Warren Murphy: Prophet Of Doom

The chanting of the priests grew louder, more frenzied.

Nausicaa's head felt as though it had filled with the yellow smoke. Slick brownish bodies of dozens of slithering snakes moved with sickening slowness across her sandals, coiling up around her naked ankles.

She attempted a last scream, but the ecstatic cries of the priests muffled her voice so that only a whimper escaped.

Terror clogged her throat.

She felt the snakes tighten about her ankles. Cool,

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flicking tongues were exploring her knees, her thighs. She could feel dry, scaly muscles sliding slowly across her neck—but it no longer seemed to matter.

Something terrible was happening inside her head.

The smoke continued to pour out of the crevice, surrounding her with its nasty old-egg stink. She became dizzy and fatigued. Nausicaa tried to blink at the sensation, but her eyes no longer worked. She thought hard on this, and realized that her eyes still worked. It was only that they no longer worked for her.

Through a strange, shifting haze, Nausicaa saw the temple priests surround her body, ankle deep in slithering snakes, but she was no longer in her body. She was beyond it, above it.

Somewhere from a distant, indistinct place her father was beckoning her to join him, and she left the temple and its chanting priests along with her body as she moved into a place of light and warmth.

As her thoughts fluttered free, a strong alien presence that had taken root somewhere in a far-off place within her mind told her that the events of this last day in her young life would have resonance down through the ages, and that the chain that began here would end as it was foretold.

The words spoken in her mind foretold that when East met West, a god of the past would meet a god of the distant future.

There was only one word in the prophecy Nausicaa did not understand, and as her essence vanished into the ethereal nothingness, that single word and its significance—along with all the troubles of her earthly self—vanished behind her.

The word she did not understand was "Sinanju."

Chapter one

This day the Prophetess foretold a great fire that would wash down from the mountains and scorch the valley below. The ground would quake beneath a stampede of mighty beasts, and the earth would give up its dead.

There was much excited discussion among the new arrivals upon hearing of the catastrophe that would soon befall mankind. They looked up and around as if the end were at hand, which it was, according to the pamphlets they had received upon passing through the high steel gates.

The sky was a warm pastel haze, the Wyoming sun a small spark of yellow white against the sea of ice blue. There wasn't much in the way of apocalyptic activity at present, but the Prophetess insisted it was on the way, and they had been assured that the Prophetess was never, ever wrong.

"Will the seas turn to blood, like in Revelations?" someone asked fearfully.

The Prophetess considered. "Like the blood of a thousand times a thousand souls," she intoned.

There were gasps.

"Will the sky darken?"

The Prophetess allowed that it would. "The sky will I turn the color of death for seven days, and on the

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seventh it will be torn asunder and a hail of holy fire will pelt the valley below." Pelt? She'd have to reconsider that word. It didn't sound sufficiently lyrical, let alone apocalyptic.

The crowd was enraptured. "When will this come to pass?" they chorused.

The Prophetess held her right hand to the heavens, as if the sun's rays against her palm were the source of divine inspiration. Her hand made an arc through the still air as she thumped the heel of the long hickory staff clutched in her left hand against the ground three times, making tiny circular marks in the dirt of the compound. Puffs of reddish dust rose and fell as she considered the question.

Those gathered held their breath as the seconds slipped away.

The Prophetess stepped up onto the broad wooden porch of the ranch house so that the crowd, clumped together at the end of the long road leading up from the main gate, was a full head-length beneath her. It was a well-rehearsed move and one that placed her in a clear position of authority.

She suppressed a shudder as the air-conditioned coolness poured out through the open door of the house onto her back.

At last the Prophetess spoke. "It will happen in the time of which I have spoken and in the manner in which I have foretold." She said it with certainty. Her blue eyes, like azure pools, held each of theirs in turn.

There was power in the eyes. And wisdom. Those determined, unwavering eyes had converted many a disbeliever, leading the new faithful over to the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth like

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Moses leading the Hebrews through the parted waters of the Red Sea.

At least that was how the faithful saw themselves. Esther Clear-Seer, the divine Prophetess, was nicknamed "Yogi Mom" by her followers. As founder and Beatific Head of the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth, and possessing a mystifying gift of prognostication, she saw her followers less as Levites than as lemmings. They streamed willingly to Esther's wilderness church and flung themselves off the cliffs of reason with an almost violent eagerness.

This new group was no exception. They had been driven by bus from the nearby town of Thermopolis, Wyoming, to the Truth Church ranch for religious indoctrination. Esther could see from their naive, hopeful expressions that they were ripe for the picking.

There were about a dozen of them, men and women in their twenties and thirties. They stood there in the dirt of the arrival center of Ranch Ragnarok—duffel bags, knapsacks and third-generation suitcases bursting open at their feet—and Esther knew that they were all hers.

She had seen their type before. Despondent, lonely, downtrodden. These were her flock: people with an emptiness in their barren lives. They looked to Yogi Mom for deliverance. Many such converts were toiling on the grounds of the ranch or in the concrete bunkers beneath her gold-sandaled feet.

Some in this latest batch thought it odd that heaven could be achieved by sheer brute force, for that was the impression one got upon seeing the well-armed squads of Truth Church disciples who milled about at the periphery of the indoctrination area. It seemed that

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everyone on this side of the Ranch Ragnarok gates carried some kind of pistol or rifle or machine gun. The new faithful were told in no uncertain terms that force was sometimes necessary to ensure harmony of spirit. They learned, soon enough, to adhere to this dictum, lest they find themselves staring down a 700-rounds-per-minute barrel of divine retribution.

Thus, surprisingly few questioned the wisdom of Esther Clear-Seer. Most who had joined the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth had nowhere else to turn. These were society's outcasts, desperate for something to cling to. Esther Clear-Seer gave them hope, family, community. A future. Her assurances that they would be the survivors of the coming Dark Times made them somehow special. And in the end, special was all they had to cling to.

These new arrivals were no different. Failure showed through the glazed look in their eyes and sat across their slouched shoulders. The world had dealt them many harsh blows, they believed, and they longed for some deus ex machina to alleviate their troubles.

Al Ranch Ragnarok in the piney woods of Wyoming, I hey were promised the secrets of the future and pmUMion Horn the things that were to come.

<)l miii.Ht-. nothing was ever given away, free of char yy

(in ilit* sU-ps of her sprawling ranch house, Esther ('Itai Si ti addressed this latest motley collection of human flotsan and jetsam.