The Messiah Choice

by Jack L. Chalker

  Ross nodded. “Oh, yeah. There are all sorts of documents on it—now. Stuff hidden away for years even from us, although we suspected it before. The old man knew what he was doing, I’ll tell you that.”

  “You knew about her? How? If that’s not violating anything.”

  Ross shrugged. “Nothing special, and before my time, but there was a tremendous investigation of her accident after they found no injuries in the tests to sustain it. She’s in a dozen medical books, though. The old boy pulled out all the stops on her. The therapy center she was at was nothing until she got there, then it became a big corporate priority. Bet it gets even more, now. You see how her body looks so normal?”

  “Yeah, I noticed it.”

  “It’s a series of drugs they developed at fantastic cost. The stuff can’t really be synthesized in bulk—costs a few grand a gram or more—but it works. Even if they could get the costs down, though, they don’t think it’d be very commercial unless they can figure a way to get those parts to work again on most people.

  The detective nodded. “That explains a little bit, anyway. Even after working for this company for several years, I still can’t get used to the very rich and what they can do and get. I guess one day they’ll come up with some kind of robot, just stick her inside, and she’ll be able to walk and drive a car or whatever.’’

  “They’re workin’ on it, brother, believe me. We can practically do it now.”

  MacDonald’s mind went off again, as it did whenever new information was added. Sir Robert’s daughter was a quadriplegic. Because of that, Magellan had devoted tremendous resources first to curing her, and, when that failed, to doing the next best thing. A robot body for a human…

  What would it weigh with an adequate power pack? Could you screw on legs that, perhaps, had three long clawed toes and reptilian features? Even if it were waterproof, you wouldn’t want to go into a heavy surf with it. If you toppled over, you’d drown when it filled before you could get it right again. But if you could get out, and get it to walk by itself into that ocean, you’d dispose of it and the tracks would be wiped away by the rising tide. It might even be computer remote controlled, then disposed of by just having it march into the sea… A machine perhaps hidden or sheltered in the area near the meadow, waiting for its quarry to come near, perhaps even baiting the trap.

  Sir Robert had received some written notice of which there was no trace now with his morning papers. He’d read it, then gone out, rejected a cart, and walked to the glen.

  It was a wild, impossible hypothesis, but it fit all the facts as he had them. In fact, the only thing he really didn’t have now was who did it and exactly why, and why the method chosen was actually selected. In other words, he had reduced it to a common premeditated murder with suspects limited to the few dozen on the island capable of carrying it out—or, of course, the several thousand executives and nations with stakes in the corporation who could have it all planned out elsewhere and carried out by any paid employee in any position as an accomplice. Or the few thousand who’d passed through here in the past two years with computer access who could simply command SAINT from any telephone jack in the world.

  Angelique lay on the big bed and sighed. Sister Maria, who was checking out the luggage and trying to decide where its contents should go, heard and came over to the bed. “I thought you were going to sleep,” the nurse chided gently.

  “Oh, I was, but I can not. This has simply been too much too quick! Just a week ago it was so simple. I thought I knew God’s will and my own origins and destiny. Then, suddenly, poof! It is now all so complicated. Good Uncle Robert is really my father and he has left me more money than there is in the world. Everyone and everything is at my beck and call. A big company of which I know almost nothing is scared I will fire them all or something. You saw how they all looked and acted here.”

  The nurse nodded sympathetically. “I saw.”

  “And, the worst is, I am already corrupted by it myself. God forgive me, but I actually had a thrill at the power they feared that has been invested in me. I liked the corporate jets, the suites like this one, all the attention.”

  “And you are enjoying it.”

  “God help me, but I am! On the plane, even now, I have fantasies. I have had no fantasies in years. No, don’t look that way—not those kind. That, in fact, just gets in the way. I saw them taking my inventory with their eyes. Sometimes I wish they would invent a way to take that away, just leave my head, my eyes, ears, nose, mouth, brain. Powered like that wheelchair or my little mechanical gadgets. Don’t look so shocked! There is nothing to me below the neck. Nothing. It does not exist. I no longer even dream of it, not since coming back from the Center. Even if they give me one day a contrivance so I can walk, I will not feel it. Enjoying good food and drink is the only pleasure of the flesh I will ever know. I have my mind and nothing else, so I must use my mind. Now I have a great fortune, and the power to direct some of it to good.”

  “And those are your fantasies?”

  She nodded. “Somewhat. But there is also the opportunity to enjoy life as much as I can. Have a gang of servants to literally do everything for me, be my body. See the whole of the world and meet the important movers and shakers of it.”

  “All this is true,” the nurse agreed. “Why do you hesitate?”

  “Would you? In my circumstances?”

  Sister Maria shrugged. “I don’t know. I could never conceive of it.”

  “But that’s just the trouble! Neither can I! Even now. I feel like a very un-godlike Jesus who upon the mount in the wilderness was offered the entire world by Satan as an alternative to dying on the cross. I was headed towards becoming a bride of Christ and doing His work, aiding the sick and handicapped. Now I am offered the world, and I am a poor sinner and not the Son of God! Will God be better served by my giving it all away, refusing it, or by my taking it and influencing what I can. Who knows what cures are possible with enough money and drive behind it? And what poverty might be cured? And all this while letting those who know what they are doing continue to run the businesses as always!”

  “I can pray with you,” said Sister Maria, “but I can not guide you.”

  “All this is for some purpose, some grand design,” said the woman on the bed. “My disability prevents much corruption and forever reminds me through my dependency of my own small self. It gives—humility, and, perhaps, perspective.” She was suddenly wide awake and excited. “Fix me a cup of coffee, will you? I would like to get started in this.”

  After the coffee, Sister Maria dressed Angelique once more and strapped her into the chair. They had three fully charged battery packs and a fourth charging, so there was almost no limit to her range. After, they went next door, and looked over Sir Robert’s tropical getaway.

  It was a suite much like theirs, although appointed differently, giving it less the look and feel of a luxury hotel suite than of a millionaire’s rustic hunting lodge, complete with a bear rug on the floor and stuffed animal heads on the walls.

  They found his desk, an old, roll-top affair of weathered oak, and the nun set up an easel in front of Angelique, who took an unsharpened pencil in her mouth. She could now read through a stack of papers placed on the easel and, using the eraser, slide one sheet over to read the next. It was quite an art and had taken a great deal of practice, but it worked.

  “This is quite enough, Maria,” she told the nurse. “Why don’t you go next door and lie down yourself? I’ll call if I need you for anything. I wish to go through this, and if I need some help some of the people at the Lodge will come in to help me. Just leave the door to the hall open.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The nun wasn’t happy with the idea of leaving her alone, although in truth she was exhausted, but she also knew the value Angelique placed on being as self-sufficient as possible. And, as she said, the Lodge staff would be at her beck and call. “Call out if you need me for anything,” Maria
told her, and then left.

  Angelique was well experienced with her disability and quite self confident about it, far more so than she was about meeting and dealing with these strange people and this strange new life and power. A thermos with a long, stiff, curved straw was at one side of her chair, allowing her to sip whatever she had instructed be placed in it—in this case some ice tea—and to the other side was a small holder with a number of devices that could be grabbed by her with her teeth. The chair’s sophisticated microprocessor could by voice command raise or lower any part of it or the easel. She had other devices, not currently attached, that allowed her to do far more on her own than most people would believe possible.

  Still, she had lied when she’d said she no longer had those kinds of fantasies. Indeed, it was just such urges that had caused her to put off taking final vows and truly committing herself to a new life.

  She had lied, too, about no longer being attracted to men. She was, and she found them fascinating because they were different from the nearly all-female society in which she’d been raised. MacDonald, now—though she’d seen him little enough—she found attractive and handsome. He was the only one who didn’t dress up, nor quake in his boots at her every word. He’d even ducked out on the big meeting! She hoped he wasn’t a rotten character underneath. It would be nice to have a male friend who wasn’t fifty or sixty and didn’t ever wear a clerical collar.

  She put such things out of her mind and began sifting through the stack of papers. MacDonald and the others had, of course, gone through much of this before, but they would have been less sure than she was as to what was or was not important.

  It was laborious work, particularly with her handicap, but she had long conditioned herself to patience. Many of the papers had notes in cryptic words and abbreviations, mostly from Sir Robert to himself. Others were reminders of non-routine obligations and appointments, various ideas for expanding or changing things in the Institute—Sir Robert even seemed concerned about the color of the drapes in the library— and lots of other such mundane items. All of it seemed quite routine.

  After a while she began to get the strong feeling that someone was watching her. It was a somewhat unnerving feeling, and she periodically glanced furtively up to see the open door to the hall and the equally open interconnect to her own suite, from which Sister Maria’s snores were quite evident. She also heard voices dimly down the hall, but there was no one anywhere near. And still the sensation persisted, as if someone were almost behind her, peering over her shoulder. The drapes had been closed and the lights off in the room when they’d entered, but she had turned on a strong lamp on a table beside the desk. Now, though, it seemed as if the dark shadows at the opposite side of the room harbored something or someone.

  She knew she was being foolish, that the room and the events and the long trip had simply gotten to her, but still it persisted. Finally she could stand it no longer; taking a deep breath she said, quickly and sharply, “Demicercle droite!” The chair immediately pivoted around one hundred eighty degrees to the right.

  For a moment she saw nothing. Then, for a second, she thought she saw movement in the shadows: a dark, manlike shape that seemed to move, then shimmer, a greater black against the darkness of the corner, and it was gone. “Avancer!” she commanded. “Lentement!” The chair crept slowly forward to the corner.

  She did not fear that whatever it was was still present. Just as she had sensed its presence, so had she felt its leaving. Still, she had to take a look, if only to reassure herself. The corner was empty save for an old coat rack that contained only an umbrella and a well-worn sweater. There was room for a man and more here, but there was no exit of any kind, no place that such a man could go without coming first into the light.

  She turned around once more and went back to the desk area, but she was too shaken to continue. She knew it would be foolish to tell someone. Nerves, they’d say. The coat rack was mistaken for a phantom. No way to prove otherwise, although she knew that someone had been there.

  She decided that she didn’t want to be in the room any more, but she certainly wasn’t sleepy. She needed to get outside in the sun, and to talk to somebody—anybody. Well, she thought to herself, if I am to be queen of this place, then perhaps I should learn to act the part.

  She commanded the chair forward, guiding it through the doorway to the hall, and then went down it a ways until she saw a security man standing there at his post. He watched her come, and approached when he sensed she wanted something. “Ma’am?”

  “Pardon, if you please—will you remove the contents from this tray and replace it in the room back there?”

  He reached over and, with her help, removed the tray/copy holder, took off the papers, and placed the tray in a compartment on the back of the chair. “I’ll see to it, Ma’am,” he assured her. “Anything else I can do to help?”

  “Oui—yes,” she responded, catching herself. She was nervous, and whenever she was nervous she thought only in French. “Will you please use your radio or whatever and see if Monsieur MacDonald is available to talk to me?”

  “I think I know where he is right now. Where do you want me to send him?”

  “I will wait by the entrance there, where I can look out into the sunlight.”

  4. THE OCEAN OF MEMORY

  Gregory MacDonald was surprised at the summons and even more surprised to find her waiting alone. He had assumed that the nurse, at least, would always be present.

  “Mademoiselle, Greg MacDonald at your service,” he said lightly, not really knowing how to react to her.

  She smiled. “Please—not Mademoiselle. I’m already a little tired of all the formalities which I’m not used to having, and I am not even certain of my family name any more. Everyone has always called me Angie and I would be pleased if you would do so.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Very well—Angie. Most people just call me ‘MacDonald’ or, sometimes, ‘Mac,’ but I always insist that lovely ladies who inherit the company I work for call me Greg. Fair enough?”

  She laughed a little at that. “May we go outside? I need to feel a little of the sun and breathe the air here. I have never been to a tropical place before.”

  “You’re the boss, but I warn you to go slow. If you’re not acclimated to this sort of place you could find it physically very hard on you.”

  She commanded the chair forward and to the doors, which were electrically opened for her. He followed, wondering just what all this was about. It was humid, and the temperature was in the eighties, as usual. That was one reason he had always liked Celsius, where it was only thirty. It was just as hot, but somehow it sounded cooler.

  The broad porch had tables and deck chairs, but she wasn’t particularly interested in lingering. “If we could—I would like you to show me where my father died.”

  “I’m not too sure about that. It’s a ways and some of the terrain’s pretty rough. If anything happened it’d be my neck in a noose.”

  “If I am, as you say, the boss, even though it will take years to get it all settled through the courts, then you are my employee. You are without power to stop me from going, so are you going to come along to safeguard me or not?”

  He sighed. “Well, if you put it that way, I guess so. But let me get a walkie-talkie from one of the security boys first so if we run into trouble or that fancy chair of yours runs out of juice I can call for help.”

  She permitted him to do that, and they were off down the road and around the antenna array.

  “Those things can communicate with just about every place in the world, yes?” she asked him wonderingly.

  “Oh, yeah. Actually, they’re tied into NATO and a bunch of security telecommunications systems as well as our own home offices.”

  “They are controlled by the big computer, then?”

  “Everything is controlled by the big computer—the air conditioning, the lighting, the automatic doors, defense and security systems—you name it. This may look li
ke a nice little resort on a charming tropical island, but it’s a high-tech nightmare in some ways.”

  She nodded. “And—who controls the computer?”

  “Theoretically the corporation telecommunications headquarters in Toronto, and that by the corporation’s top management in Seattle. They basically tell it what to do and make its priorities.”

  “You said theoretically.”

  He nodded, impressed with her line of questioning. If it hadn’t been a cruel joke he would have said she had a real head on her shoulders. “Yes, theoretically. The truth is much closer to home. You see, SAINT isn’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill computer. It might well be one of a kind, although it’s based partly on Japanese work and they have a similar government controlled operation. It isn’t just a collection of data bases and operating interfaces and the like; it actually makes decisions, evaluates information, essentially on its own.”

  “You mean—it thinks?”

  “It thinks. Oh, not like we think, and don’t get the idea that it’s some movie monster computer plotting to take over the world. It thinks about what it’s told to think about. It doesn’t have an original idea in its head. Human beings tell it what to think about and just how far it can go. Much of its circuitry has to be kept below freezing just to keep it from burning up its billions of parts with its own speed, and while it can talk it’s not self-aware like we are. The only man who can be said to understand and really run SAINT is a Brit with the incredible name of Sir Reginald Truscott-Smythe.”

  She giggled. “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m afraid I am. He looks the part, too, complete with moustache and summer whites and a dreadfully uppah clahss accent. He’s the highest paid repairman in the world and commands a crew of forty—second only to the security forces in staff number. He and two other men designed and built the creature. The other two are Japanese who worked long and hard on their project but just couldn’t resist the kind of money Magellan could offer for the job. They’re both back in good old Nippon now, but old Reggie, who worked in Japan and speaks, reads, and writes that and a lot of other languages, is still here, king of the hill. I’ll introduce you, when you want.” They came to the split-off trail. “Whoops! Here we are at the detour. Are you sure you can make it through there with this contraption?”