The Messiah Choice

by Jack L. Chalker

  The cart went by so close that they could almost smell the breath of the two men riding there, one driving, the other handling the spotlight. Both had weapons, but not in their hands.

  They passed right by the fence hole and for a heart-stopping second the beam actually swept the damaged area, but the cart went on. When it’s routine and no trouble is expected, MacDonald knew, people, even trained people, often see what they expect to see. Had their presence been suspected, that same sweep would have resulted in immediate exposure.

  He moved back towards the Bishop and Maria.

  “A close one,” breathed the clergyman.

  “Not so bad. I’d fire them for incompetence. O.K.—here’s where we split. You, my Lord, and Maria get to the bushes on the near side here, where you can see the antennas and wait for our first boom. Good luck.”

  The Bishop shook his hand, and Maria kissed him, and he was off. He followed the cart down the road, linking up with the Sikh and making their way to the edge of the Lodge and then across to the next building. Taking up decent hiding places, they removed and clipped on their infra-red goggles. They expected a power outage, but as they’d have to be seen to get in, they didn’t want anything obvious distinguishing themselves from the rest before they struck. The other pair did the same on the other side. Now the waiting game began anew.

  The security patrols continued their random but perfunctory activities. Clearly they were ready for trouble, but they hardly expected anything to happen up here. The action was in the meadow and apparently also in other areas of the island. The helicopters no longer came and went now, and the traffic in and around the common had virtually ceased except for a couple of armed sentries at each entrance looking pretty bored. A fog had rolled in, partly shrouding the Institute and giving the whole thing a ghostly air appropriate to the moment.

  From down the mountain somewhere, they could hear the voices of a great many people, and there was the sound of not very uniform chanting and other such activities. The words couldn’t be made out, but clearly the preliminaries before the main event had begun.

  The bomb blew slightly early, at 10:27, shocking and scaring them almost as much as it did the people in the area of the Institute. For a moment, everything and everybody seemed to freeze, then the sentries and security personnel started running towards the back of the Lodge, weapons at the ready, and they could hear the rear alarm as the kitchen access doors were opened.

  For a moment it looked as if they had achieved only a big bang, but suddenly there was a secondary explosion far more powerful than the first, and a tremendous roar lit up the northern skies. This was followed a few seconds later by an earthquake-like rumbling beneath their feet, and then a section of cliff blew out in back as the Lodge storage tanks caught and burst, blowing not up but outwards. The floodlights on the common blinked and went out, as did all the lights in the Institute buildings. They heard the anguished screams of people dying and people on fire, and probably people going right off that cliff and straight down.

  They moved, sub-machine guns at the ready, and ran out into full view and then quickly up the steps to the Lodge’s deck and inside the door. The other pair had been ahead of them.

  They all immediately pulled down or put back on their infra-red goggles and proceeded along their set paths. MacDonald and the Sikh went down immediately to the library. Dim emergency lighting had come on, switched there by the computer from its own power supplies, but now they were in the domain of SAINT itself. The terminals in the library were all on and their flat screens were glowing.

  They heard more muffled explosions upstairs. The other team was checking out and cleaning out the upper areas if possible, guarding their rear. It had been agreed that until they were clearly discovered and exposed, they would use the grenades exclusively. With all the explosions and fire about, they might be taken for secondary blow-ups from the big blast.

  “Hello, Greg,” said the smooth, cultured English voice of the computer from one of the terminals. “I must say I’m not surprised to see you here.”

  He and the Sikh whirled, but there wasn’t anything to shoot at really.

  “It’s sealed the doors!” MacDonald told Shad. “They aren’t blast-proof up here, though. Let’s blow ’em! Don’t touch the terminals, though!”

  “I must say, Greg,” the computer continued, “that I’m most impressed with you and most angry at Mr. Ross. He will suffer for all this damage. However, you can’t win, you know.”

  They got back as the door blew, then settled back on one hinge. They got up and pushed it out of the way and then continued on down.

  The Sikh led the way, and they found the door at the bottom stuck open and went in. This level, the third, was the central control room area for the computer and security complex. Not caring now, they fired around in both directions, mowing down the dozen or so men and women struggling to get a handle on the damage done by the initial blast.

  Access to SAINT was now just one floor below, but it would be hard to get down there. The doors down from this point were thick and blast-proof and could be operated only by the computer. They were also of the sliding type with a full-height locking mechanism, and solid as a rock. This was the point where they knew they might be stuck and where they might not pass, as SAINT was hardly going to open the doors for them and they couldn’t bring enough firepower to really blast through doors that would take an anti-tank missile. Frankly, they were a bit surprised to have gotten this far this easily.

  As they were trying to figure out some sort of plan, almost incredibly one of the doors opened and two figures stepped out, talking angrily. One was dressed in the reds of the computer technicians, but the other was dressed from head to toe entirely in black, including a black mask covering his entire face. His voice gave the last clue.

  “Some people are going to wish they were dead before this is over,” growled the Dark Man, without his eerie electronic protection.

  They didn’t hesitate. Almost at the point where the pair saw that they were not alone, both MacDonald and Shadrach opened fire. The force of the machine gun blasts cut through both men, knocking them back against the wall. The two invaders approached the door and the two limp forms carefully, but the door remained open. The Sikh, again, led the way, and as he approached the Dark Man he frowned. “No blood,” he said. “The other is covered in blood…”

  He stooped down, carefully, reaching out to remove the mask. The Dark Man did not bleed, but his black uniform was riddled with holes.

  Suddenly the black-clad figure reached out with lightning speed, pushing at the Sikh and throwing him into the air as if he were a child’s toy. MacDonald pulled the trigger on his weapon, but it wouldn’t fire. The Dark Man was on his feet now, and chuckling softly.

  Although he would have sworn he’d never actually use it up to a moment before, he found himself popping a poison pill into his mouth and crushing it between his teeth.

  “I hope you like licorice,” the Dark Man said, sounding vastly amused. “It is not only appropriate, it is the first flavor that popped into my mind.”

  The sweet, distinctive taste in his mouth left no doubt that the pill was not as advertised, but MacDonald did not feel relieved.

  Suddenly the Sikh gave a terrible cry in his own tongue and leaped from a desk straight at the Dark Man.

  “Go to your God, Sikh!” said the inhuman man, and sparks flew from his gloved hands and enveloped Shad in mid-air. He shimmered and disappeared, leaving not a trace of himself or his weapon to fall to the floor.

  MacDonald took advantage of the distraction to hurl himself forward onto the Dark Man, knocking him down on the floor. Caught off-balance and unaware, the black clad man fell and was partly pinned by MacDonald, who was working in one fluid motion. He reached up and grabbed the tight black stocking mask over the face and yanked hard enough to pull it completely off.

  Greg MacDonald screamed, then got quickly up and backed away from the Dark Man, who was slowly gettin
g to his feet.

  It was a horrible face, beyond a dead man’s face, the face of one who had laid in the ground far too long. Much of the skull was showing, and what skin remained was peeling and flaking in rotten bloated masses. One lidless eye was hanging, partly out of its socket, the other in, huge, bloodshot, and staring. Unkempt hair grew where skin still adhered to skull, and it was matted and mixed in with the rotting flesh. There was suddenly a stench in the room, a stench of meat left too long in the sun.

  It was an impossible face, a face that held a grim, fixed expression and one that was such a horror that he could not bear to look at it, although he couldn’t bear to turn away.

  “I told you I didn’t wear this mask to hide my identity,” said the Dark Man through rotting lips. “It disturbs some people to look upon it.”

  “Noooo…!” MacDonald screamed. “You can’t be! You can’t exist! You belong in the grave!”

  “Others agree, but after tonight the power will lie elsewhere anyway. I see my face has a strong effect on you. Would you like one just like it? You might have problems getting kissed after that…”

  “That’s quite enough, Geoffrey,” said a calm British voice behind MacDonald. “You have quite enough to do and time is running out. It’s past eleven, you know.”

  MacDonald turned, thankful to have a reason to tear his gaze away from that horrible thing, and saw Sir Reginald Truscott-Smythe standing behind him with a quick-firing scatter gun much like the one the Dark Man had wielded in the motel room.

  “The others?” the Dark Man asked.

  “We killed the two upstairs, although they took a frightful toll, and they apparently planted bombs along the antenna array. Four are knocked out and the other three are off kilter. W’re off the air right now, but we should be able to jury-rig something in three or four hours at worst.”

  The Dark Man reached down, found his mask, and fitted it back over his terrible head. “Very well. I hesitate to leave MacDonald here, though. He is a most resourceful man.”

  “You’ve deactivated all his weaponry and explosives?”

  “Of course. Tell you what—sit down, MacDonald, in that chair over there.”

  MacDonald sighed and did as instructed. With everything else blown so far, he had to cling to the fact that they hadn’t found them all yet, and they still had a big shock coming.

  The Dark Man came over and touched a point on his neck. He felt a coldness, like a dagger of ice, go in, and when the creature’s finger was withdrawn he had no feeling, no control or sense of movement below the neck.

  “Geoffrey—it’s eleven twenty,” Sir Reginald said nervously.

  Ten minutes, MacDonald thought anxiously. Just ten more minutes …

  “All right—I’ll go. Have a nice chat, if you wish. I’m sure that Mr. MacDonald can be brought around to our point of view, one way or the other, at our leisure. He would be a wonderful replacement for Ross. Treat him well. After all, he is married to our Angelique…”

  With that, the Dark Man vanished, this time by walking back through the door.

  Sir Reginald put down the pistol and took a seat himself. He looked both nervous and very, very tired.

  “Reggie—what is that thing? You called him Geoffrey.”

  “He’s my brother,” the computer genius responded.

  “Your brother hanged himself almost nine years ago.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. Oh, god! I’m so tired and sick of all this mess!”

  MacDonald frowned, recovering a bit from the Dark Man’s visage although it was never far from his mind. “Hey— aren’t you the one behind all this?”

  “Well, yes, in a way I suppose. You see, I was working up at Cheltenham on the defense computer system at the time. Geoff had been dead about a year, and until those books arrived I’d quite forgotten about it all.”

  “Then you weren’t in any cult?”

  “No, I had little use for such stuff, then or now, I’m afraid. But, you see, shortly after the books arrived, I went down for a visit to Geoff’s grave. I’d put it off—it’s a silly custom—but when the books came I thought about him and just decided to go. I was there, at the grave, which had already been seeded with grass and overgrown, when I noticed some odd symbols at the bottom of the headstone. I kneeled down to get a better look and—” his voice trembled and broke rather suddenly”—these two arms, these strong, terrible arms reached up from the grave had held me. I—I screamed, broke free, and ran, but he followed me, somehow. He was there, outside the windows of my house, in the shadows even in the high security area at Cheltenham and I couldn’t do anything. I thought I was losing my mind. Finally I confronted him, and he told me what he wanted me to do.”

  “Eight years… Then he couldn’t be a creation of SAINT.”

  “No, nor anything else in this rational world. The project here was already under way, and he told me I’d get an invitation to supervise its final stages once construction was complete—and I did. He also sent a number of people to me; bright, young people with solid computer backgrounds who were none the less involved in cults of one kind or another. We designed many of the proprietary chips and circuits at Cheltenham for SAINT, and they were there, offering suggestions that were far beyond their possible knowledge, and he was there, too, in the shadows. The innovations he and they offered were brilliant, far beyond the capability of anyone I had ever known, even the Japanese geniuses on their projects.”

  “And you never tried to fight them? Never tried to foul them up? You just went along?’’

  “I—I’m not as strong a man as you might think. How do you fight someone like Geoff? How do you rationalize it? You tried—and see where it’s gotten you. And as a man of science, a man whose whole heart and soul was in computers, to be fed those incredible new designs, those whole new and revolutionary ways of doing things—it put me on top. It was the sort of knowledge a man of science would sell his soul for.”

  “And that’s what you did.”

  “I suppose you could say so.”

  “Reggie—what are they doing out there tonight?”

  “Something revolutionary. Something that many of those new circuits were designed to handle, and something that fulfills almost an ultimate dream.”

  “Eh?”

  “The fusion of human and computer. To actually link someone directly to the machine so that the two are essentially one. The human mind can never hold or comprehend the power, speed, and data of a computer, but imagine having all that at your command, instantly, when and if needed. To get any fact, do any computation—instantly. To control any computer-controlled device as needed.”

  “Angelique. You mean Angelique, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s not possible, Reggie! I say that having looked into the face of a living corpse and surviving a bout with a monster that could not exist. You said it yourself. The brain would fill up.”

  “No, we licked that. Even the personality shell will reside within the computer, not the brain. Only the autonomic functions, the lizard brain and the mammalian brain, will remain. The rest will be a blank slate, able to hold whatever data is needed. The transfer is at the speed of light. There is no need to hold anything permanently there.”

  “Good lord! You mean she’ll look like Angelique, sound like Angelique, but she’ll really be nothing more than an extension of SAINT, a living robot.”

  “It’s a bit more than that. I would gladly do it myself if I were permitted.”

  “Uh—Reggie? What time is it? How long until this happens?”

  The Englishman looked at his watch. “It’s eleven thirty-five now. No more than twenty-five minutes.”

  MacDonald’s heart sank to its lowest depths. Eleven thirty -five… We should all have been radioactive dust five minutes ago.

  15. THE MESSIAH CHOICE

  “When is this all taking place, Reggie?” MacDonald asked him. “The witching hour of midnight?” He was still amazed at being alive, and amazed, to
o that being alive now disturbed him so much.

  “Oh, that’s rubbish. They have all their leaders here, you know—kings of African tribes and Himalayan principalities, ministers from many countries, all that. They’ll give them a real show before the climax, from their point of view. They have until the crack of dawn, as I understand it. His power wanes in the daylight.”

  “But not SAINT.”

  “No, not SAINT.”

  “How come you’re not down there watching it all, or running around fixing up our damage?”

  “I’m very tired, and stick of all this, frankly. They are taking the scientific breakthrough of the century, perhaps for thousands of years, and turning it into a mumbo-jumbo circus. As for SAINT—the sort of work you are talking about is heavy stuff, best done by the staff. When it’s ready to be operational again, I’ll have to check it all out I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  “What? What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly that. Has it occurred to you, Reggie, that you’re not really one of them? They needed you as the front to get their stuff installed in the computer, and they needed you up to now as insurance. But once they have this done, once SAINT and Angelique are one, the computer will be in complete control and you’ll be like the revolutionary that puts the dictator in power. His friends know how to wage a revolt and topple a government, and they have expectations when their man is in. So, the first thing the dictator does is wipe out his friends who put him there—if he wants to survive himself. It’s called a purge, Reggie.”