. . . . Many people accept only physical phenomena as real. To them we are born, live awhile, then die, and with death cease to exist. To them, the prospect of death can be especially frightening. But you are, in fact, an undying soul, and your loved ones are undying souls. Death ends neither your existence nor theirs. Each of us survives as a soul, despite war, murder and plague. We would survive collision with a 5-gigaton asteroid that killed every human body on our planet.
While incarnate on Earth, we are a soul united with a primate, in a very close relationship, and the primate has its own reactions to dangers. Because the body does die, and regardless of Church doctrine, is not resurrected. Thus being convinced of one's soulhood, one's immortality, does not automatically exempt us from fear.From The Collected Public Lectures
of Ngunda Aran
The room was dark, except for flickering light from an aged television. Near one side of the room stood a stove made of a 35-gallon oil drum standing horizontally on four legs. Its draft was closed, its damper nearly so. An occasional muted pop sounded from its interior, and around its door a red line glowed, thin and dull. To one side lay a small pile of split pine, on the other a shaggy cattle dog, head on forepaws. In the weak light, it might easily be overlooked. Its eyes were not on the screen, but on two men, seated. Footsteps sounded on the front porch. The door opened and closed, a brief chill wind blowing in. There was a smell of barn boots. The two men did not turn.
"What ya watching?"
The younger of them, large in the darkness, answered from the sofa. "The son of God."
"Shit!"
"Careful now, Carl," the third man said. "God'll get ya."
Carl grunted, stepped to the set, and squinted farsightedly at the digital display on the satellite tuner. Then he sat down on an easy chair and watched. Now and again he cursed. The program had been two-thirds over when he'd entered. When it finished, he got up and turned the sound off.
"Goddamn jigaboo!"
The large, younger man grinned. "That's gigaton. Five gigatons."
"What the hell you talking about?"
"That five-gigaton rock he's going to call down to land on your roof. Drive you clear down to hell if you're not careful."
Carl swore again. "Lute, you listen to that Un-gunda enough, your brain'll rot. It's like smoking dope."
Lute laughed outright. "Like that snoose'll rot out your jaw? When dope comes in a bottle, I may get interested." He got to his feet. "Right now, though, I'm going to freshen up my coffee and listen to you tell me why it's worth my time and somebody's money to kill the guru."
He went to the kitchen. It was lit by a Coleman lamp, despite the generator humming in an add-on behind the house. The firebox in a hybrid wood and propane stove kept the coffee pot hot on the backburner. Luther Koskela poured from it into a mug, and sat down at the table. His uncles followed, the eldest hunched and limping, and sat down across from him.
"When he's dead," Carl answered, "people won't have to listen to him anymore."
"That's it? Jesus Christ, Carl, it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to change the channel."
Carl's voice was implacable. "It's reason enough. The man's an abomination to God. God'll be glad when the sonofabitch is dead."
"Huh! When he's dead, people will declare him the second coming of Christ, and he'll be on television from then on. They'll replay every word he ever said! Every Sunday! That's what makes someone a messiah. Leave him alive. After a while, people'll get tired of him. Then he'll die out on his own." Lute paused, grinning hugely. "Leave be, Carl, and listen to him. Maybe he'll save your soul."
Carl swore at greater length, this time more angry than surly. Lute laughed. "Well, never let it be said I turned down fifty thousand."
The swearing stopped. Carl stared. "Fifty thousand?!"
"A hundred maybe. I'll have to pick my team and pitch it to them. Fifty might not be enough."
"Why goddamn it, that's robbery! I'd rather do it myself!"
Lute snapped his fingers. "Sounds like a winner. Go down there, knock on his door, and when he answers, shoot him. Come on, Carl, get real! This is a job for trained professionals."
The third man spoke now. "Where do you recommend we get that much money?"
"The last time, if I recall the newspaper story, it came from SeaFirst Bank in Spokane."
"That wasn't us. You ought to know that."
"Not you personally, I don't suppose. And then there was that armored car heist down in Denver. A million something."Carl couldn't restrain himself. "We don't even know who did that one! Probably the Mexican Mafia."
Lute laughed again. "And you want to kill him just because some stupid shits say he's the second coming. What makes you so sure there was ever a first coming?"
"Don't talk like that, Lute! You're our nephew. Don't embarrass your mother's soul. She cringes when you say things like that."
Lute stopped laughing, and the grin disappeared. His eyes gleamed in the lamplight. "When's the last time you were in church?"
"Damn churches don't know a thing. They're all nigger lovers. Either that or they want to tell you what to do."
Again Lute laughed. "That's what really gripes your ass, isn't it, Carl? Ngunda's a nigger, a sharp brainy nigger with lots of money." He paused. "I'm not Aryan, you know."
Carl's answer snapped. "Watch your mouth! Your mother's our big sister!"
"And my dad's a Finn."
"Finns are Aryans!"
"You ever hear Finnish? It's kin to Mongol. Finns are Asiatic."
"I don't give a shit about the language! I've seen Finns. Used to work in the woods with 'em. Worked with your dad. He was blond, blonder than Anna, and when you were little, you had hair the color of cotton. That's Aryan!" He paused, waiting for Lute's comeback. When all he got was another grin, he asked, "How come fifty thousand?"
"How many people do you think would like to kill Ngunda Aran?"
"God! There's got to be millions! I know a hundred myself."
"And he's still running around breathing and talking. Why do you suppose that is?" When neither of his uncles replied, Lute answered his own question. "To him, fifty thousand is nothing. He wipes his ass with hundred-dollar bills. He's living on a big ranch in Colorado, farther out in nowhere than you are, and you can bet your ass he's got protection. High-powered, expensive, professional protection."
He paused for effect. "I'll tell you what. You give me—three thousand ought to cover it—and I'll drive down to Colorado. Go to the Soil Conservation Service and buy the aerial photos for Huerfano County. Then I'll rent a plane and fly over the place. Learn the terrain. There's a squatters' camp full of hippies on the property; I'll go there and see what I can learn. Snoop around in the dark with night binoculars, sketch out a map. If it looks doable, I'll talk to some guys I know. Old buddies from my merc days; best pros you can find. Then come back and talk business. If it doesn't look doable, you're out three big ones, and I've wasted three, four weeks of my time."
He raised the mug and sipped boiled coffee. There was a long silence before Carl spoke again. "Three thousand's a lot of money for no guarantee." Lute grunted. "You ought to be used to that. You put in a crop every spring without knowing if you'll get diddly out of it. And I drove nine hundred miles from Portland with no guarantee, because you asked me to."
"Shit. Three thousand dollars." This time Carl's voice was pensive. "Well—" He turned to his older brother. "What do you say, Axel?"
It was Lute that Axel spoke to. "You'll have to stay around a day or two. Carl will talk to some folks. Get the three thousand. You can help me with the chores."
Lute's eyes gleamed as he studied his uncles. He wondered what they'd say if they knew who he planned to pitch to. Sarge was bigger than he was, and tougher, maybe even smarter. And black. The grin reappeared, grew. "Sounds good," he said cheerfully. Abruptly his face turned hard. "But be goddamn careful who you talk to about this, and what you tell them, 'cause with that Anti-Terrorism Act, I'll be putting my life on the line."
That touch of reality sobered Carl into silence. He left the kitchen, going to his bedroom early, as usual. He was strong as a grizzly, but because of Axel's damaged back and hip, Carl did all the heavy work. Someone had asked him once if he didn't resent that. He'd answered he'd rather do the heavy work than go through what Axel had, and anyway Axel was his brother.
Axel's back and hip also interfered with sleep, and he spent long hours on his recliner, reading by the light of a Coleman lamp, sipping a little whiskey from time to time to ease the discomfort. Lute sat on the other side of the lamp, also reading. Axel lay his open book facedown on his lap, then took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "D'you still read all the time, like when you were a boy?" he asked.
Lute snorted. "I never read all the time. I spent too much time cutting wood, chopping and heaving out frozen cow shit, and fixing fence. And doing sports. The only way I got through all those books was, I read fast."
"Well maybe you can tell me what the hell a jiggerton is. Or is jiggerton like saying whatchamacallit, means whatever you want it to?"
Lute laughed. "You thinking about what Ngunda said?"
"No, I'm just curious."
"It's not jiggerton. It's gigaton, without any r. You got a dictionary?"
Axel gestured. "On the shelf. Next to the Bible."
Lute got it and opened to the Gs. "G—Giga. Here we are. Giga—one billion—ten to the ninth power. So a five-gigaton asteroid is a five billion-ton rock—we're talking a rock that's miles thick—clipping along at maybe twenty or thirty thousand miles an hour. That's way faster than a bullet." He returned the dictionary to the shelf. "It'd drive more than this house down to hell," he added. "More than Blaine County or Montana. If it hit here, it'd pulverize North America and wreck the whole damn planet. Like an aught-six soft-point hitting a punkin."
"Is there such a thing? As a five-billion ton asteroid?"
"You bet. Various of them."
Axel said nothing for a minute, just sat looking at the stove. "You know," he said at last, "the way the world's getting, God might take a notion to do just that. Show us who's boss."
Lute's smile was lopsided. "Five gigatons would wipe us out so quick, it'd be a waste of time. We'd be dead before we knew it hit us." Again he laughed. "There's satellites watch all the big asteroids that might hit us someday. Give us plenty of warning, so we can all convert to Catholic—confess our sins and be saved. Although there's some of us with so many sins, we might run out of time." He laughed again. "Can you imagine the lines of people waiting to confess? And the priests would be all tied up confessing to each other what they did to the altar boys."
Axel shook his head. "Lute, I can't always tell when you're kidding."
"That's all right. Neither can I."
"How old is it they say the Earth is?"
"Four billion years, they say. That's four thousand million."
"Huh! And it's still here. I won't spend much time worrying about it then." Axel put his glasses back on and picked up his book.
Lute watched him for a minute. Carl and Axel, he thought, two old farts so soured on the world, they'd hire someone killed for no more reason than somebody else said he was the messiah.
He shook his head, both amused and fond, and turned to his own book, failing to wonder about somebody who'd kill someone for them.