The Messiah Choice

13. A SMALL, DEVOUT BAND OF SCOUNDRELS

“Why is it,” Bishop Whitely asked grumpily, “that it is impossible to get a decent coddled egg in any restaurant in this country?”

“Because they ran away from home and mother when they were too young and turned their back on culture,” Lord Frawley responded. “On the other hand, why are the best restaurants in London run by foreigners?”

Gregory MacDonald smiled and shook his head, although he wasn’t in much of a mood for smiling. These two old men acted like doddering British codgers most of the time, and it wasn’t an act. It was just difficult to take them all that seriously, and they were at heart very serious men indeed.

“So he really said to you, ‘Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it?’ ” the Bishop asked between bites of toast.

“Or something like that. Why? Is it important?”

“It’s Goethe,” Whitely responded. “Faust. It’s what Mephistopheles tells Faust when they’re discussing the bargain and the demon’s pressed on just what Hell is like. He may have a point, too. This world is going to hell. You can see it, sense it, feel it.”

“It’s been going to hell since I was a boy,” Lord Frawley noted. “It hasn’t gotten there yet.”

“Ah, but that’s a relative thing. I’ve been studying the news since I’ve been here, and I’ve called in for correlations. Did you know, for example, that those grisly murders in San Francisco made page fourteen of the Chronicle and didn’t even rate a mention in the national news or in other papers? Not long ago that would have been headline news. Even Tass would have covered it as evidence of how lawless and savage and decadent the West was. Now it’s barely a mention. Single murders, ordinary ones, and most rapes don’t even get a line any more. Now people take it upon themselves to drive into crowds and play ‘smash the pedestrian’ in many major cities. It’s almost common. Serial killers used to rate big play—they’re still talking about Jack the Ripper, after all. Now there are so many that the media is hard pressed to come up with macabre new nicknames for them. Assassinations and assassination attempts are so commonplace it’s odd when there’s a day without one. No, Pip, it’s on the move.”

“Modern times, that’s all. It’s the price we pay.”

“No, there’s a pattern. It’s well distributed, and the incidents are almost geographically uniform and patterned out. The beast is loose. People are going mad in droves, and the rest of the population is increasingly terrified. Nowhere is safe. We’re being primed with violence.” Whitely paused a moment and looked over at Greg. “He didn’t ask you who the King was?”

“No, that was the most insane part of it. He as much as said that they let her run loose at least partly to expose the organization, yet he didn’t ask me a single question about it. It was as if it didn’t matter any more.”

“Perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps he already knows all he needs to know and has other plans. Perhaps he needs an opposition. Indeed, he may just have known that you don’t know who the King is.”

“But that’s just the point,” MacDonald said, slowly drinking his coffee. “I do know. And I would have spilled it, I have to admit. I would have spilled anything at that point. Until now, I’ve never really believed that somebody could be pure evil, but I’ve met him now.”

“Rubbish,” Pip sneered. “Evil is a relative term related to goals. This fellow had all sorts of electronic gimmickry to use and to disguise himself, but did you feel that he was supernatural, somehow? Or was he in fact a human being?”

“Well, Hitler was a human being, so I suppose it’s not too far off. Yes, I’d say he was human. He wears boots, anyway. I could tell by the sound when he walked out. He has that power—tremendous gobs of it—but you could tell he really hated to use it. He much preferred the pistol and the physical threats and torture. He was such an arrogant, totally self confident bastard that you wanted to strangle him, but he was a pro. He knew exactly what he was doing and what buttons to push.”

“After all she’s been through, though; to surrender that easily…” Frawley muttered.

“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” the Bishop responded. “I mean, he set her up for alternate rises and falls. He gave her physical freedom, but took away looks and communications abilities. He let her run free, even gave her a taste of power and killing, knowing that she’d be forced to give that up and lock herself in just to foil them. Then he lets her run, gives her plenty of rope—too much, as he admitted, a price of that arrogance and self-confidence—but at the very moment of consummation he appears to first show her closest friend in the world to be a Judas and worse, then to taunt her not with any more horrible things to her but rather to him, once she’s really committed herself for love. Considering her background, her extreme naivete, it’s a wonder she didn’t crumble before this.”

“Many brave men and women are dead because they preferred it to crumbling,” Frawley noted.

“But many more aren’t. The threat of death is still the strongest one. Consider—ask a group of women what is the worst crime that they fear and nine out of ten will say rape right off. Yet the vast majority of women who have been raped are still alive and even healthy. Why? They were given only two choices—the rape, which was incredibly repugnant, or death.

That’s the same principle the Dark Man uses. He finds the thing you fear the most, whether it’s death or perhaps paralysis and total helplessness, as in Angelique’s case, and he gives you two choices. Let your mind and body be raped at will by him, or choose what you truly fear the most. It’s quite effective, and it’s an old story. He’s just far better than most at determining your worst fear.”

“He’s got a computer to analyze his victims for him,” MacDonald pointed out. “Funny. He quoted Orwell, too. I thought that was about as appropriate as could be, under the circumstances.”

“I’m quite a bit more interested in how our friend here explains what happened to Maria,” the Bishop commented a bit smugly. “No odd laboratories, no big computer or giant radiation dishes, nothing. Here, in the middle of nowhere, the Dark Man is not only able to appear at will but also exercise those considerable powers of transmutation.”

“I don’t know the explanation, damn it,” Lord Frawley growled. “I don’t know how the process works, but it’s self-evident that it does. With that sort of disguise, anyone could play Dark Man, even with the Dark Man broadcasting his voice via satellite. There’s a logical explanation for what happened, if we only knew and understood the physics—I feel sure of that. Who knows what kind of transmitting and generating systems the corporation might now have all over the place, ready to be deployed as needed?

Still, it doesn’t change the basic situation. He can do what he claims to, no matter if he hides behind satanist claptrap or really believes it. They can re-make and transform whole populations into slaves of any design, reward with youth and beauty or punish with age and infirmity at their whim. It’s a terrible weapon.”

“I still can’t understand why he left me whole and unchanged,” MacDonald put in. “I mean, he had me cold, and I represent a demonstrated and very real threat to him, if not the power to thwart his plans, at least the threat of doing damage that might be very inconvenient. If I’d had him at a similar disadvantage I know I wouldn’t have let him go.”

“Oh, I suspect that was for Angelique’s benefit,” the Bishop replied, sipping his tea. “She had to be reassured that you were whole and safe or the bargain would have been invalidated. If he’d done anything, he wouldn’t have your paralysis as a threat to hold over her any more. I suspect he thinks he’s put a sufficient scare into you at this point that he doesn’t really worry about you that much. If anything, you’re the price he paid for getting her complete cooperation.”

“You know how that makes me feel. The question is— now what?”

“We must take direct action against the buggers, obviously,” Lord Frawley stated flatly. “We must put them out of business.”

“Yeah,” MacDonald responded, “but that’s easier said than done. It was tough enough getting off that island. Now you’re telling me we have to get on it and do a lot of operations when their power’s strongest there and they can even sic invisible monsters on you at will.”

“Exactly so,” Frawley agreed. “An air strike is out. We might get some buildings and lots of innocents but we wouldn’t touch that computer—and it could bring massive defensive armaments to bear on any such attackers. A full sea landing, assuming we could convince some nation of the extreme danger and get their troops, would be just as bad and couldn’t be hidden. A nuclear missile or bomb would do it, but even if we could get one it’s unlikely we could deliver it without going through the sort of channels SAINT can control and counter. Actually, I might be able to use some of my old terrorist contacts to actually get a small and dirty bomb in a few weeks, but those little monsters still weigh a few hundred pounds and would have to be assembled on the spot by experts. How would we get it there and in? They have radiological monitors that are the best in the world to keep ships and boats with such things away, and a whole naval force to intercept. They’d take no chances—we’d be blown out of the water.”

MacDonald thought it over. “Not necessarily. Remember, my primary job at Magellan before all this blew up was to test and if possible penetrate security at company installations. I only failed once, and that was in the middle east against an adversary who was clever and of whom I knew nothing. With Jureau gone, Ross is the top security man there and just the type to play ball with any of them. I know him well, and I know what types of things he’d employ. I beat their system once, and recommended how to plug the holes. What do you bet that they implemented that report?”

Frawley almost choked. “Good Lord! You mean they are defending themselves on the standard level according to a plan you devised?”

“I’d almost bet on it. Oh, they’d modify it a good deal, and they have these powers that will have to be taken into account, but Ross is not very creative and he’s also quite literal-minded. His ego, arrogance, and self confidence also fits in with that crowd now running things. And, if that’s true, we have a built-in edge.”

“Indeed? What is that? I’d be delighted to find any edge for our side at this point.”

“I made my living by making fools of the professional security men. If I failed again and again, I’d have been fired. I had to succeed to prove my worth to the company.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, I plugged the major leaks and openings, of course, but I always left something else open or slightly flawed so that if I ever was ordered to try the same place again I could still beat the system. I figured three separate ways to get into the Institute and picked the easiest last time. I succeeded, then plugged those holes, but I made only token changes against the other two ways, sufficient to foul up somebody who didn’t know they were there but easily bypassed by me. Now, I can’t take the installation, but I can get a small group of experienced infiltrators in with equipment—even, possibly, your bomb.”

“Pip,” Frawley was rubbing his hands in glee. “Why, this is marvelous! Marvelous!” He looked over at Whitely, and stopped and frowned. “So what is wrong with you?”

“I fear you miss some of the implications of all this,” replied the Bishop. “Blowing the island is not sufficient. We must be absolutely cenain that Sir Reginald, the bulk of his followers, the Dark Man, and, I’m sorry to say, Angelique, are there as well. It will kill everyone, the innocent along with the guilty, the women and children of Port Kathleen as well as the bastards up top.”

“I agree that innocents must suffer, but that’s the only way,” Frawley replied. “Why, however, do we need all those others there? I mean, certainly hitting that computer should be sufficient.”

“No, hardly. You, of all people, should see why. First of all, the Revelations of St. John of Patmos suggest that the beast shall receive a mortal wound and then be miraculously healed by the Antichrist. What if we nuke, as I believe it’s said, the whole thing, and then Angelique shows up in Montreal, say, or London, and announces that while it’s a terrible tragedy it’s no time to panic, they have a backup computer or two on line right now and nothing’s interrupted? We’d have delivered a mortal wound to the beast and to Magellan, and then she would heal it and use the incident to further her own power. No, we must have them all—all in the basket at one time. It’s our only chance.”

“And when would that be that you could guarantee such a thing?” Frawley asked him. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“October thirty-first of this year, when they intend to consecrate Angelique and turn over the power to her, and, not coincidentally, I would think, a day after the final transfer of her inheritance and a day before the next scheduled meeting of Magellan’s Board of Directors. They’ll all be there on that night, and probably only on that night. Not before or after will they be in one basket.”

“I think you left out one important point in that plan, my Lord Bishop,” MacDonald noted.

“Oh? What?”

“Whoever goes in, assuming they can plant that thing, will almost certainly be stuck there. We don’t dare to just arm and leave it. Security will be extra tight that day and we can’t leave the success of a bomb to chance or remote control. It must be hidden, assembled at the last possible minute, and then exploded. Anyone involved in that would be stuck there, too. It’s a suicide mission you’re talking about. Leaving is as hard or harder than getting in, particularly now, after two escapes. We couldn’t afford to risk anyone leaving and getting caught. Everyone involved in this will die in the same atomic blast as they do. And they’ll know as well as we do how likely that date is for an attack.”

The Bishop polished off the last of his breakfast. “Well, my boy, perhaps it’s not quite as drastic as you suggest, nor are we quite as defenseless against the magic as you might believe. However, let’s float this by the King and see what happens. We’ll need some good, dedicated people, solid planning, as much training as we can get, and intelligence if we’re to carry any of it off, and time is of the essence.”

“Yes,” added Frawley skeptically. “We’ve got all of five weeks.”

There was no more need for secrecy now, as they packed up rather leisurely and prepared to link up with others in their organization. Greg MacDonald went back into the motel room to confront Maria.

There was no question that she felt both bitter and angry, but she also left little doubt that she felt less the betrayer than the betrayed. She was certainly still recognizable, but she now stood about four one and weighed perhaps sixty-five pounds, with long light brown hair. She had a good figure, for a kid, but, of course, no breasts, pubic hair or other signs of puberty, and her voice was higher and sounded very child-like. The Dark Man had chosen a particularly cruel point at which to revert and then freeze her; the child-woman, stuck eternally just on the edge of physical ripening.

He tossed some clothing down on the bed, having gone into Carson City to run a number of errands before leaving. MacDonald had never taken pains choosing his own clothes, but he had a good eye for what fit other people. He’d gotten her a sleeveless tee shirt, some jeans, a light jacket, and sneakers. He hadn’t bothered with underwear; he thought she’d rebel against panties with cartoon characters on them and she hardly needed a bra.

She put them on rather sullenly, then looked at herself in the mirror and frowned. Many people had fantasies of being children again, but he could read her thoughts just looking at her. I’m going to be like this forever… Worse, she might look like that and be subject to the emotional extremes that were physiological at that point, but inside she was the mature and highly experienced woman in her mid-forties she’d been before, finally, she turned to him and asked the big question.

“What happens to me now?”

“Up to you,” he told her. “None of us have any real sense of love and responsibility towards you, you know. If it wasn’t for you, the nightmare for many would be over. Now, if we didn’t lose everything last night, it’ll cost a lot of innocent lives to put it right. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll stake you to a couple of hundred bucks and drop you at the Carson City bus station.”

There was panic in her eyes and her expression, and she fought back tears. “You can’t just leave me here! You can’t!”

“Why not?”

“What am I supposed to do? Where can I go? I don’t have anybody, you know that. To everybody else I’m just some kid who should be in sixth grade someplace, only I got no papers, no identity, no family, and I’ll never grow out of the sixth grade! I can’t even go back to the church. Who’d believe me?”

“Yeah, well, that’s a problem, all right. What would you do?”

“Take me with you,” she said, almost pleading. “I’ll be good—honest. No more trouble. I’ll do whatever I’m told. Just—don’t leave me here.”

“I wish I could count on that, but how can I? We trusted Angelique to you, and you ran at the first trouble and then called in the enemy. We bet our lives on your loyalty, and at the first sign of trouble you turned us in.”

“I still think I did the right thing. You heard that old geezer in the van! How many people has he killed or ordered to be killed? He didn’t even care about people—he was talking about messing up her body like she was some piece of rock or something. And they wouldn’t have stopped looking for you two if you blew her cherry. They need her as a front no matter what. I saved her life, damn it!”

“No, you didn’t, Maria. You probably made sure she’d die. What choice have you left anybody now? She’s target number one, and probably so well protected that they’ll have to take out half a city to get her—but they’ll get her. You turned her from a fugitive needing protection into the most dangerous person alive. Can’t you ever understand that there’s no perfect world, no perfect situations, no perfect choices except in the movies? And did you really think I’d just fall romantically into your arms when you did this to her, to me, to everybody? What conceit! What arrogance! You really should have stayed on their side.”

And now she was in tears, and, particularly looking as she did, it was a heart-rending sight. It softened him just a bit inside, but he wouldn’t permit it to show.

“How can we trust you, Maria? Blow any plans we have and they’d offer you the moon for the information. You’d crack in a minute.”

“No, no! I won’t! I swear it! No more dreams, no more illusions! I’ll stay this way until the end of time. What would I get out of them now? Lots of promises, but I got promises this time, too. No, all I want do now is get even. It’s all I got.”

He thought about it a moment. It was true she couldn’t be trusted, but it was also true that she had roamed that island for weeks as one of the enemy. She alone might know where some of the traps were, and what new things had been added. She knew who was who. This information, supplementing his own, might be very valuable.

“All right,” he told her. “You come along—for now. But one step out of line, one little thing done wrong, one look crosseyed at anything, and if you don’t know too much you’ll be dumped on a street corner with nothing in some city somewhere and that’ll be that. If you know too much by that time, then it’ll be your body they find someplace, and you won’t go quick and easy. Understand?”

She practically threw herself at him, crying uncontrollably. “Oh, yes, yes! I’ll be good. I swear it…”

The model was a good one: a complete, detailed duplicate Allenby Island in miniature, measuring a good six feet by four feet and showing all the major details, including the town, road, Institute, and even the meadow and woods trails.

“Quite impressive for such short notice,” Lord Frawley commented.

“It wasn’t very hard. This one used to be in the lobby of the home offices of Magellan in Seattle,” MacDonald told him. “It’s not quite up to date, but it’s useful.”

“I won’t ask how it wound up here,” the older man said. “Here,” in fact, was a luxury beach house on the far side of Aruba, well away from much of the built-up and tourist-dominated areas. “However, I’ve been going over the model with these aerial photographs from this year and I’ve noted changes where there shouldn’t be any.”

“Huh? How so?”

“This meadow—the evil place where all this devil rubbish centers—with this big hunk of obsidian in it. It’s not very large, but the so-called altar stone on the model is shaped something like a primitive drawing of a sheep or deer. See the two little legs, the U shape between the curvature into this headlike protrusion? Now look at the photograph taken— let’s see—May twentieth of this year. The meadow’s the same, but the altar stone is a relatively straight line, like the flat of a ruler, with curvatures and slight protrusions on both sides. See?”

MacDonald frowned and examined the two carefully. He’d looked at this many times, but the fact was he’d always been looking for trails, roads, and new construction. The removal or planting of trees was important, but he’d never really paid any attention to the rock formations. Frawley was certainly correct in this, though. The altar stone had changed shape—if the model was accurate. “You’re sure it’s not just the model builder?”

“I’m certain. The early construction photos we have indicate the same shape as the model.”

“Yeah, sure—but that’s tons of obsidian! How could they switch or carve or do anything to it without messing up the meadow—and why?”

“Well, it wasn’t carved. The mass now is larger than the mass at the start. Perhaps a side view would be more illuminating. See, here, that the computer complex goes down six stories below the common with the antennas. That’s roughly a hundred and twenty feet. Now extend that elevation out towards the down slope of the mountain, and you see that the meadow is almost exactly at the surface elevation you would be at if you extended this sixth level out to the south.”

“Yeah, but the engineering to do something like that would be enormous. We’d have seen something.”

“Not necessarily. Do you know anything about the geomorphology of volcanoes?”

“I’m a cop from Canada.”

“All right. Well, it’s not necessary to build one if you understand that the island is honeycombed with natural lava tubes. When the old mountain blew its cork, lava rushed through, cutting its own way through cracks and weaknesses in the rock. The outside was cooler and the flow was fast, so it more or less built its own pipe. This sort of lava is common in Hawaii, quite rare in the Caribbean, but it was true of our old mountain here. Now, masses of obsidian are formed when lava reaches the surface in such a state that it cools rapidly, too rapidly to form crystals and become true rock. It’s a glob of glass. It’s my guess that there was a first eruption, the tube was born, but the lava from that cleared the tube entirely, leaving it a slightly crooked cannon, so to speak. Then there was a second eruption with a heavier, more plastic flow, possibly a small amount that shot down the tube and hit a rainstorm, or was blocked in some other way, and cooled immediately. The obsidian, the altar stone, is a plug for the tube which still exists.”

“There are some old caves on the island, but they’re short and not much use and some of them are caved in or blocked off to prevent any accidents. None of ’em go anywhere that I know of.”

“Precisely. Now you know of one that does. I believe the chamber was opened up and then followed all the way to the plug. Then it was carefully excavated from the cave side, possibly with lasers or other high-heat diggers that wouldn’t be good on solid rock but would be fine for obsidian. I have discovered that some such prototypical tools were in fact used during the construction stage. They removed the plug in this manner, taking the remains out via the tunnel, and then replaced it with something that looked natural, probably during the construction although not in the official blueprints. That explains not only the shape change, but why the replacement is larger. They had to lose some of the surroundings during the operation. I think you’ll find long cables running from the power plant to the tunnel and through it to this stone or whatever it is. There’s your device—computer controlled, computer activated—for all the mumbo jumbo of special effects, specters in the air, and the rest.”

MacDonald was fascinated. “Then it is high tech, somehow. But these caves, these lava tubes, interest me more and more now. If they could do this with one of them, maybe they have a whole warren under there. No wonder they could hide so much in such tight quarters! I wish we had a way of knowing where those tubes were, though.”

“We do,” Frawley replied, and took out a set of rolled-up maps. “Remember, before this was anything it was a station of the Royal Geographic Society during its most active period.” He took first one map, then another, then another, examining each for a moment, then said, “Ah! Here we are! The summit area before any major construction.”

They were copies of what were less maps than blueprints of the mountain from the eighteen eighties, but they clearly showed all the known tubes, including a few that had crater openings. There was clearly one leading inward from the crater’s low point, although no exit point was indicated.

“I think I’m going to go talk to Maria again,” MacDonald told him, and walked out.

He walked out on the patio and found Bishop Whitely there, reading his Bible but dressed only in a pair of swimming trunks, a Panama hat, and sun glasses. Maria was out on the beach, doing something in the sand.

“Ah, my boy,” said the Bishop, putting down his book. “Have you and Pip solved the whole thing for us?”

“Not quite. Uh—how is she today?”

“Mixed,” the Bishop replied gravely. “She’s right on the edge, Greg. Right on the edge. Do you know what she’s doing out there? Building a sand castle. She’s got her hair in pigtails, and earlier she asked me if we’d buy her a dog to play with her. She’s put on a fairly thick southern American accent and let her grammar go to pot. When she’s like this she wants to be called Missy—apparently a family nickname from when she was this age.”

“You mean she’s becoming what she looks like?” That worried him.

“I only wish that were true. It would be easier to deal with. No, my boy, she’s splitting in two. When she’s Missy she doesn’t ask questions or take on airs, she just acts her physical age and that’s that. When she has to be Maria, though—when she’s forced to be—the change is quite remarkable. We took her on a shopping spree, so to speak, and the two sides were never more evident in what she bought or how it’s used.”

“I need to ask her questions about the island. How do I get Maria to come out.”

He sighed, stood up, and stretched. “You go back in to your little war games there. I’ll fetch her, but give her half an hour to get cleaned up. Be warned, though—Maria totally blocks out the idea that she’s in a child’s body. She doesn’t see herself that way, but rather as she was.”

“She’s going ’round the bend, then. How dependable will she be?”

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion. I don’t think it’s schizophrenia, if that’s what you mean. I think it’s deliberate, if not totally conscious. It is her way of coping.”

Greg nodded worriedly and went back in to Frawley. “O.K.,” he said, so we have the caves to deal with, and we have to assume they can get from here to there, maybe several places, without being seen. That just complicates the problem. Still, they wouldn’t have let me get all the way to the power plant when I ‘invaded’ the place if they thought that access posed a security threat. I mean, they could have stopped me without blowing their cover.’’

“I agree. Now, that power plant—it is a small experimental fusion reactor, totally self contained?”

“Yeah, that’s true. Not very cost efficient in that form, but it allows a totally independent power supply to be fed to the computer and the grids. It’s used only for that, though. The power for the basic Institute is still generated by burning oil, which comes in by tanker every six weeks. It seemed wasteful to build a whole pipeline from Port Kathleen up the mountain, so instead a shorter line was installed here, at the base of the cliffs in back of the Institute. A small pumping station takes off the oil and stores it in these two tanks here, at sea level, then pumps it up to the Institute’s tanks as needed along this nearly vertical pipeline.”

“Uh huh. And the pipeline only goes up two thirds of the way up the sheer cliffs on the north side, I see. That means the tanks themselves are on level six.”

“Right. There’s a ladder along both sides of the pipe, just in case, but it ends at that point and there’s no access to Level Six from the cliffs. The pipe goes in through a hole only big enough for it, and the wall and tanks are on the other side, perhaps a foot or two, whatever was required for stability.”

“Monitors?”

“Well, the basic tank and pumping station is unmanned but heavily guarded electronically. Additionally, there are six all-weather cameras, two of them infra-red types, mounted at various points along the ladders, and sound monitoring gear at various other points. If necessary, they can send a lethal voltage right through those ladders, and they’re usually carrying a non-lethal charge to begin with to discourage anyone and also to keep away the birds and other critters that might accidentally set off their alarms.”

“It sounds pretty formidable. That’s the way you did it last time, though?”

He nodded. “It’s the most vulnerable area of the island. I picked a new moon and had a small storm to help, so there was some electrical interference for them to contend with anyway. I wish we had somebody who could arrange a storm this time, since we’re locked in to the dates.” He sounded sad and wistful saying that, remembering someone who could arrange such a storm at will. “I’m pretty sure that they’ll have a patrol boat anchored at the dock, too. No, I wouldn’t come up the back side, but of the two remaining routes the least chancy—and it’s still a dilly—is to come up the west face from this little cove here.” He pointed to it on the model. “I’m sure they have no monitoring down there simply because it’s where I put in for the day when I escaped, and they never caught me.”

“Uh huh. Less of a climb, but still a deuced ordeal, and no ladders.”

“It’s a bad climb, that’s for sure—almost a sheer drop, and complicated by this small but spectacular waterfall here. But it gives some shelter to people below, if we can get a boat in that far past the patrols and radar network, and if one man, a good, experienced climber, could get up there and anchor something. He’d take up a rope, then we’d attach that rope to a good rope or woven synthetic line ladder. With enough people up, we could use the same network to rig a primitive hoist and bring up the equipment.”

“We’d be sitting ducks up there until it was all done,” Frawley noted. “And the ladder would have to go before we moved anywhere.”

“Agreed, but the sitting duck stage in unavoidable no matter how we come in, and as for the ladder—well, you only wanted a one way trip, didn’t you?”

Frawley sighed. “Yes. Quite so. All right—now we’re up with all the equipment. Now what? Isn’t there a network of security sensors about the cameras strung here and there?”

“Yes. It’s called the grid, but it’s been there for some time. There are only a couple of cameras up there, in that region, both with heavy duty power packs, since you can’t really run power lines. Their outputs run up to small microwave transmitters sticking out of the treetops, where the signal is beamed back to security and SAINT. King’s base assures me that the latest satellite photos still show only those two—one here at the waterfall, the other covering the remaining cabin and pump, where they kept Angelique. That was one extra reason for putting her there. There are a few battery powered microphones as well, including a couple whose existence I’m going to assume since I would put them there—one here at the lookout, for example, which is how they knew Angelique was going to escape. Until now, I wasn’t really sure how their output got back, since they’re not tied into the transmitters for the cameras, but I think I’ll get the answer in a few minutes, for I just saw the Bishop waving out the back window. Excuse me.”

He went into the living room and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hi,” said Maria softly.

He hadn’t even known they made dresses like that in such a small size. She was apparently wearing falsies, and a clinging, smooth satiny dress of dark green material that was split most of the way on both sides. She had let her hair down, applied heavy makeup including eye shadow, rouge, and lipstick, and clip-on dangling earrings. She was even wearing a pair of matching high-heeled shoes in her tiny size. She looked more like a midget whore than a ten year old, he thought, even to the moves, except for the fingernails. Missy, it appeared, bit hers. He remembered the Bishop’s caution that she either believed, or pretended, that she was fully adult in this phase, and although he didn’t need this kind of adult he did indeed need that adult’s memory.

He cleared his throat nervously. “Dressing for a night on the town?”

“No, I just wanted to see if you liked it. You don’t know just how long it’s been since I dressed like this.”

“It’s—stunning. But I only need the answers to some questions now, things I hope you can tell me.”

“Go ahead, Greg. Anything you want.”

Uh, yeah, he thought nervously. He felt like he was in a kiddie porn movie, even though he knew better. “Are there caves underneath the Institute that the Dark Man and his people use?”

She looked surprised, “Uh, yeah, sure. A few.”

“Any that start up there or near there and come out elsewhere on the island?”

“Sure. One, anyway. It goes from the chemistry building— what is it, the Carrington Building?—basement over and down almost to the cabin where they kept Angelique. It’s how we got all the supplies to her and got in and out without trampling down the forest. No lights—you had to use like miner’s hats and big lanterns—but it’s smooth and easy. We’d bring the stuff on a hand truck and then it was only twenty feet or so to the cabin. They had it disguised and all at the cabin end. I don’t think even Angelique ever found it or knew it was there. They said the old man—Sir Robert, I guess—used it to go from the cabin to the Institute when they were building, but it was bricked up on both ends when they tore the bulk of the cabins down. They just un-bricked it, I guess. It don’t look like much from the outside.”

He nodded absently. “I want you to take some diagrams of the island and show me every cave you know. Then I want to sit down with you and talk security.”

She stared at him. “You’re going back, aren’t you? You’re really going back!”

“Well, somebody is. Not necessarily me.”

“To kill Angelique?”

“We don’t even think she’s on the island right now, although it’s hard to tell for sure. Let’s say we’re sending in some folks to try and blow that computer if we can.”

“You can’t. You can’t get near it without it knowing, and you can’t even put its lights out without going through it. Nobody goes in or out of there without the mark, and it’s something you can’t fake. Strictly for the true believers and put on down there by the Dark Man or somebody.”

Bishop Whitely entered, still wearing his bathing suit. “Did I hear something about a mark?”

“Yes, sir. It’s a crazy looking thing, kind of a six written three times, in three sizes, one a little bigger than another and encircling the smaller one. then encircled itself by the biggest one.”

“Indeed. The number of the beast, or one of them. I expected that. How and where is it worn?”

“The forehead, mostly, but occasionally on the wrist. You can’t see it most of the time, although they say that ones with it can always see it on others who have it. You could see it in the meadow, though. Real slick and professional, like a purplish tatto, only printed on.”

“Makes sense,” the Bishop responded. “Now, will you go in and show old Pip whatever it is Greg wants you to? I want to talk to him alone for a minute.”

She looked disappointedly at Greg, but he nodded and she complied. When she was in the back room and the door was shut, the Bishop took him over to the patio doors and then out onto the patio itself. “Sit down, my boy.”

He took a chair, and waited for the old man to begin.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about who should go on this little mission, considering what has to be done. I overheard you talk of caves under the island and it’s changed the whole nature of the game, I think.”

“Oh? How?” As of now, they had been going with a small sailboat handled by but three men. Two would assist in assembling the bomb and arming it, but would then get away in a small dinghy if they could for pickup at sea. He was, however, already thinking along new and more somber lines as was the Bishop.

“I’ve always been frightened of the bomb,” said the Lord Bishop, “and I’ve even been involved in disarmament rallies. It kept me popular at Oxford and made my peers in the church think I wasn’t all Tory. But this thing, this bomb, has to be right and it has to be effective. It’s not going to vaporize the island any more than even Hiroshima, devastated as it was, was vaporized, particularly not when placed at the bottom of a cliff.”

“We already knew that. Lord Frawley and I were just discussing how to get the bomb and man up top.”

“All right—but just how effective will it be, I wonder? What of these caves and lower levels? It’ll sear and huff and puff on the surface, but what about below? Will it kill SAINT when SAINT is so well insulated? Will those in the tunnels, with their great powers, be able to ride it out and then survive?”

“Well, the best place would be right in the common, and that’s out of the question,” Greg told him. “The second best would be over at the meadow, and I think that’s no more likely. I think, though, that Lord Frawley is considering planting it in another cave that enters the Institute at that level. Most of the blast will still be surface, but enough will go up that tube that it should blow the Institute from the bottom up. Nothing is certain. We don’t have the kind of bomb that will do it in, period, although such bombs exist. We haven’t the means to steal it, we haven’t time to build it, and nobody with one is going to give it to us. I would think an A-bomb about a third the size of what did in the Japanese should be enough.”

“But is it, really? If we explode something as terrible as an atomic bomb and then the computer and Angelique somehow emerge after-well, it would do their job nicely and fulfill the prophecy.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Two teams. One for the bomb, another for the Institute. An attack launched, let’s say, no more than an hour before our bomb goes off. Blow up what we can, kill whoever we can, God forgive me, get as far as we can. In particular, blow the suites, the library, whatever and wherever key people are likely to be. They’re expecting something. Let’s give it to them.”

“A diversion?”

“Yes, indeed. That, and more. Real damage, as far and as far down as we can get.”

“But Security—”

“—Will be preoccupied and harried during that period. This is a chance to act boldly, audaciously, decisively—as they do. To give them a taste of their own medicine and their own fears. Who knows who we might get strictly at random? Sir Reginald? The Dark Man?”

“Angelique,” said Greg hollowly.

“What can I say except that we will save her immortal soul by doing so? Don’t fear death quite so much, my friend. Angelique didn’t, which is why the Dark Man found something far more terrible. Greater love has no man but to lay down his life for his friend. Even greater, I think, for strangers. Is living in the fascistic Orwellian world they will create for the West better than death or is it merely a slower, more miserable, more prolonged death horror? Knowing that their inevitable goal is a massive nuclear exchange with the East? Even the most conservative of governments and the most paranoid do not want nuclear war today even as they build bigger and better weapons. They want it, and if you want it and gain control you shall have it.”

“It could backfire and tip our hand to no profit,” he said. “We might not get anybody important or insure anything, but alert them. They’ll put everything on hold and scour the island.”

“Pip is rigging a dead man switch for the triggering mechanism. If it sounds as if anyone is even coming close ahead of the deadline it will be triggered, and if they shoot him, as is most likely no matter what powers we talk about, he releases the switch and it blows. No, his period of danger is between set-up and detonation time.”

“You’re talking like you expect to be there.”

He sighed. “My boy, I have always expected to be there. I am seventy-two, but I climbed a mountain in Wales as late as last year. My heart and mind are sound and I’m in excellent shape. Now Pip, of course, will be the trigger man for the bomb.”

“Now wait a minute!”

“No, no, hear me out! He knows what he’s doing. He’s an expert and he’s designed this thing. There’s none else nearly as qualified. What you don’t know is that he’s got a cancer. A bad one, in the brain and inoperable, with a good deal of it running around his body and settling elsewhere. He is in constant pain, and had methodically prepared for his own suicide before it grew so bad and he so weak that he’d be in bed. He doesn’t believe in God or the afterlife, but he does believe in miracles and this is his. His whole life he’s sent young men and women out to die, or ordered the deaths of others. His whole life has been spent in the dark corners. He never married, and he lives only for that, but it was taken away several years ago in a scandal involving some of his superiors as well as a strong and unrealistic idealistic streak on the part of the last Labour government. The very existence of the bomb we’re using is an act of treason, since it’s one of many that he and several colleagues saved and hid with RAF connivance when the stages of Britain’s unilateral nuclear disarmament policy were announced by the Prime Minister. That’s how he got it.”

MacDonald was stunned. “I—I didn’t know.”

“You see, it’s his one last act, his one spectacular way out. He’ll save the world, and, more important, he’ll do it personally, not sit back and order others to do so.”

“But we’re talking about a climb up a sheer rock face of almost four hundred and fifty meters! He can’t possibly make it!”

“He’ll make it because he wants to more than he wants anything else in the world.”

“But—you! You were just telling me how healthy you were!’’

“I am indeed. For me it is a different thing. I might live another ten or twenty mostly useless years watching everything fall apart. I might go tomorrow, of course—only God knows that for sure. But, my boy, I have spent my entire life in the service of God and His holy Church. I have fought a lifelong, devoted war in His name—and I’ve been losing. All my life I’ve wondered, after every failure, every setback, why God called me to this profession. I’ve felt like Job. Call it madness if you wish, or conceit, but I feel that all of that was preparation for this. I am called to do battle with Satan himself. No greater glory could a man of my faith ask. More, I’m the only one that understands them as they really are, and, as a result, I’m the only one who can fight them on spiritual grounds. No one, but no one, will deny me this. If I am forbidden to go, I will get a boat and sail right into Port Kathleen myself. I know—I’m sounding less like a doddering old fool and more like a fanatic.”

“Yes,” MacDonald agreed, not at all reticent to say so. “Well and good, my boy, because no matter what their high-tech pyrotechnics and black magical parlor tricks, so are they. So are they.”

MacDonald sat back and sighed. “I need a drink,” he said. “That and a change of subject for the moment.”

“The first is easily remedied. The pitcher there has sangria and there are two glasses sitting inside each other next to your chair. As for the second—what do you think of Maria now?”

He poured one and took a good swallow. It tasted fine, and he had no idea of the power of it, although he knew that the Bishop liked his drinks strong. “I—I don’t know. It’s really sad, somehow.”

“Why? With all that paraphernalia, she feels like the woman she is inside, and she needs to be. Without it, she’s a defenseless little kid with no future, so she might as well be that kid.”

“Well, what else can she do?”

“No matter what she looks like, she’s another Angelique. She’s really a mature woman and she desperately needs to be treated like one in all respects. Most of all, she needs to be trusted again, particularly by you. She is as in love with you now as she was before all this. She needs your trust and your love, and she’ll follow you anywhere, even die for you.”

“Well, she may have to adjust otherwise. You and I know, Bishop, that if this thing is to be pulled off I’m going to have to be there. I’m going to have to be the one to keep everybody else from tripping sound alarms and getting on camera. Nobody else, except maybe Maria, has the—wait a minute! You aren’t suggesting that she go along?”

“I’m suggesting that she be told nothing or even have intimated to her anything about the bomb. Pip will be secure, and so will I. That other team, however, is valuable. I think she ought to be offered a chance to participate, to redeem herself, with the full understanding that she is going to die up there.”

“You’d put that much trust in her—after all this?”

“I would. Treat her as she wants to be treated. Give her everything she wants—and I say this as a man of God, I hope. In the end, it will come down to Maria or you. You can supervise—and survive to continue the fight if we all fail. You don’t have to go, Greg—if she does. I’ll take the responsibility.”

He sat back and sighed. Damn! “Who else are you including in your suicide pact?”

“No more than two or three others. King’s base has already got them picked, if they agree. They’ll be here drifting in, one at a time, starting tomorrow.”

“More geriatric wonders?”

“No. But each has their own reasons for wanting to do this, and they all know it’s certain death. They’ll do.”

He stared for a moment at the old man. “You’re some strange kind of priest,” he said at last.

“Yes, I know. It’s been my own cross to bear.”

MacDonald sat back and finished the drink. He didn’t care how strong it was; he needed something stronger. “Look—I never bargained for all this. If I hadn’t been handy and convenient when they polished off Sir Robert, I wouldn’t even know any of this was happening. I don’t mind risking my life, but suicide is not part of my make-up.”

“Pip intends to commit suicide and yet make his death count for something. The others—they have their reasons, I think, but they aren’t suicidal any more than I am. Not even Jesus wanted to go to the cross in the end. You’re far too young to remember the Second World War, but none of our brave lads wanted to die. Still, when you stand there and see your own capital burning, when you hear the screams of trapped women and children and can do nothing to save them from the roaring fires, when you see the horrors of the concentration camp, the ovens, the piles of bones, the gold melted from the fillings of victims, you know that if you do not face down evil, no matter what the cost to you, you deserve just what you see. You are most fortunate, my boy. God has mercifully given you a supporting role in which sacrifice is not a requirement. No one is blaming you. If this cup could be taken from my hands I would relinquish it, but it can not. Now—go. We have much to do, and the clock is ticking.”

MacDonald got up and walked slowly back into the house where Maria was waiting to be led like a lamb to the slaughter, if only he would act his part.