But this was the Dark Man’s swan song, he remembered. Tonight the power would be transferred, transferred and multiplied an infinite amount—or at least six to the sixth to the sixth power. Is that what they had in mind for him? A husband as chaste as she?
He was broken and he knew it. He just couldn’t fight them any more. He had tried, tried harder than any could expect of a man, and he’d failed, as they all had failed, and he’d paid a price as dear to him as the innocents before him had paid. At least Frawley and the three mercenaries had been lucky. They were dead. He had no idea where Maria and the Bishop were, but they sure as hell couldn’t get off this island.
The chanting hit a crescendo, and suddenly all the lighting went out. Then, slowly, the meadow itself began to glow, and varicolored lights of some kind of living energy traced complex designs on the grass. There was silence, but in the distance thunder could be heard, thunder all around, and there seemed a swirl of clouds overhead, as if the sky itself were alive and they were in the eye of some terrible hurricane.
A figure now appeared on the stage behind, just in front of the great central idol. The figure of a girl, radiant and fresh, dressed in some transparent white silky garment and nothing else. She knelt before the idol, then arose, turned, and looked out at the congregation. The choir and the women and then the congregation started in another rythmic chant. As they did so, she seemed illuminated, the perfection of her body showing and shining through the flimsy white dress. Her large eyes were open wide, but she seemed to be staring off in the distance, oblivious to the crowd, as if fixed on something only she could see. Her expression was fixed and yet relaxed, but there was no smile, or frown, or other hint to reveal her inner thoughts, if indeed she had any.
“Angelique,” MacDonald whispered, for it was she, and not the primitive she had been reduced to, but the true Angelique, skin fair, eyes greenish, with light, reddish-brown hair flowing down past her shoulders.
And now, above the soft chanting, he heard the Dark Man’s voice.
“In the name of Satan Mekratrig, Lord of the Earth; in the name of Lucifuge Rofocale, Emperor and Supreme Ruler of the Underworld, I charge the Princes of the Throne of Dis to come forward and attend this most sacred rite,” uttered the voice of the Dark Man, booming over the meadow and perhaps the whole of the island.
And, out of the air, there began to materialize—shapes.
They were so bizarre and the effect so fascinating that for a moment even MacDonald could do nothing but stare.
First came Ashtoreth, a great, dark shape outlined in fire, astride a great winged horse; then came Mammon, then Theutus, Asmodeus, Abbadon, and Incubus, and lastly Leviathan, rising majestically in the center upon a great throne. They were grand and awesome and, most incredibly, they were not visions of horror nor demonic nightmares but creatures of tremendous beauty and power and grace. They floated eerily above the meadow, then took their places in a line behind the stage.
A thought, a line from someplace, came unbidden to his mind. How great must Heaven be, if such wonderful and majestic angels can still be so great and beautiful and wondrous after their fall from grace…
And now the very sky was lit with swirling cloudlike forms, and there seemed in the clouds, reflecting the various colors on the grass below, to be great faces, faces of other creatures. Faces of demons, and faces of goat-like creatures with eyes of fire, and faces of creatures so bizarre that man had no words to describe them and no similes he could use.
And the faces spoke as they swirled around the island, in a great single voice, saying, “Blessed are the Princes of Hell, for they shall be restored. Blessed are those who serve, for they shall be given the keys to the universe, and heaven and hell, which are outside the universe.”
“In the name of all those who would serve thee unto final victory, we humbly beseech the Lord of the Earth, the Lord of Hell, the Lord of our creation and the true master of mankind who was created in his image, I ask you to appear and to anoint thy vessel for the trials and tribulations to come,” called the Dark Man, and MacDonald, barely able to turn his eyes from the creatures lined up behind the stage, saw that the speaker was now standing at the other end of the altar stone, just beyond the pool of blood.
“In the name of the candlestick throne, which is yours to claim, we plead with thee to appear to us,” the Dark Man continued.
And now there was a sudden collective gasp and sigh from the crowd, and they all turned and looked towards the Institute. The look on their faces was as if they had beheld the face and form of God Himself; total, complete, abject worship and subjugation. They fell upon the ground, and on each other, because there was so little room.
MacDonald could see a glow from that direction, but was unable to turn and see for himself what all, even the Princes, were seeing.
Angelique, too, turned now, and for the first time there was an expression on her face, a softening, as if all doubts and fears were swept away by one glance at whatever it was that hovered over the Institute, and there was even the trace of a smile on her lips.
“Behold, the Master claims his bride, and anoints her Queen of Earth,” said the Dark Man.
Now MacDonald felt a sudden gathering of heat, and overhead he saw reach out just a tiny corber, just a fraction of what they were seeing, and he was still awe struck. A finger, but a finger of incredible size, glowing with a power and strength and greatness so incredible that it could only be thought glorious. There was total silence, and everyone lay flat, as the finger reached for Angelique.
“IN THE NAME OF THE LORD GOD JEHOVAH, CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE AND OF LUCIFER HIMSELF, I COMMAND THIS TO HALT! I AM FILLED OF THE HOLY GHOST, AGAINST WHICH NOT EVEN HELL MAY STAND!”
The voice was so loud, so commanding, and such an obvious departure from the script that there was a frozen moment of silence. Even the finger seemed to pause in midair.
MacDonald stared, and saw a strange figure in one of the hooded robes standing between him and the Dark Man on the altar stone, facing Angelique. He turned and discarded the robe, throwing it on the ground, and they saw that it was just a man, a very old man with flowing white hair and still a few bits of black on his face, but dressed in the robe of a Bishop.
Alfred Whitely had a strong, determined look in his eye and a steely expression. He alone among the whole crowd seemed not the least bit awed or impressed by the display to date. The robe looked a little rumpled; he must have taken it in his pack and changed after blowing the antennas.
In his left hand he clutched his old, worn red Bible; in his right he held up a large golden cross that seemed to shine of its own accord.
Whitely ignored the Dark Man, only a few feet from him, and turned instead towards the vision whose finger alone MacDonald could glimpse.
“IT IS NOT YET TIME! BEGONE UNTIL THE BOOK OF LIFE IS FILLED!” the Bishop commanded in a tone and with authority so strong it dwarfed even the Dark Man. He suddenly and quite spryly leaped up onto the stage itself and put himself between the finger and Angelique.
The Dark Man became very confused. He attempted to throw his power and energy at the old man and absolutely nothing happened. Frustrated, he screamed at someone out of sight beyond MacDonald’s head, “You men! He’s just a doddering old fanatic! Shoot him! Shoot him!”
“NO!’’ came a voice that seemed louder than thunder and greater than any human voice could be.
There was a sudden short burst, and three bullets tore into Whitely from the front, knocking him back into Angelique. He smiled, pulled himself back up, and placed a bloody hand on her white dress which was already somewhat spattered. Angelique looked confused, blank, unable to react al all.
The Bishop was mortally wounded, yet he took a pain-wracked step forward, holding out the cross with his right hand, then another, until he was at the great extended finger. Nobody seemed able to move or do anything but watch.
“I’m not afraid of you, Lucifuge Rofocale,” said the Bishop weakly, but determinedly
. “I think you are afraid of me!”
Whitely touched the cross to the extended finger, and there was suddenly a tremendous, almost blinding flash of energy. For a moment, it seemed to engulf the Bishop, and then reach beyond him into the ground itself below the stage.
There was a tremendous, mournful howl of pain and outrage from the creature with which he’d joined, a cry so terrible that the very ground shook and the island trembled.
There was a sudden panic, and screams and yells from the assembled multitudes, but MacDonald couldn’t take his eyes off Angelique.
The altar stone shook, and the Dark Man fell off the bottom end, but somehow MacDonald stayed on as if stuck to it. The stage trembled as well, and the idols fell backwards and tumbled off with a crash. Suddenly a small form darted onto the stage, dressed in black, and pushed Angelique down onto the altar stone just as the stage itself collapsed. The tiny figure removed something from around its neck and put it over Angelique’s head, then looked up at him.
“Maria,” he croaked.
The entire island was shaking as if it were about to fracture itself apart, and trees began to topple. There was a strong odor of rotten eggs, and then from the ground all around plumes of steam erupted with great fury.
Maria came up to him and he heard her even above the roar. “Tough shit, Greg, but I told you not to come. The old boy was right after all, huh? I’d like to stay, but maybe I can make it off this sucker before it blows. If not, I sure paid back my dues!” She kissed him and jumped off the rock and started running into the trees.
Angelique lay there, half in the pool of blood, eyes closed, as the whole island continued to shake. He wanted to get to her, to try and get them both off, but he still couldn’t move.
All around now there seemed a great fog of white, yet in the white there seemed to be shapes, strange shapes not unlike those of the cloud and the Princes, yet somehow different, brighter, cleaner. They were solid, humanoid, yet they seemed to grow out of the clouds and be yet a part of them. None was still long enough for him to get a clear view, but he knew they were all around.
There were the sounds of people screaming in pain and panic, screams which seemed to be progressively stilled.
And still he and Angelique were stuck to that damned rock!
He sensed a presence behind him and perhaps a bit above him, but he couldn’t turn his head to see who or what it was. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard a clear, joyous voice, one that was very familiar.
“Without a willingness to sacrifice, mankind is not worth saving from Hell or from himself,” something whispered in what sounded very much like Whitely’s voice. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. Take care, son. We’ve won the battle, but the war goes on.”
“My Lord Bishop!” he croaked, and reached out a hand to the air, but there was nothing, nothing there at all.
And now a tremendous blast of heat and flame roared down from the top of the mountain and engulfed not only the pair on the altar stone but also the whole of the island, and he could see the entire jungle ablaze before he passed out from its effects, this time for a very long time.
16. SCIENCE AND SORCERY
He slept the sleep of peaceful dreams. The nightmares were there, but every time they would intrude something gentler intervened and forced them away.
And yet, he finally did awake, although the awakening was tempered by drugs and seemed in its own way a dream. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came forth but a harsh croak.
“Don’t try to say anything,” said a woman’s voice gently. He tried to focus his eyes, and saw that it was a nurse. “Just relax and take it easy. You are in the intensive care unit of St. Ignatius Hospital in Port of Spain. You’ve been here for quite a number of weeks now. We thought we were going to lose you.”
“Ange-lique?” he managed, although it hurt him even through the drugs and pain killers.
“They found a woman with you, but she’s as bad off as you are, if not worse. You just relax now and try not to think. It will take a long time to get you well.”
He didn’t try any more right then; even that effort had taken all his strength. Yet—how could he stop thinking? Wondering?
Am I—whole or—disfigured? How badly were we burned by whatever it was? Will we both look like the Dark Man?
These thoughts drifted in and out with his consciousness.
The improvement was very gradual, but as the days passed he found himself being able to remain awake and alert for longer periods of time, and to manage a few simple questions. Very slowly, he was able to get the whole story from the outside world’s point of view, although they would tell him little about his own condition or that of Angelique. Their very evasiveness on it made him nervous and queasy. He was on a bed but all but his head was inside a form-fitting plastic device that was helping repairs and healing and minimizing infection. He couldn’t really see or tell what was there, and when they opened it it was like being behind the wheel of a car when the hood was raised—his view was blocked.
After perhaps a hundred thousand years of dormancy, early in the morning of November first, without any prior warning, the ancient volcano that was Allenby Island had blown its top and erupted with tremendous force. The ash cloud reached around the world, and there were still particles in the upper atmosphere that colored the sunsets and might well for years to come. Actually, there was probably a single early warning, since the telecommunications network had gone off the air a few hours earlier, but a bad storm in the area prevented anyone from coming in by sea or air, and security people on the island, by short wave, had assured everyone that the communications break was caused when a freak explosion of oil storage tanks now under control created a power shortage.
After, there had been a flow of lava, thin and runny like water, very wide but not very deep, and it had run down and spread out so that it blanketed the whole of the island and flowed swiftly to the sea. The Institute, having been built almost entirely within the main crater, was completely consumed, and the flows burned away almost all the jungle and forest and came down to the sea through the town of Port Kathleen, which had been fortuitously evacuated a few weeks before. Not a single structure remained, although here and there were the blasted remains of trees.
No human being could possibly have survived such a blast and such a flow, and no survivors were expected. There had been a top secret meeting in progress involving a great number of important politicians and influential leaders from all over the world, the reason for the evacuation, but they and their entire staffs were lost, of course.
It was over within hours, and finally the superheated steam and gasses rose and created a torrential downpour that helped cool the mass. It wasn’t until November third, though, that the first volcanologist could get to the scene and survey it by helicopter. They were making a swing around to look at a particularly odd formation jutting up from the blackness when they saw two badly burned figures on the thing. They assumed, of course, that both were dead, but managed to land experts who could remove the bodies. It was a shock to find that, impossibly, incredibly, both still had weak but definite life signs.
The mere fact of their survival could not be explained, and the fact that both did not die but actually responded to treatment was considered as much if not more of a miracle.
After emergency aid, they had been placed in special tanks created to transport bad burn victims and taken to the closest burn-specialized hospital, which was St. Ignatius. There they had been suspended in larger tanks, getting their air and food from tubes, while specialized solutions helped heal their burns and promote new skin growth.
All of their treatment involved revolutionary new and in some cases experimental ways of treating victims of burns and dehydration, and he was told that, even if they had survived the volcanic fury, an impossibility that had happened, and had survived the transport as well, they would have died within days in the hospital had it been even
a year earlier. There was also the fact that the best specialists were immediately flown in, and money was no object.
The next day, the money walked in the door. The King, without whose help all along it would have been impossible to get as far as they did, looked simultaneously grim and overjoyed.
“I couldn’t stay away any longer,” said Alan Kimmel Bonner, President and Chief Operating Officer of Magellan. “You aren’t supposed to have any visitors yet, but you’d be surprised what money and influence can do.”
“I saw it—on the island,” he said weakly.
“Well, yes. But even when they found out that their fight was a civil war with other elements of the company, they were so overconfident that they ignored us.”
“You want a debriefing?”
“That’ll wait. I already know the main facts, even the specific ones.”
“But the Bishop—the Dark Man…”
Bonner sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’ll get your side when you’re ready. I don’t really need it right now, except for the record.”
“If—you know—then you—can tell me,” MacDonald managed. “Was it truly the devil? I’ve got to know!”
The Messiah Choice Page 35