The Messiah Choice (1985) (33 page)

And Greg MacDonald
did
see. "Angelique! If Christ was male, then the Antichirst will be female. The head of Magellan. A recognized face, but someone known to be a helpless cripple.

She's pure, still somewhat innocent in spite of what's happened, and even still a virgin.

Considering Magellan's activities, she could get an invitation to the White House
and
the Kremlin."

"Indeed," interjected Lord Frawley. "Western intelligence has been trying to prove for years that several great advances in computer science and technology in the Soviet and Chinese blocs were the result of deliberate capitalist espionage. Magellan. They've already built or maintained master computers for defense and international finance in most of the western world, and what they maintain they can modify. Now, if they secretly sold the same sort of thing to the Soviets and the Chinese. ..."

"Exactly," the Bishop agreed. "At the right moment, when Angelique assumes complete control, so, too, will the Beast be in control, not just of one computer but of almost all the vital ones. A tyranny by computer."

"But both the Russian and American launch computers aren't on any sort of network like that,"

Frawley pointed out. "Without the codes, which are changed daily, what can they do to start Armageddon?"

"Even I can answer that," Greg responded. "You don't
need
the codes, if you can create a crisis so intense that you will cause one or the other side to push the button. Starvation, revolution, mutiny—it's all one and the same. That dictatorship isn't national, it's multinational—Magellan. A multinational corporation of slaves. She'll take it, build it, and mold it until it's just right, and then it will cause conditions that
will force
one side or the other to World War III. Oh, my god!"

Whitely turned and looked at Maria. "Do you think you can get the gist of that through to Angelique, my dear? She should know, after all."

"I—I'll try. I'm not sure I understand it myself, but I'll try." And she did.

"They say that the Dark Man will make you the daughter of the Great Deceiver, the Father of
Lies, as the one who died on the cross was the son of the Supreme God. You will assume the trade
of your father and with it control the whole world. You will have miraculous power and people
will worship you as a god yourself and do as you command, and you will command them in the
future to wage a great, last war against themselves so that they may then wage war against
Heaven. Do you understand what they say?"

That was the trouble, Angelique thought sadly. She
did
understand. They would corrupt her utterly and then control her, making her not only better than she was but almost Christ-like.
The
Antichrist! They want to make me the Antichrist! God protect and defend me!

They were through Sacramento now, and going up into the mountains. He had elected to go via the twisting, winding little road leading to the pass at Lake Tahoe, and from there over to Carson City. It wasn't a well used route, particularly in the middle of the week and at this time of year, and it was the road on which they were least likely to encounter trouble.

"Well, she can't be their jolly little Antichrist if we've got her," Lord Frawley pointed out.

"Indeed. But for how long do we have her? A close shave tonight, old boy," the Bishop retorted. "I'm certain that for symmetry's sake they'd like to have it done on October thirty-first of this year, but so long as she is around it can be done almost any time. We can't keep running forever, and their resources are enormous now and getting greater every day. We fed the problem into
our
little computer, with some help at Stanford, and we came up with some answers, although not cheering ones."

"Yes? You mean short of doing her in outright?" Frawley asked, and heard Maria give a little shocked gasp.

"Oh, yes. Put it all together and it's correct. They are quite fanatical in their own way. They require a sexually pure woman. That was the point of the quadriplegia. An impure Antichrist might fit in well with
our
notion of opposites, but they're playing by their own rules."

Lord Frawley was agog at the idea. He was having trouble rationalizing all this occultism with his nuts and bolts universe as it was, and he accepted it only in terms of the beliefs of madmen—a company in which he included Bishop Whitely. "You mean—all we have to do is get someone to knock her up?"

"Yes, but that's not as easy as it sounds," Whitely reminded him. "I mean, a few hours ago four big men had the motive and the method and the opportunity, and they'll be buried in a couple of days. I suspect that even if you drugged her, there would be something, somewhere, planted as a booby trap to prevent it. They know the stakes as well as we do, and I'm certain they allowed for this eventuality. No, to do it she would have to do it freely, willingly, out of desire and out of love."

Maria had sat in the back in silence, not translating any of this in spite of Angelique's pokes in the side to do so. "She might do it," she told the men. "She might do it for one person. She's got a real, solid thing for you, Greg, and I mean it."

Although, deep down, he knew it, he still was startled by all this and fought to reject it.

"What—would it do to
her?"
he asked, not caring who answered.

Whitely, too, felt somewhat uncomfortable with this, but he saw it as the only expedient out of a dangerous situation. "Tell her about it, Maria," he ordered sternly. "Ask
her
that question."

And Maria did so, as best she could.

The very fact that the Dark Man planned to use her as the ultimate instrument of Satan's final war had shaken her, and she'd remembered the Dark Man's comment that the war between Heaven and Hell had yet to be fought. Now, here it was—a choice. A choice she did not wish to face.

"She wants to know if this would cause the ruination and fall of their ultimate plot," Maria told them.

"No. I'm afraid not," responded the Bishop. "It buys time, that's all. Time for us while they frantically search to cover their losses and find another candidate. A few years, perhaps. Perhaps longer. They will create a puppet Angelique to take control and proceed as before, I suspect, but they will not be able to use her. They may have someone in the wings—they certainly seem to plan ahead—but I suspect that their Angelique will become pregnant and bear a daughter who will be a direct heir and will also be totally under their control from the beginning. It might buy us a generation."

Maria told Angelique what Whitely had told her, and the strange young woman nodded sadly.

"As I thought. Still, a generation is a long time, and the cup will be passed from my lips. Yet, for a
Hapharsi Mother to surrender herself and her office, there is a high price to be paid both for me
and for the other."

"What—will happen to you?"
Maria asked nervously.

"Me? I do not know what traps the Dark Man laid, if any, for they are beyond my detection. But
it is certain that I will lose all my power and all my communion with nature. I will surrender my
self and my will. Hapnarsi Mothers are supreme because they have all the great attributes of
womanhood, yet call no man their master and thus are superior to men, having the highest
attributes of both. This is not so of a Hapharsi wife. Wives surrender their own selves to their
husbands. A Hapharsi wife is totally loving, and obedient to her husband's will. She becomes an
appendage of him. As he has arms and legs, and moves them as he wills, so is it with his wife.

There is no choice, no other way. When his essence enters my body of my own free will, I become
part of him always."

Maria was appalled.
"You talk like you'd be his slave!"

"In a sense, that is true, only it would be voluntary, willing, and forever. One is not a slave if
the choice is a free one. Still, this much is clear. I will remain in this body, with these thoughts,
with these limits, for the rest of my life, with no hope of ever being different and no way of even
communicating save by sign with anyone else, for I will not have the power or authority to take
on daughters such as you."

Angelique dwelled on the implications as Maria gave what translation she could to the men.

This way forever. . . .
No, not this way. Without power, she would be defenseless against anyone and anything. Her upper body strength would ebb. She would be weak, and ordinary, but she would remain looking like this, cut off, allergic or whatever it was, and out of place in the world no matter where she was. It was not a nice fate, and the only compensation would be that she would have Greg, although she would be in a way as dependent on him as she had been on Maria while in that wheelchair. Still, if the alternative was to become the
Antichrist,
her duty and sacrifice was clear. It wasn't the hospital and the vegetative hell. She would do it—but she had to be honest with Greg about
all
the consequences.

Maria was startled by Angelique's comment, but she relayed it. "Uh— Greg, she says that when her power leaves her it will exit through you, binding the two of you. As near as I can figure it out, if you make it with her you'll never be able to make it with any woman
but
her again. You just won't be able to get it up."

"Enforced monogamy. Incredible," breathed the Bishop

"Unmitigated, superstitious bullshit," muttered the Rook.

Greg, however, was not so sure. "Hey! Wait a minute! Doing it is one thing, but that kind of deal—I have to think about it!"

"You don't mean you actually believe in that balderdash!" Frawley exclaimed angrily. "You remember our discussion of voodoo? It only works on you if you believe it. If you believe it, then it's true. Get your brain back in the real world where it belongs, boy!"

"Leave him alone, Pip," Whitely said seriously. "I'm sure at one time or another we all would love to live in that wonderfully ordered, totally predictable universe of yours. It must be so nice.

Unfortunately, few of us do. I think the young fellow deserves a chance to think it over."

"And the alternative if I don't?" MacDonald asked them, hoping for some easier way out himself.

"I'm afraid, old boy, that there is only one alternative," Lord Frawley responded. "We must stop somewhere in a civilized area, then take that fancy little weapon you have there and shoot her to death, after which we will mutilate her so badly that only fingerprints and dental information will be available. She actually retains a crown and two fillings from her old days. Then we call the police, they try and identify the body, the information goes through the telenet and is intercepted by SAINT, and this in turn triggers that nasty little wipe out monster lurking in its system, for while they can fool the world about Angelique, they can not fool themselves, which is all that's really necessary we think. I'm well skilled in how to do it right and proper, if need be."

"Jesus Christ!" said Gregory MacDonald.

Maria said nothing for a few moments, then said, "I thought it would come to this. You have no choice in the end but to kill her. I know people just like you. I knew them in New Orleans. Oh, you've got national security to rationalize your deed and they were in it for the money and power, but you're really the same people."

"Now, wait just a minute!" Greg almost shouted at them. "Nobody's going to be blowing her away! I didn't go through all this just to have that happen. If I did, it would have been easier and better to do it back there in the islands. And don't you dare translate any of this for her or I'll cheerfully kill
you,
Maria!"

"No," Maria responded almost woodenly. "You couldn't have done it back there. In your head, yes, but she wouldn't have permitted it. Now—I'm not so sure she wouldn't welcome it. At least, she wouldn't
stop you,
Greg. You've pretty much ignored her, or treated her as some kind of strange creature, and it's hurt her, but you're the only thing she's got."

A heavy silence fell upon the van, which was all right with Gregory MacDonald. Up until now he'd enjoyed playing the secret agent, but the fact is that this was exactly what he'd been doing—

playing. He wasn't any James Bond; just an ex-homicide detective from British Columbia. Until now, he hadn't even minded the danger, or the risk, and after he'd escaped from that creature on the island and then from the island itself, his self-confidence knew no bounds. Part of it was that he lived for the game; his work was his life and beyond that he was more or less an idle bum. He was a thrill seeker, a man who loved to play the dangerous game, and was willing to do so because he generally risked only himself.

Self-centered, egocentric, the Sun Cop—that's what his ex had said when she'd walked out on him. People weren't real to him, they were just props, actors there to support his starring roles. He had a false but convincing bedside manner, it was true—all part of the game—but the truth was that he was good at what he did precisely because he was never in the slightest emotionally involved with his cases. Still, before he'd only had to solve them, perhaps apprehend the criminals, sometimes leaving that to others. Until now, he'd always been a player, not a piece on the board of his own deadly chess games.

And like his father he'd always been a socialist and a realist; his church affiliation was nominal and really amounted to none at all. He'd always voted NDP and touted socialist realism. But he had never before been chased down a mountain by a monstrous thing he could not see, until its arm was forced to solidity when reaching in vain through a church window.

And Angelique. He had gotten emotionally involved with Angelique back on the island, no matter how much he'd tried to deny it to himself, but he now felt detached from her present incarnation. Was it because she was now black? He had to wonder, no matter how much the idea that such a kernel of racism could be inside him troubled him. Or because she'd been transformed, into a strange being with a painted face who could neither speak nor understand? He hated that idea almost as much.