Jack Chalker - The Messiah Choice

“I know. I never thought of it much until I went into the convent, even though I was forced to be a good church goer all the time I was growing up. For all its complicated rituals and beliefs, Catholicism is an easy religion, really. It doesn’t demand a whole hell of a lot. Go to church every Sunday and on certain other days, take communion, confess your sins, say some prayers or do other penance, then go out and sin all over again. It’s an easy thing to fall into, particularly when the Church makes sure you get all the basics, but deep down I never was able to swallow it whole.”

“Do you believe in heaven and hell?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. I think that there’s got to be a hell, just so people like the Dark Man and Sir Reginald and folks like that will get it. When you see some good people corrupted, when you see a kid who just happened to be in the way lying there beside his bike bleeding to death… There’s got to be a hell someplace. I’m not so sure about heaven, though. In a way, you have to go along with the Dark Man. If this isn’t hell, then the blood of all those innocents, the babies who die blameless, all the horror with no purpose—it just isn’t any kind of place a good and merciful and just god would allow to happen. Oh, I heard all the arguments—all the priests with their high-sounding long-winded explanations of just about everything—but I can’t buy it. Even the Bishop can go on for hours, but the Dark Man makes more sense. Either God is crazy, or He isn’t what we think at all.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s just one of those things our brains can’t solve, even with these super computers.”

“I like to think maybe Frawley’s right,” she said, “but I can’t. I’ve seen babies being born, and I look around and see how complicated it all is and I just can’t believe that it came from nothing. I just kind of think sometime that we’re just higher animals in His playground, though, that He never really listens or cares about us except maybe the way a farmer cares about his cows or sheep or pigs. I look back on my life and I’m just going to pretend we’re just animals, anyway. No inhibitions, no thinking, no caring. Think you could pretend, just for a little bit?”

He held her close. “What do you mean?” he asked her softly.

“I want you to pretend that you love me, for just this morning. I want you to pretend that I look like I did back on that oil rig. Just this one last time I want to be kissed all over and do the kissing like we meant it. I want to be naked and feel somebody inside me, going off, exploding there. I want to be loved real hard one last time.”

He felt a tear in his eyes, and he’d seldom felt that before. He would come back, but to an empty house… What the hell could he do but what she wanted and what he wanted to give her?

It looked like a small recreational sailing vessel of the kind seen by the hundreds in the Caribbean. They had not reached it directly, but had left in twos and threes by various means throughout the afternoon and rendezvoused shortly before midnight at a staging point off the Venezuelan coast about thirty miles from the island.

All their supplies and equipment had already been placed on board, and the ship was crewed by three silent young men supplied by King’s base. All but the Nigerian blacked their faces and exposed skin; the African chuckled at their efforts and did an unflattering critique. Of the group, only he and the Bishop seemed not the least bit sullen or worried. Everyone else, including Frawley, seemed to be in a state of high nervous tension.

Under their black clothing, each wore a cross on a chain that had been blessed by the Bishop at a private mass he conducted just for them. Even the Sikh, the Moslem, and Frawley wore them, because, while they weren’t Christian, the enemy was following a Christian script. They might not mean anything at all against the Dark Man or any other, but there was a slight psychological advantage they didn’t want to miss.

The moon was a mere crescent sliver, hardly giving any light at all, and as they sailed they ran into choppier seas and heavier clouds, and the night grew black as pitch.

“Perhaps this is our first sign of divine help,” the Bishop noted, looking at the darkness.

“If, of course, we make it into the lagoon without cracking up and make it up that cliff wall by braille,” Frawley muttered.

“We’ll make it in, sir,” one of the crew whispered to him. “We’ve snuck in and out of there three times already without once being detected, and two nights ago it was just about this bad.”

MacDonald was confident, too, at least of that much. “I kind of expected a cloud cover for tomorrow night, but it looks like they’re starting early to make it look more natural. I think that tomorrow there’s going to be a hell of a rainstorm everywhere around here for twenty or thirty miles except right on the island itself. They don’t want anybody seeing what they’re doing up there.”

The Bishop shrugged. “Whether by heaven or hell, it helps us and hinders them. I glanced at their little radar in there. There are so many false blips from wind and thermals and waves that it looks like a riot of light green. I doubt if anyone could pick us out of it from the surface, and the cover makes it unlikely that we could be picked out by infra-red satellite for a day or two at least, if then.”

“You act pretty confident of success,” Frawley grumbled.

“I am confident only of what God wills, and I don’t know His will in this matter. I am confident only that we are the anointed ones to do this job, and that if we did not at least try He would allow the end to come. I am confident that, starting tomorrow, we will at least know some of the answers.”

MacDonald worked his way back to Maria, who was just sitting there, staring out at the blackness. “Butterflies?” he asked her.

“That and a lot of soreness. I feel like somebody ran a broom handle straight through me and out the ass end.”

He felt embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“No, no! Don’t ever be sorry! I must have done it ten thousand times and that was the first time it ever really counted, ever really meant something.”

He was touched. “That doesn’t sound like an animal talking.”

“No, not an animal. You know, it’s crazy, but after forty five years I think I finally just grew up.”

He took her tiny hand and squeezed it.

“That thing Frawley’s got,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “It’s an A-bomb or something like it, isn’t it? You’re gonna blow the whole island tomorrow.”

“Yes,” he replied, deciding it wasn’t worth hiding any more. “Something like it.”

“All those people…”

“No, it’s not as bad as we thought. It turns out they’ve evacuated the whole town except for a staff. Took them off in small groups over the past several weeks. Where, we don’t know, but definitely incommunicado until November, when I guess they’ll be brought back. They’re using the town to put up a bunch of visitors. The choppers have been coming in and out for days now. It’s a good bet that there will be nobody on that island we don’t know about who’s an innocent party, anyway.”

She sighed. “That makes me feel a little better. You know, it’s funny. I’m not really scared of them any more. No matter what, I’m not really scared of the Dark Man or any of them. I’m just scared of that cliff and that rope ladder. I don’t know if I can make it.”

“You’ll make it,” he told her. “Still, you can back out now. I have to go up and help haul up the stuff and get it in place.”

“I’ll make it,” she told him flatly. “Somehow, I’ll make it.”