Jack Chalker - The Messiah Choice

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.