Physicists recognize four basic forces in the physical universe: the strong force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force, and gravity. Actually those are derivative, not basic. The basic force is love, and the principal secondary force is fear.
From The Collected Public Lectures
of Ngunda Aran
The trip had not begun well. There was an ongoing gun battle at Kennedy Airport between a Port of New York security force and militants of some sort. Thus their commuter flight from Bridgeport had been diverted all the way to Dulles, the air traffic overload at LaGuardia and Newark being extreme. At Dulles they'd lucked out. Their tickets were business class, so they'd gotten on the second flight to Denver, a little more than two hours later than their scheduled flight from Kennedy.
On the Denver flight, and the commuter flight to Pueblo, there'd been no complications. American Airlines had rearranged their reservations, and informed the charter plane that would take them from Pueblo to Henrys Hat.
Henrys Hat. A strange name for a town, Lee told herself.
She stared. In all her thirty-six years, Lee Shoreff had never been west of the Mississippi. And while she'd seen mountains—the Adirondacks, Greens and Catskills—she'd never seen anything remotely like the chain of snow peaks some twenty miles ahead. They stretched as far north and south as she could see from the small plane, their upper slopes white with late-September snow.
"Ben!" she murmured. "They're beautiful! I wonder how high they are."
It was Lor Lu who answered, looking back from his seat beside the pilot. "In that range, the Sangre de Cristo, there are probably ten peaks higher than fourteen thousand feet. See those three over there?" He pointed southwestward. "The tallest is Blanca Peak, the highest in the range."
"Will we fly over them?"
"No, we're almost to Henrys Hat."
Scanning she asked, "Where?"
"See that creek ahead to our right? Where the trees are? That's Henrys Creek. Henrys Hat is the village, those buildings you can see up ahead, where the the road crosses the creek."
She stared. "That's—it?" She was surprised that so small a place would have a name. As they approached, she decided it might have a dozen houses, all of frame construction, all weatherbeaten. Plus what she recognized as garages, barns and sheds. And what had to be a store, with a low porch and fuel pumps in front, and a flagpole and flag at one corner. There was nothing resembling a school. A half mile past it was a small airfield, with two parked planes and a large metal machine shed. The only thing she found aesthetic about any of it was the cottonwoods along the creek, their leaves golden, with dark spires of spruce scattered among them.
The eight-place Beechcraft landed smoothly on the grass runway, and they disembarked. She, Ben, and the two girls stood by while Lor Lu settled things with the pilot, whose belt computer first scanned Lor Lu's plastic, then his thumb print. An ungainly looking vehicle had been waiting for them, its front half an eight-seat carryall, its rear a long pickup bed. Now it rolled to the plane, and a lanky man got out. He began to transfer their luggage, Ben helping him. Each piece, before loading, he put in a large plastic yardbag, which he then tied. When Lor Lu finished with the pilot, he joined them.
"Hello, Bar Stool," he said, "how's the Mescalero?"
"If it was flyin', I wouldn't have come in the eight-pack." He gestured at the dust-coated vehicle, which had four doors, and bench seats. Bar Stool, Lee thought, looked sixty or so, his hair white, his face seamed. But he seemed strong and agile. He fit Lee's consept of a cowboy.
Lor Lu turned to his wards. "Bar Stool," he said gesturing, "meet Ben and Lee and Becca and Raquel."
"Glad to know you," said Bar Stool.
They shook hands with him, the girls included. Bar Stool's was large and callused.
"Do you, ah, have another name besides Bar Stool?" Lee asked.
"Yep." Bar Stool opened one of the back doors. "If you folks will climb aboard, we'll get to the Ranch in time, you can shower down and settle in before supper."
They boarded, dust flying as they slammed the doors. Then Bar Stool took off with as much of a jackrabbit start as the eight-pack provided, the truck bouncing along the rough road, trailing a plume of tawny dust. He drove too fast for the conditions, it seemed to Lee, fifty miles an hour on ill-graded gravel, slowing and speeding according to the bends, curves, and holes. "How far is it?" she asked—loudly; the ride was noisy.
"Twelve miles."
She'd already given up on the girls attending a private school. There wasn't even a public school in Henrys Hat.
"Mr. Bar Stool," Becca asked, "how did you get your name?"
Bar Stool looked at her via the rearview mirror. "Ask Muong Soui Louie here." He thumbed toward Lor Lu beside him. "He tells it better than me." Lor Lu glanced back, grinning. "It was at the Raven hootch at Long Tieng," he said. "The Ravens were a secret U.S. operation. Not secret from the Pathet Lao or the North Vietnamese. Secret from America. And the hootch was the house we lived in, with a cage outside, and two Himalayan black bears we fed beer to. We had a little club nearby, where we drank, and the club had bar stools. Bar Stool got his name because he got so attached to one of the stools, sometimes when he left he'd take it with him."
Becca looked uncertainly at Lor Lu, getting no notion at all of what he'd been describing. Neither did her mother—no clear notion. It was Lee who spoke. Cautiously. "Where was that?"
"Laos. Long Tieng was the center of Hmong resistance to the Pathet Lao. The Hmong were a mountain people, and the Pathet Lao were communists."
"Then this must have been . . ."
"Bar Stool was there from '69 to '72."
Lee stared at the small Asian. The truck hit an exposed culvert and jounced, hard, her seat harness holding her in place. "Was that—in the Viet Nam War?" she asked.
"In a manner of speaking. Peripherally."
She stared. He'd said "we" as if he'd been there. And the Viet Nam War had ended —what? Forty years ago? Yet Lor Lu couldn't be much over thirty, if that.
The strangeness killed the conversation while stimulating Lee's fears. She sat unable to think coherently, as if some small but dangerous beast crouched in ambush, watching for weakness. Grassy hills flowed past, with occasional small groups of grazing cattle. The grass wasn't even green; it was dead. Dun-colored. To the west the foothills rose higher, patches of dark pine marking them, coalescing into distant forest. After twenty minutes or so she saw a large camp ahead, with tents of different kinds. Hippies! Tents enough for a hundred people or more, even now at the beginning of October, with cold weather coming. Here and there were structures she assumed were sanitation facilities—latrines perhaps, and bathhouses. On a nearby knoll stood a large water tank.
And barbed wire fence, with a sign reading children at play, speed limit 15 Bar Stool had slowed way down. A uniformed entry guard waved them through a gate without stopping them. Why barbed wire? Lee wondered. And the guard wore a pistol! Good God!
The truck tires had thrummed momentarily as they passed through, a sound they'd heard several times since leaving Henrys Hat.
"Mr. Bar Stool, what was that sound?" Raquel asked.
"That was a cattle guard, honey. Made out of railroad rails. Cows won't cross them; afraid they'd get their feet caught. Which they would. It's all range land around here. Pasture. That's why the place is fenced: to keep the cattle out."
The adults Lee saw in the camp stood or squatted or sat in openings among the tents. Children ran and played. They should, she told herself, be in school somewhere.
Then the camp was behind them. Bar Stool's mundane comments had relieved and emboldened Lee. "I noticed the guard had a gun," she said.
"Yep. There's been murder threats. On Dove. Ngunda."
She supposed there had been. Another worry. There were crazies running around.
A knoll ahead had a watchtower on top, like those at prisons. The road curled around it, and a mile or so ahead she could see—not exactly a town, but with a lot more buildings than Henrys Hat, if with less character. As they neared it, she began to see details. The central and largest building was long and three-storied, of dark brick. An office building, she decided, its ridged tile roof bright red in the autumn sunlight. Near it on one side were several long, two-story frame buildings suggesting small motels or dormitories. Their siding appeared to be one of the new synthetics, cream colored. Their roofs were bright red, green, or blue. The rest, fifty or more, seemed to be small ranch-style homes. They looked much alike, but again with red, green, or blue roofs. Their sidings were various pastels or white. Everything was landscaped, the trees small. Two or three hundred yards beyond the "village" were several large machine sheds.
The last half mile was blacktopped, and the village streets had traffic stripes. Bar Stool pulled up before one of the houses. "This is it," he said. "You're home. The water should be hot by now, so you can shower if you want." He paused. "Sorry for all the dust. Ordinarily I'd have flown you here in the Mescalero."
Lor Lu got out and went around to the rear of the ungainly vehicle, while Ben held the door for Lee and the girls. Becca popped out quickly, Raquel close behind. Lee got out almost reluctantly, as if not wanting to see what the house was like inside. Ben and Lor Lu began taking luggage out of the yardbags, which were gray with dust. Bar Stool led Lee and the girls onto the front porch, unlocked and opened the door, and handed the key ring to Lee.
"There's four keys," he said, "all the same. Far as I know, no one here locks their doors, but I suppose some do at first. Force of habit."
Then he turned back to the eight-pack to help carry up the luggage. Lee went inside more slowly than her curious daughters, and scanned the living room. Even with all the basic furniture, the place felt empty. Foreign. There was no dining room; the living room had an extendable drop-leaf table. The kitchen was well equipped, and had not only a breakfast nook, but a pantry and freezer. It should have, she told herself grimly, as far as it is to the nearest supermarket. Henrys Hat barely had a general store.
She'd never been good with maps, but she'd put a highway map of Colorado in her shoulder bag. Before looking through the rest of the house, she took it out and spread it on the dining table. Ben had drawn a thick red circle around Henrys Hat, whose population wasn't listed. The next nearest town was Lauenbruck, population 567, fifteen miles the other side of Henrys Hat. Even Lauenbruck wouldn't have a mall, she told herself, and wondered how people lived there. The school couldn't be much either, and it was twenty-seven miles away.
Looking for the basement stairway, she found instead a small utility room with washer, dryer, and water heater. There was no basement, she realized.
She was aware now that Ben was behind her. "Not bad, eh?" he said. "It's even been dusted."
Not bad? she thought. She found a three-quarter bath—with only a single washbowl. Something was building inside her, something between dismay and anger. Ben was leading now. They peered into one of the three bedrooms, not very big, with two narrow beds. The girls', she wondered, or are we supposed to sleep separately? A second bedroom was even smaller, and unfurnished. She wondered what possible good it could be without furniture. Then, from behind her, Ben said, "Ah! Our computer room!"
Their own bedroom was somewhat larger, with a queen-sized bed. It had two doors besides the hall door: one a sliding door to a small patio; the other was to another three-quarter bath, this one with double washbowls, in a vanity with a false marble top.
"Tell me what you're thinking," Ben murmured.
She answered without turning. "I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking it's for just a couple of months. Maybe three. At ten thou a month for the two of us. Then we can leave. Go home."
He smiled, realizing she wasn't up to being grinned at. "We don't have a home, sweetheart. Remember? We got foreclosed on. Sold the furniture and appliances to pay on our debts."
She nodded. "I miss our things," she said stiffly. "The things we shipped."
"They'll be here in a few days."
"I know." She gathered herself, but when she spoke, there was no fire in it. "We don't have a thing in the house to eat. Or a car. How will we get to a store? We should have driven here."
"We talked about that." His words still were soft. "By road it's more than thirty miles to Walsenburg, population 3,100, and part of the road is unpaved. Pueblo's twice as far, population 78,000, a steel mill town. And we're higher here than Henrys Hat, which is 7,500 feet above sea level, so there'll probably be quite a bit of snow, and it probably won't melt very fast. So we decided . . ."
"Right." She nodded curtly. "Where are the girls?"
"In their room, probably. Or outdoors."
She turned to him and put her hands on his shoulders, her eyes on his. "Ben, this isn't easy for me. I'll try not to take it out on you, but be patient with me. Okay?"
He smiled softly. "Sure."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This isn't really that bad," she said. "This house I mean. I just wish Millennium wasn't a cult. And there's the school to worry about . . ."
The doorbell rang, and Ben strode from the room, Lee following. While he headed for the front door, she went into the kitchen, where she could hear the girls' voices. "Mom," Becca said, "there's a little building in the backyard, probably to store stuff in. But it's empty, and we don't have anything to store in it, so Raquel and I want to fix it up for a playhouse. And there's a girl's bike on the patio next door, so we'll have someone to play with! Do you know when our bikes will get here?"
"Not exactly. In a few days."
"Lee?" It was Ben, looking in from the living room. "There's a man here. He'd like to take us to meet Ngunda."
"Now?"
He nodded. "If we're ready. Or we can make it later."
I need to shower, she thought, and do something with my hair. Maybe change . . . Oh to hell with it! "All right. Let's meet him." If he doesn't like the way we look, let him fire us.
The man in their living room was young, perhaps thirty she thought. And personable, his smile convincing. She didn't trust him a bit. "Mrs. Shoreff," he said, "I'm Larry Rocco. Ngunda would like to meet you two today. He'll be leaving on tour in the morning."
Lee nodded curtly. "Fine," she said brusquely. After instructing the girls not to leave the house, she and Ben left with Rocco. As they stepped off the porch, Rocco gestured with his right hand. "I'm your neighbor," he said, "three houses down."
There was no car in front; they were expected to walk. Of course, she realized. Everything here is so close. Everything but a town, a real town.
As they walked, she noticed the landscaping was quite good. Give the trees and shrubs a few more years to grow . . . There were even sidewalks and curbs. Whoever bankrolled Millennium had deep pockets, and she wondered about that, not for the first time. It occurred to her to ask where the school was. "Actually I'm really more interested in seeing the school than in meeting Mr. Aran just now."
"Why don't we go there after you've met him. I'm sure he won't keep you long. We're quite proud of our school, incidentally. Six teachers and six aides for—the last I heard, it was ninety-eight kids. Their coursework and visual aids come via computer link. What our people do, mainly, is guide and elaborate. Expand on the coursework, and handle any problems the children might have with it."
The school might, she thought, be rather good in some respects. She'd be surprised, though, if there weren't some cultist ideas thrown in. I'll deal with that when we come to it, she told herself. If need be, we can send them to boarding school. Surely there's a decent one in Pueblo.
Like their house, the brick administration building was utilitarian. Even Ngunda's office, on the third floor, was utilitarian, as was his desk. At least he wasn't into extravagant display. Three file cabinets seemed excessive though, given his cutting-edge computer. She'd take care of that, she told herself, when she reorganized their operations. Smiling, Ngunda had stood as they entered. He was taller than Ben, rather lanky and quite dark. She found herself surprised at his appearance. She'd seen him on TV, and pictures of him on Millennium's web site, and in magazines. But the image she'd carried with her had been influenced by editorial cartoonists.
She'd heard he had charisma. Now she felt it, before he'd even spoken. She'd read up on him since they'd contracted to come here. He was 43 years old and an only child, born in Malawi of an African mother. His father was a New Zealander—Maori, Irish, and English.
"Dove," their guide said, "I'd like you to meet Ben and Lee Shoreff."
Ngunda grinned, a flash of white teeth. "It's a pleasure." His deep, resonant voice reminded her of the actor, James Earl Jones, in his prime. "Lor Lu tells me you're just what we need here."
"I trust we won't disappoint him," Lee answered. "Or you." She was in her professional persona now, confident, businesslike.
"And you've brought two daughters. How old are they?"
"Rebecca is eleven and Raquel is nine. They love the idea of a ranch. They've imagined riding horseback here."
"Ah! The possibility has been raised before. Perhaps it's time to lease some horses. Larry, talk to Bar Stool about it. He'll know what the possibilities are, and what's necessary." He turned back to Lee and Ben. "Tomorrow noon I'd like you both to check in at reception. Lor Lu will have you introduced to our organization, and to your jobs. If that is not too soon?"
"That will be fine. It gives us time to take the girls to school and meet their teachers."
"Good. Will noon be all right with you, too, Mr. Shoreff?"
"Me? Yes. That will be fine."
Color rose in Lee's cheeks. She'd ignored Ben, as if he hadn't been there. She'd done that before, and hated herself for it. It was the sort of thing husbands did to wives, a thing that had always annoyed her.
"Well then," Ngunda said, "I hope you two will have supper with me."
"I'm afraid I'll need to press some things first," Lee answered, "and my iron and ironing board are still on their way from Connecticut."
"Ah! As far as I'm concerned, you look fine as you are. We're quite informal here. Most people wear jeans at work. We'll eat in an alcove off the staff dining room. The menu is the same for everyone. Do you think your daughters would care to eat with us?"
He raised an eyebrow at Rocco, who grinned and turned to the Shoreffs. "They can eat at our table if they'd like," he said. "My girls are eight and six. Or someone with older kids may invite them to theirs when they see them."
It seemed workable to Lee, and Ben agreed, so they thanked Ngunda and left. She'd decided tomorrow would be soon enough to visit the school, so Rocco walked them home. The front door was open, and from the front walk, Lee could hear the voices of more than their two girls inside. They found two others with them: Lori and Kari Klein, ten-year-old twins. Minutes later the twins' mother stopped by, identifying herself as the welcome lady. Before she left, she'd invited Becca and Raquel to eat at the Klein's table that evening.
From Susan Klein, who was a teacher, they also learned that school started at 9 a.m. Lee should bring the girls at 8:30, to register and get a quick tour. Registration would take about ten minutes.
There was also a storage building with surplus furniture and appliances, and a small commissary with a limited selection of basic household supplies, and groceries. The commissary had the use of the Ranch's helicopter, and twice a week made a shopping run for residents, to City Market in Walsenburg. It was about thirty miles by air.
Susan also told them the name "Ranch" didn't apply to the "village," strictly speaking. A newsman had learned that in Malawi, Ngunda meant "dove," so he'd dubbed this place "the Dove Cote" before it had even been moved into. That was quickly shortened to "the Cote," and "the Ranch" came to mean the entire, sixteen-square-mile property.
After Susan Klein had left, it occurred to Lee she might adjust to this place pretty decentl nmy. The day had gone well, and no one had seemed at all like a fanatic. If only the school was okay. Susan Klein's personality—pleasant and intelligent—had been reassuring. Cross your fingers, Lee, she said inwardly.
Supper with Dove also went well. The food was rather simple, mostly low fat, and well prepared. And instead of talking religion or philosophy, the great guru had talked about the school, about the Rockies' late season skid that had lost them a place in the National League playoffs, and about the Broncos' rookie quarterback, their first-round draft pick out of BYU. As far as she could tell, he wasn't putting it on for her benefit. He seemed as knowledgeable and interested as any casual fan might be. Despite his magnetism, though, she couldn't see why so many people made such a big deal of him. In letters to the editor, he'd even been referred to as the new messiah. Ben said Millennium made no such claim, but it wouldn't. Bad PR. Let others make it for them.
Obviously a lot of money had been pumped into Millennium, which meant someone hoped to make big money out of it. Perhaps it was his PR image that drew people. He might be nothing more than a magnetic but amiable puppet, mouthing someone else's scripts. Or the scripts could be his own. Big Money might see him as a resource. Might have moved in on him, providing financing and promotion.
Walking back to the house, Becca and Raquel did most of the talking. Actually, Raquel did seventy percent of it. They "really really liked" the Klein twins. Their eagerness to start school the next day bemused Lee. When she'd been a girl, the prospect of changing schools had given her an upset stomach.
If cult values and ideas were taught, she wasn't sure she could deal with it.