The Messiah Choice (1985) (38 page)

There was clearly one leading inward from the crater's low point, although no exit point was indicated.

"I think I'm going to go talk to Maria again," MacDonald told him, and walked out.

He walked out on the patio and found Bishop Whitely there, reading his Bible but dressed only in a pair of swimming trunks, a Panama hat, and sun glasses. Maria was out on the beach, doing something in the sand.

"Ah, my boy," said the Bishop, putting down his book. "Have you and Pip solved the whole thing for us?"

"Not quite. Uh—how is she today?"

"Mixed," the Bishop replied gravely. "She's right on the edge, Greg. Right on the edge. Do you know what she's doing out there? Building a sand castle. She's got her hair in pigtails, and earlier she asked me if we'd buy her a dog to play with her. She's put on a fairly thick southern American accent and let her grammar go to pot. When she's like this she wants to be called Missy—

apparently a family nickname from when she was this age."

"You mean she's becoming what she looks like?" That worried him.

"I only wish that were true. It would be easier to deal with. No, my boy, she's splitting in two.

When she's Missy she doesn't ask questions or take on airs, she just acts her physical age and that's that. When she has to be Maria, though—when she's forced to be—the change is quite remarkable. We took her on a shopping spree, so to speak, and the two sides were never more evident in what she bought or how it's used."

"I need to ask her questions about the island. How do I get Maria to come out."

He sighed, stood up, and stretched. "You go back in to your little war games there. I'll fetch her, but give her half an hour to get cleaned up. Be warned, though—Maria totally blocks out the idea that she's in a child's body. She doesn't see herself that way, but rather as she was."

"She's going 'round the bend, then. How dependable will she be?"

"Well, that's a matter of opinion. I don't think it's schizophrenia, if that's what you mean. I think it's deliberate, if not totally conscious. It is her way of coping."

Greg nodded worriedly and went back in to Frawley. "O.K.," he said, so we have the caves to deal with, and we have to assume they can get from here to there, maybe several places, without being seen. That just complicates the problem. Still, they wouldn't have let me get all the way to the power plant when I 'invaded' the place if they thought that access posed a security threat. I mean, they could have stopped me without blowing their cover.''

"I agree. Now, that power plant—it is a small experimental fusion reactor, totally self contained?"

"Yeah, that's true. Not very cost efficient in that form, but it allows a totally independent power supply to be fed to the computer and the grids. It's used only for that, though. The power for the basic Institute is still generated by burning oil, which comes in by tanker every six weeks. It seemed wasteful to build a whole pipeline from Port Kathleen up the mountain, so instead a shorter line was installed here, at the base of the cliffs in back of the Institute. A small pumping station takes off the oil and stores it in these two tanks here, at sea level, then pumps it up to the Institute's tanks as needed along this nearly vertical pipeline."

"Uh huh. And the pipeline only goes up two thirds of the way up the sheer cliffs on the north side, I see. That means the tanks themselves are on level six."

"Right. There's a ladder along both sides of the pipe, just in case, but it ends at that point and there's no access to Level Six from the cliffs. The pipe goes in through a hole only big enough for it, and the wall and tanks are on the other side, perhaps a foot or two, whatever was required for stability."

"Monitors?"

"Well, the basic tank and pumping station is unmanned but heavily guarded electronically.

Additionally, there are six all-weather cameras, two of them infra-red types, mounted at various points along the ladders, and sound monitoring gear at various other points. If necessary, they can send a lethal voltage right through those ladders, and they're usually carrying a non-lethal charge to begin with to discourage anyone and also to keep away the birds and other critters that might accidentally set off their alarms."

"It sounds pretty formidable. That's the way you did it last time, though?"

He nodded. "It's the most vulnerable area of the island. I picked a new moon and had a small storm to help, so there was some electrical interference for them to contend with anyway. I wish we had somebody who could arrange a storm this time, since we're locked in to the dates." He sounded sad and wistful saying that, remembering someone who
could
arrange such a storm at will. "I'm pretty sure that they'll have a patrol boat anchored at the dock, too. No, I wouldn't come up the back side, but of the two remaining routes the least chancy—and it's still a dilly—is to come up the west face from this little cove here." He pointed to it on the model. "I'm sure they have no monitoring down there simply because it's where I put in for the day when I escaped, and they never caught me."

"Uh huh. Less of a climb, but still a deuced ordeal, and no ladders."

"It's a bad climb, that's for sure—almost a sheer drop, and complicated by this small but spectacular waterfall here. But it gives some shelter to people below, if we can get a boat in that far past the patrols and radar network, and if one man, a good, experienced climber, could get up there and anchor something. He'd take up a rope, then we'd attach that rope to a good rope or woven synthetic line ladder. With enough people up, we could use the same network to rig a primitive hoist and bring up the equipment."

"We'd be sitting ducks up there until it was all done," Frawley noted. "And the ladder would have to go before we moved anywhere."

"Agreed, but the sitting duck stage in unavoidable no matter how we come in, and as for the ladder—well, you only wanted a one way trip, didn't you?"

Frawley sighed. "Yes. Quite so. All right—now we're up with all the equipment. Now what?

Isn't there a network of security sensors about the cameras strung here and there?"

"Yes. It's called the grid, but it's been there for some time. There are only a couple of cameras up there, in that region, both with heavy duty power packs, since you can't really run power lines.

Their outputs run up to small microwave transmitters sticking out of the treetops, where the signal is beamed back to security and SAINT. King's base assures me that the latest satellite photos still show only those two—one here at the waterfall, the other covering the remaining cabin and pump, where they kept Angelique. That was one extra reason for putting her there. There are a few battery powered microphones as well, including a couple whose existence I'm going to assume since
I
would put them there—one here at the lookout, for example, which is how they knew Angelique was going to escape. Until now, I wasn't really sure how their output got back, since they're not tied into the transmitters for the cameras, but I think I'll get the answer in a few minutes, for I just saw the Bishop waving out the back window. Excuse me."

He went into the living room and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Hi," said Maria softly.

He hadn't even known they made dresses like that in such a small size. She was apparently wearing falsies, and a clinging, smooth satiny dress of dark green material that was split most of the way on both sides. She had let her hair down, applied heavy makeup including eye shadow, rouge, and lipstick, and clip-on dangling earrings. She was even wearing a pair of matching high-heeled shoes in her tiny size. She looked more like a midget whore than a ten year old, he thought, even to the moves, except for the fingernails. Missy, it appeared, bit hers. He remembered the Bishop's caution that she either believed, or pretended, that she was fully adult in this phase, and although he didn't need
this
kind of adult he did indeed need that adult's memory.

He cleared his throat nervously. "Dressing for a night on the town?"

"No, I just wanted to see if you liked it. You don't know just how long it's been since I dressed like this."

"It's—stunning. But I only need the answers to some questions now, things I hope you can tell me."

"Go ahead, Greg. Anything you want."

Uh, yeah,
he thought nervously. He felt like he was in a kiddie porn movie, even though he knew better. "Are there caves underneath the Institute that the Dark Man and his people use?"

She looked surprised, "Uh, yeah, sure. A few."

"Any that start up there or near there and come out elsewhere on the island?"

"Sure. One, anyway. It goes from the chemistry building— what is it, the Carrington Building?—basement over and down almost to the cabin where they kept Angelique. It's how we got all the supplies to her and got in and out without trampling down the forest. No lights—you had to use like miner's hats and big lanterns—but it's smooth and easy. We'd bring the stuff on a hand truck and then it was only twenty feet or so to the cabin. They had it disguised and all at the cabin end. I don't think even Angelique ever found it or knew it was there. They said the old man—Sir Robert, I guess—used it to go from the cabin to the Institute when they were building, but it was bricked up on both ends when they tore the bulk of the cabins down. They just un-bricked it, I guess. It don't look like much from the outside."

He nodded absently. "I want you to take some diagrams of the island and show me every cave you know. Then I want to sit down with you and talk security."

She stared at him. "You're going back, aren't you? You're
really
going back!"

"Well, somebody is. Not necessarily me."

"To kill Angelique?"

"We don't even think she's on the island right now, although it's hard to tell for sure. Let's say we're sending in some folks to try and blow that computer if we can."

"You can't. You can't get near it without it knowing, and you can't even put its lights out without going through it. Nobody goes in or out of there without the mark, and it's something you can't fake. Strictly for the true believers and put on down there by the Dark Man or somebody."

Bishop Whitely entered, still wearing his bathing suit. "Did I hear something about a mark?"

"Yes, sir. It's a crazy looking thing, kind of a six written three times, in three sizes, one a little bigger than another and encircling the smaller one. then encircled itself by the biggest one."

"Indeed. The number of the beast, or one of them. I expected that. How and where is it worn?"

"The forehead, mostly, but occasionally on the wrist. You can't see it most of the time, although they say that ones with it can always see it on others who have it. You could see it in the meadow, though. Real slick and professional, like a purplish tatto, only printed on."

"Makes sense," the Bishop responded. "Now, will you go in and show old Pip whatever it is Greg wants you to? I want to talk to him alone for a minute."

She looked disappointedly at Greg, but he nodded and she complied. When she was in the back room and the door was shut, the Bishop took him over to the patio doors and then out onto the patio itself. "Sit down, my boy."

He took a chair, and waited for the old man to begin.

"You know, I've been thinking about who should go on this little mission, considering what has to be done. I overheard you talk of caves under the island and it's changed the whole nature of the game, I think."

"Oh? How?" As of now, they had been going with a small sailboat handled by but three men.

Two would assist in assembling the bomb and arming it, but would then get away in a small dinghy if they could for pickup at sea. He was, however, already thinking along new and more somber lines as was the Bishop.

"I've always been frightened of the bomb," said the Lord Bishop, "and I've even been involved in disarmament rallies. It kept me popular at Oxford and made my peers in the church think I wasn't
all
Tory. But this thing, this bomb, has to be right and it has to be effective. It's not going to vaporize the island any more than even Hiroshima, devastated as it was, was vaporized, particularly not when placed at the bottom of a cliff."

"We already knew that. Lord Frawley and I were just discussing how to get the bomb and man up top."

"All right—but just how effective will it be, I wonder? What of these caves and lower levels?

It'll sear and huff and puff on the surface, but what about below? Will it kill SAINT when SAINT

is so well insulated? Will those in the tunnels, with their great powers, be able to ride it out and then survive?"

"Well, the best place would be right in the common, and that's out of the question," Greg told him. "The second best would be over at the meadow, and I think that's no more likely. I think, though, that Lord Frawley is considering planting it in another cave that enters the Institute at that level. Most of the blast will still be surface, but enough will go up that tube that it should blow the Institute from the bottom up. Nothing is certain. We don't have the kind of bomb that will do it in, period, although such bombs exist. We haven't the means to steal it, we haven't time to build it, and nobody with one is going to give it to us. I would think an A-bomb about a third the size of what did in the Japanese should be enough."

"But is it, really? If we explode something as terrible as an atomic bomb and then the computer and Angelique somehow emerge after-well, it would do their job nicely and fulfill the prophecy."

"What are you getting at?"

"Two teams. One for the bomb, another for the Institute. An attack launched, let's say, no more than an hour before our bomb goes off. Blow up what we can, kill whoever we can, God forgive me, get as far as we can. In particular, blow the suites, the library, whatever and wherever key people are likely to be. They're expecting something. Let's give it to them."

"A diversion?"

"Yes, indeed. That, and more. Real damage, as far and as far down as we can get."