The Messiah Choice (1985) (7 page)

"But they have a language requirement in university, no?"

"Yeah, they do. I took Spanish—don't know why, except that I had a couple of friends who were neighborhood folk, immigrants from someplace in South America, and the Spanish department was small and they were doing double and triple duty with what assistants they could find. Spanish had do-it-yourself exams. I cheated, that's all. Just plain cheated. Oh, I could remember the day's lessons enough to fake it back, but as soon as I didn't need it any more it was gone."

She laughed, and stifled it only when she saw that it really hurt him to admit all this. "I will tell you what," she said, trying to break his mood, "we will trade handicaps, yes?"

He smiled a bit guiltily. She
did
have a way of putting things in perspective, he had to admit.

He was, however, quite curious about all this. "Can I ask what this is all about? You wanted more than just to see the scene here, and you trusted a complete stranger. Why?"

She thought a moment before answering. "I must trust strangers all the time. I am totally at the mercy of almost everyone. Don't you see how it is for me? I am more than handicapped—I am a talking, thinking head. The machines can do only so much. I must always have others to be extensions of my will. No, no, that sounds bad and I did not mean it to be. Since I was fourteen my life has been a medical complex, a convent, and a very tiny town. I know a lot of people, but since this—condition—happened I have no social life and my friends are friends out of pity or mercy. I am a burden to everyone, and, down there, I lost the only family and the only true friend I ever really had these past seven years. I am an heiress, true, but everyone here is either fearing for his job or currying favor or seeking advantage. I am not a human being to them, either, and I can't be their friend or they mine. One of them killed my father and may have terrible plans for me."

He looked up sharply. "Why do you think that? Just nerves?"

She told him about the dark figure in her father's office, and was pleased when he did not immediately dismiss it.

"It was a man-like shape?" he asked her. "Average height and build?"

"I would say. I only saw it briefly. You do not think I am hysterical?" Her voice was quietly hopeful.

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I might if you were the first, but you aren't. A number of people both at the Institute and in town have reported similar things. They're mostly dismissed, but the evidence accumulates. The villagers call him simply the Dark Man. Some of them think he's a ghost or spirit."

"You mean—my father?"

"No, the sightings predate his death by several months. Some of our scientists have seen him, too. They won't admit it, but you can see it in their faces when the subject comes up. Some references in your father's notes and papers indicate that he, too, had seen it more than once and was trying to track it down. He didn't think it was any spirit, though, and neither do I."

"But you have not personally seen him?"

"No, but your description tallies with the others, leaving out the fear factor."

"Yet he vanished where there was no place to run!"

"I didn't say he was actually there, only that you saw him. We don't know all of the experiments going on up there, and we don't know all the equipment the security forces have and use—but I'd say it's a dead certainty they know just where both of us are right now and even odds they're monitoring this whole conversation somehow. What I don't know is if it connects in any way to your father's murder. It may have everything to do with it—or nothing."

"I am feeling more afraid and uncertain every moment, yet—where can I go? You can see now what I was trying to tell you? Right now, you are the only one on this island who was both not here at the time of the murder and who has no vested interest in his death or my future other than Sister Maria, and I really do not know her all that well, either."

"She's not from the convent?"

"Oh, yes, but she has not been there long. She trained at the Center in Montreal with the kind of equipment I need and use, like this chair, but after I was there. I am a patient to her, not a friend, and if I do not give this all up and return and take my vows she will be gone very quick." She sighed. "Don't you see? It is not my affliction but my position that is the occasion for pity. I am alone.
Monsieur
MacDonald— Greg—what I need is a friend, a
confidant.
You are correct—I truly know you not at all. But you are here, and I need someone. If you are that someone, then I must reach out to you."

He stood there a moment, trying to think.
O.K., MacDonald, this is one turn you didn't
consider, eh? Beautiful, handicapped daughter of murder victim under investigation who stands
to inherit a billion or two pleads for your friendship. Damn it! I didn't even think they'd let me
near
her without ten bodyguards, twenty nurses, and a security force.

And yet, in spite of everything, he really liked her. He hadn't expected to, and certainly hadn't expected her to be what she was, but she had one hell of a mind behind that pretty face, and a willingness to gamble. "All right, Angie. I'll be your friend." He said it sincerely and he meant it.

"Greg—thank you. Now, will you be honest with me?"

"I'll try."

"Do you think you will discover who killed my father?"

He nodded. "Yes, Angie, I think so. It's too spectacular and too messy to cover up forever.

Also, I fear, just because of the way it is done it is the beginning of a plot, not the objective of it.

But even solving it is not justice, nor even proof. It is quite possible that I may never be able to bring them into a dock. It's even possible that it was done on government orders."

"I understand. But—what do you mean, it is only the beginning?"

"Someone went to a lot of trouble to kill him in just this way. There are thousands of ways to kill someone, many undetectable, and Sir Robert was wide open to an inside job anywhere on the island. He could have vanished mysteriously, or choked on a bit of food, or had what looked to be a stroke or heart attack. He might have been blown up, for that matter. Yet whoever did this instead went to great lengths to be a magician, to commit the possible murder by an apparent monster in broad daylight. Why do it in such a spectacular and bizarre manner that I'm only the tip of a huge investigative iceberg?"

"I—I don't know. But tell me truthfully—am I next? Am I the idiot for even thinking of coming here?"

"No, I don't think so. If they wanted you out of the way they could have done it far easier where you were and with few questions. There is also a sword hanging over all of this until the full estate is settled and you can write your own will, if you didn't know. It's why I'm certain that every move we've made, every word we've uttered, has been monitored and why they're almost panicked that you're even this close to the cliff edge."

"Oh, what is that?"

"It's a code—a set of codes, actually, that Sir Robert established not only within SAINT but within the entire corporate complex. No one knows who has the codes, or who can give them—

his open letter to the Directors in the event of his death went into few details, but it is certain that those who have parts of it need only a keyboard, a modem, and a telephone line to send it. In the event of your death before your full legal rights are determined and your full inheritance is worked out, there is no question that those codes will be sent. None. Truscott-Smythe has been working for days on running them down and can't even verify their existence, yet no one really doubts that they are there. Our Japanese friends that I told you about helped devise the system, but can't really find it themselves. If you die, for any reason, and those codes are sent and received by the company's telecommunications network, every single computer data bank will begin to systematically and quickly erase itself.'' She gasped. "But that would collapse the company, yes?"

"More than that. It might collapse a number of weak governments, a huge number of banks and subsidiary and dependent corporations in thirty or more countries, and crash stock markets around the world."

"What men have created they can uncreate, certainly."

"Well, they've started trying, but even the method, which was eventually computer devised, was wiped from the computer's main memory and no single human really knows how he did it. It's risky, but it's brilliant and shows he was thinking of you. He bet that they'd settle all the claims and transfer everything before they could figure out and cancel his codes. And he was smart enough to realize that, with the enormity of the threat, there would be far fewer contests and obstacles in the way of probating. Many governments and much of the western economic community would far prefer you to inherit all than to risk dragging out the proceedings, perhaps for a decade, particularly in your condition."

"It is too—enormous. Again I feel like running back to the Gaspe and hiding."

"It's too late for that, if it ever was time after Sir Robert's death. No, Angie, I'm afraid that the danger to you is real but it isn't death that you must fear. Someone, or some project, was about to be exposed by Sir Robert. They couldn't control him, or outsmart him, so they took him out, betting that the resulting confusion and your inheritance would buy them time. They're betting that you'll take the money and let the experts run the business, which is a good bet. Then they'll either get their own people in top spots to protect themselves or capitalize on your, pardon me, ignorance and naivete and get you to vote them what they need."

"I am both of those, I admit. But if this is true, why did they use a monster?"

"Angie, why were you in such a hurry to make friends with me? To get me on your side?"

"Why, the Dark Man, of course. I was, as you say, naive and ignorant and already fearful of what had befallen me. Alone, in that room, with that—whatever it was—pushed me quickly. I am afraid, Greg, and I admit that."

"And that's probably the answer. Fear and boasting at one and the same time. Fear of person or persons unknown who could do this, in this way, in broad daylight—and a warning that it could happen to any of us at any moment in any one of hundreds of ways. It is a giant sign saying that

'we are in control, not you. We can do anything with impunity, even something as open and bizarre as this. Imagine what we can do to you.' And it's not just for us—you and me—but for the whole island, the whole community, perhaps the whole corporation. Its heads are human, and humans fear the unknown."

"But this puts you in great danger, then! And you are not afraid!"

"Angie," he sighed, "I am literally scared to death."

5

THE SAINT AND THE SINNERS

As MacDonald had predicted, it was a closed coffin affair; a simple burial service for a very complex man. They were all there—not merely the top people at the Institute and Magellan's company men, but also many top corporate leaders from the home office in Seattle including, very briefly and just for the ceremony, the President and Chief Operating Officer, Alan Kimmel Bonner. He was a big, rough-looking man with a huge shock of gray hair that seemed in eternal disarray and a hard, chiseled face. He looked more like the popular perception of a dockworkers'

union president or perhaps a Mafia godfather than the shrewd head of one of the world's largest multinational corporations.

Although he didn't lack for toadies, he spoke only briefly and gruffly to most of the people there, having a few longer and softer words only with Angelique. After the service he was whisked up to the Lodge for a brief conference with Director Byrne and then he was gone. The island regulars could not remember him ever having even visited the island before, and, from his manner and speed of departure, it seemed unlikely that he would repeat the occasion.

They laid Sir Robert to rest, as he had stipulated, in the small graveyard by the tiny village church, his grave facing not the Institute but the sea. It had surprised some that he had instructed an island burial at all, but he had a strong feeling for this place, which was created a fair bit out of his own imagination, and no really strong feelings for anywhere else. There was a family crypt just outside of Halifax, but he had never gotten along much with his father and other family members and had in any event outlived all of them except his daughter.

They had found a dark suit that almost fit MacDonald, and he walked back from the burial towards the town anxious to be rid of it. Angelique would be the titular hostess at a reception at the Lodge later and would be too busy; he decided to skip whatever he could. As he walked towards the small main street of the tiny town, constructed in an earlier era to resemble a Tudor village, he spotted Ross. The security man was just standing there, watching him.

As he approached, the security man said, "You know they're pretty pissed off at you for endangering her like that yesterday. Byrne told Bonner he wanted the authority to fire you for it."

MacDonald stopped and shrugged. "And am I fired?"

"You'd know by now if you were. Hell, you gave her a bigger thrill than she's probably had in years, and charmed the shit out of her in the process. It might be in your best long-term interest to stay away from her for a while, you might know."

"I'll bet. I'm just like the rest of them, though, Ross. When she calls, I got to come."

"Yeah. Sergeant MacDonald of the Yukon, off to the service of distressed damsels, out to lock up the villains and take their own whips to them. Come off it, MacDonald. Give it up. You ain't gonna get a dime of her old man's dough no matter what."

Suppressing an urge to punch out the security man, Mac-Donald stared hard into the other's eyes. "Ross—tell me, are you a total and complete incompetent who should be canned yesterday or are you a willing accessory to murder.''

Ross's composure was slightly shaken. "What the hell does
that
mean?''

"You got the cliff sides wired, you got an electronic security scan system that even includes the beach, yet at ten in the morning the biggest man under your watchful eye gets turned into tomato juice and you don't know why or by whom. I'll bet you can quote every word she and I said to one another, yet you couldn't pick up and scramble on something fifteen or twenty feet tall. Either you are more of an incompetent than you are an asshole or you helped kill him, at least by looking the other way while it was being done. There's no third possibility."