“Well, Reggie, I’m impressed—but can’t SAINT hear and see in this room, too? Didn’t you just tell him how he could die? And didn’t you just say that the only man who knew that code was you?” MacDonald pressed, sensing an opening he never expected and pushing it for all it was worth with the one weapon left to him. “Any chance you had of surviving before just went out the window.”
Sir Reginald suddenly got up and looked around nervously. All was quiet in the eerie emergency lighting, although there were dead bodies all over. MacDonald could see it in his face, though, and in the way he looked around, that the computer genius was suddenly more terrified than tired.
“I’m afraid he’s right, Sir Reginald,” said the smooth, unhurried voice of the computer from a wall speaker. “The truth is, up to now no decision had been made on you. Call me—sentimental, if you will. Now, though, I fear Mr. MacDonald has done you in, although in so doing he has done me an inadvertent service.”
Sir Reginald picked up the pistol with its two strange clips. “SAINT! I created you!” he shouted, his voice echoing against the walls. “No one else could have done so! I—I did more than create you! I loved you!”
“You did indeed create the machine,” SAINT admitted, “but it was only a shell itself, a receptacle for what was to come. Still, in an odd way, I did love you, too. Just wait there. In a moment it will all be over, and you will be with me forever.”
“Reggie! You don’t have to stand there and die like a dog!” MacDonald shouted, cursing his inability to move. There was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs from above. “Damn it, man! Think logically! If there’s hell and a return from the grave, then there’s God in heaven, too! You still have a chance, Reggie! Give the damned code!”
Two red-clad men appeared, bearing rifles. Sir Reginald shot both of them with the pistol, which gave a sound like a short burp, and they went down for good. He turned and looked frantically around. “I—I can’t! I need a terminal! It can block the rest by simply preventing the code from reaching its banks through the audible sensors!”
He looked around as the sound of more footsteps approached, and made for the door down to SAINT itself. The terminals both upstairs and on this level were totally under SAINT’s own electronic controls, but downstairs there was a direct input terminal, one which SAINT couldn’t foul up or shut down without shutting down part of itself.
SAINT tried to slide shut the door, but it hung up on the body of the technician who’d been with the Dark Man and didn’t have the living corpse’s immunity to bullets. Neither did Reggie, though, and bullets flew and pinged off the walls as he slipped through and ran down the stairs to the next level two at a time.
“Reggie loved Daddy!” Sir Reginald screamed as he ran. “Daddy hates Geoff!” They were simple words, key words, but he’d been right. The computer shut down its speaker inputs at the first words. The only hope he had now was the direct input terminal in the small glass-enclosed booth just outside of SAINT itself. But in shutting down its sensors, the computer had also shut itself off from direct help in its own survival. It had to rely on human help.
There! He was within sight of it, breathing hard. The glass booth with the one unstoppable entry into SAINT. He reached it! He reached the door, an old-fashioned door with a simple knob latch, and started to open it.
Bullets from men and women in red uniforms both on his level and from below cut through him, splattering the glass exterior with blood, although they did not penetrate the special protective glass of the walls. He took so many shots in his body that before he hit the ground he almost looked as bad as his brother.
MacDonald just sat there, unable to do anything, hearing the muffled sound of the shots below. Suddenly four big men came up from the fourth level and over to him.
“He didn’t make it,” one said casually. “Come on. They’ve decided you’re part of the show. The boss wants you down there.”
“I can’t resist, but I can’t move, either,” he pointed out, cursing under his breath. So close! Each damned time it’s so close and no cigar!
One big man took him under his arms, the other by the feet, and together they carried him through the door and down not one but two more flights, to the fifty level, where SAINT’s refrigeration and small fusion plant were located. The place was quiet and antiseptic, but as they carried him down to the far end of the huge chamber he saw a small crew working on patching a gaping hole through which outside air was rushing in and he grinned. “A little more air conditioning than you want, eh?”
“Shut up or I’ll cut your tongue out,” snapped the big man forward of him. He shut up.
MacDonald was surprised to find one of the small electric carts at the end of the room, and he quickly saw why it might be there. One whole section of wall seemed to have swung outwards and away, revealing an enormous tunnel. The tunnel was lighted with four bright strips going its entire length, and also down it ran thick cables that apparently had been hidden by the wall, coming down as they did through holes drilled in the rock. So Frawley had been right about one thing.
They dumped him unceremoniously in the back of the cart and the big man started down the tunnel. To MacDonald’s surprise, it opened into a fairly large chamber that might have covered the entire base of the meadow. In the center was the huge mass of obsidian that was below ground, going from ceiling to floor and possibly beyond. It was not the cold glassy black it should have been, though; all the cables terminated, it seemed, directly into it, and the whole rock or whatever it was hummed and glowed with an eerie light that filled the entire rock structure. It seemed almost like something alive.
Men and women in brown saffron robes took him from the cart and stripped him naked. He could see that on their foreheads was a symbol that seemed to pulse like strange protruding veins. The six inside the six inside the six. Somebody stuck a gag in his mouth and then they began to rub his whole body with some sort of oil. He couldn’t feel a thing except on his face, where it felt like vaseline. Innterestingly, the one thing they left on him was the chain from which hung the Bishop’s cross.
They took him back to the center rock formation now, lifted him up to his feet, and pressed his entire body hard against it. He felt a tingling, then some vertigo, and then a sudden blackness for just a moment. Then he was outside, in the open air, and he knew just where he was if not how he got there. His head rested on the top of the high point of the altar stone, and he looked both out and down.
The small cup-shaped depression at the low end was filled with red liquid, almost certainly blood. The whole “stone” or whatever it was seemed drenched in it. In back of the stone and running its entire length they had erected a narrow wooden stage-like platform, and there were people on it as well as several enormous idols, each a stylized demonic creature with gaping mouth and goat-like horns and vaguely saurian appearance. Each had some sort of incense or another sweet smelling material burning in their laps, but it gave off far more odor than smoke. Fires lit inside made the eyes and mouths burn and glow.
On either side of the central and largest idol were hung, upside down, the bodies of the Lebanese woman and the Nigerian. They had been stripped and then hung up by their feet like deer carcasses, and their bullet-ridden bodies twisted slowly as if their dull, unseeing eyes might take in the entire scene.
The audience, or congregation, numbered at least a hundred and fifty, which was more than anyone could have imagined being packed into the area of the meadow in front of the stage and stone. Many wore various kinds of robes and costumes, including leopard’s head headdresses and demonic-looking helmets; others wore more traditional dress, from business suits to Middle Eastern garb, flowing white robes and headgear suitable for the desert. They represented all races and habitable continents, and they were the leaders of this new wave, the evil within. Not the presidents and prime ministers, not necessarily the princes and kings, but those who were behind the seats of power, giving advice and manipulating information.
In front of the altar stone, between him and the congregation, a group of naked women whose bodies were painted with all sorts of designs and colors danced a frantic, insane dance that seemed both sexually obscene and somehow animalistic and violent to the chanting of what was, at least to him, an off-stage choir and the frantic beat of drums. He recognized most of them with a start, as the women who’d been Angelique’s staff, some of the wives of the most distinguished permanent administrative staff of the Institute, and others who were young, sensual, and overendowed who might well be ones he’d known now showing off the rewards of converting to the opposition. All had that same throbbing, pulsating symbol on their foreheads.
The Dark Man came over, and knelt down beside his head. No matter that he was both covered and using his electronic distortion disguise, MacDonald tried to shrink from his loathsome touch but could not.
“I thought you deserved a front row seat for the climax of the show.” the Dark Man said to him in a low tone. “Rituals are just good show business but the masses seem to expect them. I will restore feeling to your body, but don’t try and get up. You can’t, and the pain will be great and they’ll eat it up. Look at them. Look at their faces and their eyes. They can hardly wait until they have the power to do this themselves—and they will. Just relax and enjoy it and don’t worry. Killing is not for the likes of you.”
That was what he was afraid of. Still, he felt feeling return to his lower parts, and he found himself able to move his arms and hands a bit. They felt stiff and sore. He did try to rise just a little, though, and the pain in his back was instantly excruciating. He relaxed, and it slowly ebbed away. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he knew it.
The revelry stopped suddenly, and for a moment there was dead silence. The women took places as a sort of honor guard on either side of the stone. At last the Dark Man broke the silence, sounding less like a cult leader than a master of ceremonies at a night club.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice echoing through the meadow and beyond in ghostly fashion, “it is time to pause a moment and consider the basic things for which we stand and the threats we still must face. Here I present a man who several times has come within minutes, perhaps seconds, of destroying all that we have worked so hard to build for our lord and master Lucifer, Angel of Earth, the highest sane creature of the nether realm. Look you here to your right on the platform, and see what he almost accomplished!”
MacDonald struggled to see for himself, and his gasp was audible in the dead silence. On the platform was, unmistakably, the bomb Lord Frawley had been supposed to set off long ago now.
“An atomic device,” the Dark Man explained, causing a stir and ripples through the crowd. “It would have scoured this island clean of life above, and set us back decades at the moment of our ultimate triumph. Oh, don’t worry, it’s fully deactivated now, its heart removed, as it were, but it sits here as testimony that we can not fail!
“Consider,” he continued, his voice rising and falling for emphasis, “that this device was situated so that it would do the most damage, and attached to a dead man’s switch. We did not find it in time! When we did find it, after the attack above, we found it with, of all things, a dead man. An old man, dead perhaps of a heart attack, his death so sudden, so abrupt, that his fingers locked around the trigger so it could not fire! There was a timing device, too, but for some reason he had either not connected it or disconnected it. I suppose he wanted to do it himself.” This caused even more of a nervous stir in the crowd as they realized how close they had come.
Damn Frawley, MacDonald thought in disgust. The climb was too much for his weakened body, but he had to be in full control, a self-centered egomaniac to the end!
The Dark Man laughed in triumph. “But consider, my friends, how this is our time and that we are protected by our Lord even from such as this!” he went on. “Consider the miracles here represented! Our Lord Lucifer crept into his mind and made him disconnect the timer, then struck him with a blow that kept us all safe from harm and our cause totally intact. None can touch us! Our threats are revealed to us by our very enemies, and our Lord watches over where we can not!”
There was a sudden, apparently spontaneous reaction in the crowd. Most dropped to their knees and began to chant, “Blessed be Lucifer, also called Satan, Lord of Earth and the Underworld, wise protector of the universe. May we draw from him our strength and never waiver or fail him in our duty.” It was said in a babel of languages, but one of the women closest to him was an English speaker and he made out the words from her.
The Dark Man turned and pointed to MacDonald. “Behold the man behind it all, whom the enemies of our Lord set against us! Do not be fooled by his position now! He is a most formidable and worthy opponent, a brave challenger who almost succeeded despite a notable lack of help from his god.”
There were some snickers at that from the crowd.
“What is your price, MacDonald?” the Dark Man asked, his voice soft, his tone rhetorical. “Not your life, for you brought that thing here and remained. Not your love, for you made no protest when you could and would have taken her life tonight as well if you could. Not terror, not the dark and the horrible things that lurk in every shadow, for you have faced down a demon and looked into the face of death. Yet, what is it I see in your eyes now? Not terror, no, but something even more foreign to the truly godly. I see hate there. Burning, festering, blistering hate. It feeds upon you. It eats your soul. It turns you, inside, into me! And that, my friends, is the ultimate power. Not magic, not sorcery, not witchcraft, but rather this—that your actions, your deeds, our actions and deeds, turn our enemies into ourselves! The more they fight, the more they become ours.” His voice rose with the litany. “Christian! Jew! Moslem! Hindu! Buddhist! Taoist! Animist!” Suddenly his tone lowered. “Patriot,” he added, then walked back and stood directly over MacDonald.
“So, you see, we cannot lose,” the Dark Man continued. “Either in fighting us they become like us, or like the martyrs of many religions they do nothing and do not resist. The days of Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed are done because they are bankrupt. More evil has been done by men in their name than has been done in the name of our Lord whom they blame. What sort of prophet, what sort of god, is worth following if the result is a world where even the most starry-eyed idealists would murder a whole population of innocents in the name of the greater good? Let us be done with them. Let them join Zeus, and Jupiter, and the worship of emperors on the ash heap. We are the predatory animals given mastery over a world of brutality. Let us stop fighting our natures, our urges, our inclinations. Let us not agonize and recriminate. We were created the highest of animals, then cursed by god to always fight our unconquerable basic nature. Let us begin here to pull down this world and this mad god and build a new one based upon what we are. Let us banish the very concept of sin, and become like gods.
“For that’s what God fears, my friends. That, knowing all, we can make him irrelevant!.” He suddenly stopped and stared down at MacDonald. “But you would deny the animal, wouldn’t you? Mind over matter. Very well, then. I will show true power, mind over matter, and make a small sacrifice of that which is animal. That we will return to our master.”
MacDonald steeled himself, feeling real fear now, knowing what that terror from beyond the grave could do with the flick of a hand.
He felt the Dark Man’s gloved hand around his genitals and he started to cry out in horror, but suddenly the pain there was so enormous that he shrieked in agony instead.
The Dark Man held up the object for all to see, then turned and fed it into the mouth of the largest idol, which suddenly flamed with extraordinary brightness. “Now he may serve the bride of our lord!” the Dark Man cried triumphantly, and the crowd and the choir began chanting frantically.
MacDonald passed out from shock and pain, but, unfortunately, he came to rather quickly.
* * *
When he awoke, he was still stuck, lying on the stone, but the lights were now dimmed and the scenery had changed. A group of hooded and robed people, male and female, now stood before the idols chanting in some impossible tongue, eliciting a response in the same tongue from the congregation at intervals. The Dark Man was out of view, if still in the assemblage.
It was impossible for him to tell just how long he’d been out, but it was still totally dark and he guessed it couldn’t have been very long. He felt no more pain, only an itchy tingling in his groin. He managed to move a hand to the area, and felt only a small lump below which was a hole. Not a vaginal sort of hole, just a cavity about large enough to insert a finger. So it hadn’t been a nightmare or an induced hallucination. He wanted to cry, but not even tears would come. The proceedings seeming like a dream to him. They’d been right, he realized. Angelique, Maria. . . . They’d been right. Everyone has a price, a fear, a secret horror which, if realized, makes even death seem pleasurable. The Dark Man had finally found his own personal demon, his own most secret terror, and had done it; done it with the knowledge that his victim knew that with the demonic mastery over form, it did not have to be permanent—but only the Dark Man could replace it.
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.