The Messiah Choice (1985) (16 page)

She was, she saw, in some sort of log cabin; a one room affair with a small cast iron wood stove, some cabinetry and pots and pans hanging from wall hooks, and some wicker-style furniture. There was a single solid wooden door with a wood bar for a lock, and that bar was in place. The area just next to the stove had a small window, and there were two more small windows with wooden shutters hooked closed on either side of the door.

"Where is this place?" she asked him. "Where have you taken me?"

"It is a cabin in the woods on the island. It's been here for years. It's to the west of the Institute and down about halfway, about a hundred yards in from the western cliffs. It was built just after your late father purchased the island, and housed the planners and surveyors who came first, to plan the whole thing. There were several, but only this one wound up being kept in good repair, primarily because your father liked coming down here in the early days, when things were just building up top, to spend some time in solitude. The others were dismantled and are long gone, but this one has been here, forgotten by almost everyone, unused for more than seven years, its lone trail pretty well overgrown."

"Have you brought me here, then, to do away with me? If so, I am ready. I can stand this no longer." It was brave talk and she didn't mean a word of it, and he knew it.

"Do away with you? Certainly not! You are quite special, Angelique, more than you know.

Greatness awaits you, a greatness that all will envy and that others will covet, but it is for you alone. You are quite safe here. No one even remembers this place exists, and no one ever comes to this part of the island. It is as virginal as when it was as yet unseen by man. None will harm you, and so charmed are you that not even a mosquito will dare bite you, nor an illness infect you.

Unfortunately, it is not yet your time, although that time is soon. It may also be necessary, at times, to produce you or to produce your witnessed prints. So, until such time as all is right and we have need of you, this will be your home. I apologize that it is not as fancy or as comfortable as the Lodge, but it is far more secure."

She was appalled. "You expect me to lie here, doing nothing, going nowhere, for days, weeks,
months!"

"Only if we have to. I doubt if that will be necessary, so long as you behave." He walked to the foot of the bed, his boots sounding very solid on the old wooden floor, and stretched out a dark hand. "Rise, Angelique!"

And she did so, getting up to a sitting position, shifting over to the side of the bed, then, steadying herself with one hand, getting to a standing position. It was so remarkable, so incredible, that she was overcome with emotion that for a moment blotted out all the other, darker circumstances.

"I—I stand! I walk!
I feel
!"
she exclaimed. "I am once again whole!" She flexed her fingers and her toes and almost cried with joy.

"You have never been otherwise," the Dark Man told her. "The doctors were correct in stating that there was no medical reason for your paralysis. They erred only in being men of pure science. They could not know, and if they had known could not have accepted, the effectiveness of a true curse."

Almost instantly, her sheer joy turned to hatred and extreme anger. "You mean
you
did that to me?
You
cost me all those years of my life?
You
made me go through
hell
!"
Her throat was still sore and her voice raspy, but so great was her anger that the room almost shook with the words.

She moved to attack him physically, all thoughts of well-being gone, but he put up a dark hand and she stopped, frozen, unable to advance.

"It was quite necessary, once we realized who you might be and saw the potential there. It preserved you—innocent, virginal, unattached, and naive. It froze you as you were, a young girl unsullied by the world." He paused a moment, and his tone became more practical. "You will notice that the curse is not lifted, merely suspended at our whim. That suspension can be lifted at any time, for any reason, and you will become as bad as you were or worse than you were. If we wished you could become an automaton, seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, thinking—but unable to control any part of your body whatever voluntarily, doing only what you were told to do. It's up to you."

"You won't get away with this! I'll be missed at the Institute. Security will search for me.
Greg will—"

"Greg is most probably dead by now," he told her bluntly. "I should like to have interrogated him, as I should have liked to talk with your father, but others intervened. I should not count on Security. You
will
have to bear their watching eyes on their little monitors if you stray into habitable territory, I fear, but don't expect any help from that quarter. As for any others, this island is at the moment being placed under a security blanket. In modern, tense times like these, those in power tend to believe what their computers print out, particularly when it is confirmed by people in their own employ. This island has become a tiny independent republic for the duration of this—er, emergency, and will be run as one from this point on, with the aid and support of Magellan and the NATO and Caribbean pacts. No one will get on, or off, this island without our knowledge and permission. No one will be able to communicate in any way with the outside world unless we first approve it."

"But you can not keep this up forever!" she told him. "Sooner or later someone will get suspicious and they will demand to come and see for themselves!"

"By that time, we will be in total control of every living thing here. You would be surprised at how long it could be sustained. You see,
we
control more than you or anyone has dreamed by now. We can access the data banks upon which they rely, make a saint into a KGB spy, order suspicious probers to duty in Greenland or Antarctica from a dozen military forces. We can cause diversions—wars in the Middle East, for example, and other threats to vital areas—that will take their minds off us. And we do not have to do it forever, only for a short while. Three or four months. People believe their computers. They depend upon them and the telecommunications networks that tie them together. You would be shocked at what we can do without any resort to the supernatural."

"What
are
you?" she practically screamed at him. "Are you a man? A demon? The devil himself?"

The Dark Man laughed. "Perhaps I am none of those. Call me John the Baptist, if you will."

"You profane and mock the sacred!"

"Well, it has always been the fashion to do so. Perhaps you have been
too
insulated. The world goes around saying, 'Jesus Christ!' at the slightest provocation, and 'God damn!' is probably the second most popular profanity humanity uses. The world is full of the profane. Hell is rampant, as it always has been. And do you know why? Because that's the way God ordered it to be. He's supposed to be all-seeing, all-knowing, omniscient and omnipresent, yet He's never gotten over the fact that He made humanity in His own image and humanity proceeded to screw itself up. He ordered humanity tested, and humanity failed, so He ordered humanity to be tempted, tormented, and punished, rather than face the fact that He, Himself, was obviously imperfect or mad, in that He created an imperfect thing."

"It is
you
who are mad! There was war in Heaven before the Fall!"

"A later invention; a rationalization by his more intelligent followers to explain the contradiction. It is not so, and Job proves that Hell served God's will by God's command. Nothing is clearer."

"You can not judge God by man's standards! It is impossible for any lesser being to understand God's will and ways!"

"I will agree that madness is a relative term. By our lights we are sane and God, and God's followers and defenders and rationalizers, are mad. It is a point of view. Consider the evil that God knows of and allows. Consider that He must know what is going on here, yet does nothing to help, nothing to stop it. His solution to the mess was to crucify Jesus in agony. Since that time, the Christian church has primarily venerated its martyrs and been dominated by the charlatans and the power-mad. He allowed the Holocaust and condemned His chosen people who survived to eternal warfare. His other aspects are as bad. Many have sacrifice, including human sacrifice, and all sorts of cruel rites. The Japanese Shintoists actually looked forward to suicide under certain conditions. The Shi'ites venerate masochism and beat themselves with chains. The Hindus use Him to freeze society in an odd variation of the divine right of kings. The only thing as stupid and wasteful as a Crusade is a Holy War. This is madness. This is a universe based upon madness."

"And in the name of restoring sanity you reduce people to animals, kill, torture, maim, send monsters to crush people to death, cause wars, do all that you boast of doing! That is
some
sanity!"

"In World War II, millions were sacrificed by much of the world to defeat Hitler, who was the greater evil. We feel that the entire universe is at stake. All of humanity, and countless other races out there among the stars. The innocent will suffer and pay the price as it always has been in wars. As to our methods, we are constrained to use them. God's rules, you know. We must play by the rules, as must you, until the battle is joined. The war against Heaven, you see, has not yet been fought. God will not intervene here on Earth, and for a cold, practical reason. It means nothing to Him.
You
mean nothing to Him. We threaten only the Earth, not Heaven. But it is here that it must start—according to the rules. We must make a move here first in order to attack His seat of power.''

"And you will lose! That, too, is the rules!"

"Will we? Would we even attempt it if we didn't believe we could attain victory? John of Patmos warned Christians to shape up because God was returning soon and it would be too late.

Yet here we are, two thousand years later, more or less, and 'soon' has lost its meaning. John was a fanatic and a mystic and he was certainly either insincere or wrong on his timetable. There is no reason to believe his outcome, either. We know Him. We know His location and His weaknesses.

And even if we lose, which we do not intend, we would rather lose and suffer the true death of oblivion than to live under a God like that."

She was shaken and stunned by his statements. Her initial terror had subsided now, and she felt in control once again. She would still have gone after him if she could, but it was useless. He had far too much power, and had to be fought by ways she did not know. What was most chilling was his matter-of-fact brazen blasphemy and his commitment to Armageddon and beyond even if it meant losing.

He sensed her confusion and despair, and jumped on it. "Think of it this way, my dear.

Armageddon is coming, as was prophesied and commanded by God. The time is now truly soon.

Is it blasphemy to oppose or prevent it when it is so clearly God's will? It is an interesting point, and one we may debate off and on in the times to come. Now, we must deal with the more immediate and intimate situation. We must deal with you."

She wasn't sure whether she was gratified or not by that change of subject.

"This island is constraint enough for you. We've tried with your nocturnal sojourns to built up your muscles and restore your coordination and balance, and I think that has succeeded. To keep you at the Lodge we would have to keep you immobile and perhaps also incommunicado. This would take a staff as large or larger than we have used to date, and might result in a contest of your inheritance on the grounds of incapacity. Better that you be somewhere else to everyone here not involved in our business, and that you be here and in control of everyone outside the island. It is most convenient just to stick you over here, with the basic needs, and allow you to get used to being a whole person once again."

That was yet another shock and surprise. "That's all? Just leave me here?"

"Oh, I know what you're thinking, so we will dispose of those thoughts right now. A few small restrictions—spells, if you like, curses if you don't—to insure a harmonious retreat. First and foremost, you will find it impossible to speak to anyone but me or one in my service. Should you attempt to write something, you will find your hand frozen, unable to do it. It would make little difference, anyway. Everyone knows that you are paralyzed and couldn't write and so would doubt the notes, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Should you think about trying to leave the island, I would think again. First, if we discover it and stop you, you will pay a dear price.

Second, even if you somehow evaded everything and made it—and I remind you that you never did learn how to swim—the paralysis of your voluntary actions would not only return, it would be total. You would become a human vegetable, unable to communicate in any way, and your paralysis would last the rest of your life unless I, personally, were to lift it."

That was sobering. She was still relishing the very fact that she could feel her whole self once more. God help her, she didn't know if she could give up that freedom again willingly. Damn them!

"Finally, we can't have you just walking into town or the Lodge. Too many messy questions.

Stretch out your arm, now that you can, and watch."

She did as instructed, not daring to guess at what he planned to do. There was silence for a moment, as if he were concentrating, and then a dark arm reached out and actually touched hers, although she tried to shrink away. It felt cold as ice and a certain energy seemed to flow from him along her skin. As it did, with a mild, tingling sensation, she saw her arm, lightly tanned, turn much darker. She felt the sensation flow from the arm to all parts of her body, even her hair.

"Not much of a change," he told her, "but now your skin is a deep tan and your eyes brown and your short, fluffy light brown hair is long, straight, and black as night. Mute and like this, no one will recognize you, no one will guess or believe even if they note the physical resemblance, yet it can be reversed as easily as it was done in case we need to produce you. And we will make one last adjustment."