The Messiah Choice

8. DESCENT INTO HELL

Angelique spent much of the night exploring. Not exploring her surroundings that much, although she located both the pump and the waterfall, but mostly exploring herself, her newfound control of her body which had been remotely built up and finely tuned by the nocturnal sojourns over the past weeks.

When the skies had begun to lighten, she had returned to the cabin and tried as much as possible to get a little of the outside air and light into the place. The bed was no more than a simple cot using a wafer-thin mattress on poorly supported springs and slats with a single sheet wrapped around it and an old feather pillow at its head. She lay down on it, and immediately began to feel a burning sensation on her skin. She jumped back up and stood there a moment, adjusting to the pain, and felt it slowly subside and disappear. She put a hand on the sheet and held it there, and it began to burn and she quickly withdrew it. It was certainly the sheet. She pulled it off and tossed it to one side and tried just the mattress. Before long, the sensation returned. She was not to be permitted even this comfort. She could see a little in the cabin now and spotted a straw mat, looking rather new. on the floor to the far side of the bed. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than the dirty floor.

She suddenly got an idea, and put the mat atop the mattress on the bed. The rough straw was irritating on its own, but she managed to get used to it, and this didn’t burn and did help.

She finally lay on her back for a while and with her hands explored her own body. It was a strange and wonderful sensation to caress her own nipples and find them stiffen and rise and produce a pleasurable tingling sensation much like a tickle yet oddly different, too, with results also causing changes elsewhere inside her. She had been barely pubescent when they had taken it all away from her, and she had not until now known the feelings of an adult woman’s body except through books and through her imagination.

She had been like a little child all night, running around the cabin, just reaching out and picking things up, tossing a few stones, using the pump just to see it gush—all these were wondrous, magical things to her.

The only damper had been when her body had told her that she now needed a toilet, and a toilet was one thing that hadn’t been provided here. Whatever they’d used in the past had either been demolished or buried when the other cabins had been torn down. She’d used the woods, but found one process as messy as the other, and nothing to be done about it. She would have to wash herself off every time, which was an unpleasant prospect.

Now, lying there, feeling herself, she began to think a little on her situation and her future. Even though they had been the cause of her severe handicap, the freedom from that handicap was heady wine indeed. Hanging over her always was the threat of the restoration of that condition, which, she knew, could be done almost with the wave of a hand.

She knew she had to fight them. Not merely for her own sake, for she was certain that whatever they eventually had planned for her would be very unpleasant indeed, but also for the sake of the world. The Dark Man was right—they could seal off this place in the name of the all-powerful God whose name was Security, and they could probably make it stick for a while, being very convincing to those few outsiders who would come in and out in spite of that security wall. With control of that computer and the kind of casual yet awesome power demonstrated by the Dark Man, it was unlikely that any on this island could stop them.

She thought of that little man, Jureau, whom they had caused her and the others to kill. He had been away, so they hadn’t worried about him, but he’d come back unexpectedly, most likely. If most or all of the security forces had been hand-picked—with help from computers, of course—as their people, a Jureau would see through them and move to correct things. Those who could cause them real trouble died. Her father, Jureau, now Greg.

Poor Greg! How she longed to have him with her now, when she was whole and could feel the reciprocate his tender feelings! She would have to fight them for his sake and in his memory, too.

Those with the power to do harm were removed. The rest? The Dark Man’s power, and most particularly the fear that power could generate, would keep them in line. A few ugly, or even humiliating, examples would probably suffice. Most of the townspeople had families. When it’s your children who are threatened and not just yourself, you are even more likely to go along and take it.

The Institute? They’d probably let some of the Fellows up there stay on, and some of them were so far removed they might not even notice anything else going on. Then, when their term was through, they’d be shipped back to their labs and universities none the wiser. Security could send just about everyone who might cause trouble packing before they knew too much, anyway. And all the time, the day-to-day business of information management would go on; Magellan’s corporate books would remain balanced, their business uninterrupted, and the NATO and other branches of the various governments and institutions using it to do business would go on as before, betraying nothing wrong. She could expect little help on the island and no calvary riding to the rescue.

At the moment, she decided, she just didn’t know enough to even know if anything was possible. She needed time, time to adjust, time to think, time to test herself and them, to find out if there was anything that could be done. And yet, what could she do, naked, exposed, and alone? What could she do to those who her father and Greg couldn’t stand against? She didn’t even understand computers and had no idea what they even did up there at the Institute or, for that matter, what Magellan did around the world.

Feeling both depressed and inadequate, she finally managed to drift off to sleep.

When she awoke it looked like late afternoon. She was feeling a little sore and nauseous. She wasn’t used to such feelings, nor the little aches and pains that everyone suffers and takes for granted. She got up to explore the now illuminated area of the cabin interior.

Someone had clearly been there while she slept. Atop the cabinets were small baskets which contained bread, cheeses, some cold cuts, and other makings for sandwiches. There was also some fresh fruit. A picnic-style cooler had also been brought in, and inside, packed in ice, were two bottles of wine, one red and one white, a liter of beer, and a liter of Coke. In the cabinets she found eating utensiles, some dull bread knives, a large jar of instant coffee, and a box of tea bags. She also located, and took out, a battery-operated single burner electric stove small enough to sit on the table top, and a couple of packs of safety matches. Topping it off were boxes of crackers, cookies, and even some chocolate bars. Clearly they didn’t mean for her to starve.

She didn’t like the fact that someone, perhaps several people, had been in and carried in all this while she lay asleep and had done so without disturbing her, but as uncomfortable as that idea was, it certainly was something she suspected she’d have to get used to. She wasn’t up to doing much immediately, so she made herself a sandwich and washed it down with a Coke. It made her feel a little better, and she looked around the rest of the cabin.

The place was really dirty, and it bothered her. She didn’t much relish the idea of parading around au natural in the sunlight anyway, so she found a bucket and some cleaning utensils and, with a full water pail from the pump and some of the liquid detergent they’d provided her proceeded to wash the dishes, counters, table top, and much of the rest. As she progressed, she found, unmounted and just leaning against the back wall, a filthy old cracked mirror that must once have been part of a dresser. She washed it with detergent and rags and wiped it off, and as she did she saw herself for the first time.

It was a shock to look into the mirror and see a stranger staring back at her. But for coloration, there had been no changes to her body at all, and her face was still her own face, unaltered save for the color of her eyes and the color and texture of her hair, but it was still a shock to see her whole body, the shape of breasts, waist, hips. For perhaps the first time she looked at herself and saw herself not simply as poor, little Angelique but as others had—as a beautiful woman. It was difficult to grasp that the person she saw was really herself. The changes were such that someone might note the resemblance between her and the heiress from Quebec but would think it only an interesting coincidence. She was not profoundly changed, but what they had done, together with her mobility, was, she knew, just enough. Enough to dash any lingering hopes that she could somehow make contact with, and establish her identity to, some friend on the island with guts.

Later, when shadows loomed but there was still some light, she took some rags with her to the small waterfall and bathed, then went down along the small creek all the way to the cliffs.

The creek bank was shaded by vegetation most of the way, but there were places where she could sit out, exposed to the sea and the view, letting the breezes dry her body and hair. It was a drop of at least a kilometer to the sea, but the cliff face wasn’t sheer, and that interested her. She wondered if, somehow, she could get down there—and, if so, could she get back up again. Certainly it would have to be done in daylight, which didn’t appeal to her at all.

As night fell, she could see in the distance small lights that might have been any number of things. Some were certainly ships of one kind or another, slowly moving across the horizon, and some were buoys or other kinds of navigation markers placed so that those ships could safely make a night passage. It was forty miles, Greg had said, to the next inhabited island. That was more than sixty-four kilometers, if she remembered right. Sixty-four kilometers to the rest of the world.

Over perhaps a two week span—it was difficult for her to really be sure—her self-consciousness at being naked and her fears of attack or exposure subsided, and she had cleaned and ordered her environment. Her skin had toughened to the elements, and she was no longer aware of every little thing her body felt. She almost took for granted the mysterious deliverers of food and supplies, and she grew bolder in her forays.

The Dark Man had not returned and she had been left completely alone, which made her feel immeasureably better. She didn’t know what evil he and his cohorts were up to, but at least it didn’t involve her any more.

More than once she’d gone up close to the helipad and even to the Institute itself. She found she retained, and even improved upon, the animal-like instincts of the wild pack, and at night, with her dark skin and ability to remain motionless, crouched and still, she could get so close that she could observe and even overhear without anyone knowing she was there.

Important-looking people came and went on the nearly nightly ’copter shuttles, although their identity was a mystery. They were occasionally addressed by people on the ground as “General So-and-So,” and “Doctor Such-and-Such,” but the names were meaningless to her. There did seem to be fewer people about the Lodge at night, and those she did see, both there and around the helipad, seemed less talkative among themselves and more somber than she would have expected, but it looked so very ordinary in most ways. It was only the joyless faces and near dead silence of staff people riding down the mountain in the electric carts that betrayed hints of what must really be going on.

Only when she began to spy on that meadow, that terrible meadow with its grotesque altar stone, in the hours between midnight and dawn, could she really see.

Each night they held strange, horrible, blasphemous rites there. They were not the same each night, nor did they always involve the same people, but they were frightening and revealing.

The rites usually began with a gathering of several dozen men and women in hooded robes, coming from both town and the Institute. They chanted and prayed to Lucifer, Emperor of Hell, Ruler of Earth, and pleged themselves to him. Sometimes strange things would appear, such as designs of colored lights in the grass or apparitions above the stone, and there would be balls of light shooting up and darting about like living creatures. Quite often the rites would climax with a ritual sacrifice, usually a goat but on two occasions human beings, drugged but alive, were stretched out on the altar stone and horribly butchered to the prayers and chants of the gathering. Although none of the people sacrificed were familiar to her, the sight sickened and repulsed her, and she was amazed to realize that the victims had all been men.

Sometimes there would be blood feasts, and other times the suppliants would offer their own to one another. Occasionally they got so worked up into a frenzy that the robes came off, leaving them naked but often wearing primitive jewelry and occasionally with paint on their bodies. They would have sexual orgies in the grass without regard to which sex was which or who was with whom. She did occasionally recognize some of the worshippers; at one time or another she saw Juanita Hernandez and Alice Cowan there, and another time the Haitian twins were also there, performing perverted sexual acts with one another. There were others, too, and she realized for the first time how surrounded she had been all the time. She felt angry and sick that such things could go on at all, and that such people could become such monstrous practitioners of murder, sadism, masochism, sexual excess, and even beastiality.

The presiding priest wasn’t the same person from night to night. The Dark Man, who presided but did not participate, was the usual leader, but sometimes he was not there and another took over. More than once it was a woman who led them, a woman she realized was Carla Byrne, the Director’s wife. Whether her husband was one of them, or controlled by his wife, she couldn’t say.

She tried to get a grip on herself and some understanding of those people as she continued to spy upon them. The servants she could understand, if their culture and background had raised them in this sort of thing, and people like the Dark Man, whoever he was, and the rest of the top Institute staff who had to be in on it could also be understood by the oldest of rationalizations—a lust for power. But there were others there, in the middle management levels, the product of Christian culture and yet far down in the power structure, both from the village and from the technocrats of the Institute, that were inexplicable. How did the leaders bind and corrupt so many souls so absolutely and so easily?

She would eventually sicken of the spectacles in the meadow and work her way around them, usually going down the cliff trail to the beach where her father died and sit in the sand and let the warm Caribbean waters come up around her and try and think it all out.

She made her way down to the village after a while, and saw the little church in ruins and the graveyard in disarray, and wondered what could have happened here in so short a time, and how the people down here, no matter what, could accept such unspeakable horrors. Did they just look the other way and pretend to know nothing? Had they all been corrupted or enslaved? Some had boats—motor boats, small fishing vessels and sailing boats. Surely some would have tried to escape by now.

Perhaps, she thought, they had tried. Tried and just not made it.

She adapted quickly to her own situation, no longer embarrassed or worried at the thought that her nudity would be seen by someone, no longer even thinking about it or her other limitations, so minor were they when compared to the seven years of far greater limits she had endured. She began to go out during the daytime and get quite close to human activity. Once in a while she’d been spotted by someone, but she’d managed to duck out of sight and avoid any serious investigation. She even discovered that many of the staff and servant women went topless during the heat of the day when outside. This was something new, and indicated how lax any sense of morality and standards had become, but it made it easier for her. Behind a bush, explosed only from the waist up, she might be mistaken for one of the staff workers herself. The imposed physiological changes made on her by the Dark Man to conceal her identity acted in an odd way as a wall against embarrassment. As Angelique she would have suffered acute embarrassment and upset at being seen topless, let alone nude, but as this stranger—it didn’t seem to matter to her at all.

She returned to the cabin one afternoon and immediately sensed that something was different, that someone was there. Her sharpened senses gave her caution, but somehow it just didn’t feel like the Dark Man. Deciding it must be one of the mysterious ones who dropped off fresh supplies, she took a deep breath and walked boldly up to the cabin and in the door. She hadn’t really realized until now just how much she had missed human company, no matter what sort it might be.

She was shocked to find a single young woman there. She was dressed in what was becoming the island fashion—topless, with a colorful print skirt—and she looked lean and tan and somehow familiar, but Angelique couldn’t quite place her.

The woman put a finger to her lips and pointed at the door. After first thinking that this was a warning that someone was listening, she realized that the woman was motioning for them to go outside, and she did so, the other following quietly. Realizing that the woman wanted to talk and did not want to be overheard, and desperate for any sort of direct human contact, Angelique led her through the wooded area over to one of the clearings on the side of the cliff.

The woman seemed satisfied. She was white and looked to be no more than in her late teens or early twenties. She sat down beside Angelique and said, softly, “Do you remember me, Angelique? Do you know who I am?”

She stared at the other, and tried to speak, but no sound came out. She shook her head negatively.

“You can’t talk to me, for I haven’t had the guts to take the sign upon me, at least not yet. Just look at me and speak slowly, as if you had a voice. I can read lips.”

Who are you? Angelique asked her. What is this all about?

“I—I was Sister Maria Theresa when you knew me.”

Angelique was stunned and stared at the other disbelievingly. You can not be her. She was—old!

“I know. You see, we all have our price, don’t we? Motion, feeling for you, and for me—from menopause to adolescence, physically speaking. Forty-six is a difficult age. They made me seventeen again—seventeen always, they say—in exchange for renouncing my vows and joining them.”

But—you were a nun! In God’s name, how could you do such a thing?

Maria smiled a bit wistfully. “It’s all so simple for you, isn’t it? So cut and dried. Good and evil and that’s that. I don’t put you down for it. They kept you a child, denied you—experience. Not so with me. I was fairly late coming to the Church. Oh, I was born a Catholic and had the usual pressures as a kid and teen, but I was wild. Nobody’s fault, least of all my parents. I fell into a bad crowd in high school—right around seventeen, in fact. I didn’t want to work, didn’t want to grow up, and I wanted independence right then and there. I liked sex. I loved men, and I was in the kind of city that had a lot of them, lots of tourists, too. New Orleans. Wide open. So me and a couple of other girls from good middle class Catholic homes started selling ourselves for pay.”

Had Angelique been able to speak she could not have done so. She simply couldn’t imagine someone doing what Maria described unless forced to it by economic desperation. It was unheard of in the world Angelique had known.

“I know, I know. Welcome to the grown-up world. It wasn’t like you read about it in the books. It was easy. Just look through the papers, see what conventions were in town, go to the right hotels, and you made a pretty good amount of money just letting them make a pass at you. For a while it was fun, but then we got well known to the organized working girls. We were competition. We got threats and they really meant it, and we wound up with a Mac—a pimp—for protection. That’s when it stops being fun. You get a quota, and you suffer if you don’t make the nut. You turn it all over to the Mac and are totally dependent on him for everything. You stop being a person and start being property. Finally you get older and sick and tired of it and you want to quit and they don’t let you. You can’t anyway. Try being property for eighteen years and you realize you don’t even know how to take care of yourself. You start gettin’ bags under your eyes and spotting gray hairs and you know you’re in the home stretch, that you’re gonna be finished, and it’s organized crime and after all that time you know too much and can’t run. Well, I figured out a place to run to and I did.”

Angelique stared at her. You never told me. You never told anyone.

She reached into a small purse, took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled deeply. “Would you? Oh, I told the Church, sure. And they took me in, and I went through all the training and took my vows, and then went on and became a nurse—on them. I wanted to try and do a little good with the rest of my life. They stuck me in Quebec because it was a different country and I wasn’t likely to ever run into anybody familiar, and I took a new name and all that. So eight months after I first met you and took on your job, I wound up back in the fire again. These people knew everything about me. They knew things I’d forgotten for years. I put up a fuss at the start, yeah, but when they swore to me that they weren’t going to harm you and could cure you, there wasn’t much else I could do. I never really could be on my own, you know. I sold myself to the Macs, then I went and found the Church to take care of me, then when they couldn’t any more these people made an offer and I sold myself again. I’m not real proud of it, but it’s a fact.”

Angelique’s mind worked on several levels at once. She had a hard time imagining that a nun, any nun, could come from such a background, or, even if so, could have belief so shallow that the vows meant nothing except self-interest. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if even Sister Maria hadn’t been manipulated so that she would be where she was when Angelique’s crisis came.

“You’re shocked,” Maria noted. “You have this high ideal of why folks become priests and nuns and you don’t like it shattered. Well, honey, let me tell you, two-thirds of ’em come into the service for personal rather than religious reasons. Oh, some are real strong and real sincere and stay that way, but most are just people. If I had a buck for every pass ever made at me by some fat, middle-aged priest—and a few nuns, too—I could buy my way out of this. I didn’t take ’em up on it, but I never really was much for the religious stuff. It was just one of the prices you paid. I needed the Church as a protector. I guess maybe that’s why God dropped me right back in the midst of the worst of ’em.”

Angelique looked her squarely in the eyes. Why did you come to me today? she mouthed.

“Oh, I dunno. Guilt, maybe. Maybe I just wanted to make sure you were O.K. I really kind of liked you, you know. Oh, me and the other girls have seen you stretched out dead to the world—we bring that stuff in—but I just wanted to see how you were, that’s all.”

Are you a part of all this in the meadow at nights?

“I been there, but not much. They want the true believers there. They got ways, though, to convert most anybody. You scare somebody completely out of their wits, then make them choose between a slow, tortuous death or giving over their soul to the devil and I don’t know one that wouldn’t take up the chants and offer to sacrifice a pig to old Lucifer. They got it made here, you know. Damndest thing I ever saw. High tech Satanism. I think they fake most of the stuff they do somehow, but they still got the power. They got a lock on this island you can’t believe. It’s kind of like a tropical Nazi Germany except when some outside bigwig comes along and everybody plays normal. They finished off or converted every big shot working at the Institute. They own everybody here, and they got ambitions to own a lot more.”

Yes. They killed Greg.

“Oh, yeah? Who told you that?”

She felt a faint stirring of hope. The Dark Man. The first night.

“Well, he’s full of shit. They wish they caught him. Sent their big, lumbering monster or whatever it is after him and he holed up in the church, outlasted it, then made a run for it stealing somebody’s boat. I got that from Red—the town constable. He went through a grilling like you wouldn’t believe after that, but they finally let him go. Fired his ass, of course. He’s now just a common laborer, which is rough at his age, but they got his teenage daughter in their pocket and he’s got to go along. But he was there. Not that they didn’t search like hell for him. Gossip is he holed up someplace for the day, then sailed until he met up with a Guyanan fishing trawler that took him home. Where he went from there is anybody’s guess. They sent out something that he was a Russian agent or something and he’s wanted all over, but if they got him I didn’t hear, and they’re still a little jittery over him. The only one that got away.”

Angelique leaped over and kissed and hugged the surprised woman, and then she broke down in tears. Greg was alive! He got away! Once again she had hope.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high, honey,” Maria said gently. “Don’t expect him to come over the horizon with the Navy and Marines to save the day. He’s a fugitive on the run, was really working for somebody other than the company, and he can only keep alive by staying buried. Knowing what’s going on and convincing anybody else of it is two different things.”

She was right, of course, but Angelique didn’t care. He was alive! And he would do what he could against these monsters! She was sure of that. Perhaps, just perhaps, he would keep at it a little for her, too.

“So—how have you been doing? O.K.?”

I have had to deal with far worse than this, as you know, she responded. Still, I wish I could somehow get away, but it seems impossible. They said I would turn into a vegetable if I left.

“Oh, bullshit!” Maria responded. “Look, they got lots of power. Just look at the two of us now. But it’s not absolute. They got to be there to do something. Oh, they have these little dolls and they can cause you all sorts of problems, but even then they got to be right around you. What you are now is what you’d be if you escaped. A vegetable is what they might do to you if they caught you.”

She was fascinated. You are not fooling me?

“No. They know I’m here—I had to get permission for this—but they don’t care any more what you know. They figure they got it made. So even if you could get away, what would it get you? You don’t have anybody to hide you like MacDonald did. I mean, beg pardon, but anybody who saw you and didn’t know about this stuff would take one look at you and figure you as some poor savage from Haiti or more probably French Guyana. They’d either ship you back there or force you into some kind of labor or domestic service. You can’t talk, can’t write, and there ain’t many lip readers in this part of the world and none but me that would believe you if they could. Even MacDonald wouldn’t recognize you— but these guys would, and they’d be out looking.”

Marie was right, of course, and she knew it, but she also felt she had to do something, regardless of the risks. She looked at the former nun and mouthed. Do you know what they plan to do with me?

“No. Only that you got to be a virgin. Come here. Let me check something. Don’t worry. I’m a nurse, remember.” She leaned over and felt around the inside the vaginal area. “My God! An intact hymen! Girl, you must be the oldest virgin in the world!”

She felt herself flush in embarrassment.

“That’s what is important about you. You got control of the company and all and you are a pure virgin. Put that together with these guys who really control the company and believe in this devil worship. Figure on them doing a number on you at some point. Virgins are supposed to have big magical powers. If they can turn you around to their way of thinking—and, believe me, they can be real persuasive—you’ll be you again, maybe the number two head of the cult or whatever it is. I bet that’s what they’re doing now, setting it all up. Then on one of their big nights, like Halloween or something, they’ll come for you. It might be months, but they’ll start to work on you before that. You remember going out like an animal and killing that guy… Don’t look so surprised, we were all there. Well, they can take you a lot lower than that. Drugs, hypnosis, their other crazy powers— they’re like little gods even now.” She sighed. “I wish I knew what to tell you, but I don’t. One thing sure is that they’ll break you. They can break anybody. But if you get away like that, you won’t last as a virgin for ten minutes with that body, and if you’re not a virgin any more they’ll just let you stay like this forever and find another sucker. I mean, remember, if they can change you into that they can sure as hell change some other virgin into you—and they’ll find one eventually.”

That was sombering news. Damned literally if she did nothing, damned to life as someone else with no hope of ever breaking it if she did something, and the clock was most certainly running.

“I got to go,” Maria said. “They get real sticky if you’re too far off your schedule of duties.”

They got up, walked back to the cabin and went inside. Maria went to the supplies and removed an object that almost looked like a dead snake with something tied on to it. “I know this isn’t much, but you never had much practice with your hands. It’s made from local vines, so that spell or whatever it is should let you wear it. Hang it on those gorgeous hips. This little thing on the side holds a gourd; I’ve brought one, hollowed out. If you want to take something to drink with you, wear this, pour it in the gourd, and shove this cork in like this. It isn’t much, but it’s the best I could do.”

Angelique could only wipe away the tears and plead, Please come back soon!

Marie gave her a sad smile. “If they let me, I will.”

She was so grateful to the nurse that she kissed and hugged her, and she watched Maria go back through the jungle with a renewed sense of hope mixed with caution. She didn’t hold it against the nurse that she’d been forced to join the enemy; she had no doubt of their persuasive powers, and that was what worried her now.

She tried on the vine belt and experimented with the gourd holder, and was delighted to see that both worked and that no force pulled the vine from her nor did it burn or irritate. Nothing had been flung away since the Dark Man’s visit, but every time she’d tried putting on any kind of clothing or cloth it had begun to burn like fire. From the rags and cloths they provided and from the remains of her torn clothes she’d tried things, but they had all started to burn within a few minutes and she’d had to remove them. Now she realized it must be an allergy to all sorts of processed cloths and synthetics.

Partly to clear her mind and give her a chance to think, she went out into the jungle and found large leaves of the right size and some of the common type of vine used in making the belt. Using the kitchen tools and a lot of patience, she fashioned a front and rear leaf loin cloth and tried it. It took a lot of adjustment and fiddling, but it worked and did not burn and she was delighted. She felt like Eve, using a fig leaf to cover her lower parts. She went over to the mirror and looked at herself.

She looked, she thought, like somebody you saw in the back pages of National Geographic. Still, her loincloth made her feel better, more human, somehow, and less debased.

That night she went over to the beach, found some shells and some small leafy vines. She took to the long, methodical work of creating something with her own hands as if she’d been doing it forever, although there were many breaks and wrong decisions and steps back to the beginning. Finally, though, by the light of the lanterns, she managed to create a primitive necklace of shells, small, light volcanic stones, and laurel-like leaves, and also a headband which helped control her hair.

She was admiring her handiwork in the mirror when she suddenly felt an unwelcome presence enter the room. She looked into the mirror and could see nothing reflected there, but when she turned, he was there. No eyes or other features could be seen in that face of total black, yet she felt his gaze.

“Very attractive,” the Dark Man noted approvingly. “Very—primitive. It might start a new fad.”

“Very funny,” she responded. She felt too much hatred and contempt for the Dark Man to fear him, although she respected his power and knew his danger. “I thought I was rid of you for a while yet.”

“Oh, no. The past few weeks have been a bit of seasoning, a period of adjustment for you. We’ve removed some cumbersome baggage from you. You are tougher now, and far more self confident and self-sufficient. The whimpering, self-pitying cripple has been displaced by a newer woman, and perhaps a better one. In a few weeks the girl who was too shy and too modest and too morally hamstrung to even allow cleavage to show now walks naked with little thought of who is watching. The girl who was so helpless she took an hour to figure out a manual can opener now studies and creates basic clothing and even adornment with those same hands. The little would-be nun has been stripped of some of her civilized veneer. Tell me, what did you think of our—services?’’

“You mean those abominations in the cursed meadow? Horrible. Grotesque. Insane. Each day and night I pray for your victims.”

“And, no doubt, ask God to intervene and strike us dead— but He does not. He hears, but he does not. By the way, there was a telelink today between Mr. McGraw and you. Settled a lot of matters and got you on the record as desiring to assume all the burdens of the estate. McGraw will continue as your attorney, which pleases him.”

She frowned. “I made no such contact and you know it.”

“Oh, but you did. Because of your paralyzed condition, it was necessary to do it by conference so you could be seen. It’s amazing when you think that such signals are actually made up of little tiny pixels, little dots, each with only a little information, and the sound and video are reduced to digital form. All of this, of course, is handled via SAINT’s telecommunications net. The fact is, to him you looked bright and cheerful and quite happy and natural, yet your image and voice existed only within the computer. It’s amazing what modern electronics can do these days.”

She could hardly believe him, yet she dared not disbelieve him, either. No one was wondering or worried about her in the outside world, because they could produce her, authorizing what they wanted and reassuring anyone who wondered, on demand through electronic wizardry. In many ways, that power was as great as the other more supernatural powers the Dark Man displayed.

“Your existence belies your confidence,” she shot back. “If all is going so much your own way, and you control this entire island, why is it still necessary for you to adopt this disguise which alters your voice and makes your features nothing? It seems a lot of trouble for someone without worries.”

“Oh, this is for a different reason than that, but it is not one that you have to know right now. I am no one you know or have ever met, yet this is still necessary for now. We will discuss it no more at this point.”

“And what do you intend with me now, then?”

“A comparison. Two women. Two possibilities. The world is full of possibilities and biographies are the stuff of possibilities. Let us consider just one.”

There was a sudden sense of dizziness and some disorien-tation, and then she was floating, floating in something but without sight or sound or other sensation. No, wait—images suddenly appeared, very blurry at first, but getting clearer, and distant muffled voices became progressively louder and clearer to her ears.

She was lying in a bed in a room painted light green. A hospital bed, surely, in some modern facility. The pain hit almost immediately, and wracked her body. All parts seemed in pain, the agony forcing her to cry out and beg for help from those in the room, but she could not speak or move.

“Should I administer a sedative, Doctor?” the nurse asked, looking down at her. “There’s just something about her eyes, like she can really understand what we’re saying.”

“Don’t read more into her than is there, Jenny,” the doctor responded. “It’s always tragic to see them when they’re young and pretty, but she’s a vegetable, with little more feeling than a blade of grass or a tree. It’s only damned corporate politics that we don’t disconnect the intravenous tubes and let her starve and die. They are paying a fortune to keep her legally alive for some reasons of their own, but she’s gone. Only her shell remains, like Karen Quintan and the other body-live, brain-dead. Such a tragedy.”

“No, no!” she tried to shout to them. “I think! I am in terrible pain! I need help! I am truly alive!” But nothing came out. She had no power to move or communicate in any way.

“But her eyes are partly open some of the time—like now,” the nurse pointed out. “I’d swear she knows we’re here.’’

“Yes! Yes! I do know! Oh, help me!”

“We’ve tried talking to her, getting her to blink if she understands us, but it’s no use. Forget it, nurse. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. Just maintain the current levels and keep the monitors going.” He sighed. “Poor thing. With the size of that annuity for her and even today’s medical knowledge, she could be like this, for the next fifty years…”

She was still screaming at them inwardly, unable to control a thing, when she was aware that both the pain and the vision were fading and she was floating once again. The experience was so horrible, the absence of pain so intense a relief, that she almost passed out. She didn’t know how long the episode had lasted, but it was the most horrifying experience of her entire life, the stuff of nightmares.

“Choose,” came the voice of the Dark Man from all around her. “Now choose, but consider this alternative.”

She opened her eyes and gazed deeply into the fire and drew strength and power from the spirit it contained. She crouched there a while, but then stood and raised her arms and beckoned all the spirits and demons to attend her. And they were there, and responded to her call, in every tree, in every blade of grass, in every brief gust of wind that struck her almost naked body, and they let their power flow into her. Her body tingled with a totally erotic sense that none else here could understand, the power begetting power and giving off pleasure as a side effect.

She was a virgin, by their standards, yet the tribe all called her Mother and she saw them all, young and old, male and female, strong and weak, as her children. What could they know, from their few minutes of climax, what the spirits and demons could give to one who was one with them, give eternally and on demand?

She gestured with her right hand, and the fire flared up, a torchlike column that seemed to have a life of its own suspended in air. In its illumination she could see them all, her children, on their knees to her, praying to her, watching with awed eyes and fear in their souls, fear she had placed there and fear they had accepted as the price of her protection.

She gestured with her left hand and a great wind came, like some living thing, and swirled around the column of fire and kissed each of the worshippers in turn, then flowed inward to the small stone idol that sat on a bed of straw between the fire and the crowd.

It was crudely fashioned, but now it seemed to glow and pulse and throb like a living thing, and they all saw and made supplication to it, calling on it by name.

“Dobak! Dobak! Protect us! Dobak! Dobak! God of the Hapharsi! Protect thy children from harm and bless our hunt!”

And the demon flowed from the idol into her body, and took it for use as its own, for certainly it was Dobak’s to use and willingly so. And while it performed its magic rites and demanded its sacrifices and its blood, her own self was plunged into a realm of indescribable pleasures and delights, orgasm after orgasm, through her mind and body, and she heard not what was being said or done in her body and cared not. So wondrous were the sensations that although a tiny corner of her saw her hands come up, then descend with the knife and plunge it into the writhing, crying body of the infant girl-child upon the altar, she did not care. And at the moment the sacrifice died, she felt that sensation rise to undreamed-of heights as the youth and energy of the child’s soul flowed into her while the agony and pain were absorbed by the demon within.

“The sacrifice is good,” she heard the demon say with her lips, “and the hunt will be good, and the women of the tribe will be blessed with many strong and healthy children who will not die too young. This I grant, so long as you worship me.”

And they roared and chanted its unholy name, and buried their faces in the earth. And the sensations slowly subsided as the demon flowed from her body and back to the idol, but she felt the lingering, tingling sensations and would for some time to come, and she knew her power was increased and her body made well of all its ills and younger, too. As the demon prepared to leave its effigy, she, too, sank to her knees and prayed to the great god of the tribe in thanks, and suddenly she was floating once again.

“Now choose and merge,” said the Dark Man’s voice all around her. “Choose not with your mind but with your inner feelings.”

He had shown her two kinds of Hell, and she rejected both choices, yet he would not offer any alternatives. The pain returned, the horrible pain and the quiet and the horror of the hospital room…

And so it went, fading from one sensation, one life, into the other, for what seemed like an eternity. She struggled against it intellectually, but the pain of the girl in the room was too intense and too real, and she found after a while that no matter what the horror of the demon and the ritual sacrifice she could no longer willingly leave that existence, that she fought in her mind to remain there, to not go back to that sterile hospital room filled with pain and no hope at all.

Given a choice of hells, she could no longer bear the hopeless agony contrasted to the power and pleasure of the other, when she was forced to choose.

Her body still tingled with those wondrous sensations, but she felt the hard floor of the cabin and looked up at the Dark Man, not illuminated by the flickering kerosene lantern, from her kneeling position.

“A primitive tribe in any time, remote from civilization even in this modern age,” the Dark Man said softly. “They are beset by disease, lack of medicine and sanitation, and the vagaries of the hunt which is their only source of sustenance. Yet they are not ignorant. The missionaries had come, but with independence the missionaries had been foreced to leave, and the corrupt new government cared little about the primitives in the bush. They had prayed to the spirits of nature, and had received nothing. They prayed to this white God of the missionaries, and that God sent them nothing. So they prayed to the power, the elemental forces that were the very agents of their misery, and they received help.”

“They sold their souls to your master,” she managed.

“Ah, but consider the alternative! Did you not just do the same? A high tech hospital, the wonders of medicine and the arrogance of ignorant doctors. He might have given her the benefit of the doubt and shot massive doses of a strong opiate into her, but that risks complications with the heart, liver, and other organs, and considering the millions of dollars in donations and grants in aid that depend on keeping her alive—perhaps his own job—he does not risk it. You knew he wouldn’t. Faced with a life of eternal agony or one of pleasure and power, even if it means the sacrifice of innocents and taking a demon lover, you made the same choices they were forced to make.”

“But I had no other choices!”

“Neither did they.”

“That girl in pain—that was me, wasn’t it? Keeping me alive, indefinitely, to safeguard your precious computer!”

“It might be. That is your choice. It is always your choice. One or the other.”

“But even Christ had to suffer on the Cross but three hours!”

“Well, he had connections in high places, didn’t he? He had his own choice, but he knew how short its duration, how temporary its agony. You do not have that luxury. Your agony is permanent. God expects such a sacrifice, and tonight you failed Him. He’s still there. Renounce at any time, and you will return to that hospital, that bed, that pain and helplessness. I think you have learned much tonight about yourself. You have come a long way, and we will explore further in the times to come.”

“I have done nothing but play a game of illusion.”

“Oh, really? Go to the mirror. Look at yourself now.”

She turned and went over to it, fearful of what she might see or be shown. She looked at her image, and gasped.

Her body was still beautiful, and of the deepest brown, but she had changed. The face staring back at her was an attractive face, a young face. Her ears were pierced, and through them ran smooth rings of reddish bronze about the circumference of golf balls, and from each ring hung another, and yet one more. Her headband had become a true headband made of some grasses so finely and tightly woven they looked machine made, and her crude breechclout had become made of the same stuff, and hung on her hips. Her cheeks and brow and breasts were marked with some sort of chalky paint with odd designs in several light colors, and her necklace had become one of tiny, colorful, brightly polished stones. She had never seen that face, yet she knew it, knew whose reflection she saw, and she gave a small cry and turned away.

“I said I gave you a choice,” the Dark Man noted.

“Nothing is permanent except that hospital and the bed and the pain. You chose the Hapharsi Mother, and so lock in those attributes, which you take in commemoration of your choice. As you choose more, those attributes, too, will you acquire, inner as well as outer. At any time you may recant, at any time you may deny it, and at that time you will return, then and there, to the pain and the hopelessness of that hospital room. But if you do, then only your total and sincere surrender of your life and soul and will to great Lucifer will get you out.”

“You bastard!” she screamed, and picked up a piece of broken chair leg and tossed it at him. It deflected itself to the left and crashed against the cabin wall. She picked up other things, at random, and threw them at him, but no matter how true the throw she could not strike him. Finally she burst into tears and dropped to her knees. “Please!” she begged. “Please stop this! Stop this horrible nightmare!”

But he just chuckled and said, “Enough for tonight. Pleasant dreams and sleep well. You are on the right path and deserve a reward. Perhaps I will let your friend come again. She is a good outlet for you, and I grant you the power of speech with her. I wouldn’t want you to go mad.”

And, with that, he faded and was gone.

She knelt there, head bowed, for quite some time, and prayed to God, to Mary and Jesus and the saints, to deliver her, even to strike her down, but to end this thing.

But, as usual, there was no answer, no response at all. She understood why. God expected her to take the bed, make the sacrifice, go horribly mad in agony year after year. But she was no saint and she knew it. Not even the saints had been required to endure such a painful, prolonged living death, a state well within the power of those who now ran Magellan.

She knew from this very night that she could not hold out, that they would chip away at her soul as they had marked her body night after night until she was theirs and willingly so.

She could and would fight it, but the Dark Man was right. She was allowed only two choices, and that was which living Hell to join.

She knew that, no matter what the cost, she would have to try and escape, even if it meant living the rest of her life like this. She might, at least, die in the attempt and be saved from all this.

Forty miles of water. Yet, if, somehow, she could make it, she had one thing they didn’t know. She had a name and address. Just how difficult it would be, looking like this, mute and prevented from writing, to locate the place and get in and communicate her identity once there, she refused to even think about. The odds were she’d never get there in the first place.