headquarters. The ranch is a big place." He shifted the conversation. "You've read about Iiúoo, the Ladder. It was featured in the Sunday Times a few years ago. Among other places."
She did remember, vaguely. Ladder was a program providing free counseling on Indian reservations, and supposedly had had impressive success. She'd never put much stock in psychological counseling, or in free anything.
"Then you know who started it," he said.
"Ngunda Aran. Your goo-roo." She exaggerated the syllables.
"He's not my guru, sweetheart," Ben answered gently. "I simply read his columns. He's a licensed psychotherapist who had a highly successful clinical practice and did pro bono Life Healing in the Colorado penitentiary. Then he spent two summers on the Crow Reservation in Montana, dealing with alcoholism, drugs, and futility."
Her husband, she thought, was sounding like a Millennium flack. "What's that got to do with hippies flocking to him?" she asked.
"I suspect they're like a lot of other people; they've lost faith in a system that screws over certain groups and then punishes them for not fitting in. But the hippies' main interest isn't therapy. They're looking for a spiritual fix, and they like what he says in his columns and talks."
For a minute she didn't say anything. She was thinking of $10,000 a month. Finally she gazed thoughtfully at her husband. "Is that why you're attracted to him? Because you're looking for a spiritual fix?"
"I'm attracted to Ngunda because he's been effective. And because to me he makes sense." He paused. "Let me ask a question now. It's my turn."
She nodded.
"How much faith do you have in the system?"
She examined the question. "It's never worked terribly well. Socioeconomic systems are composed of human beings, and we know what they're like."
"What are they like?"
"Let's say we're—imperfect. Irrational and perverse, not to mention greedy and dishonest." She paused. "Not everyone, but enough. What was your original question again?"
"Have you lost faith in the system? Do you think it will get us out of the current depression? Heal the pessimism? Reverse the fifteen percent unemployment? Workers getting by on twenty-hour workweeks so executives and stockholders can make bigger profits by avoiding worker benefits? Professionals working twelve-hour days to keep their jobs, like you did? The anger and cynicism? The violence and vandalism? Mortar shells dropping on gated enclaves for the wealthy?"
Lee had wilted at his listing, especially the mortar attacks. "I'm—not sure," she answered softly. "I really hope it can. Times have been bad before and the country's come out of it."
Ben thought of saying that people often survived a first major heart attack, sometimes a second, even a third. But if they kept having them . . . Instead he put an arm around her. "I hope it can too. But people will have to change in the process. More greed and more government won't work." He smiled, barely. "End of sermon."
Lee's sigh was gusty. "What'll we tell—what's his name again?"
"Lor Lu. How about yes?"
She looked at her husband. At five-feet-eight, she was fairly tall for a woman, but he was considerably taller. And looked Levantine: swarthy and hairy. Not a handsome, exotic-looking Levantine, but virile. Sexy in spite of his calm, his flexible disposition, his mild good nature. It was his sexiness that had first attracted her. Then she found they could actually talk out their disagreements without either of them getting angry the way she and her first husband, Mark, had. She hated it when she got shrill.
Sighing again, she nodded. "Okay, I'll go." She made a face at him. "If you promise not to sit around on a pillow with your feet in your lap, saying Ommmm."
He laughed. "I promise, absolutely." Then turning, he drew her to him, kissing her.
Her response was distracted. She was worried about her daughters now. She'd check the WebWorld. See what she could learn about the Millennium school that what's-his-name had mentioned. Lor Lu. Maybe they could register them in a private school, in some town near the Millennium ranch.