The Messiah Choice

11. PAST AND FUTURE

Getting off the boat was tricky, but was a well rehearsed routine by now. All along the gulf coastal area were oil platforms, many in this region no longer staffed or supported but run automatically. A few were shut down entirely, either because they had played out or gotten to a low point where they were more economically kept in reserve. They stood in the water like odd prehistoric sentinels, and the trawler entered their silent domain on its way to link up with the destroyer. In the confusion of blips on any observer’s radar screen, it was possible to actually stop briefly by one of the derelicts, if only for a minute or two, allowing anyone aboard to jump off. Maria was still in no shape for this sort of thing, but she knew she had to see it out, and she explained to Angelique what had to be done.

As they came up to the small metal dock of a rusting platform, MacDonald shook hands with Garcia and then jumped over to the structure. Angelique did the same, and together they were able to pull Maria across. As soon as they did so. the trawler accelerated and swung away, still keeping close to the line of platforms though and taking it slow and easy.

“What will happen to them now?” Maria asked him.

“They’ll be all right. They’re a legitimate operation whose main job really is fishing—shrimp trawling, mostly—and they’ll link up with the destroyer, be taken into a Venezuelan port, searched, and interrogated, then finally released. They’ll head east from here along the coast to Panama, so they should be safe from retribution. Speaking of safe, we ought to get up and in. That thick cloud cover is already starting to break up, and we’ll be naked to satellite photography after that.”

It was a long, desolate climb up to the top of the platform on a network of ladders and scaffolding, and the thing was covered with rust and not very inviting nor really all that safe. The superstructure had been mostly dismantled and taken away for use elsewhere, leaving only a flat top of rusting metal, but just below, between the platform and the supports, was a small area that still offered some shelter. The corridors and tiny rooms looked like those in a submarine, but a couple still had serviceable cots in them and the tiny galley obviously had been upgraded and cleaned and stocked with a limited amount of canned and dry goods and one small sink actually had water.

“Go easy on that water. It’s a little rusty because of the pipes but it’s good. Mostly collected rain water and hard as a rock, but it’ll do until we can get off this can,” MacDonald told Maria.

The place was hot enough to be almost an oven in itself, yet Angelique shivered inside it. It felt cold, dead, lifeless, and the only sign of life were the massive amounts of bird droppings that covered much of the area exposed to the outside.

“What do we do now?” Maria asked him, feeling the desolation of the place herself.

“We wait. I don’t know how long. Considering the welcome, they’ll be cautious in coming for us, that’s for sure. We could probably go a week or ten days with the stuff that’s here, but I’m afraid there’s no showers and no change of clothing so it can get pretty raunchy. There’s also no electricity, I’m afraid, so except for a couple of flashlights here that we’ll have to be real careful using and a few camping style lanterns that are located so they won’t show from the outside, that’s about it. There are a few navigation lights on the platform connected to a master electrical cable running under the water, but we weren’t able to find a good way of tapping them without being detected.”

Angelique said something to Maria, and she translated. “She wishes to know if we must stay inside this thing all the time. It bothers her.”

“No, just keep to the bottom catwalks, and get back in at the first sign of a boat or plane. After dark is best, but be careful. No lights outside, and none until you’re well in here and away from any windows.”

It was not a comfortable time for any of them, and least of all for Angelique, who took to spending almost all her time outside, walking the catwalks and just sitting and staring out to sea. She felt very mixed up inside as well as out, and she tried to sort it out as best as possible.

Somehow, she’d always retained the romantic feeling towards Greg, always thought of him as her savior and perhaps eventually her lover, but she’d seen his face when he’d first laid eyes on her as she now was and she’d felt his fear of her, a fear that had only partly diminished. He was still the handsome and confident agent, it was true, but she was no longer of his people, his color, his customs and understanding. She had changed radically, and for the first time now she was feeling what that change really meant.

To make matters worse, it was clear that he and Maria were at least physically attracted to one another, a condition made worse by their close quarters and by the fact that they really had little choice but to go around nude. She felt, somehow, betrayed by both of them, the only two people she really had in the world. It was Greg whose affection, whose love, she craved, yet oddly, she knew that even had he been and done what she dreamed of she did not dare go far with him. Her power, her one edge over this modern world, was dependent on her remaining chaste from the pleasures of all men. And in that loneliness and jealousy she cast a spell, without ever really consciously realizing she had done so.

It was a dark, moonless night, their third on the platform, and Maria came to her at the far catwalk. Greg, as he did much of the time, was up listening to the small short wave receiver, getting the news and listening for a pickup cue at one and the same time. They conversed in Hapharsi.

“It hurts me to feel you so troubled, my mother.”

Angelique stared out into the darkness, watching the lights of the other platforms and an occasional ship’s light in the distance. “I ache with the knowledge that I am the only one of my kind,” she responded. “Until now, I had not thought of this truly as a curse.”

Maria, unbidden, began to rub Angelique’s shoulders and back, and it felt good. “You must not think so. You are whole, and you feel, and you are attractive.”

“I repulse the sight. Even the men of the boat reacted to me not as a woman but as some sort of strange thing, an animal.”

“You are beautiful to me,” Maria whispered, and with that and the sensation of the fingers massaging and caressing the energy flowed from Angelique into Maria, an energy born of tension and desire and feelings she did not understand.

Angelique did not stop it; in fact, she encouraged it, and allowed it to go quite far. But she did stop it, at last, using willpower to stop it short and dampen down the artificially raised ardor, and afterwards she felt even more unclean. It felt—unnatural somehow. Deep down, she was still the innocent small town Catholic girl and it just didn’t seem right and proper to her, somehow. Perhaps worse than that, it had been artificially induced, not arising out of genuine love or even attraction. It was, however, the shock to her system that she needed.

From here on in, she would be totally chaste. The desires would be there, but those were perhaps God’s price for her power and mobility. She would wait, at least until this terrible curse would be broken and she was restored to herself once more. She was certain that such a thing would happen; either that, or she would die in the assault on evil and join the spirit realm herself, beyond such things.

They came for them on the fourth night, shortly after midnight. It was a low profile jet helicopter with security-type engine mufflers that really damped, although they did not eliminate, the telltale sound of the whirlybird. The pilot was good; he landed atop the platform without lights. He was also apparently part of the organization, for although Greg and Maria had re-donned their clothes, such as they were, he didn’t bat an eyelash at the sight of Angelique.

Maria in particular had worried that the helicopter might not be in friendly hands, but Greg had no problems. He apparently knew the pilot and the timing was right on the dot.

The only problem they found was in getting Angelique comfortable. The seats were upholstered in fabric, and it stung her after a while. Greg finally figured out a solution by taking a fair number of papers from the cabin—some old newspapers, sheets from the pilot’s clipboard, anything— and lining the seat. It seemed to work, and then they were away as fast as possible, the pilot skimming the surface of the sea at or below the level of the oil rigs to avoid any hostile radar.

Greg took the seat next to the pilot, and as he flew they talked.

“Sorry it took so long, but it’s been damned complicated, or so they tell me,” the pilot told him. “You all are hotter’n a firecracker in this part of the world. Then they had to figure out a meeting place everybody could get to that was far enough away from here that they’d find it hard to figure, and still met the little lady’s special needs.”

They were soon over the Venezuelan mainland but still flying, in just about pitch darkness, at close to treetop level.

“How are they going to get us out of here?” Greg asked him.

“Old private airstrip up ahead a few miles. It ain’t much and it’s mostly dirt. These days it’s used for smuggling. Drugs, that kind of thing, you know. The local authorities can be persuaded to look the other way on it once in a while, if you know what I mean. We got an old crate in there waiting. No seven forty-seven, mind, just a hunk of junk, but it’ll get you where you got to go.”

Within minutes, they set down at the field, a dark and forbidding strip hacked out of the jungle and lying between nasty looking hills.

The plane waiting was what some folks would call an antique flying boat. A war surplus HU-16 seaplane, it was impossible to say during just which war it had seen active duty. Able to land on both land and sea and get in and out of places with short, tight runways, it had the large boat-like body and overhead wings with pontoons so familiar to navy war movies, and its two great prop-driven engines were almost as loud inside the plane as outside, but it was surprisingly roomy inside, if militarily spartan.

The two pilots were both middle aged and looked like retired military, but they were long enough out of it and jaded enough to look like they slept in their clothes and peeled them off anually for showers.

The older and grayer of the two shook hands with Greg. “I’m Mitch Corwin, and that’s Bob Romeriz. Welcome aboard Air Nowhere.”

“Glad to see anybody,” MacDonald assured them. “You know the score?”

“All the way. That her? Wow… O.K., no more comments now. Pile in and let’s get the hell out of here. We’re cleared from Caracas to Kingston, where we’ll take on fuel but nothing else. Then we go up the coast with fuel stops every six hours. There’s water in the cask in back and Dixie cups next to it, and there’s cold box lunches and beer in the coolers there, and if you got to go there’s a porta-potty in the back. Assuming no problems, the whole thing should take forty-four hours give or take, allowing for the fuel stops. These babies don’t go real fast and they’re not designed for comfort but they’ll get you there in one piece.”

They got in, but the old fabric seats proved impossible for Angelique, and she wound up sitting on the floor of the aircraft, simply hanging on to the metal seat bases as they took off.

There was, in fact, a great deal of noise and vibration, but the ride itself was fairly smooth and stable. They munched cold chicken, drank a little beer, and mostly otherwise kept to themselves during the trip.

They landed at a general aviation strip outside Kingston while it was still dark, but aside from staying down low inside the plane there was no trouble. The plane had a manifest and flight plan that was proper and provided a stop for refueling but no other purpose in Jamaica. The lone, bored looking customs man was there only to make certain nothing unauthorized got in or out of the plane; he couldn’t have cared less what it carried and did not try to look inside.

It was past dawn on a gray, overcast day when they made their second stop, this one in Cancun, on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Again, with just a refueling and a refiling of some paperwork, there was no hassle. From that point they used small, private airfields, heading northwest across Mexico. For something planned in a hurry, it was certainly well organized.

“Oh, we do this all the time,” Corwin told them. “It’s the way you make money with a small outfit like this. You prepay the bribes and have a lot of options to move.”

“What do you usually carry?” Greg asked him.

“A little bit of everything. Dope of all types, of course, and sometimes wetbacks and other times it might be political refugees from Latin America. We had two trips getting phar-maceuticals to Cuba, if you believe that. Those are hairier than the drug stuff but they pay best of all.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t gotten caught and strung up by now no matter what your contacts,” Greg noted. “You’re not in a long-life type of trade here.”

“Well, hell, we’re equal opportunity, see? I mean, we’ve run stuff for the CIA, so the U.S. stays off our back or covers for us. We’ve run stuff for the Reds, so we don’t get no flack from the Cubans or Nicaraguans or anybody like that. Almost every government’s used us at one time or another, and we’re a special favorite of certain Mexican politicians.”

“Seems to me you could afford better airplanes,” Maria noted.

“Oh, hell, honey, we got any kind of plane you want for anything, and old pilots to fly ’em. This was the best overall for this job, considering that turkey airstrip we started at and where we got to wind up.”

“Just where are we winding up?” MacDonald asked.

“Well, sir, near as I can tell, they got to thinking. They needed a place with a big international airport so’s everybody who needed could get in and out, and they wanted a kind of place folks might go anyway. Now, add to that someplace where they wouldn’t give a second glance to your little tattooed lady there, beg pardon—no offense meant. If she was dressed at all, that is.”

They flew the entire distance up the California coast well out from shore and low enough to be out of most of the air traffic control radar. They landed on the water for the first time over a hundred and fifty miles out in the Pacific off the California coast, but near a small chartered tanker that was there to give them more gas. From that point, they disappeared from anyone’s clear trace, landing in the water again, this time about twenty miles off the coast and in daylight. There they unstowed and assembled and inflated a large orange life raft complete with outboard motor, and all, including the pilots, transferred into it.

Away about a mile, Romeriz took out a small metal box, raised an antenna, then flipped up a cover to reveal a single contact switch. He pulled it down, and two very small muffled explosions could be heard in the distance, panicking some gulls.

“I hate to lose her, but we can’t afford to keep her any more,” Corwin told them. “She’ll be on her way to the bottom now with any luck, if those explosive boys were right, and nobody’ll ever know we were here.”

They put in at a small, deserted beach of black sand, then deflated the raft and took it back out into the water, letting the motor’s weight sink it to the bottom.

Air Nowhere certainly knew its business. They walked over a huge amount of driftwood piled up in back of the beach and then up an almost overgrown trail to a small turnout near a two-lane road. A small camper truck was parked there, but it didn’t seem to bother the pilots, and Romeriz went up, selected a key off his key ring, and unlocked the thing. They waited for some general traffic to pass, then got Angelique and the others inside.

“This we will not sink or blow up,” Corwin told them. “It was rented fair and square in Astoria for a week and it’s going back there when we’re through. Settle back—we’ve still got quite a drive. Either of you want to take the wheel, you’re welcome to do it. After we drop you off, this gets turned over to an innocent and unsuspecting family that wants to drive north along the coast road in a camper, and they’ll check it back in. It’s rented in their name, so anybody who wants to trace this will have one hell of a time proving anybody was ever in it that they want.” And that was how they got Angelique to San Francisco.

“Outside of theaters and espionage circles I don’t think there’d be much of a call for this stuff, eh?” MacDonald commented, applying another batch of a seemingly clear liquid to his hair and beard and then showering it off. It had the effect, over a period of time, of turning dark hair gray and doing so convincingly. Applied to both hair and beard, it had the effect of adding twenty years to his apparent age.

“Rather simple stuff, old boy,” replied a tall, distinguished-looking man in his sixties or early seventies. He wore an aloha shirt and brown slacks, but somehow he still looked quite the British civil servant which he used to be.

Lord Clarence Frawley, who insisted on being called “Pip” by everyone unless under formal circumstances, had quite a lot of experience in that end, being, for some eleven years, the real-life counterpart of James Bond’s legendary “Q”, the master of gadgetry for spies. His own Ph.D. was in chemistry, but he knew an incredible amount about almost everything in the sciences. He had not, of course, been the one man show of the cinema, but rather the administrative head of a research-and-development wing that employed only the best and the brightest and the most secure. A staunch materialist and top scientist, he’d been one of Sir Reginald’s bosses at one time when the renegade computer genius had worked for the British government and he was also familiar, as a prior Fellow of the Institute, with the actual layout of Allenby Island.

For that reason, he was Queen’s Rook.

The house itself was quite large and set back from the ocean, but also set apart from any other houses atop a large hill about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. The place itself was actually owned by a Hollywood writer who leased it out for the six months of the year when he had to be in Los Angeles. None of them had ever heard of the writer, who apparently wrote television spy shows for some series or other and had gotten his start as the author of a series of spectacularly successful low-budget hack and slash horror movies, and none knew how the house had been secured, except that it had been done by agents of the King.

Pip fixed himself a whiskey and soda and sank down on the couch. “We’ve got the tests back on her, and they’re quite amazing,” he said simply.

Greg MacDonald, equally relaxed but in a bath robe, joined him. “How’s that?”

“Well, the fingerprints are certainly hers, and I think it’s pretty certain that she is indeed Angelique Montagne.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that. Otherwise this was all one hell of a waste.”

“The bone structure, cellular structure, and the like though, is simply amazing. They didn’t merely give her a disguise. As near as we can tell, she is genetically what you see. That, and our mysteriously youthful nurse, tell us a lot.”

“Such as?”

“Well, they can really do it, that’s what. Someone, sitting up there, using that marvelous computer, found a tremendous breakthrough. The implications are enormous!”

“And scary.”

“Well, yes, that too.” he agreed, accepting the idea almost as an afterthought. “I can’t see any other way to do it but to somehow encode a human body inside a computer, every little bit of it—and then introducing whatever physiological changes the programmer desires and then recreating the person with the changes. It’s energy into matter with the most complex organism we know—and it’s alive!”

“Well, maybe,” MacDonald responded. “But if that’s the way they do it, why keep the fingerprints? And why worry about Angelique at all? They could just take one of their own, change her into Angelique so absolutely that nobody could prove any difference, and go on from there. All this makes no sense if you’re right.”

“Exactly so, my boy,” came another, deep, melodious British voice behind them. Into the room walked Lord Alfred Whitely, retired Bishop of Burham at Yorkminster, professor emeritus of theology and philosophy at Christ’s College, Oxford. “One can never trust a Cambridge man to think things through.”

The Bishop was about the same age as Lord Frawley, but round-faced and hawk-nosed with thick white hair and a ruddy complexion. The Bishop was also wearing very unclerical red plaid Bermuda shorts and a tee shirt which read, “I left my cash in San Francisco.”

“And I suppose you have a better idea?” Pip asked sarcastically.

“Why of course! Researchers on my end have come up with wonders. But do go on. I would like to hear what you’ve found—excluding the speculation, of course, on miraculous and vaporous gadgets that don’t exist and don’t make sense.”

The look the Bishop got would have fried an egg.

“Well,” Pip went on, “we also discovered a legitimate physiological cause for this aversion to most materials. It’s a definite series of allergies, far too severe to be treated without long hospitalization and lots of experimentation, but we tested a number of things after wondering why she didn’t come down with problems using the straw and the like. That suggested that there were things she could tolerate, and we found one that works.”

“Oh, really?” Greg was very interested. “What?”

“Silk. Real silk, not the synthetic variety. We also discovered a range of non-alkaloid dyes that could be used, and even now we’ve got folks working on things. We’ve taken many fittings, and perhaps we can have something this afternoon. The real problem is that we must tailor with silk thread as well. Do you know how bloody difficult it is to get that much natural silk these days?”

“The facial tattoos, I fear, are permanent. We can’t figure out even now how they were done. Those long rectangular stripes are actually set into the skin, for example, as if the face was actually molded around them. They’re thick and solid, although pliant. They’d have to be removed surgically and the face would be a mess. The scars would never color, either. Still, it’s a small price to pay if we can get her dressed and allow her some mobility.”

“What about the language? Anything on that?” MacDon-ald wanted to know.

“Well, whatever hypnotic conditioning techniques they use, they’re quite sophisticated and quite probably drug reinforced. All the information, all that she’s ever been or known, is still there in her head, but it can’t be fully accessed and the conditioning is so deep that she is convinced that nothing can be done about it. It’s like the old voodoo thing in Haiti where someone makes a doll of you with some clippings of your hair and the like. Do what you will with the doll and nothing happens. But show the victim the doll and do something, and it happens to the victim. Pain, crippling, even death—because the victim knows and believes in the power. She believes. She had a religious, somewhat mystical outlook in her upbringing to begin with, I believe. Raised in a convent and all that. It’ll be hell to shake her out of that belief. Best we leave it alone and let it come to the fore in social situations. Once she inadvertently reads a sign or understands a comment in English or French, such as a danger warning or somesuch, it’ll all come back.”

“Perhaps,” Bishop Whiteley commented. “If, indeed, that’s all it is. I feel very sorry for the poor child, though. Still, she’s better off as she is and with us than with them, that’s certain.”

“So how has your God Squad been coming along?” Pip asked him. “Any results as yet?”

“Well, the plane with the latest information arrived this morning. Damned nuisance, having to do all this direct and without using long distance lines or direct computer terminals, but it’s necessary. We don’t wish to tip our hand.”

Greg looked at him quizzically. “Just what have you been up to, Lord Bishop?”

“Pip calls them my God Squad. Actually, they’re some very talented young people working on a continuing project for me at Oxford. Let us face it, my boy—if they have a computer, then we must have one, and one which can be cut off, in whole or part, from the international telenet. This project’s been ongoing for years, and it’s finally starting to pay off.”

“Oh?” Greg was curious. This was, after all, the man Sir Robert was told was the greatest expert on cults and mysticism in the world. That was why, although Sir Robert had never lived to meet him, much less recruit him, he was now Queen’s Bishop.

“In many ways, it’s the counterpart to Sir Reginald’s little project. Urn—do you know why I was made Bishop of Durham? And why I was so quickly and somewhat forcibly retired?”

“I admit I don’t. I’m afraid the Anglican Church isn’t my strong point.”

“Indeed. I don’t think it’s mine any more, either. You see, lad, it’s a state religion, so it must accommodate a tremendous range of religious views. The Durham seat has always gone to an academic, and most of the academics have been, shall we say, on the radical left of theology. Our brothers here, the Episcopals, are called radicals because they ordain women and in some cases even homosexuals of both sexes and because they go all out for radical causes, but they’re mild compared to the old mother church. Not one of my three predecessors believed in the virgin birth or the divinity of Christ. My immediate predecessor, in fact, saw religion as an ethical guidance system and believed that whether or not God existed, He was irrelevant.”

“Eminently sensible,” remarked Lord Frawley.

The Bishop gave him a frown. “Pay no attention to him. He was Labour, of all things.”

Greg decided to say nothing. His own political affiliation was with a party at least as leftist as British Labour.

“At any rate,” continued the Bishop, “God may install vacuous clerics, but He keeps hold where it counts, with the parishioners. There was finally such a hue and cry and actual mass walkouts from services that the Archbishop finally decided to fill the next Durham bishopric with me. Now, I’m the true radical in the Church. I believe in the holy Catholic-Church, in the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection and the existence of both heaven and hell. But, most importantly, I believe in the existence of evil and the reality of sin.”

“In other words,” Pip injected, “the Bishop isn’t Tory, unless you count one who would be at home most in the court of Henry the Seventh a Tory.”

“No, no, Henry the Eighth,” Whitely retorted. “I picked the correct church. But, you see, they couldn’t keep me shut up and on track any more than they could keep those social reformers’ mouths shut. I began to speak from the pulpit against the way many of the Church leadership had strayed, and had the temerity to suggest that anyone who professed not to accept the trinity and the resurrection should be excommunicated and told to join the Unitarians. I drew quite a following, and enormous pressure to resign. I did so, not because I was wrong to do it and say it, but because I couldn’t get any of it through their thick skulls. They feared I was starting a revolt, a cult within the church, to gain personal power. Never once did they even consider my actual arguments! Their minds were so small and so limited that they simply couldn’t believe that someone would act out of Christian faith and devotion; they could only interpret all my actions in the same way they thought—as petty power politics. I certainly knew how Henry and Martin Luther both felt in their day. One does not leave the church out of faith. One turns around one day and realizes that the church has left him.”

“All this is well and good,” Lord Frawley said sourly, “and I’m sure we will all buy and avidly read your autobiography, Alfred. But what is the point?” -

“The point, dear boy, is the whimsically named God Squad project at Oxford. There we have our own computer— not as good or as fancy as the one on Allenby, I daresay, but adequate—and some really bright young programmers who are also solid Christians. We’ve been pouring in, and classifying, and doing comparative analysis, on a tremendous mass of religious writings through the ages—and not just Christian, either. We ask questions, and if the question is valid and the information is sufficient and the program is good enough, we occasionally get an answer. Well, with the de-briefings and other information provided us, and what theology we can glean from what we’ve seen them about on Allenby, we have some answers, including a couple I suspected the moment I first saw that photograph of the Institute.”

Both Greg and Pip were interested now. “Go on,” MacDonald urged him.

“All right—let’s go back to the beginning. Sir Reginald’s brother is caught up in this Satanist thing and perhaps drags his younger brother into it. At any rate, Sir Reginald is left this huge library of cult, occult, and Satanist lore, and because he has this enormous project and this way to feed information in huge doses into a computer and store it in compressed form, he does so with the library. He can then sell the physical library at Sotheby, which he does, and distance himself from it while still having all of it.”

“We already had that much,” MacDonald told him.

“Well, yes. Now he plays around with it, doing the sort of correlating we’re doing at Oxford, but he can only get so far until he’s offered the job on the Magellan artificial intelligence project. They build this ironically named SAINT on Allenby—I’m sure they must have worked to get that acronym—using the Japanese technology, and all goes swimmingly until Sir Reginald, on his own, dumps his huge file of occult material into the computer in his own private area. Now, I’m told this computer actually thinks—not in the way we do, but the end result is the same.”

“That’s correct,” Lord Frawley told them. “That’s exactly correct.”

“But the thing’s still a machine, and that’s all it is. Garbage in is still garbage out, but it has no way of really telling what is and what is not. Now Sir Reginald uses as his hypothesis for his own program that all of the material he’s put in it is actual, is real. The computer is told that it contains basic truths, things it is to assume as givens. Do you follow me so far?”

Frawley remained silent, deep in thought, but MacDonald nodded. “I think I see. It was told to believe it, so it did. So what? It’s still only going to use it to solve Reggie’s arcane little problems with the occult.”

“I think it went further than that. Remember, there is one difference between this computer and the one Sir Reginald used originally to compile the information, the same difference that it has with my computer. Unlike those, it thinks, it reasons. But it’s a box, an assemblage of silicon locked in a room.” He reached over to one of the end tables and picked up a red-bound book, opened it, and paged through it to a page near the end.

“I thought about this almost immediately,” he told them. “Now, listen. ‘And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads.’ ” He paused a moment. “Now let’s skip down just a bit. ‘Men worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” ’ ” He sighed, then went on.

“ ‘And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months… Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and tongue and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, every one whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain. If any one has an ear, let him hear: If any one is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if any one slays with the sword, with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.’ ”

“Very instructive,” Pip noted. “Now what’s the point of all that mumbo-jumbo? What is that you’re reading, anyway?”

“The Bible, old man. Revised Standard Version, which is not as melodious, but it’s good enough. The Revelation to John, also known as the Apocalypse. The final authority even for any Judeo-Christian based occultist. Now consider what I’ve read. There are a million interpretations possible and ten million have already been made through the ages. Put it together with all that Satanist claptrap, sew it all up, assume it as real, and we have our SAINT looking at itself. I can tell you still don’t see at all. Go get that photograph of the Institute.”

Greg got up, went into the study, found it, and brought it back. It was an aerial photo used by the company in some publicity shots. It showed the buildings of the Institute surrounding the great antennas of the computer.

“Behold the seven heads of the Beast,” the Bishop told them.

“Hmph!” Frawley snorted. “And where’s the ten horns?”

“Inside the seven heads. All have single feeder horns for sending and receiving, except the ones on each end and the one in the center, which look slightly different and have two apiece. That’s ten ‘horns,’ as I believe they’re called sometimes. Now consider what they do. They listen to and talk to most of the world, including the Soviets whether you deny it or not. Our modern world today still has the bulk of its people in subsistence life living as their ancestors did, but even the most primitive of nations is dependent now on the computer and on telecommunications. All international banking, most military work, most diplomatic work, is done that way. News, television, radio, telephone and telegraph—it’s all done by computers via satellite. All the nations of the Earth now bow down and worship their keyboards, their disk drives, their terminals and telecommunications programs. We’re so dependent on them, and so completely obedient to them, that we follow them as if our very lives depended on it. Computers are taken as best testimony. I’m still getting bills from Harrod’s for stuff I never ordered and they agree I never ordered. But I shall still be hauled into court one of these days for not paying for it. As for the blasphemy, I can think of worse things, but the word SAINT written inside each one of the dishes is good enough I should think.”

“What are you saying?” MacDonald asked, confused. “That SAINT is the devil incarnate or something?”

“No, I’m saying that it reached that conclusion on its own. What few criteria didn’t fit it arranged to fit. It believes that it is the Beast of the Bible, the terrible dragon, the serpent of Eden incarnate. Now, tell me—this master telecommunications network, this worldwide super system. How long has it, rather than SAINT, been active and operational?”

MacDonald thought a moment. “Well, SAINT’s about five years old, but the master network was installed, oh, about three and a half years now.”

“Not about. Exactly.”

He strained to remember. “Um—operational date was, I think, three years ago last May. Maybe April.”

“Could it have been April thirtieth?”

“Uh—yes, now that you mention it, I think it was the last day of April. Huh! Three years to the day before Sir Robert was murdered.”

“Indeed. Walpurgis. The night of that date is particularly powerful in Satanist lore. And six months later, October 31, is All Hallow’s Eve, another important Satanist date, although no more prime than others. Still, the last day of October of this year will mark the forty-second month that the telecommunications network has been in existence. So the Beast will have reigned, and set up, and caused its evil for forty-two months at that time. Then will be the beginning of the end of the world. Then it will delegate its powers, relinquish them to the one who will lead the world to Armageddon, the last war. That person will be the Antichrist.”

“You mean it expects to anoint a human being, the Antichrist, on Halloween?” MacDonald felt a little ill. “And that person will lead the world into—atomic war?”

“I fear so. That’s why it was so circumspect up to now and why at this stage it is moving much faster.”

“And who will this be? The Dark Man, whoever he is?”

“I think not. We’ve done a good deal of thinking on this, and come up with the usual hundred theories, but we must factor in how this is progressing and with whom. Remember, we’re not working so much on what the full literature says, in allegory and symbolism, but on how this literal machine interprets and acts upon it. I believe I have its monstrous scenario, which explains the rest, but I want to check and double-check everything before throwing it on the table.”

“So what we have, then, basically, is a mad computer,” MacDonald said, thinking it all over. “But how does this explain invisible monsters and this great power they have over people’s bodies and minds?”

“Science,” Lord Frawley stated flatly. “Allenby is a think tank for the west’s greatest scientists and engineers and theoreticians. All of that work, some of it considered so far out that no government or corporation would finance what would be necessary, went into SAINT, and SAINT has access to the full resources of Magellan. We have no idea what incredible things were worked out on that computer and using graphics models. Most of the great minds involved probably believe the work is still in the theoretical stages, but that’s where they have the edge. They can send an apparently valid order to a thousand places, each building and testing small components of a system, all cloaked by national security seals, and then assemble it when and where they wish. I find it difficult to believe that a computer such as SAINT could act as you describe unless told to do so, but, much as I hate to admit it, Alfie’s got the basics down. I think you’ll find humanity more than capable of providing sufficiently demented brilliant minds to carry it out with tools like SAINT, alas. It’s actually an old story—the misuse of breakthrough technology for evil ends—but we have progressed so far in our knowledge and resources that the potential for this dwarfs Hitler.”

“Perhaps,” said the Bishop. “Perhaps. But there are inconsistencies, holes in it all, as our young friend here pointed out. There’s no room up there for secret laboratories and wide scale experimentation on people. It is a close community and is rather open to all. A think tank, not a place for experimentation. I’ve seen the blueprints. There is no way such labs could have been added without everyone noticing; they take time to build and expert, specialized staffs to maintain. No, my friends, this is the real thing. This is Satan’s work, working through men as he always does. People will regard the Antichrist as a great human being capable of miracles and speaking in God’s name. Our materialism, the materialism of our society, leads us to reject the truth when it stares us in the face. Hell has been handed the opportunity and the method and it is taking advantage of it. Do not dismiss their off-handed powers lightly or try rationalization too much, or we shall lose.”

“Oh, Willie, enough of that spiritualistic clap-trap,” Frawley snorted. “Next thing you’ll say is that since it’s in the Bible we shouldn’t stop it, that it’s our duty to let the world be destroyed or dominated by these madmen.”

“No, we must try and prevent it at all cost. God is not as absolute as all that. Men and women must struggle to the last breath against Satan and retain their trust in the Almighty. God’s mercy saved this brave lad in the church from their pet demon. Still, I can not deny that I worry about our role in this.”

“Eh?” MacDonald felt like an observer at a tennis match.

“The beast shall be delivered a mortal wound by the people of God, and that wound will be healed, or so it says. The beast will be apparently vanquished, then resurrected by the Antichrist. We’ve come far, gentlemen, and we’ve accomplished a lot under their very noses, but I worry that this is partly playing into their hands. I can’t help but wonder if we are the instruments that are to mortally wound the beast in God’s service. We could very well triumph in this and actually advance their own mad cause.”

After so long sleeping on hard straw mats or the harder ground, Angelique found it next to impossible to sleep on a bed even when it was covered with a silk sheet. They had made her slippers which allowed her to walk through the whole of the house, which was mostly carpeted, and that certainly had lifted her spirits, but the clothing was more important to her, as it restored a sense of both freedom and dignity.

She stood there as Maria tied off and put the finishing touches on a beautiful light blue silk dress. It had been designed as a sari, and it gave her an exotic, third-world appearance that seemed almost natural in an international and cosmopolitan setting. It took some time to get used to moving in it, feeling something soft against the skin, but it felt almost sensuous. With a little help—some cleaner and polish for her jewelry, which was welded on, and some dark red lipstick, and a touch of exotic Oriental perfume, she hardly knew herself looking in the full-length mirror. The girl that she saw there was yet a third persona, not the crippled and defenseless girl from Quebec nor the priestess of some ancient time, but rather an attractive, exotic, even sensuous woman from some far off land, who looked quite foreign but even more mysterious and sensual for all that.

The men of the house, even MacDonald, were equally impressed and affected by it, and by the inner change it seemed to bring in her. She felt human again, part of the human race, and it showed.

With Maria’s help in translation, they had quickly worked out a somewhat elaborate sign language for her, so she had a method of communicating even with those she no longer could understand. She was now feeling somewhat irrepressible. She wanted to feel some of that freedom in more than this cloistered setting. She wanted to go out and see this place, this new corner of the world.

At first they were hesitant, but they realized that no one can be a freak and a specimen but so long without going mad. She needed to reclaim her humanity.

The first few forays were brief and in a lot of company—a walk down the narrow streets of Sausalito, feeding the birds on the pier, eating ice cream bought from a vendor. She drew some stares, it was true, but also a lot of admiring glances from strangers, and after she saw some of the normal denizens of the Bay area in their crazy costumes and painted faces, she realized why the location had been chosen.

Ultimately, one of the staff would drive just her and Maria into the city itself. She liked the feel of San Francisco, and liked browsing in the shops, particularly in the silk shops of Chinatown. Maria was always there, dressed in a curly blonde wig and dark glasses, the worldly-wise guide.

Still, she felt only a visitor here, not a part of things. She could read none of the signs, understand none of the prices, and could make no sense at all out of the ceaseless babble around her.

One evening in late September they were walking back to the car as it was growing rapidly dark. They had limited themselves to the daylight, mostly for safety’s sake, but Angelique found she had no sense of time at all and Maria had lost all track of it. The area where they’d parked seemed now full of shadows, dim and deserted.

They didn’t even notice a group of four big, young men on a street corner until, when they were actually at the car and Maria was fumbling for the keys, they were suddenly all around them in the otherwise deserted lot.

Strong hands pushed both women with force up against the car and then turned them around. The four stood there, grinning and leering, and there were knives in the hands of two of them.

“Look, you can take the money, the car. Just go and leave us alone,” Maria told them, trying to sound brave when she was actually scared to death.

“Yeah, well, maybe we take more than that, babe,” said one, obviously the leader. “What’s she? Some kind of Affrican princess or somethin’?”

“Y—yes. African. She doesn’t speak any English.”

“I never had no Af-rican meat before,” one of the others noted. “Not the genuine article. And you, babe, you look good for the bunch of us yourself.”

Angelique could not make out the words, but she felt almost overwhelmed by Maria’s terror and there was no mistaking the intent of the men. She repressed her own fear and mentally called for the spirits to attend her, even in this desolate and unnatural jungle.

One man reached out to undo Maria’s jeans, while another closed on Angelique with intent clear in his mind, and something snapped inside her.

Feet shot out powerfully into one man’s stomach, knocking him back into the one behind. Somehow, in one motion, Angelique had landed on her feet with the knife from the first one in her hand. It was a strange sensation; she was working on instinct and with such speed that the men all seemed to be moving in extreme slow motion.

The knife plunged into the one closest to Maria while Angelique’s body knocked the other away. Although tiny, Angelique had tremendous power and speed. Her sari unraveled and fell away, and as they were getting up to come at her she was already in their midst. She leaped like an antelope, a foot striking one’s Adam’s apple while the other came down, maintaining perfect balance. She whirled, and before another could leap on her the knife in her hand whirled, too.

Maria watched, stunned, unable to believe what she was seeing, in spite of knowing that Angelique had taken care of the two guards in the boat house back on the island. This was unnatural, perfect; Angelique was a killing machine and she was enjoying every second of it. The sight of it, the combination of the attack and her friend’s response, and the welled-up tension of the past weeks all seemed to gang up on her at once, and she panicked and started running blindly away from the parking lot towards the street and people through an alleyway.

Angelique was on such a high that she didn’t even notice, but now, standing over the bodies of her victims, she looked around and saw nobody there. She was suddenly aware once more of where she was and what she had just done, although she could still see no alternative. She knew, though, that this place would not stay deserted for long, and that when the authorities came they would find her and take her in and there would be fingerprinting and descriptions that would go out across the country and would be seen and heard by the ever-present listeners even on their remote island. And the Dark Man had a very long reach.

She looked around, found the crumpled sari and hastily moved off into the shadows, clutching it. Only in the safety of the darkness did she pause and retie the thing as well as she could manage. She had had a lot of practice. The whole thing was held in place in the end by one inner safety pin that had given way at her first leap. Fortunately, the pin had remained embedded in the cloth.

She knew she had to get out of there and fast. She couldn’t waste time looking for Maria, not now, and she was sufficiently exotic that even if they discounted the idea that such a small woman could have taken and done in all four attackers they would run her in on general principles.

There was, and had always been, a contingency plan in case of any separation. There was a place where far-off people visited, the Place of the Fishers, which was always brightly lit and was right on the water. If anybody was separated, they were to go there—Maria had shown her the exact spot—and wait near the old sailing ship until help came. It was an open area, so someone could observe the spot without actually being there and thus make certain of rescue before exposing yourself. But she was not near the water, but well into town, in the places of business and guest houses rising to the sky, and it was dark, the high buildings and city lights obscuring any view even of the sky and moon. She turned a corner and found herself on a hilly street filled with pedestrians and horseless wagons with bells and bright, garish lights, and she was alone, with only a rumpled sari, hopelessly lost and confused, with no command of any language she might encounter, with no money. She had had no real fear of the four men; they had been evil ones, barbarians who had to be dealt with, and she had the power and the skills to do it. But now, here, alone in this strange city, she began to feel afraid.