The Stolen Gospels

by Brian Herbert

  Part Two

  THE HOLY WOMEN’S BIBLE

  Chapter 14

  It is said of Lori Vale that she is blessed with a holy talent.

  —From Saint or Sinner, UWW Press

  After knocking on the door of her son’s apartment and receiving no response, Dixie Lou crossed a cobblestone street and took an elevator to a lower level, into the ancient catacombs of the monastery. She wore a metallic black dress, her sword-cross necklace, and gold-colored boots. Wondering where Alex was this morning, she decided to check back on him later. The earthquake, which had occurred an hour before, had not been strong enough to be a concern.

  But as she stepped into a corridor she stopped suddenly, struck by a startling memory. She’d been in a place like this a long, long time ago, within an enclosure constructed of similar blackened gray stones, except it had not been a monastery. It had been something else, an entirely dark and gloomy place except for a narrow beam of sunlight that passed through a barred window and illuminated a bearded man inside as he knelt on the rock floor, praying.

  A prison . . .

  The prisoner turned his head, looked toward her through the bars of his cell. She squinted, tried to make out the details of his face, but the sunlight was too bright and she couldn’t.

  At a noise the image faded. She was back in the monastery, and saw a hooded figure in the passageway to her right, moving rapidly away from her. The figure bounded up a stairway, out of view. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

  When Dixie Lou reached the base of the stairway she looked up, but no one was in sight.

  Odd, she thought, wondering who it was. She would have the area staked out. There had been too many unusual occurrences recently . . . and annoying incidents of sabotage.

  * * *

  Following the time spent with Alex that morning, Lori had asked him to leave so that she could remove her robe and get dressed for the day, in blue jeans and a pink blouse. She hadn’t worn the medical patch since the day before. The wounds on her forehead and temple were still pink, but only hurt a little to the touch.

  Her eyes needed a little makeup. She searched through articles on the bathroom counter. A small container of personal articles had been provided for her with the apartment, but she didn’t care for the eyeliner color, which was too dark a shade of blue. While washing it off with cold cream she heard the doorbell rang.

  “Lori, hurry!” a man shouted through the door. She recognized Alex’s voice. At first it irritated her that he had returned so soon, but then she remembered his disability, and resolved to be patient.

  When she opened the door, she found him in a fever-pitch of excitement. “Come with me,” he said. “I wanna show you a secret.”

  Within minutes they were hurrying down a stairway beneath the street, into a passageway. “I know a shortcut,” Alex said, at a half run. He moved athletically, effortlessly.

  Lori kept up, but had to breathe hard to do so. As she ran she felt a half pack of cigarettes that she had stuffed in a front pocket of her jeans. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see!”

  They caught a rail car for a short distance, then ran into a tunnel. “We’re almost there,” he said, over his shoulder.

  Lori was breathing hard behind him. “Why are we in such a hurry?”

  “To get there before my mom does. I race her sometimes.”

  “I see.”

  A door slid open ahead, marking the apparent end of the tunnel. Bright lights shone. Guards in pale gold uniforms with green-and-orange shoulder patches waved them by, saluting Alex with W’s as he passed. He and Lori climbed into an electric cart, which spiraled up a ramp. The small vehicle, which was white with a canvas top, exited into an immense room with a high ceiling.

  “I think we beat her,” Alex said, as they stepped out of the cart. “We’re in a building where monkeys used to copy religious stuff into books.”

  On a wall, Lori read “Scriptorium Building,” which was written in two languages, including English. She didn’t recognize the other language.

  “I think you mean monks,” she said with a smile.

  Alex didn’t seem to understand. He led her to a guard station adjacent to a closed door. Two uniformed women greeted them.

  “Good morning, Alex,” one said with a broad smile. She looked at Lori, then back at him. “Your girlfriend?”

  “We wanna go inside,” Alex said.

  “Now you know we can’t permit that. We’ve been through that before. You always come here and we always give you same answer.”

  “But I wanna show Lori where my Mom works. This is her big job, huh? Right through that door, huh?”

  A gray-haired woman approached from the side, at a purposeful gait. “Alex, what are you doing here?” she demanded. “Turn around right now and go home. We have important work to do.” Her hands were on her hips, and her deeply creased face reflected displeasure. Her pale blue eyes glittered.

  “You’re not talking nice to me, Katherine,” he complained, with a pout.

  “Alex, I don’t have time for this. Just go. We’ll discuss it later.”

  With his face set in a stubborn expression, he shook his head. “This time I wanna go inside.”

  “We’d better leave,” Lori said to him, grabbing hold of his arm.

  “It’s okay, Miss Pangalos,” one of the guards said. “He always comes here and we always send him home. It’s a harmless little game we play with him a couple of times a week. You go on inside, OK, and we’ll take care of him for you.”

  “I don’t see why he was even allowed to get this far,” Katherine said. “Someone should have stopped him back there.” She pointed toward the top of the entrance ramp, where several white electric carts were parked.

  “Miss, he can’t see anything from here anyway. His mother doesn’t get mad about him getting this far, so we assumed—”

  “Well you should never assume anything. Do you know who I am?”

  The guard hung her head. “Yes, Miss Pangalos.”

  “Well I’m ordering you not to let this young man into the building anymore. Notify the other guard stations.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Katherine grabbed Alex by the arm and pointed him toward the electric carts. “Young man, you are to leave immediately.”

  “What’s going on here?” Turning, Lori saw Dixie Lou, who had come out of the door behind the guards. The teenager felt the familiar queasy feeling return, in the pit of her stomach.

  “They’re not being nice to me, Momma,” Alex said, easily breaking away from Katherine. “Hey, how’d you get here before me? I went real fast.”

  Dixie Lou smiled at her dimwitted son. “Well your Momma is a little faster today.” She looked at Katherine Pangalos. “What are you doing to my son?”

  “Your stupid boy is wasting our time. He shouldn’t be in here, and I’ve told the guards not to allow him this far again.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Alex muttered, but only Lori heard him.

  “Oh you did, did you?” Dixie Lou said to Katherine, her eyes fiery with rage. “Well did it ever occur to you to ask me first? In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Chairwoman pro tem, selected by Amy as her successor.”

  “And I brought in the first two special cases, not to mention the fact that I’m the largest UWW contributor. Ruffle my feathers, lady, and I stop your precious money flow. I have influence, you know.”

  “Even you couldn’t stop our funding. We have plenty of other sources.”

  “You’d be surprised at what I could do.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” Dixie Lou snapped. Affectionately, she put an arm around Alex. “This is my son and he’s to be treated with respect, even by you. Especially by you, in fact.”

  “Such respect can occur elsewhere,” Katherine said in a haughty tone. “There is critical work to be done here and these young people are interfering.”

  “We wanna go inside there, Momma,” Alex sai
d, pointing to the closed door.

  “Out of the question,” Katherine said. “I’ve never heard such a preposterous idea.”

  “And what harm could he do?” Dixie Lou snapped. “He’s just a stupid boy, as you said.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Alex repeated, louder this time so that all heard him.

  “And her?” Katherine said, pointing at Lori.

  “She goes inside, too,” Dixie Lou said. “Lori Vale saved my life, which is more than you’ve ever done for me, Katherine. In fact, I’m not sure that you deserve to go inside any more. You’re not even a councilwoman.”

  “Hrrmphh, just a technicality. I will be soon, and you know it. The next open chair has been promised to me.”

  To the guards, Dixie Lou said, “Until further notice from me, these young people are to be permitted inside, all the way to the cubicles.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said, in unison.

  “They’re just young people,” Dixie Lou said, as if trying to convince herself of the wisdom of what she was doing. “They can’t do any harm.” Leaning over, she flicked something off the top of one of her gold boots.

  “You’re responsible if anything goes wrong,” Katherine huffed. She hurried through the door, followed by the others. . . .

  Inwardly, as Dixie Lou led her son and Lori toward the cubicles, she was somewhat surprised that she was doing this, and hoped she wasn’t making a big mistake. She had, after all, acted impulsively and out of anger, without fully considering the consequences.

  “Thank you, Momma,” Alex said. Smiling at her in his silly, carefree way, he passed a hand casually through his curly hair.

  Dixie Lou looked at Lori, whose intelligence was far superior to that of her own son. The girl was somewhat defiant, but perhaps that was because she didn’t understand the immensity of the project that was underway. After seeing this, her behavior was bound to improve.

  But secrecy was of paramount importance, and Dixie Lou would discuss that privately with Lori. The girl would cooperate, or else, and there were ways of ensuring appropriate behavior. The Angkor Vow, perhaps, and put her on staff. As for Alex, it didn’t much matter what he said to anyone, because no one took him seriously anyway. Besides, he wouldn’t understand what he was seeing. Lori might, though, so she’d bear closer watching.

  It’ll all work out, Dixie Lou told herself. She took a deep breath, and began to appreciate the scale of responsibilities she was assuming as Amy’s replacement. Was it only temporary? Would the Chairwoman return?

  * * *

  Lori absorbed her surroundings. The vaulted room contained cubicles and aisles and banks of computers. Men and women hurried up and down the aisles and stood at the machines, discussing what they saw on the screens. The air buzzed with activity.

  Dixie Lou led Alex and Lori down one aisle and another, past modern tables and ancient rock-slab platforms that might have been used by monks at one time but which now held computer equipment. She paused by one of the glass-walled cubicles.

  Lori was transfixed by what she saw inside the enclosure. A diminutive woman sat at a computer terminal, touching one of eight separate panels on an oversized screen that took up an entire wall. The panels contained words in an ornate script.

  On top of a table in the center of the room sat a female child with olive skin and reddish-brown hair, being tended to by a rotund woman in a white dress, wearing a green-and-orange identity badge on her lapel. In a yellow play suit covered with camel and donkey designs, the little girl, perhaps a year and a half old, appeared to be pouting. The table had a safety railing all around it.

  A peculiar feeling crept over Lori. The strange entwined with the familiar, an odd dance of sensations.

  “Remain out here,” Dixie Lou said. She entered the little room and crossed to the table. From the doorway Lori could see that the child had bright green eyes.

  “This is Veronica, at her scripting station,” Dixie Lou said, glancing back at Lori. “She’s a very old soul. The woman with her is her matron. This is one of our special children, and her words are being recorded and entered into our computer system.”

  “Not much today,” the matron reported. “None of the usual food or toy tricks are working.” She looked inquisitively at Alex and Lori.

  The toddler blinked her green eyes in Lori’s direction, and looked sad. Then Veronica said a couple of words that Lori couldn’t understand, and pushed away stuffed animals around her . . . toy camels and donkeys matching the designs on the play suit. Near her were little dolls resembling biblical men and women: a bearded man on a cross that must have been Jesus, and a male doll with short hair and a Roman tunic, with a single red stripe on the side of the garment.

  “I want dolls like those.” Alex said, his tone childlike.

  Lori exchanged smiles with him, but felt troubled. She was not sure that she liked what she was seeing. Food and toy tricks? What did that mean?

  “I’m glad they let us in,” Alex said. He was shifting around on his feet, so excited that he could hardly contain himself.

  Lori struggled to comprehend what was occurring here.

  Upon noticing Lori through the glass of the cubicle, the child’s expression changed, and she smiled and said something, which again the teenager could not understand.

  The women in the cubicle exchanged glances, and the computer technician typed.

  Hypnotized by Veronica’s sad green eyes, Lori took a hesitant step into the cubicle, not removing her gaze from the child. But Lori was prevented from going further by the large matron, who moved toward her to block the way.

  Dixie Lou waved the woman aside, and Lori approached the table.

  Something ineffable drew the teenager forward, but she proceeded slowly, cautiously. As she neared the child, she felt a severe tingling of her own skin, as if the layers of flesh were vibrating against one other. It was an unsettling sensation, one that confused her and failed to provide her with confidence in the integrity of her own body.

  The discomfiture increased as she drew nearer to the child, but it wasn’t such that she wanted to turn and flee. Paradoxically, she felt a need to be closer to Veronica and eventually touch her, even if the result caused Lori to shatter into a billion irretrievable particles. What an odd thought. Why should she fear a tiny, innocent-looking child?

  Lori reached Dixie Lou’s side, and ever so carefully moved her hand to the edge of the table and rested it there. Lori’s entire body was shaking.

  Within the immense computer screen on the wall, the separate panels contained words, alphabet letters, and sentence fragments in an unknown language, and in English below that, with dots between the entries representing missing portions. The terminal operator scrolled the panels so that new sections came into view.

  “How are you, Veronica?” Dixie Lou asked, with a broad smile. She clasped one of the child’s hands in her own, commented that it was warm to the touch.

  Veronica didn’t reply, pulled her hand free and kicked the dolls and animals on the table. Some tumbled to the floor.

  “She doesn’t talk in the normal sense,” Dixie Lou said. “None of the she-apostles do.”

  “The what?”

  “She-apostles.” Dixie Lou went on to explain to Lori that this child and the others like her were the reincarnated female apostles of Jesus—and that the children spoke in sentence fragments from a long-ago language, Aramaic.

  Startled, Lori caught her breath. She didn’t know what to believe. It didn’t sound possible.

  “This was one of the first two we found,” Dixie Lou said. “She was born to Italian parents, who quickly took her to a doctor when she started babbling. It wasn’t like normal baby talk, and frightened the parents.” Dixie Lou stroked the hair of the child.

  Veronica pushed her away.

  “Be polite, little one,” Dixie Lou said, in a soothing tone, “or we won’t give you the little oranges you love.”

  At a signal from Dixie Lou, the matron brought out a sma
ll orange from one of her own pockets.

  The child reached out for it, but the woman withheld it.

  The child shook her head angrily, and scuttled to the opposite side of the table, away from her.

  “I’m not the best person with these children,” Dixie Lou admitted. “They’re moody and unpredictable. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t.”

  “May I try?” Lori asked, reaching a hand out to the child, but not touching her yet. She didn’t like the way Veronica was being treated, but didn’t feel comfortable saying anything about that. Not until she figured out how to voice her complaint, and what to do about it.

  “Don’t let her,” an urgent voice said. Peripherally, Lori saw Katherine Pangalos in the doorway.

  “Go ahead,” Dixie Lou said.

  Gathering courage, Lori clasped the child’s hand. Tiny fingers wrapped around the teenager’s forefinger, and a sub-cellular earthquake shook Lori to the core, then dissipated, leaving her with a warm, infinitely calm sensation. She lifted Veronica into the air, and suddenly the child began to speak loudly and rapidly in a peculiar language, as if a faucet had been turned on.

  “She’s speaking ancient Aramaic!” Dixie Lou said excitedly. “Complete sentences!” She pointed to the woman at the computer. “We’re translating to English on-the-spot . . . a rough translation that is refined later, after the recording is studied in more detail.”

  In their spoken form, the words sounded vaguely familiar to Lori, but she couldn’t quite place them. She read the words on the wall screen, printed in ornate script:

  “Our Lord Jesus loved and respected women. I, Veronica, and Mary Magdalene were among his twenty-four apostles. When the Savior was being led to his crucifixion, carrying his own heavy wooden cross, he stumbled and fell to one knee, near where I stood with Mary Magdalene in a throng of onlookers at the side of the road. As the Lord Jesus struggled to His feet, He gazed upon us and smiled. He was bloody and bruised from being beaten by the guards. I stepped toward Him and wiped His face with my veil. Gazing upon me tenderly He blessed me and said, ‘You have my blood. I am with you always.’ They took Him straight to the cross on the Hill of Golgotha and nailed Him there.”