Maria was appalled. “You talk like you’d be his slave!”
“In a sense, that is true, only it would be voluntary, willing, and forever. One is not a slave if the choice is a free one. Still, this much is clear. I will remain in this body, with these thoughts, with these limits, for the rest of my life, with no hope of ever being different and no way of even communicating save by sign with anyone else, for I will not have the power or authority to take on daughters such as you.”
Angelique dwelled on the implications as Maria gave what translation she could to the men. This way forever. . . . No, not this way. Without power, she would be defenseless against anyone and anything. Her upper body strength would ebb. She would be weak, and ordinary, but she would remain looking like this, cut off, allergic or whatever it was, and out of place in the world no matter where she was. It was not a nice fate, and the only compensation would be that she would have Greg, although she would be in a way as dependent on him as she had been on Maria while in that wheelchair. Still, if the alternative was to become the Antichrist, her duty and sacrifice was clear. It wasn’t the hospital and the vegetative hell. She would do it—but she had to be honest with Greg about all the consequences.
Maria was startled by Angelique’s comment, but she relayed it. “Uh— Greg, she says that when her power leaves her it will exit through you, binding the two of you. As near as I can figure it out, if you make it with her you’ll never be able to make it with any woman but her again. You just won’t be able to get it up.”
“Enforced monogamy. Incredible,” breathed the Bishop
“Unmitigated, superstitious bullshit,” muttered the Rook.
Greg, however, was not so sure. “Hey! Wait a minute! Doing it is one thing, but that kind of deal—I have to think about it!”
“You don’t mean you actually believe in that balderdash!” Frawley exclaimed angrily. “You remember our discussion of voodoo? It only works on you if you believe it. If you believe it, then it’s true. Get your brain back in the real world where it belongs, boy!”
“Leave him alone, Pip,” Whitely said seriously. “I’m sure at one time or another we all would love to live in that wonderfully ordered, totally predictable universe of yours. It must be so nice. Unfortunately, few of us do. I think the young fellow deserves a chance to think it over.”
“And the alternative if I don’t?” MacDonald asked them, hoping for some easier way out himself.
“I’m afraid, old boy, that there is only one alternative,” Lord Frawley responded. “We must stop somewhere in a civilized area, then take that fancy little weapon you have there and shoot her to death, after which we will mutilate her so badly that only fingerprints and dental information will be available. She actually retains a crown and two fillings from her old days. Then we call the police, they try and identify the body, the information goes through the telenet and is intercepted by SAINT, and this in turn triggers that nasty little wipe out monster lurking in its system, for while they can fool the world about Angelique, they can not fool themselves, which is all that’s really necessary we think. I’m well skilled in how to do it right and proper, if need be.”
“Jesus Christ!” said Gregory MacDonald.
Maria said nothing for a few moments, then said, “I thought it would come to this. You have no choice in the end but to kill her. I know people just like you. I knew them in New Orleans. Oh, you’ve got national security to rationalize your deed and they were in it for the money and power, but you’re really the same people.”
“Now, wait just a minute!” Greg almost shouted at them. “Nobody’s going to be blowing her away! I didn’t go through all this just to have that happen. If I did, it would have been easier and better to do it back there in the islands. And don’t you dare translate any of this for her or I’ll cheerfully kill you, Maria!”
“No,” Maria responded almost woodenly. “You couldn’t have done it back there. In your head, yes, but she wouldn’t have permitted it. Now—I’m not so sure she wouldn’t welcome it. At least, she wouldn’t stop you, Greg. You’ve pretty much ignored her, or treated her as some kind of strange creature, and it’s hurt her, but you’re the only thing she’s got.”
A heavy silence fell upon the van, which was all right with Gregory MacDonald. Up until now he’d enjoyed playing the secret agent, but the fact is that this was exactly what he’d been doing—playing. He wasn’t any James Bond; just an ex-homicide detective from British Columbia. Until now, he hadn’t even minded the danger, or the risk, and after he’d escaped from that creature on the island and then from the island itself, his self-confidence knew no bounds. Part of it was that he lived for the game; his work was his life and beyond that he was more or less an idle bum. He was a thrill seeker, a man who loved to play the dangerous game, and was willing to do so because he generally risked only himself.
Self-centered, egocentric, the Sun Cop—that’s what his ex had said when she’d walked out on him. People weren’t real to him, they were just props, actors there to support his starring roles. He had a false but convincing bedside manner, it was true—all part of the game—but the truth was that he was good at what he did precisely because he was never in the slightest emotionally involved with his cases. Still, before he’d only had to solve them, perhaps apprehend the criminals, sometimes leaving that to others. Until now, he’d always been a player, not a piece on the board of his own deadly chess games.
And like his father he’d always been a socialist and a realist; his church affiliation was nominal and really amounted to none at all. He’d always voted NDP and touted socialist realism. But he had never before been chased down a mountain by a monstrous thing he could not see, until its arm was forced to solidity when reaching in vain through a church window.
And Angelique. He had gotten emotionally involved with Angelique back on the island, no matter how much he’d tried to deny it to himself, but he now felt detached from her present incarnation. Was it because she was now black? He had to wonder, no matter how much the idea that such a kernel of racism could be inside him troubled him. Or because she’d been transformed, into a strange being with a painted face who could neither speak nor understand? He hated that idea almost as much.
For, inside that head, inhabiting that form, was still Angelique, the vulnerable girl he’d gotten to know on Allenby, an unwitting pawn in a very deadly game. And now, here it was—the cold logic of national interest on one side versus a permanent and bizarre involvement on his part. Homicide from the other side, or Angelique and him in a kind of permanent union—not the Angelique of the island, but this Angelique, looking as she did now, cut off from any real communication. Pip Frawley might be certain, as the Bishop had mocked, but Frawley hadn’t stood on the deck of a trawler and watched her call a storm to herself and manipulate the lightning as if it were sets of ropes and cables to bring down two helicopters. He did not doubt her power now, whether it was mystical or some kind of ESP or whatever, and he did not doubt she’d lose it the moment her cherry was broken if only because, as Frawley said, she believed she would lose it.
But she also believed that such an act would bind him, at least sexually, to her for a lifetime. As she had controlled Maria and as she had manipulated that storm, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she could do it to him in a last act of power.
Somehow he’d known it would come down to the idea of killing her. His own deductive mind always led to that conclusion, but he’d always rejected it or put it aside in his mind, confident that if no other way could be found, someone else would do the deed, and efficiently, out of sight and mind.
And now, here it was, with only the Bishop standing in the way of Frawley’s cold rationalism. Frawley’s way was the most efficient, of course, but it did leave several unknowns. Right now, they knew the names and location of the enemy. That enemy wouldn’t die just because the computer erased itself. All the data was backed up somewhere, in a thousand different places, and they had the talent and skills to put SAINT back together again by this point, surely, although it might take years. And if Angelique died with no heirs, Magellan might be shaky, but the projects would continue because so many nations and financial institutions depended on it.
The Dark Man might well be the key there, and his importance was doubtless the reason he kept his identity so secret. He would probably become, if need be, a major figure and take managerial control in the crisis. Who would know?
He could think of a half a dozen ways this nasty group could survive either alternative, and both Frawley and Whitely agreed on that themselves. There was, however, the mind set of the leaders on Allenby. He had relied on that for many of his actions, and now the Bishop was doing the same. They had planned for Angelique; they wanted Angelique, and had gone to some risk and great pains to prepare her. To remove her from the game would be as devastating to them as killing her. In fact, the two alternatives were clear. Both would set them back, both would buy a fair amount of time, neither would be fatal to them . . .
. . . but one would be fatal to Angelique.
They stopped for gas and some carry-out food in Lake Tahoe, and were able to find restrooms in the back of a carry out that allowed them all to use the facilities without being seen more than necessary. It was quite cold in late September at this elevation, and there were even some flakes of snow in the predawn air. They had driven long through stiff winds, rain, and fog and it was still no picnic where they were. MacDonald made a call from a pay phone, then came back to them.
“The house in California was raided shortly after we left,” he told them gravely. “They got a few of our people, although most of them and all the important stuff got away or was destroyed.”
“How could they have known that quickly?” Bishop Whitely asked. “You said the car couldn’t be traced.”
“Maybe it couldn’t. It makes no difference how they found it, the point is that they found it and they found it in time to get some of our people. The fact is, it wasn’t a raid by officials. It was clearly a private deal, and they were nasty and well armed and prepared. If our people were in the hands of the cops, they wouldn’t crack, but Magellan’s not bound by the rules of procedure and the rights of the accused. They may know we’re in a blue van, but they don’t have a real description or license number or anything like that, so I’m not too worried on that score. They’ll have good descriptions of us, though, so Carson City’s too hot now. Our people want us to lay low for a day or so until they can work something else out. That means we find a couple of motels, split up and stay in more than one so there’s no group portrait, and wait.”
“That sounds all right to me,” said the Bishop, yawning. “I feel as if I could sleep for a week.”
They selected two motor inns about a half a mile apart on the highway. One was rather posh and had a small casino attached. This would be for the Bishop and the Rook, who looked the part for such a place and could comfortably go about there. The other was a small motel with two blocks of outside-opening rooms and a small detached coffee shop. It was a budget motel catering to transients. Greg was taking no chances on this one, though; he would stay in the same room there with Angelique and Maria.
The floor was carpeted, but the staff had been on the ball and Angelique’s slippers were easily found to help with that. They had also packed two sets of silk bedding—one clean and one dirty—which meant that they could remake one of the twin beds for her.
Maria took a shower and changed clothes, and for the first time in these past busy weeks MacDonald noticed a real change in her. She had been well built but thin on the oil platform; now she was having a lot of trouble getting her jeans on. She had put on a considerable amount of weight in a very short time.
“I’m dead tired but I’m really starved,” she told them. “I’m going over to that little coffee shop. Can I bring you anything?” She asked the same of Angelique. Both indicated no, but Greg told her to go ahead, that they’d probably be asleep when she came back.
Maria left, and for the first time since this all began, Greg and Angelique were alone together.
She sat on the side of the bed, completely undressed, and watched him remove his own clothes. He just went down to his jockey shorts, but he felt her gaze and looked back at her. He stared into her big brown eyes and for the first time he saw beyond the shell, and sensed the woman within, the Angelique he’d first seen trapped in a motorized chair. She was a lonely, pleading, tragic figure, and he felt great pity for her and much ashamed of himself. She looked, even smelled so very different, yet her spirit, so lacking in the joys of life, still shined there. He thought of that time back on the beach at Allenby, where she’d reached out to him so desperately and asked for a kiss.
He sat down beside her, and put his arm around her and held her close to him. She shivered a bit and responded, then looked up at him. He looked into those big brown eyes and could see no one but Angelique there, and he kissed her, long and passionately.
Maria had told them that Angelique would demand a ceremony, a marriage ritual she respected and considered binding, before she would take the ultimate step, as it were. Since the Hapharsi ritual was out of the question, that meant Catholic, but no Catholic priest would perform this marriage without a lengthy period of time and all sorts of other formalities. Angelique, however, knew that Whitely was a priest, and he certainly looked to be the right kind and she had regarded him as such, using the term Father-Elder to Maria. Whitely could and would perform a simple ceremony, giving a religious if not a legal and civil marriage validity in her eyes. He’d do it to save her life.