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 Magel
lan 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.
For himself, he had very mixed emotions about the episode, but he was certainly uncomfortable. Although he’d known that she had a crush of sorts on him, up to now it had been a purely non-physical thing, and, therefore, somewhat abstract. Now, he knew, it could get more than a little awkward for all concerned, and he had enough on his mind as it was. When a cop got emotionally involved in a case, even unwillingly, he lost his objectivity and was more prone to take risks and make mistakes. This was a game in which risks and mistakes were what he couldn’t afford. The other side held most of the cards, and he had no large force or laws to back him up.
For Angelique, it was the fulfillment of a fantasy. Still very much an adolescent emotionally and desperately in need of a close companion, the father figure of the psychiatric report, she had seized upon MacDonald from the start. What was strangest and most wonderful during the kiss, though, was that she was sure she felt various other parts of her body tingle and glow as well. She wanted to shout out that she loved him, wanted him, would do anything for him, but she was afraid that she might drive him away. She had nothing really to offer him except money, and he had never shown much liking for it in large amounts. His file had said he’d been a lifelong member of the socialist New Democratic Party back in B.C.
And, of course, that was one of his attractions, at least in reassurance terms. She knew full well she’d never lack for suitors, but he was the only one that she could count on from the start not to be thinking first of the dollar signs.
So she said, “Thank you, Greg. It meant a great deal to me.”
“No, no! Any time you like! It’s in my job description. Kiss any and all beautiful women who ask me.”
She chuckled. “And am I beautiful?”
“You bet you are,” he answered playfully. “But now I think we ought to get you home.”
“Red can run me up with the dusk patrol.”
“Oh, no. I’ll run you home. We can always get a cart— they’re moving stuff up from the ship all evening. Uh—by the way, are you going to tell me about how you got all scratched up or not?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You’ve got little scratches on your arms, ankles, and even one up there just on the side of your face. I noticed them as soon as we met but I figured you’d tell me about them.”
She shook her head in puzzlement. “I—I did not even know of them.” She looked down at her arms, held on the arms of the chair by small, loose straps. “I can not see. Undo one and hold it up.”
He unbuckled a strap and did so, turning the arm slightly and carefully so he wouldn’t hurt anything. The scratches were there—thin, random, and small, but deep enough and old enough to have formed scabs.
“Bruises I am used to—you get them all the time like this and never really know. But these—these look deep enough that I should have at least known when they happened. You say they are also on my neck?”
“Yes—there, on the left side.”
“Funny. I have had an itch there off and on today, but I did not pay much attention to it. I shall have Sister Maria take a look at them when I get back.”
“I think you should.” He didn’t know why they disturbed him—they certainly weren’t anything serious—but their mere existence troubled him. If he’d blocked it out before, he now had no doubts that he was the principal reason that she remained on the island. He resolved that if any of his strong suspicions and hunches could be independently confirmed he’d get her off this place, even if he had to physically carry her.
And then, one night, another came to the meadow, one not like them, yet not like the Others, either. Dark he was, darker than the darkest night, yet even as he sat there upon the glassy rock no features could be determined. It was not a man, but the shadow of a man, yet it moved, and had depth and a form that was like something solid and real.
And they feared him, far more than they feared the Others, for he radiated power and fear and his confidence was absolute, yet such was that power, so hypnotic, so magnetic, that they were held, transfixed, and could not flee.
And he played for them tunes on a pipe, and the naked girl-apes danced for him and around him, a wild, frenzied dance that aroused in them all their most primal emotions, and gave within them a sense of power that overwhelmed their fear and intensified that hunger they had felt but never understood or filled.
And when their dancing had reached a fever pitch, he stopped and pointed, and they were off, no longer playful things but a wild, frenzied pack seeking a release they did not understand. They came to a road and waited, hidden in the trees and bushes, their eyes glazed, mouths foaming, waiting, waiting…
And, soon, there came footsteps along the road, and they saw that it was one of the Others, a small man with a balding head and slight goatee, dressed casually in shirt and shorts and sandals. He walked very confidently and seemed unaware that they were there.
As one they leaped out and were upon him in seconds, and he was pushed to the ground and his throat was slashed by nailed hands and biting teeth. He was dead very quickly, but they did not stop, his blood flowing warm and inviting, and they tore at the corpse and drank the blood and ate of the flesh and it filled their insane hunger.
There was a thunderclap which startled them, and then it began to rain quite heavily, drenching them all. From down the road they could hear the sound of one of the Whining Monsters, and they broke off and dragged the corpse with them, back into the woods, back along the trail in the now-driving rain, back to the meadow where the Dark Man waited.
Lightning flashed as they reached the meadow, illuminating the scene briefly as if it were day, yet the Dark Man remained the darkest black of shadows. He stood there, laughing, and gestured, and they placed the corpse on the stone, and they howled their joy and triumph over the Others and danced again around the stone with its grisly burden, danced in the mud and the lightning and the rain…
“Señorita Angel, Señorita Angel, wake up, por favor!”
She groaned and managed to open her eyes and blearily see the face and form of Juanita Hernandez standing there, holding a tray.
“Go away, Juanita, please,” she managed, barely getting the words out. Her throat was sore and she was sure she was coming down with something.
“But, Señorita, it is well past noon. It is not good for you to sleep all the day. If you wake up I will feed you some breakfast.”
She groaned again. “No, nothing, please. Just some coffee to help me wake up. I’m not at all hungry.”
They were on the small fishing pier in the village, just watching the sea birds and watching the ocean. It was a rough surf, thanks to the storm the previous night, and that made it dramatic, plumes of waves sometimes striking the pier, rising up and threatening to get them drenched.
She had not been able to get the nightmare out of her mind. “It was a horrible dream, the nightmare that I felt was coming.”
“You
told nobody else about it?” MacDonald asked her, concerned.
“No. I had enough with psychologists at the Center. They would say that my fears and insecurities were causing it, that my frustration at this handicap was coming out in that wild experience, and that killing the man was in some way the resentment against my father expressing itself. But the man was a total stranger! I can see him now, describe him.”
He frowned. “Go ahead. Describe him to me.”
“But it was just a nightmare.”
“That’s all right. Real people show up in dreams all the time. Go ahead.”
She did so, hesitantly, not wanting to remember too much. Is it—somebody real?”
“I think so. It sounds a lot like Jureau. He’s the NATO security representative here—a Belgian. Even more unpleasant than Ross, but you don’t see much of him.”
“Then I have met him?”
“You must have, although I didn’t know he was back, or even if he was coming back. He’s been in Brussels since shortly after your father’s death. He’s a stiff-necked by-the-book martinet that nobody likes.”
“Greg—you will see this Jureau? Find out if he is actually here, yes? Find out if…”
He stared at her in disbelief. “If what?”
“If—he is—still—alive.”
He sighed in disgust. “Come on! You’re not starting to believe this, are you? That somehow you’re turned into a beast-girl every night and go out with the other beast-girls to prowl?”
The Messiah Choice Page 9