Jack Chalker - The Messiah Choice

“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.

A figure now appeared on the stage behind, just in front of the great central idol. The figure of a girl, radiant and fresh, dressed in some transparent white silky garment and nothing else. She knelt before the idol, then arose, turned, and looked out at the congregation. The choir and the women and then the congregation started in another rythmic chant. As they did so, she seemed illuminated, the perfection of her body showing and shining through the flimsy white dress. Her large eyes were open wide, but she seemed to be staring off in the distance, oblivious to the crowd, as if fixed on something only she could see. Her expression was fixed and yet relaxed, but there was no smile, or frown, or other hint to reveal her inner thoughts, if indeed she had any.

“Angelique,” MacDonald whispered, for it was she, and not the primitive she had been reduced to, but the true Angelique, skin fair, eyes greenish, with light, reddish-brown hair flowing down past her shoulders.

And now, above the soft chanting, he heard the Dark Man’s voice.

“In the name of Satan Mekratrig, Lord of the Earth; in the name of Lucifuge Rofocale, Emperor and Supreme Ruler of the Underworld, I charge the Princes of the Throne of Dis to come forward and attend this most sacred rite,” uttered the voice of the Dark Man, booming over the meadow and perhaps the whole of the island.

And, out of the air, there began to materialize—shapes.

They were so bizarre and the effect so fascinating that for a moment even MacDonald could do nothing but stare.

First came Ashtoreth, a great, dark shape outlined in fire, astride a great winged horse; then came Mammon, then Theutus, Asmodeus, Abbadon, and Incubus, and lastly Leviathan, rising majestically in the center upon a great throne. They were grand and awesome and, most incredibly, they were not visions of horror nor demonic nightmares but creatures of tremendous beauty and power and grace. They floated eerily above the meadow, then took their places in a line behind the stage.

A thought, a line from someplace, came unbidden to his mind. How great must Heaven be, if such wonderful and majestic angels can still be so great and beautiful and wondrous after their fall from grace…

And now the very sky was lit with swirling cloudlike forms, and there seemed in the clouds, reflecting the various colors on the grass below, to be great faces, faces of other creatures. Faces of demons, and faces of goat-like creatures with eyes of fire, and faces of creatures so bizarre that man had no words to describe them and no similes he could use.

And the faces spoke as they swirled around the island, in a great single voice, saying, “Blessed are the Princes of Hell, for they shall be restored. Blessed are those who serve, for they shall be given the keys to the universe, and heaven and hell, which are outside the universe.”

“In the name of all those who would serve thee unto final victory, we humbly beseech the Lord of the Earth, the Lord of Hell, the Lord of our creation and the true master of mankind who was created in his image, I ask you to appear and to anoint thy vessel for the trials and tribulations to come,” called the Dark Man, and MacDonald, barely able to turn his eyes from the creatures lined up behind the stage, saw that the speaker was now standing at the other end of the altar stone, just beyond the pool of blood.

“In the name of the candlestick throne, which is yours to claim, we plead with thee to appear to us,” the Dark Man continued.

And now there was a sudden collective gasp and sigh from the crowd, and they all turned and looked towards the Institute. The look on their faces was as if they had beheld the face and form of God Himself; total, complete, abject worship and subjugation. They fell upon the ground, and on each other, because there was so little room.

MacDonald could see a glow from that direction, but was unable to turn and see for himself what all, even the Princes, were seeing.

Angelique, too, turned now, and for the first time there was an expression on her face, a softening, as if all doubts and fears were swept away by one glance at whatever it was that hovered over the Institute, and there was even the trace of a smile on her lips.

“Behold, the Master claims his bride, and anoints her Queen of Earth,” said the Dark Man.