The Messiah Choice (1985) (14 page)

As simple, and as basic, as that.

But why kill him in such a showy and elaborate—not to mention risky—manner? A demonstration of power, a fear inducer—all these were part of it, but not the real cause.

A self-aware computer sees its maker in mortal danger. Could it, given its compulsory
programs, act on its own? Might it choose a time and method for reasons very logical to it, but
not to a human?

Greg MacDonald suddenly felt queasy. SAINT knew, or deduced, what these papers contained and the conclusions he would draw from them. It tried to stop their delivery by conventional means—arranging the murder of Martinez—and that didn't work. It tried by somehow causing that terrible storm-like power to crash that helicopter, or at least turn it back, and it failed.
And
now he was sitting here in the shadow of the damned thing reading the material!

He quickly got up and turned around and saw that he was alone. He had been so deep in his thoughts that he hadn't really noticed. The helicopter was still there, silent now, but everyone else had left for the Lodge. At that moment, somebody turned off the helipad's lights and he was instantly plunged into near darkness. He felt uneasy, unnerved by it, although it was quite natural for the lights to go out when their use was no longer necessary.

There had been no sign of a tram going down to the village. He pressed the light stud on his watch and saw that it was long overdue. He'd been sitting there for close to an hour!

Slowly, his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, which was not total. The moon came out from behind the clouds, and up on the hill the lights of the Institute lit up the night sky. Even the road down was illuminated with small battery powered orange lanterns to guide night walkers and drivers.

A breeze rustled the tops of the trees nearby, and he was engulfed in the sounds of the night, the insects and other creatures of the dark. Far off he could even hear the distant pounding surf.

Nothing was abnormal, nothing was out of the ordinary, except that the tram hadn't come.

He debated going up to the Lodge, which was not very far although the climb was steep, but something prevented him from doing so. True, there were friends, even innocents, up there, but Reggie was there as well, and SAINT controlled everything from the lights to the air conditioning and saw and heard practically everything.

Better the village, where between a quarter and a half of the population was native or had been hired by Sir Robert directly and predated SAINT. The village itself was independent of the Institute in power and the like and its construction predated all of them.

Sir Robert, with far more light, had been trying to make the village, too. Well, the old boy had been lured to the meadow by something SAINT had printed out with his morning papers. There was no reason for Greg MacDonald not to stay on the road, and he'd walked it, day and night, hundreds of times.

He got up and started down the switchbacked road, walking at a moderate pace. He was scared and nervous, but he did not want to panic and do the job for them—if they intended to do a job at all. After all, he was as much a prisoner to SAINT and its crazy master as everyone else was.

The first switchback below the helipad took him out of sight of the Institute but within sight of the village that seemed so far away below. Then they both came into view again, and he stopped and stared, sensing a
wrongness
somehow and not being able to put his finger on it.
Nerves?
No, something else. It was quiet.
Too
quiet.

There were no insect sounds, no sound of breeze or surf. It was as if a cone of silence had descended upon him, out in the middle of nowhere, where it couldn't possibly occur.

The moon ducked behind a cloud as he looked back at the Institute, and the hair on the back of his neck began to rise. He could clearly see the road leading all the way back up to the Lodge, outlined by the battery powered orange lanterns.

Now, one by one, those lanterns were going out.

And now there
was
a sound, in the distance but growing closer. It was a hollow sound that seemed to echo, the sound of some great feet coming down, marching in an unearthly cadence, as if hitting not the road but some great snare drum.

He began to walk faster. The pace behind him didn't increase, but clearly it was progressing toward him quicker than he was moving, and he became painfully aware of just how many switchbacks there were in the road and just how close the turn up top was to the road turning back just beneath. What was the reach? Fifteen feet? Twenty feet? Could it survive jumping down between the switchbacks as it had so easily survived jumping from the cliffs to the beach, an even greater height?

Greg MacDonald started running.

He ran as fast and as hard as he could, but the thing kept coming on, coming faster although still at a deliberate pace. If it had any sense at all it would begin jumping to insure capture—or would it? Would it really care if it had to go into town or not to get him? He was running towards a harbor and town that was essentially a
cul de sac.
It had no need to hurry, for there was no place he could run.

He turned a corner and spotted not far below a lone man on horseback. For a moment he feared that they were coming at him to block him in, but then he realized that it was Red.

The chief constable stopped suddenly and his horse began to act up. He shook his head and tapped on his ear. as if wondering if he'd abruptly gone deaf. The horse grew more and more skittish, and he tried to calm and control the animal, and so he was still there when MacDonald rounded the switchback turn and practically ran into him.

"Red!" he shouted, breathing hard and feeling a little dizzy. "Red—get me down from here and fast! Whatever killed Sir Robert's coming right down this road!"

Although the man was shouting, his voice was so muffled it was difficult to hear him, while the sudden sounds of the hollow footsteps of some great beast hit them both. The chief constable stared at him, then looked up at the Institute. Although the road lights seemed out up above and were progressively winking out below that as he watched, he could clearly see the Institute and something of the road in the moonlight. Clearly there was nothing there—nothing large, anyway.

"What the bloody hell is going on here?" he shouted at MacDonald.

"No time for explanations now! Let me get up on the horse with you and get us both back down. That thing'll be here in another minute and a half!"

In the distance, through the eerie muffling of natural sound, the breathing of some great beast could be heard along with the footsteps. Red reached down and almost pulled the younger man up, then turned the horse and started back down as fast as he dared.

"But there's nothing back there!" the old cop protested. "I can see there ain't!"

"The damned thing's invisible!" MacDonald told him. "That's why it didn't care about the beach in the daylight!"

Red didn't much believe in invisible things, but he was too nervous to argue right now.

"Where'll we head? Surfs too rough to do us much good in the water, and I'll let it get me before I'll lure that fucker into town!"

MacDonald's mind raced, trying to think. The decision had to be made in a matter of seconds.

He peered forward and saw the steeple of the little chaple, removed from the town by about a hundred yards. Not much, but it was something.

"The church!" the younger man yelled. "It's not much of a chance, but they're devil worshippers, Red!"

They were there only a minute later, and both men jumped off as quickly as they could, then as Red pushed open the door to the church MacDonald looked back up the mountainside. Red was right—he saw exactly what he expected to see, except for the completely extinguished battery lights outlining the road. Still, he could hear the footsteps, very close now, and almost feel the hot breath on his face. He turned and followed Red into the church.

The lights didn't work, but they managed to find a few things to pile up against the only door, including some of the back pews. The pews were all bolted to the floor but these had come loose years ago and nobody had ever gotten around to fixing them.

Red groped for MacDonald in the dark. "So
now
what do we do?"

"I wish I knew, Red. This may be it. You haven't got a gun, have you?"

" 'Course not. What the bloody good would it do against
that
anyway? Listen to it!"

It was clearly right outside now, and had stopped. They could hear its massive body rustle and the snort from its nostrils. They held their breaths and waited for what came next.

The creature or whatever it was seemed equally confused as to that question, almost as if, after confidently tracking its quarry without hurry or worry, it had suddenly and inexplicably lost the scent.

Suddenly the entire chapel shook and the windows rattled as it pounded on the walls, again and again, with tremendous force. The shock waves sent everything loose tumbling, and, after a while, the altar in the rear collapsed with a crash. They could hear the bell in the steeple above start to clang, but it was so muffled by whatever it was that surrounded the thing that it could barely be made out from within the church and certainly would not be heard by anyone in town, although that may have been all to the good. The pounding ceased for a moment, and they heard Red's horse give a terrible, unnatural cry outside and then all was silent once more.

After a minute or so, the pounding resumed.

"Sweet Jesus, forgive me my sins and save our poor souls," Red whispered quietly to himself as he crouched down in the center of the building.

MacDonald, crouching beside him, eyes now accustoming themselves to the greater darkness, huddled and looked around and hoped that nothing was above them that would come tumbling down and do the monster's dirty work for it. The pounding went on and on, like a rhythmic earthquake, and both men wondered just how long it would be before the little building gave in to the brute force being applied to it.

Poor Angelique!
MacDonald thought, resigned to fate.
Who is left to save you from them now?

7

CHANGE OF GAME

Kris Symonds had not expected to spend the night on Allenby, but had every expectation when she'd started out that she'd deliver her goods and then take the chopper back to Port of Spain. The people at the Institute had been quite nice to her, though, and she'd finally recovered from the terrible motion sickness flying through that storm or whatever it was had given her. She was even giving serious thought to flying back if they said it was fixed in the morning, and had managed to keep down a light snack and some tea they had offered. She did not, however, have a change of clothes or even a purse. It just hadn't been the kind of job where she'd needed them, and with a heavy briefcase locked on her wrist you took as little extra as you could.

Much of the Lodge was quiet now, although there was always somebody up and about in a place like this, and she sat in the lounge as instructed and waited while they made up a room for her and found her the basics. She badly needed a shower, she decided, and sleep wouldn't be such a bad idea.

She was thumbing through some old magazine when a young, rather pretty black girl entered.

"Miz Symonds?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Come with me, please."

She rose and followed the young woman, noting the thick French accent. Haitian, she guessed, or from French Guiana or whatever they were calling the place these days. They did not go up or down stairs, but went along the rear corridor of the building to an oak door. "Go on in," the girl told her. "De security boys, dey hav' ta ask you some questions. Den we'll get you to your room."

She didn't like the sound of this. "Security?"

"Jus' go in. Dey explain everyt'ing."

She knew this was a top security installation, but she really wasn't prepared for this. Oh, well, she decided, there was nothing to it but to get it over with so she could get some sleep. She opened the door and stepped into a small sitting room, with a few comfortable chairs, a couch, and some reading lamps. There didn't appear to be any other entrance to the room but the door through which she'd entered, and there didn't seem to be anyone in the room. She stopped, turned, and said, "Hey! Wait a minute!" but the door closed and she could hear a lock being turned. She tried it anyway, to no avail, and started to get nervous. What kind of place
was
this, anyway?

She went over and sat on the couch, growing more nervous with every passing moment. She hadn't like that MacDon-ald's intimation that the storm hadn't been natural, and she remembered the details on Martinez.

This had seemed a glamorous, exciting job when she'd applied for it. International courier.

Expense-paid trips to lots of different places all over the world, really good pay and bonuses, plenty of vacation time. Although she knew that she sometimes carried valuable things, even lots of cash, she had never really worried much while doing the job and certainly hadn't worried after delivery was made.

She heard a noise from a far corner, and was suddenly aware of another presence in the room.

"Who are you?" she asked, masking her fear with bravado. "I mean, what the hell is all this, anyway?"

The figure stepped from the shadows into the light, but it didn't help at all. He was all black—

not his skin or clothing, because you really couldn't tell much about that—but strangely, unnaturally so, like a cut-out figure of a man on TV, a man-shaped blackness that moved.

"Please pardon my appearance," said the Dark Man, "but it is necessary for now for a number of reasons to adopt what you might call a high-tech disguise." The voice was deep and resonant and radiated a strange power. "I wish first to simply ask you some questions. Your answers will determine what happens next."

"W—Who—what
are
you?"