Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

"So," said O'Shaughnessy, "the Elder of Joseph is not a nice person?"

"He is considerably more than that. Father. As we now see." A new picture appeared. "This is a group portrait, taken in 1933 on the Isis at Oxford. The bald fellow is Aleister Crowley, the mountain-climber and magician. The one who looks furious with him is W.B. Yeats, the poet. This is Arthur Machen, a curious Welsh writer. This is Julian Karswell, a raving psychopath. This is a young lady who was found floating in the river the next day without her head. And this oriental gentleman is…"

"Nguyen Seth," said Brandreth.

"That can't be," said O'Shaughnessy. "Seth's father?"

"He doesn't seem to have had one," said DeAngelis. "Here, this is 1888. It's from the Illustrated London News"

It was an age-spotted magazine photograph, with the print showing through. Only the posed principles were in sharp focus. The background crowds were fuzzy, caught in motion.

"Inspector Lestrade of the Metropolitan Police examines the Whitechapel site of one of the Jack the Ripper murders. Looks like a blithering idiot, doesn't he? No wonder they never caught the murderer. But who do we find rubbernecking in the ghoulish crowd…”

In the amorphous mass, one man had stood still enough for his face to come out clear. Nguyen Seth.

"One more photograph, and we're back to paintings, I'm afraid." The photograph appeared. "This is Hendrik Shatner, brother of the founder of the Church of Joseph, modelling a pair of divinely-issued mirrored sunglasses. And, as you can see, he has an Indian friend…"

Hendrik was peering hawk-faced at the camera, leaning on a Springfield rifle, every inch the pioneer pilgrim. Nguyen Seth was dressed in buckskins and had long braids, but the face was the same.

"History calls Hendrik's Tonto 'The Ute,' but our ethnographers tell me no Ute wore necklaces like that. No Native American did, in fact. They're human fingerbones strung together."

Another picture appeared. "That was 1868. This is 1476. It's an engraving entitled 'The Death of Dragulya'. As you may know, Vlad the Impaler was killed by his own troops while disguised as a Turk, and his severed head was sent to Constantinople where the Sultan put it on display. Take a look at the features of the Moldavian hacking away at Vlad's neck. He is believed to be the traitor who gave the order to kill the prince and then spirited the head away."

The features were roughly carved, but unmistakable, realism was not usually a high priority with mediaeval artists, but this looked as if it had been done from life.

"He would have to be nearly six hundred years old," spat Brandreth.

"Um, older, actually. All the images—and we have literally hundreds more in the archive—show him to be about the same age, somewhere between forty and sixty but hale and hearty. We have no reason to believe that he was any younger ever. Our friend Elder Seth is well-titled by the Josephites. He is indeed, the Elder of us all. Even if you don't discount the legend of the Wandering Jew…"

"Which the church, incidentally, does not," put in the Pope.

"Quite so, Holy Father. Anyway, Ahasuerus aside, this individual, whatever his name, is probably the oldest person walking the earth."

"So, he's been a not-nice person for a very long time."

"Well put, Father O'Shaughnessy. And now, he is, we have reason to believe, planning a coup which will put the Catholic Church in the New World back in the position it had before the first Jesuits set out in the wake of Columbus and Vespucci…"

"And, incidentally," said O'Shaughnessy, "massacred entire civilizations."

"That was a previous papal administration," said Georgi, "for which we can take no responsibility."

"I don't see it," said Chantal. "Where's the threat?"

The map came back. DeAngelis tapped the State of Arizona.

"Here, somewhere. Tombstone would be my guess, based on Seth's nasty sense of humour, but it could be anywhere in the South-West. We've not established all the links as strongly as we might wish to. We've been getting reports of major disturbances on the edges of the Outer Darkness. All our spies in Deseret have disappeared, but we have reason to believe that Nguyen Seth has been invoking demonic powers on an unprecedented scale, and his only logical target is our datanet. Specifically, we think he's going to aim for the Central American Confederacy."

"President North will give him the Congressional Medal of Honour."

"Sadly, that is possible. The CAC represents the only successful synthesis of the Catholic Church and a governmental body outside the Vatican itself. If you weren't on the side of the angels, you wouldn't want it on the same landmass as you, even with the isthmus of Panama and the killing grounds of Mexico between you and it."

"Thank you, Fabrizio," said the Pope. "Father O'Shaughnessy, you have been monitoring the…uh…anomalies?"

O'Shaughnessy looked serious finally. "Chantal knows most of this. I'm pleased that you're at last taking notice. It's not a small, isolated thing. There have been temporal displacements all over the Western hemisphere. The epicentre, not coincidentally I should say, would seem to be Salt Lake City. Many of the anomalies have been observable only on a subatomic basis, but they're there all right. I assume Mother Edwina has been keeping up with the rash of disappearances in the international scientific community. They tie in too, I think. The disappearees have been a job-lot, with all kind of disciplines jumbled in, but they've all been at the cutting edge of dealing with this epidemic of impossibilities. As a footnote, my guess is that I would be next on anyone's list of to-be-vanished candidates."

"That has been taken into consideration," said Mother Edwina. "After this meeting, you will indeed disappear. But we'll take care of the disappearance ourselves. You'll be continuing your work under close guard in a secret location."

"That's a relief."

The map disappeared, and the lights came up. Chantal knew she had come a long way from Lausanne. No one was smoking, but this was nonetheless one of those fabled smoke-filled rooms in which the fate of the whole world was decided. Brandreth and Mother Edwina were in a huddle, and Fabrizio DeAngelis was sitting back waiting to be admired. Chantal wasn't too distracted to notice the young Cardinal taking an interest in her. The Pope leaned forwards, and came to life.

Since that day on the jetty by Lake Geneva, Chantal had been waiting for Georgi to ask her for something. This wasn't the request she had been expecting.

"Chantal," he said, looking straight into her eyes, "you must know what we want you to do. You'll have diplomatic privileges and a limited amount of cooperation from the local authorities. We can't tell them too much, so you'll be travelling on your Swiss passport. Of course, all our clergy and lay-people will be with you…but the projections suggest this is a one-person mission. And you, of course, are the only active operative at our disposal with the skills required. You'll take it?"

Chantal bowed. "Of course, Holy Father."

"Bless you, my child, We shall pray hourly for your success."

"Thank you. Holy Father."

She stood up and backed out of the room. Within the hour, she was in a private jet out of Rome for Phoenix, Arizona.

Underneath the plane, the world turned slowly.

"That's some story, sister," said Stack after Chantal had finished telling him why she was in Arizona. "I suppose that's right, isn't it. Sister? I should call you sister."

She stood up and stretched, catlike in her uniform. "It'll do, but my name is still Chantal. We don't give up everything."