The Messiah Choice

16. SCIENCE AND SORCERY

He slept the sleep of peaceful dreams. The nightmares were there, but every time they would intrude something gentler intervened and forced them away.

And yet, he finally did awake, although the awakening was tempered by drugs and seemed in its own way a dream. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came forth but a harsh croak.

“Don’t try to say anything,” said a woman’s voice gently. He tried to focus his eyes, and saw that it was a nurse. “Just relax and take it easy. You are in the intensive care unit of St. Ignatius Hospital in Port of Spain. You’ve been here for quite a number of weeks now. We thought we were going to lose you.”

“Ange-lique?” he managed, although it hurt him even through the drugs and pain killers.

“They found a woman with you, but she’s as bad off as you are, if not worse. You just relax now and try not to think. It will take a long time to get you well.”

He didn’t try any more right then; even that effort had taken all his strength. Yet—how could he stop thinking? Wondering?

Am I—whole or—disfigured? How badly were we burned by whatever it was? Will we both look like the Dark Man?

These thoughts drifted in and out with his consciousness.

The improvement was very gradual, but as the days passed he found himself being able to remain awake and alert for longer periods of time, and to manage a few simple questions. Very slowly, he was able to get the whole story from the outside world’s point of view, although they would tell him little about his own condition or that of Angelique. Their very evasiveness on it made him nervous and queasy. He was on a bed but all but his head was inside a form-fitting plastic device that was helping repairs and healing and minimizing infection. He couldn’t really see or tell what was there, and when they opened it it was like being behind the wheel of a car when the hood was raised—his view was blocked.

After perhaps a hundred thousand years of dormancy, early in the morning of November first, without any prior warning, the ancient volcano that was Allenby Island had blown its top and erupted with tremendous force. The ash cloud reached around the world, and there were still particles in the upper atmosphere that colored the sunsets and might well for years to come. Actually, there was probably a single early warning, since the telecommunications network had gone off the air a few hours earlier, but a bad storm in the area prevented anyone from coming in by sea or air, and security people on the island, by short wave, had assured everyone that the communications break was caused when a freak explosion of oil storage tanks now under control created a power shortage.

After, there had been a flow of lava, thin and runny like water, very wide but not very deep, and it had run down and spread out so that it blanketed the whole of the island and flowed swiftly to the sea. The Institute, having been built almost entirely within the main crater, was completely consumed, and the flows burned away almost all the jungle and forest and came down to the sea through the town of Port Kathleen, which had been fortuitously evacuated a few weeks before. Not a single structure remained, although here and there were the blasted remains of trees.

No human being could possibly have survived such a blast and such a flow, and no survivors were expected. There had been a top secret meeting in progress involving a great number of important politicians and influential leaders from all over the world, the reason for the evacuation, but they and their entire staffs were lost, of course.

It was over within hours, and finally the superheated steam and gasses rose and created a torrential downpour that helped cool the mass. It wasn’t until November third, though, that the first volcanologist could get to the scene and survey it by helicopter. They were making a swing around to look at a particularly odd formation jutting up from the blackness when they saw two badly burned figures on the thing. They assumed, of course, that both were dead, but managed to land experts who could remove the bodies. It was a shock to find that, impossibly, incredibly, both still had weak but definite life signs.

The mere fact of their survival could not be explained, and the fact that both did not die but actually responded to treatment was considered as much if not more of a miracle.

After emergency aid, they had been placed in special tanks created to transport bad burn victims and taken to the closest burn-specialized hospital, which was St. Ignatius. There they had been suspended in larger tanks, getting their air and food from tubes, while specialized solutions helped heal their burns and promote new skin growth.

All of their treatment involved revolutionary new and in some cases experimental ways of treating victims of burns and dehydration, and he was told that, even if they had survived the volcanic fury, an impossibility that had happened, and had survived the transport as well, they would have died within days in the hospital had it been even a year earlier. There was also the fact that the best specialists were immediately flown in, and money was no object.

The next day, the money walked in the door. The King, without whose help all along it would have been impossible to get as far as they did, looked simultaneously grim and overjoyed.

“I couldn’t stay away any longer,” said Alan Kimmel Bonner, President and Chief Operating Officer of Magellan. “You aren’t supposed to have any visitors yet, but you’d be surprised what money and influence can do.”

“I saw it—on the island,” he said weakly.

“Well, yes. But even when they found out that their fight was a civil war with other elements of the company, they were so overconfident that they ignored us.”

“You want a debriefing?”

“That’ll wait. I already know the main facts, even the specific ones.”

“But the Bishop—the Dark Man…”

Bonner sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’ll get your side when you’re ready. I don’t really need it right now, except for the record.”

“If—you know—then you—can tell me,” MacDonald managed. “Was it truly the devil? I’ve got to know!”

“Easy! Take it easy! Officially, and totally classified and buried, that is, it was a mad computer of a generation that maybe we weren’t ready to handle yet programmed by even madder individuals. How the magic worked we may never know—but someday we might—but certainly the computer, working with people on the inside and possibly partly on its own, solved the basic matter to energy conversion problem and could somehow project that power wherever and whenever it was needed. Officially, and only for certain people very high in the company, the thing channeled all its reserves into a monstrous image, a fluid, plastic sort of energy, in the air above the institute. It reached down, then, to connect itself to Angelique, and instead the Bishop got in the way. We don’t know for sure, but the official theory is that he was trailing something, perhaps a wire, all the way off the stage and onto the ground. When he stuck the cross into the field, the thing was grounded, and it discharged and shorted. Either that or it was partly touching that stone or whatever, to which it was connected, and it created a ground loop. Either way, the energy was forced back on itself, and so great was the power involved that it quite literally melted the rock beneath the Institute down to a depth where it reactivated the volcano. That do it?”

“The Dark Man—an animated corpse. Sir Reginald said he predated SAINT. Said it was his dead brother…”

“Well, we checked that out. For the record, Geoffrey is still in his grave. It was hell to get clearances on that, but I just had to know. We know from Angelique that they were masters at mind control as well as transmutation. There’s no doubt that Sir Reginald believed everything he told you, but there’s some question as to whether or not those memories were implanted later and back dated to fit the facts. As for the corpse, well, the thing could create a giant lizard to order, in energy first and then solid as need be. If it could do that, why not something that looked like an animated corpse? The ancients had a word for it. Homunculus. Laboratory created intelligence. The bright boys think it was the prototype for what it eventually wanted to do with Angelique— create a human extension for itself.’’

MacDonald stared at him. “Do you believe that?”

The corporate president looked uncomfortable. Finally he said, “I don’t know. I’d like to believe it, but there are just a few too many things that can only be explained by stretching the laws of probability beyond their limits. If you ask me if we had a mad computer on our hands, I’d say yes. If you ask me if it went mad because of the madness of its creator, I’d say yes. But if you ask me if there wasn’t something else, something lurking there, waiting, taking advantage of all this and moving in to seize control—well, it’s pretty unscientific, but I could feel it, and so could you. There was something there that came down and heightened the madness of the world beyond even its normal insanity levels, who pushed and probed and saw an opportunity and reached out to take it. It wasn’t something new, but something very old, something usually forgotten or rationalized away until it strikes. We beat it in the past, and we beat it this time, but the opportunities our age gives it means we have to keep up the watch and the fight.”

“The Bishop—he thought it all would fail from the beginning. He always planned right from the start to do exactly what he did.”

Bonner nodded. “Yes. He and the girl. No disrespect to you and the others, but he had more guts than any human being I could imagine.”

“Not guts, sir. Faith. He told me that fighting the ultimate evil required sacrifice. That only by sacrifice could we show God that we were deserving of being saved. He saw the key to the spread of the evil. We all had our price. Mostly it’s a threat to life, but in Angelique’s case it was the fear of total incapacity for a lifetime at first, then my life became the price. Sir Reginald was bought with the lure of the ultimate knowledge and understanding of his life’s work and passion. For the others, like the leaders and politicians in the meadow and most of the Institute management and security staffs, it was the even older price—the promise of sheer power, the same thing that seduced the German leaders in the last war.” He sighed. “I wasn’t immune, either, although I kidded myself that I was. Right at the end they found it, and I forfeited my right to really end this thing. In the end, they wouldn’t find the Bishop’s price, though; they never found a weak spot, and that’s what did them in. They didn’t find it because of his rock solid faith in his God, even to knowing that God well enough to understand that no materialist threat, no Frawley with his equations and his bomb, could stop them. Only an act of total faith could do so. He looked in the eye something that caused everyone else there to bow down before it merely because they looked on it, and he walked up and spit in its eye before them all.”

Bonner nodded slowly and said, “Yeah.”

“What about Magellan? Has it survived the loss of its computer heart?”

Bonner chuckled. “Sure. There was never any question of that. Data was always backed up to three remote units every time it was sent or received. It’s not as efficient, but the company goes on, as even Sir Robert knew it would when he put that erase program in SAINT.”

MacDonald started. “You mean there are three more SAINTs?”

“No, no. Although the Japanese have several that are somewhat SAINT-like, we don’t, and even they lack whatever it was that was added to those circuits by Sir Reginald. But, some day, there’s going to be another SAINT, or even worse. Nothing is more certain than that you can not un-invent something once it’s been invented. Eventually, when we’ve sanitized and rationalized the data as much as possible, we’ll issue a big public report on SAINT’s perversion and madness in the hopes that it will be guarded against in the future, but we can only warn.”

“There aren’t many nuclear power plants any more,” MacDonald pointed out. “It scared too many people.”

“Uh-uh. If you think that, you’re deluding yourself. Nuclear power died because it became too expensive. Fusion remains in small laboratory and prototype units for the same reason. It’s not the same with computers. SAINT was no larger than the average bedroom in a one room apartment. Not too many years ago, to get that kind of power and storage would have filled up half the world with chips and circuits. This is a technology that gets cheaper every day, and all it really takes is time and enough money to put together folks smart enough to build it.”

“Then—it was all for nothing? All of it? The next time it’ll be a dozen SAINTs, or a hundred?”

“Perhaps. We set them back, that’s all, like we always have so far. We took out key leaders and some of the best minds likely to serve that sort of cause, but we didn’t take out the enemy. Violence is down. Random, insane violence is way down, and even the official kind—wars and very violent movements—is back to its old slow bloodletting levels, for the moment. Our own forefathers bought our generation with their blood and their lives. You, Angelique, Bishop Whitely, Lord Frawley, and the others bought the next generation, but they, too, will have to fight or lose. It’s a hell of a system, and lord how it costs, but it’s the way things are run around here and we’re stuck with it.”

The President of Magellan got up and looked like he was preparing to leave. “You know,” he said, “you’ll always be on the payroll. Not much salary, but your expense account is higher than mine. A plane is waiting for me. I have to go. You remember, though—anything you want, anything you need, is no problem. You just tell us. It’s the least we can do.”

“What I want and need is beyond even Magellan’s capacity, I’m afraid,” Mac Donald said sadly.

Bonner stared at him for a moment, then scratched his chin and said, “You can’t be a businessman or a politician, and I’m both, and ever expect a pat hand. Happily ever aftering is for fairy tales. This was more of a—morality play. In a fairy tale, the brave company endures many trials and terrors to fight the dragon holding captive the princess, and when they slay it, finally, the prince and princess go riding off into the sunset. Now the poet sees the struggle as the thing and the fight as really inconsequential. Folks like me look at it and say that if the damned monster was so easily disposed of, he probably wasn’t what he was cracked up to be in the first place. No, the old mythologies, for all their monsters and gods had a much better view of the way the world is run. In them, the fight was as important as the struggle, the threat as horrible as its name, and when the dragon fought it fought well and gave the prince and princess terrible wounds. They kill it, but their wounds are severe and never really heal. There’s always been a high cost to anything worthwhile. Saving the kingdom which could not save itself has to be first priority, but somebody’s got to pay.”

MacDonald looked at him glumly, but said nothing.

“It seems to me that you accept the cost, and by the wounds remember the evil but also remember the accomplishment they bought and paid for. You take what you have left, and you do the best you can, out of respect for those who got you through. Somebody cared enough to make sure that both you and Angelique were so coated with some kind of goo that you managed to survive the heat of the eruption itself. Somebody also got that cross over Angelique’s head when it might have saved them, instead. Seems to me that your lives were bought with an even heavier price. Seems to me you lost sight of that girl in that wheelchair, all paralyzed from neck to toe, who you were attracted to because she wanted to get on with life and do what she could rather than sink into what she couldn’t do. Maybe you ought to think about that.”

MacDonald smiled, and wished he could grab the man’s hand. He was emotionally touched by the speech, which struck at the very heart of his own dark thoughts and fears. Instead, all he said was, “I didn’t know you were a philosopher and a poet, sir. Thanks.”

“I’m not,” replied Bonner, reaching for the door. “I’m a businessman and a politician. I steal only from the very best.” And, with that, he left.

They noted an improvement in his attitude after that, a deep down decision that maybe he did want to live after all. A day later, they sent in Dr. St. Cyr, the King’s Rook in their guerrilla organization inside the company. The Jamaican professor was as kind and strong as always.

“The kinds of medical wizards they have on your case are like no others in the world,” he told MacDonald, “but, like most experts, their bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired. They’ve got psychiatrists and psychologists all over the place, and if you want them they’re available, but it was thought that you just needed some plain talk from somebody you knew.”

“I appreciate that,” responded the man in the plastic case. “All I’ve wanted all along is some plain talk and a little truth, like when I’m going to be out of this thing and out of here.”

St. Cyr sighed. “All right. First, let’s talk injuries. You know some, but I’ll give you the litany.” And a litany it was—of broken bones, severe external burns, weakened and scorched lungs, and the like. “All of those have responded well to treatment, and the artificial skin has taken to you like a glove. It’s bonded so well you’ll never know which is which, and in a few years normal wear and tear will cause it to be unnoticeably replaced with your own. You’ll need exercise and a physiotherapy program, since your muscles are nothing right now, but six months from now you’ll even have all your hair back, at least on your head, or so they tell me. It’s snow white—I can see the fuzz—but it’s growing out rather well.”

He nodded. “And when does this start?”

“Tomorrow, if you’re willing. All things considered, even if we accept the miracle of your survival, you should be horribly crippled and disfigured. You aren’t. With therapy and some time you’ll look and be able to do pretty much what you always did—with one exception.”

He’d known it, but he’d still dreaded it being spoken.

“I know you suspected, but couldn’t tell for sure with all that automatic apparatus clamped on down there. This isn’t easy to say, but the Dark Man took what you thought he took, and it’s still beyond medical science or anything short of what blew in that volcano to restore it to you.”

“I—knew. Doctor Bonner as much as told me.”

“All right. When they were operating down there, they had to make some decisions very fast. They found enough tissue from the scrotum stuffed in there to graft some of this incredible artificial skin to match. They couldn’t ask you, naturally, so they went ahead and formed a vagina and a clitoris like they do for trans-sexuals. It’s an old procedure. But so far they’ve been maintaining your normal male hormone levels. The whole area has formed and mended well, but they have to have a decision before starting any program of rehabilitation with you. You can still attain orgasm, but not in the old way. They can construct a living prosthesis there out of the artificial stuff, but there would be no feeling in it and there’s no prostate left. Or they can change the hormones and introduce permanent peptides into your brain that would turn you physically and probably emotionally but not genetically female.”

“Huh? What do you mean, ‘emotionally?’ ”

“My boy, they know enough about neural receptors now that they could introduce a substance that would make you fall madly in love for life with the next person you saw.”

The idea frightened him. The next battlefield for the enemy? he wondered. The idea frightened him even more than SAINT.

“Let me think about it. See myself as I am. But—what about Angelique? They wouldn’t tell me anything at all except she was recovering and they refuse to let me see her.”

“You will. She’s needed more help than you, not so much for the outside as for the inside. When she thinks she’s ready, you’ll meet her.” He paused for a moment. “This isn’t the worst of it, though.”

He grew suddenly concerned. “What?”

“Nine hundred and thirty one men, women and children were evacuated to make way for their doings and held pretty much incommunicado at an old French army base in Guyana leased for the purpose. They’re not prisoners any more, and it’s been impossible to keep the press away from them. Bonner has managed a very smooth, scientific line complete with the mad computer warnings, but there’s a worldwide hue and cry against all large computers. Magellan will survive, but only because it does so little business directly with the public and so much vital to governments, but the whole story is coming out and being splashed across the newspapers and television stations of the world. Even Tass, which is showing how huge capitalistic monoliths, in the name of profits, let such a thing happen beyond the control of weak western governments. Naturally, you and Angelique could hardly be kept out of it. An old associate of yours who calls himself ‘Red’ has already sold the story of you and he being chased by a monstrous thing to Hollywood for a good sum.”

“Well, I guess it was inevitable. Doctor Bonner was setting things up when he was here, I guess. He knew they couldn’t keep a lid on it. So what’s the problem?”

St. Cyr sighed. “Well, money and muscle has kept them out of this hospital, although they’ve tried, but this isn’t a country where secrets are easily kept and this is a pretty large hospital. It’s one thing for you to have your private agony, a wound of war, but it’s not private now. It’s an enormous story, you know. Everyone who reads or watches television knows what happened to you, and also knows Angelique’s problems. The Enquirer even paid a bundle to interview your ex-wife on what she thought of it and what kind of lover you used to be. The same goes for Angelique, of course, but it’s a different sort of case there.”

The implications of it all hit him now, and he groaned. There would be no anonymity, no privacy, ever. Even when it had cooled down and become old news, everyone he’d come in contact with would know. “Hey, what’s it feel like to be castrated?” “Hey, when you gonna grow breasts?” “Oh, I like being out with a celebrity. You’re the only guy I feel really safe with.” Jesus!

“The company will provide good security, but sooner or later you’re going to have to face this. I thought you ought to understand, before making your decision.”

He sighed. “What would you do?”

“Well, I can’t comment, and at my age it wouldn’t make much difference, but it’s far easier to be one thing than neither, socially. With hormone, peptide, and plastic surgery you would appear normal and fit into society as one thing. A change of name and location, a false background, and you would be able to have a private life. Even without the change, you’d be ten minutes of old news then instead of a continuing…”

“Freak. Yeah, I know. Shit!” Normal, huh? To them, perhaps, but not to himself.

It was several days of exercising before he could manage even to stand with a walker, and he couldn’t go far, but he did manage to look at himself, naked, in a full-length mirror. St. Cyr had been right—aside from what appeared to be a permanent new dark reddish complexion and white hair, whatever damage had been done to him had been so skillfully rapaired he could hardly believe how little he’d changed. He looked at himself, and tried to imagine himself as a woman, and failed miserably. All he could do was look at it all and cry.

But he knew he’d always be Gregory MacDonald, not Georgette or whatever, until he died, and he so told his physicians.

The therapists were excellent, and he was on solids in a week and walking where he pleased within the month, although it would still be some time before he was absolutely right. He could, in fact, go to outpatient soon, although the truth was he had no idea where the hell he was to go now that it was over.

Father Dobbs paid him a visit near the end of the eighth week after he’d been freed of his devices. He’d been busy filling out forms and writing official reports and it had taken up a lot of his time and taken his mind off things.

He was glad to see King’s Bishop, even if the title elevated him a notch, but he knew that Dobbs had not come all the way down to Port of Spain just to see him.

After the usual pleasantries and small talk and comments on how fit he looked, the priest got around to the point. “She wants to see you, my boy. She wants to see you very much, and the doctors think that it will be the best thing for her.”

He was instantly excited, but he came down fast. “Does she—know about me?”

“No. We thought you should be the one to tell her. It’s a hurdle you’ve already faced, and she must now.”

He nodded. “How is she?”

“Well, she is as fit as she will ever be. There is no trace of the old paralysis, but she had extensive internal injuries. One of the bullets that struck the Bishop passed through into her right hand at an odd angle, and she’s got only limited control of the hand and she’s lost two middle fingers on it. Her scars aren’t disfiguring, but they dwarf yours. She broke bones in her hip and pelvic region when she fell—repairable, but because of the time lost she’ll always walk a bit stiffly. She claims that these are small prices to pay for having full muscular control, but we know it’s bothering her. Of course, she’ll need continuing physical therapy and medication for a while, as will you.”

“And her hair’s white, too? I been thinking of a dye job now that I have enough to matter, but I’ve let it slide.”

Dobbs sighed. “No. Uh—she wasn’t quite as fortunate as you. She was on the lower end of the stone and got more of the heat blast. She has no hair at all, and they say that none will ever grow there. They’ve tried transplants from others and some artificial business, but none of it took. She’s done small eyebrows with a liner or somesuch, but she won’t abide a wig. She says it’s part of her penance and she wants to be seen just like that.”

He nodded. “That sounds normal. Does she remember anything?”

“All of it, until that last night. They put her into some sort of trance state. She has occasional visions, but nothing more, and the visions are disjointed and distorted and make little sense. She knows what happened, though. The only clear thoughts she has is someone pushing her onto the rock and then the screams and the heat, and she says that, during that time, Bishop Whitely came and talked to her. You can see the state she’s in.”

“Well, maybe,” he responded, remembering his own visitation.

“She’s been burdened by tremendous guilt, as if everything that happened and everyone who died was on her own head. It’s taken a lot of work on the part of psychiatrists here, all Jesuits, of course, to get her back this far. She’s always been a mystic of sorts, and while she’s quite normal in most ways, she’s the Angelique who’s been through all this. She puts on a brave front, but deep down she’s scared to death.”

“When do we go?”

“As soon as you get dressed.”

He put on an old pair of jeans and a tee shirt, rejecting the hospital garb for such an occasion, and followed Dobbs. They had kept her in the opposite end of the wing from him.

A middle aged man in the black suit and clerical collar of his profession met them and shook hands with MacDonald. “I’m Father LaMarche, from Montreal,” he said. “Glad to meet you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.” He paused a moment. “She wants to see you alone. I concure, but I think we ought to have an understanding first.”

“Go ahead.”

“She considers herself married to you. Even though it was by an Anglican cleric and wasn’t consummated or legally registered, you’ll never convince her that anything Bishop Whitely did wasn’t with God’s will. He must have been quite a man.”

He nodded. “He was. Uh—you know it’ll never be consummated?”

“Yes, but break it to her gently. I don’t know what it will do to her, and she’s come so very far.” He hesitated a moment. “Her theology has also become, shall we say, radically unorthodox, despite her background and my best efforts. Be prepared there, too.”

He nodded. “My theology’s gone a little around the bend, too, Father. Don’t worry. Can I see her now?”

“Yes, go on in. Just—take it slow. Be gentle.”

He could never be otherwise with Angelique.

They had cleared out a small visitor’s room for them. It was glass enclosed and looked out on the beach and the sea. It had a number of plants and several padded chairs and one sofa. She stood there, wearing a silk robe of blue which had a hood to cover all of her head but her face. She was looking out at the sea, but she turned when he entered and he saw her face, the same beautiful face he’d seen on her when they had first met so long ago on Allenby Island. Her eyelashes, at least, had grown out, and she had put on lipstick and drawn fine brow lines with an eyebrow pencil that looked quite natural and attractive.

She smiled when she saw him. “Hello,” she said, her voice the same as it had been. “You look just as I expected you would. They told me you’d grown white hair. I think it looks very nice.”

He returned the smile but did not approach her. “Then I won’t dye it.”

“You like the robe? I seem to have gotten a taste for silk somehow, and I have the money to get what I want.”

“You sure do,” he responded, trying to be light. “All I got was an unlimited expense account.”

There was a certain tension on both their parts, each not sure how to really break their own secrets with the other.

“All that I have is yours,” she told him, “if you want it. This is a Commonwealth country. We could make it legal at a magistrate in no time. But you must—see me—first.” She pulled back the hood and undid the robe, letting it fall to the floor.

She had never stood more naked than she did there. The total absence of hair, particularly on her head, produced a startling effect, but she did not look like some horror. She had the head for it, and while she looked quite different, she was still somehow sensual and erotic. Her body was the same fine one she’d had before, although not the perfection it had been. Clearly she had been eating well. Still, her injuries were far more apparent that his. In spite of the unmarked face and good figure, she’d never be a photographer’s model.

“You’ve put on weight,” he noted softly.

She smiled, and the smile turned into a laugh, and she ran to him and hugged him and he hugged her back. She was overjoyed at his reaction, but she suddenly sensed a coolness in him, in his less than total embrace, and stepped back.

“Something is the matter. Something you are not telling me.”

“You lost your hair. I lost something—else.” Since it was public exposure time, he felt he might as well get it over with and undid his pants and let them fall to the floor.

She stood back and stared, and her jaw dropped a little. The physicians had done a perfect job. Aside from the growth of some pubic hair, which he hadn’t expected, his looked just like hers.

“Then—then it wasn’t a dream,” she whispered. “They really did it.”

He nodded and bent down and pulled his pants back up. “They really did.”

“Does it—work?”

“If you’re asking if I can get pregnant, the answer’s no. Otherwise, they tell me I’d feel just what you would.”

“You haven’t—tried it?”

“No. I’m Greg, and I’ll stay Greg.”

Suddenly she started to laugh. Concerned, he went over to her. “You all right? I know it’s a shock, but it was a shock to me, too.”

“No, no! I am just thinking that after all this, somehow we are both now virgins!”

He had to smile at that, no matter what the internal anguish.

She stopped, seeing that it hurt him, and hugged and kissed him, then picked up her robe once more and donned it, this time leaving the hood down. “I am sorry. Truly so,” she told him sincerely. “We two are not as far apart as all that. Much of me, inside, is now plastic. I, too, am barren.”

He looked at her, and found more pity for her than for him. He still was in pretty good shape and he’d had half a lifetime whole and free. She had never had that kind of chance. She had mobility and money now, but she would never know normalcy.

Up until now, she’d been open, confident, more extroverted than she’d ever been, but now she seemed small and weak once more. “I need you, Greg. I really do. My money will bring me fair weather friends and leeches, who will say that they adore me until I am out of the room and they can laugh behind my back, but nothing else. They say you can leave any time? Be an out-patient almost anywhere?”

He stared at her. “Yeah, sure. I just haven’t had any place to go, and I couldn’t leave without seeing you.”

“Very well, then. I have all this money, and money talks. I am selling Magellan to a group headed by Doctor Bonner for a pittance. A mere four hundred million dollars—American, not Canadian—in a massive trust fund with the other inheritance. Half of it I will donate to various religious charities and to medical research. I do not know yet what I will do with the rest. But, I think if I wish to go, they cannot stop me.”

“I’ll go along with that. Where are you going?”

“We are going. First we are going to a magistrate who will waive all the technicalities because of who I am, and with whom you will not discuss your—injury. Then we are going to the finest hotel in Port of Spain and taking the grandest suite they offer.”

“Huh? Why—what?”

“You idiot! Did you think that would matter”? Did I fall in love with your organ or with you”? Once I was confused and silly on this matter, but I have learned so much about myself and the world now. Did not the Bishop, like the God he served, love us all far more than we deserve to be loved? And is it not love that makes us more than the animals the Dark Man claimed we were? It is lust that is from the animal. It is love which is the part of us that is from God.”

He wanted to do it, wanted to very badly, but he couldn’t bring himself to inflict it on her, particularly as the years went by.

“It—it just isn’t going to work, Angelique. I do have lusts, and I’m going to have a hard time dealing with them, even harder if I am always with you. Besides, I have no stomach for the rich life. I’d just get fat and lazy and vegetate, while you would want and deserve the glamor of the world. And eventually you would want what I can’t give you, and I’d want it, too. What would we do in that honeymoon suite? Have some kind of two way dildo sent up from the local sex shop?”

She stopped and frowned. “What is this ‘dildo?’ ”

He told her, and she laughed again. “That sounds interesting. By all means we must try it!” Suddenly the laugh faded, and she grew almost somber. I think you truly do not love me, then. Is it the money? I will give it all away. I have never had need of it before. Oui. I will give it away. We will start clean. And if your pride demands it, I will stay home and be the good little wife and clean and mend.”

“No, my pride doesn’t demand that. I just—can’t—see how it’ll work out.”

“Then I give it all away anyway. I return to Quebec and take my vows. Without you, without your support, your friendship, your love, the rest is meaningless.”

He grabbed her suddenly. “You’re really serious?”

“I am more than serious. I will do it. I will marry either you or Christ within the week.”

He sighed. “I guess you’ll have to marry me, then. But keep some of the money. We’re going to need competent security for the rest of our lives, I’m afraid, and that costs. Besides, if I ever needed to find a job, I couldn’t pass the physical.”

She smiled broadly and threw her arms around him.

“Come, Gregory Mac Donald! I will show you how serious I am, and how much you failed to learn through all this!”

Many on the staff and otherwise did not approve of it, but her chief psychiatrist thought it was the best thing for both of them and helped. When you’re rich, what you want comes to you, including a magistrate and a pre-filled out marriage license and all the rest. Arrangements were also quickly made to sneak them past the waiting press and off to a private, well secured resort for the very rich on an isolated stretch of the Grand Cayman Islands. There, in a luxury condominium overlooking the ocean, unobtrusively protected by a security system and staff he himself designed, they were finally able to feel a measure of peace and relaxation.

MacDonald pretty much was along for the ride. He was washed up as a lover and even as a good socialist, yet he found himself surprisingly happy. He remembered his files, and his ex-wife’s own evaluation, that he was the ultimate egocentric personality, and he realized with a start that he had changed far more than physically. He was no longer the sun, but a world in orbit around a different sun, that of Angelique. For the first time, he needed someone else to give him purpose and meaning, and it wasn’t a terrible condition at all.

And now a three-quarters moon was rising above a darkened sea, and as they stood hand in hand at the doors to the balcony of the luxury suite, they held hands and comtemplated their first really private moments together after all of this. In a sense, he’d been dreading, even putting off this moment, when they were alone together.

“Are you happy, my darling?” she asked him.

“Yes, in a crazy kind of way, I think I am. Something dear was taken from my body, but, the funny thing is, something else was added in my head, something that had always been missing but I hadn’t known it before. For the first time, I care about the victims.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. I think Bishop Whitely understood it, though. I think that’s what he was trying to tell me at the end.”

“He—came to you on the rock?”

“Yes. And you, too, I understand. You want to tell me what he said?’’

“He said—love, and faith, and sacrifice were costs, but that they were why, up to now, we’d always won. He said that someone who kept love in their heart and faith in God and man would find any sacrifice a mere trifle. He said that I was saved by faith and sacrifice, and that I had now to carry on the love against which Hell itself could not stand, and that if I looked within myself there was no problem I could not overcome.”

He kissed her, and that, at least, was the same, and he even felt a tingling sensation in the right area of the groin. She removed his clothing slowly, and then her own, and they embraced again, and hands felt each other’s strangely identical parts. The room was dark, except for the light from the moon and a few street lamps below.

And, suddenly, Angelique knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

She closed her eyes and whispered, not to him, “Unab sequabab ciemi!”

There was a sudden rush of warm air all about them, although the balcony door was mostly closed and the room was air conditioned. He felt the sudden presence of others in the air of the room and all around, but there was nothing he could see or sense, and he stiffened, not knowing quite what to expect.

“Father of all, angel of nature, spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, harken, for the Mother has found her perfect lover,” she continued in the strange language of the Hapharsi. “Let that lover be filled with the soul of the he-lion and the bull, that I may be serviced and have release.’” It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real, but it sure felt real, and if anything, even bigger and better than it was. He felt a sudden surge of pure animal energy, and he made love to her in the way he wanted to through half the night.

And yet, when they awoke, late in the afternoon, they both were as they had been. There was no mistaking the reason for the radiance of her expression and the softness of her manner, and he, too, felt satisfied, and remembered it all clearly. He was sure that, somehow, he’d made love to her, as a whole man, over and over, for a longer and more satisfying period than he ever had before with a woman, and that all had been—well, normal.

She kissed him playfully. “Do you still worry, my love?”

“Yeah. Am I going nuts—or what?”

“Magic isn’t good, or evil, it just is,” she told him. “Like everything else in this world, it can be good or evil depending on who uses it and for what purpose. That goes for spells, and—computers.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Don’t start with the ‘buts,’ my love. The magic doesn’t work as well with ‘buts.’ And don’t be so afraid. There’s nothing to fear. They made me a Hapharsi Mu’uhquah for their own evil ends, but make me one they did. It doesn’t matter what I look like or who I am—it’s there, particularly in the dark. The ancient priestesses, to preserve their virginity and thus their power, took female lovers, but most of them still craved, at least occasionally, what they could not have. Sometimes as the male, sometimes as the female, they had it better and more often than the tribe. That’s why they never succumbed to temptations of the bisexual flesh.”

“Then—it was an illusion?” He’d known it, but it had been so good, so real.

She shook her head in disgust. “After all we have been through, you and I, you can worry about what is real and what is illusion? The world is a magic place, my darling, if you wish it to be, if you believe that it is. Who is to say where reality ends and illusion begins? Who cares?”

Who cares indeed? “You know, I can still get that changeover. Go all the way. I think that’s what St. Cyr meant. It doesn’t matter to me any more what I look like, but I’d be perceived as normal by others. Me like that and you with a wig and we could go places and do things without a whole army of security people.”

“Oh, no. I will not give you a chance to be a voyeur in the ladies’ rooms of the world. I think you are perfect just the way you are, and I would be content right now if this, right here, went on forever. We have earned it. What I see in your eyes in more than enough of the world for me.”

He grabbed her, and held her close, and kissed her, and they were at it again without benefit of spells or special augmentation. She broke for air and laughed. “We forgot the dildo.”

“Who cares?” he retorted, and kissed her again.