“We change cars here. That mini-van over there will have to do. Rook and Bishop are coming with us, so it’ll be cozy. The weather’s really bad all through the Sierras, so we’ll have to move overland at least as far as Carson City. There’s a private airstrip just east of there where we can get a small plane to fly us to the boondocks. You both get in over there. Your things, as much as we could manage, are already packed and in the van. Both of you go over and get in. We’ve got to move pretty quickly before they get bright and beat their roadblocks.”
Maria turned to Angelique. “We must leave this place. Tonight’s deeds will draw the Dark Man to us. We are to use that one over there. The two elders will accompany us. Come.”
Angelique complied, feeling even worse about it all.
They sat in silence in the van for several minutes as bedlam continued all around them. Finally Angelique said. “I am sorry, daughter, that I shocked and offended you. There is a part of me that I did not wish or desire that sometimes takes control.”
Maria sighed, feeling even worse. The more she thought about it, the lousier and more confused she felt. What could she say? Damn you for keeping me from being gang raped and murdered? What could she say, or do, or feel, when both love and hate were paired so directly in her and centered on a single individual?
The two elderly British lords were spry old cusses, walking and acting younger than many of the young people on the staff. Bishop Whitely now wore a black suit with reversed clerical collar and a black porkpie hat and looked for all the world less a retired bishop than an old Catholic parish priest in fine shape. Lord Frawley, on the other hand, now wore a tweed business suit and tie and wore a mackintosh over it as partial protection against the rain. He had an unlit curved pipe clenched between his teeth.
They got in, smiled, and took their own seats. Greg was last, bringing with him a long oblong wooden case. He put it on the front passenger’s seat, which was vacant, and opened it, then took out what was inside. It was a gleaming weapon, a cross between a rifle and a machine gun, and he loaded a long clip underneath and then put it on the floor within easy reach, closed his door, started up the van, and backed out of the driveway.
“Oh, dear,” Frawley remarked on seeing the weapon. “Do you really think you’re going to need that?”
“The name’s Bond,” MacDonald cracked back. “James Bond. No, sir, I hope I don’t have to use it on anyone, and particularly not on some dumb lawmen just doing their jobs and following orders, but I have to be willing to do it.”
The van had Utah plates, and he’d picked up a license and registration for it noting the same state as residence. Forgeries, of course, but not phonies, which today’s highway patrol could pick up through their computer network. There really was a van of this license and description registered to a real James V. Higgenthorpe of Salt Lake City, Utah. The computers would verify this and would not question such a registration. The computers would not, of course, check and discover that said van was parked in James V. Higgenthorpe’s back yard at the time and that he was in fact at home.
MacDonald drove over to U.S. 101, then down to San Rafael and across the bridge to connect with Interstate 80 East. He kept a citizen’s band radio on, but very low. It was crowded with jerks and lonesome truckers, but it would tell him if there was a backup or roadblock going up ahead.
“I had an attack of nerves driving past San Quentin Penitentiary back there,” he told them, “but I feel a little better now.”
“Indeed so,” Lord Frawley responded. “This is going to be a close one. Poor things. Don’t you ladies blame yourselves for this. Something was bound to crack sooner or later.”
Maria translated and Angelique gave a wan smile. It didn’t really help to be absolved in a case like this.
Still, the further they got from San Francisco and the closer to Sacramento, the more they relaxed.
“I say, old boy, I think I’ve worked out the rest of their nasty little plot,” said the Bishop almost casually.
“Huh? I’m all ears,” MacDonald responded.
“It helped to get into their head, and also to get information on the type of cult Sir Reginald’s brother had been involved in back home. What sort of beliefs and practices they had and so on. Pretty unimaginative stuff, it turns out, centering on your basic Black Mass. Still, that was a key. You know, of course, that the Black Mass is a regular mass turned inside out and upside down? Even the cross is there, only inverted, and, of course, they pray to Satan. Cults like that tend to follow the game of opposites to extremes, and that gave me the link.”
“Yes, yes, go on,” Frawley urged. “Do we always have to get a lesson in superstitious nonsense before you get to the point?”
“Yes, you do,” replied the Bishop coolly. “Besides, what else have you got to do? At any rate, the Bible’s none too specific on the nature of the Antichrist, which allows both sides a lot of latitude. The initial beast, Satan incarnate, is a water elemental—that is, it rises out of the water. Nice touch for a computer atop a tiny island, eh? The second beast, though, our Antichrist, is an earth elemental, and that means human, since humans were made from the dust of the Earth. It supposedly has two horns like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon. Since the lamb is a recognized symbol of Christ, it stands to reason that this person will be a sort of Christ-like figure, at least to the masses. Pure and without blemish and probably claiming to speak in God’s name. The dragon, of course, is Satan, so we’re really seeing someone who seems to be divine but is actually the commander of evil. Eventually, says their dogma, everyone will worship the beast under a brutal and absolute totalitarian dictatorship with the Antichrist as its leader, able to perform miracles to get the power and the following. The end result might be a lot of ravings or code to ancient churches as you will, but could also be taken as foretelling an atomic holocaust—and its terrible aftermath.”
“So how does all this tie in with all of us?” Greg wanted to know.
“Well, think on it. They need someone who will serve and be obedient to the beast, yet be a human symbol to the world. This takes a great deal of power. This human must already occupy a place so exalted and be so well recognized that the face and identity will be known to all and they can get all the media coverage they want, and audiences with world leaders. Now, think again of the Black Mass, the opposites, and the requirement to already be in the center of worldwide wealth and power and you will see where they’re going.”
And Greg MacDonald did see. “Angelique! If Christ was male, then the Antichirst will be female. The head of Magellan. A recognized face, but someone known to be a helpless cripple. She’s pure, still somewhat innocent in spite of what’s happened, and even still a virgin. Considering Magellan’s activities, she could get an invitation to the White House and the Kremlin.”
“Indeed,” interjected Lord Frawley. “Western intelligence has been trying to prove for years that several great advances in computer science and technology in the Soviet and Chinese blocs were the result of deliberate capitalist espionage. Magellan. They’ve already built or maintained master computers for defense and international finance in most of the western world, and what they maintain they can modify. Now, if they secretly sold the same sort of thing to the Soviets and the Chinese. …”
“Exactly,” the Bishop agreed. “At the right moment, when Angelique assumes complete control, so, too, will the Beast be in control, not just of one computer but of almost all the vital ones. A tyranny by computer.”
“But both the Russian and American launch computers aren’t on any sort of network like that,” Frawley pointed out. “Without the codes, which are changed daily, what can they do to start Armageddon?”
“Even I can answer that,” Greg responded. “You don’t need the codes, if you can create a crisis so intense that you will cause one or the other side to push the button. Starvation, revolution, mutiny—it’s all one and the same. That dictatorship isn’t national, it’s multinational—Magellan. A multinational corporation of slaves. She’ll take it, build it, and mold it until it’s just right, and then it will cause conditions that will force one side or the other to World War III. Oh, my god!”
Whitely turned and looked at Maria. “Do you think you can get the gist of that through to Angelique, my dear? She should know, after all.”
“I—I’ll try. I’m not sure I understand it myself, but I’ll try.” And she did.
“They say that the Dark Man will make you the daughter of the Great Deceiver, the Father of Lies, as the one who died on the cross was the son of the Supreme God. You will assume the trade of your father and with it control the whole world. You will have miraculous power and people will worship you as a god yourself and do as you command, and you will command them in the future to wage a great, last war against themselves so that they may then wage war against Heaven. Do you understand what they say?”
That was the trouble, Angelique thought sadly. She did understand. They would corrupt her utterly and then control her, making her not only better than she was but almost Christ-like. The Antichrist! They want to make me the Antichrist! God protect and defend me!
They were through Sacramento now, and going up into the mountains. He had elected to go via the twisting, winding little road leading to the pass at Lake Tahoe, and from there over to Carson City. It wasn’t a well used route, particularly in the middle of the week and at this time of year, and it was the road on which they were least likely to encounter trouble.
“Well, she can’t be their jolly little Antichrist if we’ve got her,” Lord Frawley pointed out.
“Indeed. But for how long do we have her? A close shave tonight, old boy,” the Bishop retorted. “I’m certain that for symmetry’s sake they’d like to have it done on October thirty-first of this year, but so long as she is around it can be done almost any time. We can’t keep running forever, and their resources are enormous now and getting greater every day. We fed the problem into our little computer, with some help at Stanford, and we came up with some answers, although not cheering ones.”
“Yes? You mean short of doing her in outright?” Frawley asked, and heard Maria give a little shocked gasp.
“Oh, yes. Put it all together and it’s correct. They are quite fanatical in their own way. They require a sexually pure woman. That was the point of the quadriplegia. An impure Antichrist might fit in well with our notion of opposites, but they’re playing by their own rules.”
Lord Frawley was agog at the idea. He was having trouble rationalizing all this occultism with his nuts and bolts universe as it was, and he accepted it only in terms of the beliefs of madmen—a company in which he included Bishop Whitely. “You mean—all we have to do is get someone to knock her up?”
“Yes, but that’s not as easy as it sounds,” Whitely reminded him. “I mean, a few hours ago four big men had the motive and the method and the opportunity, and they’ll be buried in a couple of days. I suspect that even if you drugged her, there would be something, somewhere, planted as a booby trap to prevent it. They know the stakes as well as we do, and I’m certain they allowed for this eventuality. No, to do it she would have to do it freely, willingly, out of desire and out of love.”
Maria had sat in the back in silence, not translating any of this in spite of Angelique’s pokes in the side to do so. “She might do it,” she told the men. “She might do it for one person. She’s got a real, solid thing for you, Greg, and I mean it.”
Although, deep down, he knew it, he still was startled by all this and fought to reject it. “What—would it do to her?” he asked, not caring who answered.
Whitely, too, felt somewhat uncomfortable with this, but he saw it as the only expedient out of a dangerous situation. “Tell her about it, Maria,” he ordered sternly. “Ask her that question.”
And Maria did so, as best she could.
The very fact that the Dark Man planned to use her as the ultimate instrument of Satan’s final war had shaken her, and she’d remembered the Dark Man’s comment that the war between Heaven and Hell had yet to be fought. Now, here it was—a choice. A choice she did not wish to face.
“She wants to know if this would cause the ruination and fall of their ultimate plot,” Maria told them.
“No. I’m afraid not,” responded the Bishop. “It buys time, that’s all. Time for us while they frantically search to cover their losses and find another candidate. A few years, perhaps. Perhaps longer. They will create a puppet Angelique to take control and proceed as before, I suspect, but they will not be able to use her. They may have someone in the wings—they certainly seem to plan ahead—but I suspect that their Angelique will become pregnant and bear a daughter who will be a direct heir and will also be totally under their control from the beginning. It might buy us a generation.”
Maria told Angelique what Whitely had told her, and the strange young woman nodded sadly. “As I thought. Still, a generation is a long time, and the cup will be passed from my lips. Yet, for a Hapharsi Mother to surrender herself and her office, there is a high price to be paid both for me and for the other.”
“What—will happen to you?” Maria asked nervously.
“Me? I do not know what traps the Dark Man laid, if any, for they are beyond my detection. But it is certain that I will lose all my power and all my communion with nature. I will surrender my self and my will. Hapnarsi Mothers are supreme because they have all the great attributes of womanhood, yet call no man their master and thus are superior to men, having the highest attributes of both. This is not so of a Hapharsi wife. Wives surrender their own selves to their husbands. A Hapharsi wife is totally loving, and obedient to her husband’s will. She becomes an appendage of him. As he has arms and legs, and moves them as he wills, so is it with his wife. There is no choice, no other way. When his essence enters my body of my own free will, I become part of him always.”