The Messiah Choice (1985) (11 page)

"Oh? What is that?"

"Someone, for some reason, preferred you to him as the owner of the controlling interest in Magellan."

6

A BRISK WALK IN THE WOODS

She was in the deep forest, the moon showing only slightly through the dense growth, yet she
could see well enough. She was naked, and unadorned in any way, yet she did not realize this or
think upon it. She did not, in the human sense, think at all; rather, she felt things, basic things,
with an intensity she had never known before. There was caution, and fear as well of potential
enemies, but there was, too, a sense of exhilaration, of being alive and one with the forest.

Sight, sound, and smell told her that the way was safe, and she got up and moved swiftly and
expertly down the forest trail until it opened into a broad meadow with a big dark rock in its
center. Once here, she knew, felt, that she was safe and protected.

One by one the others came as well, to run, and jump, and touch, and play with one another in
the meadow that was brightly lit by the moon's glow. They were of her own kind and she knew
and loved them all, these sisters of the moonlight. They were wild beasts, sometimes on two legs,
sometimes down on all fours, yet they were shaped like the others, Those Who Must Be Hidden
From and Feared.

Sometimes they would scamper through the forest and reach the places where fruit trees grew.

Then one or more would climb the trees as if it were an easy walk and not straight up and knock
the fruit down for others to scramble for and stuff into their mouths. She always ate with them, yet
no matter how much she ate it was never enough, never
right.
There was a hollow, empty hunger
she did not understand, a craving left unfulfilled, but she lacked the reasoning ability to even
guess what it could be.

And then, as the mists began to build up and the false dawn crept into the eastern sky, they
scampered back into the woods, back to the safety of their own territorial places before the sun
came up.

Angelique awoke to see bright sunlight creeping around the edges of the curtains, and she frowned, looked over at the clock, and saw that it was nearly time to get up. She did not feel like it, though; instead, she felt very tired, as if the dream had been real, and she quickly settled back into a deep, seemingly dreamless sleep.

In the following weeks, around the world, several small countries went to war with each other, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had two tense confrontations, the stock markets mostly were down, although not dramatically, and hordes of people in various major cities protested one thing or another. The business of the world went on, and even Sir Robert's murder, its grisly and mysterious details rather well suppressed, faded from the public's memory. There was still a bounty on the first new pictures and interview with Angelique, now one of the richest women in the world if not
the
richest, and there were the usual messages from the top network interviewers in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and France—as well as a host of hustlers and entrepreneurs—

coming in, but on Allenby Island things seemed to lapse into calm and insulated peace.

A small squad of expert workmen and technicians managed, in a very short time, to combine the VIP quarters with Sir Robert's old suite and remodel and remake it into a complex designed to deal with Angelique's physical problems, and to house the new staff while also redecorating to the new owner's tastes. Such things as lights, full or individual, as well as a satellite-fed television receiver, radio, and stereo gear, could be controlled by her voice in much the same way as she controlled her chair. Any dark corners could be instantly flooded with light at a single command.

As with her chair, she kept the commands basically to one or two words in basic French, since English was the usual language of the Institute. It kept her from inadvertently giving orders when having a general conversation.

The staff brought in by the Institute was excellent, at least so far. The shift work, or on-call maid and orderly services, was performed by two Haitian sisters, identical twins, actually, named Marie and Margarete, both seventeen and both illiterate, with virtually no schooling. They were, however, friendly, attentive girls who didn't mind the really dirty work and loved the luxury. The third shift was given to eighteen year old Juanita Hernandez, a half-Indian beauty from Venezuela, who was barely literate but made do in English. The twins also made do in English; their native French was such an odd amalgam of dialects and new and old tongues that it was virtually unintelligible to her.

Added to this was Alice Cowan, a nineteen year old Jamaican who was not merely literate but a very fast reader and a capable personal secretary. She was quite tall and very thin, with straight black hair and a light brown complexion, and while she seemed a bit more reserved than the others, she was no less anxious to please and seemed genuinely glad to have the job.

Greg lived in a small apartment down in the village, where he was among friends and felt most comfortable. Angelique had remained in and around the Institute, partly because helping redo the quarters gave her something creative to occupy her mind and also because Greg was a daily visitor.

They had almost literally taken apart and put back together her father's old suite, then moved her into it while they remade her own. Her opinion of Greg had risen, rather than diminished as some in the Institute had hoped, during these times, heightened by a sense of mystery about just what he was doing. Staff people and even Sister Maria had gently pumped her, apparently also out of curiosity, but she could tell them very little. Convinced that he was constantly being monitored, he discussed almost nothing and used unknown means to get his information in and his reports out. It was not even clear, in fact, exactly to whom he was reporting.

Finally, though, she prevailed on him to take her down to the village, and he gave her the grand tour and some of the island's history.

"Nobody really knows who discovered it, but the Spanish first chartered it, and the British took it from them. It didn't really matter. Just one of the hundreds of little flyspeck islands north of Trinidad and Tobago."

"No one lived here, then?"

"Nope. And a number of the islands you see from the mountaintop from here still have nobody on them, except maybe a lonely lighthouse keeper or something like that. The water's in the wrong places, the thing is hell on agriculture, although with modern methods that cost more than they're worth we're able to grow some of the fresh fruit and vegetables up to the west of the Institute, and the lone harbor is shallow and narrow, with underwater rocks and reefs, and cost a fortune just to create the small channel that allows our twice weekly supply ship to come in at all.

It just wasn't worth any trouble."

"Then—all of this is my father's doing?"

"Not quite," he told her. "The Royal Geographic Society kept a research station going near the summit off and on until the 1890s, mostly to keep some British presence here just in case somebody else wanted it. Then, in 1894, the government sold the entire island to Lord Carfax, one of those crusty rich eccentrics they used to have in those days. He built the place as a winter resort and getaway for his own use and the use of his friends. He's the one who built the town in a miniature replica of a Tudor village. The staff was enormous, and was brought in from British holdings and Britain itself. Some of the families here are descended from those earliest servants and workers for the old Lord."

"Then—it has been a resort all this time?"

"Oh, no. Not since World War II, really, but some of the people had been born and raised here and they stuck it out, pretty much forgotten in the backwaters of things. The old manor house, with its tennis courts and such, burned down in forty-two, I think, and its remains are mostly overgrown now."

"But—what did the people do during all that time?"

"Fished, mostly. Applied for every British grant they could. Took the dole. They had housing, the Lord's old water system, bounty from the sea and a little bit of land they farmed for their own consumption. Had a few cows and sheep. It wasn't much—outdoor plumbing that worked half the time, no electricity, no conveniences, but the old timers maintain they were happy times, often likening the period to paradise. Britain tried to give it to Trinidad and Tobago or even Guyana in the sixties, and they successfully fought that, but finally the mother country just gave up and outright pulled out and gave them to the tiny nation they don't like and don't feel a part of. They look upon your father as something of a savior—saving the British from the savages, as it were.

The price, though, was steep—they all became Magellan employees and workers at the Institute."

They were, however, a friendly bunch in their own little town, far, it seemed to them, from the colossus looming high above them. They reminded Angelique very much of the small-town folk of the Gaspe in spite of their far different cultural origins. And these were the folk that made it all work; who unloaded the twice-weekly supply ships and got the food and other materials up the mountain to the Institute, who repaired and drove the carts, who did the cooking, picked up the trash, and threw out the garbage, buffed the floors of the Lodge and Institute buildings, and did all the rest of the routine things that made the Institute possible at all.

For Greg MacDonald, it had been a time of frustrations and changes. He found himself thinking of Angelique now only as a friend and companion and, without really being aware of it, he no longer even thought about the wheelchair and her disabilities. Not that he ignored them—that was impossible—but he now simply took them for granted. There was something about her own spirit, her own unwillingness to let her paralysis destroy her or even limit her more than it absolutely had to that he respected. He didn't regard her as a nuisance or a hindrance, although he'd started out thinking that might be the case, and he actually found himself looking forward to her coming down, and missing her when she wasn't around. He felt quite guilty that her total dependency seemed to turn him on, but if he didn't know how idiotic it was he could almost swear he was falling in love with her.

He was frustrated, too, that he could tell her so very little of what he was up to and what he'd already pieced together. On Allenby, it wasn't paranoia to believe that every single word you spoke was recorded in some security outpost.

They went down the beach, listening to the birds and the crash of the surf, he walking, she riding, he occasionally having to push to get her unstuck from the sand. Finally, they stopped, ironically not far from where her father had died, although within sight of the tiny church. It was late in the day, and they had spent the afternoon looking over merchandise sold by the crewmembers of the small supply steamer as a sideline. Most of it was probably stolen, but some if it was quality stuff and nobody on their route, including Allenby, was likely to have the authority to make arrests and make them stick.

"You look a little worried," she noted.

"Huh? Sorry. Yeah, got to stop thinking so much."

"Problems? Is the Institute bothering you again?"

"No," he assured her, "that's all been damped down, at least for now. It's just that something was supposed to come in with the steamer today that I've been expecting for some time now and it just wasn't there."

"Something to do with your case?"

He nodded. "Yes. A crazy hunch, if you want to call it that, triggered by what Dobbs told you.

Never mind for now. What about you? You're looking more and more tired and drained. You nodded off on me a few times this afternoon. Maybe you should go back and get some rest."

She shook her head. "I don't know what is wrong with me. I am sleeping more and longer than I ever have, yet I feel very tired, as if I sleep very little."

"The dreams again?"

"Yes, I suppose, but how can a dream tire you so?"

"Depends. The mind can do funny things. Have you talked to the doctor about it?"

"Oh, yes, many times. She gives me pills or portions, but they do no real good. She says that the dreams are a textbook set, for all the time I am whole and running free in the primeval woods.

They are not
bad
dreams, just strange ones, but every time I go to sleep and have another I feel there is a
wrongness
to it, that the nightmare it is just around the corner. I am a bit frightened by it."

He looked seriously at her. "Well, you've been through a lot lately. Still, I'm not sure this place is good for you. You should go to some south seas island, or at least Montreal, and just get away from anything having to do with Magellan or this place for a while."

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I—I can not. What I fear here is nothing compared to that which I fear beyond here. I could not go out there, into the real world, without some sort of anchor, and the only anchor I have, the only friend, is right here with me."

He just stared at her for a moment, not really comprehending.

"Greg—you will pardon me, but I really don't know how this is done—will you . . . kiss me?

Even if you don't mean it and don't really want to? Just for me?"

Pity welled up in him, along with other feelings he didn't quite understand, but he knew what he had to do. He leaned over her and said, softly, "I'll give you the kiss of your life."

He had always been a very good kisser, and he had to repress the urge to do more, but the awkward angle he was forced by the chair's presence to take was a constant reminder that she could feel no where else.

He broke it off when his back and arm couldn't stand the strain of supporting him any longer, and he saw that she was crying.