Even before he had cleared Customs in Sydney, it was evident to Chaim that something was seriously wrong. Everyone at the airport, from cleaners to Customs officials, was busily passing on bits of information to one another. This information gradually filtered through the queues of incoming passengers as well.
Something terrible had happened in America. Hundreds of thousands of people had been killed... maybe more.
A surprise Russian Air Force attack over the North Pole, linked with the launch of hundreds of nuclear missiles, had wiped out, or nearly wiped out, scores of American cities. Reports were sketchy, but U.N. Secretary General Xu Dangchao had already appeared on TV, asking for governments to work in co-operation with the U.N. to mount a rescue operation. Many of America's international airports had been destroyed, but tents, medicine, and other supplies would be sent to those places in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada where planes could still land. Because of widespread fall out and the extent of damage, it would also be necessary to fly hundreds of thousands of people (if not many times more than that) out of the U.S., to seek refuge in other countries.
The airport was in chaos, but Chaim's flight to Newcastle was not affected.
Throughout the day nothing occupied his attention (nor much of anyone else’s attention for that matter) nearly so much as getting news updates on what was happening in America. Although it would be weeks before the full extent of the damage was known, it did not take long to realise that this was a disaster which towered far above all other disasters in human history.
The world was amazed at the ease with which America had been destroyed, and especially at the apparent failure of her defence system. The Secretary General was so quick to respond that there were rumours he knew ahead of time that the attack was going to take place.
Back in his flat in Newcastle, Chaim was watching the news the next morning when the first video clips of the scene in America were being shown.
They included an amateur video probably taken from a camera that had been found in the rubble of an American airport.
A family of three was facing the camera, with their backs to the large windows that looked out on the airport runway. In the final second or two of the video, a ball of fire could be seen hurtling across the taxiing lanes. Planes were just beginning to upend, before the windows exploded and the filming ceased.
What transfixed Chaim, however, was not the action in the background. It was the family in the picture. In the center of the trio was a beautiful little girl, about six years old, with springy blonde ringlets surrounding an angelic face. He watched in shocked disbelief as the girl's innocent blue eyes filled with horror at the very moment that the video cut out.
Although tolerant of other beliefs, for himself Chaim could not remember a time when he had ever believed in miracles. The miraculous, he taught, was a special spin people put on things which do, in fact, have natural explanations.
Like Tolstoy, he believed that miracles filled a need for certain uneducated people, but that they also were used by unscrupulous religious leaders to manipulate people.
Despite this apparent cynicism, Chaim would never have referred to himself as an atheist. Definitely not. There was much that transcended human understanding, and for Chaim, God was an appropriate title for all that he had yet to learn. Quaker teaching referred to this Godness as residing in the hearts of everyone. And Australian Quakerism tended to see the same force residing in all of nature as well. Such pantheism enabled Quakers to relate better to both primitive religions and to much of the New Age movement.
But the girl on the amateur video clip had Chaim rattled. The dream never came back after that, and her eyes ceased to haunt him. Yet he knew, as the whole world became occupied with rescuing American survivors, that he had experienced some kind of foreknowledge about this.
But why? And how had it happened? The whole experience went beyond any explanation that he could come up with, for even if it could be explained as a fantastic coincidence, something in his spirit would not let him accept that. He had definitely been party to something of great signficance, and he continued to feel the burden of responsibility that was a part of the original dream. It had all happened for a reason, and he needed to find it.
All through meeting the following Sunday, Chaim went over the facts, searching for an explanation.
Quaker meetings are held largely in silence, with short interruptions for "spoken ministry", which are brief moments when someone shares a few words that they feel they have been led to share as a result of their silent worship.
As an elder in the local meeting, Chaim had often spoken. His previous contributions had been little more than thoughts that sprang to mind during the silence, often reminders of something he had heard on ABC radio that morning or read during the week. Now, having experienced something undeniably powerful, (He still could not bring himself to call it 'supernatural'.) he was unable to speak, and the reason he was unable to speak was because he feared what the others would think of him.
Ostensibly, meetings for worship were a time when the congregation waited expectantly to hear something that possessed divine unction, either within their own hearts, or through the words of others in the meeting. But academic pride had caused many attenders to regard anyone who spoke with such authority as being misguided visitors who had not yet come to appreciate "Quaker ways".
Now Chaim had become party to something that was at least worthy of consideration by others in the meeting, yet he could not bring himself to share it.
He did not want others to think he had lost his academic impartiality and turned into a religious fanatic. Instead, the meeting, which was more than double its normal size due to insecurities everyone was feeling about the disaster in America, was punctuated only by feeble attempts to bring meaning out of all that pain and suffering.
Rather than share with the others, what Chaim had decided, was that he would visit Aunty Molly that afternoon. At least she would not think less of him for his experience.