Jack L. Chalker - The Messiah Choice.pdf - Jack L. Chalker - margozap

THE MESSIAH CHOICE

Jack L. Chalker

ISBN: 0-812-53290-2

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-6241

e-book ver. 1.0

For August Derleth and Bill Crawford, both gone but not forgotten

SPIDERS AND FLIES

Horrors and monsters are creatures of the night that have no business being up and about on a

bright, warm, sunny morning, or so most think. Few stop and think that should evil rest between

dawn and dusk it would be a far simpler and less dangerous world.

As was his custom, Sir Robert McKenzie arose at half past six in the morning, showered,

dressed, and went down to the Lodge dining area for breakfast. Because he owned the place, and

everything that could be seen or heard around it, he could easily have had his breakfast delivered

to him privately in his luxurious suite at the Lodge, but he disliked the very idea of it. A sociable

man who thought of the Institute as a sort of surrogate family, he would never have dreamed of

cutting himself off from that family, so long as he had any chance to spend time with its

members.

But as was often the case, there were few about when he entered the dining room, and, seeing

no one he really needed to talk to, he took a table by himself. Knowing he was a man of

punctuality who insisted on routine, the staff had his two soft-yolk, sunny-side-up eggs, three fat

sausages, toast, and strawberry jam ready for him, it being Tuesday. A staffer entered, went to

him, and handed him a thick sheaf of computer printouts. It was virtually impossible to get

newspapers delivered to this spot until they were long outdated, but his computer link gave him

photostatic copies of the relevant sections compiled by his global staff. He lingered over juice and

coffee as he read the items one by one. About halfway through the stack of papers he suddenly

stiffened, frowned, then hurriedly polished off the last of his coffee and, tucking the papers under

his arm, he left the dining room and went immediately out the front entrance of the Lodge.

He was a big man with thick snow white hair and a matching moustache, and he was never

inconspicuous. Only Sir Robert would wear a finely tailored tweed suit, long sleeve shirt, and

carefully knotted red necktie in this subtropical heat.

He paused to light a cigar and glanced over at two small electric cars that resembled orange-

colored golf carts, but then decided to walk. Port Kathleen was about a two mile downhill walk,

and either because he was enjoying the fresh air and sun or because he wished to think on some

matter he decided that walking was the way to go. He often liked to walk down to the tiny little

town that was the island's only harbor, although he joked to friends and associates that he was far

better at his age walking down than walking back up. No matter. Both electric cars and horses

were available for the trip back if he required them. After all, he owned not only the Institute but

also the town and, in fact, the whole damn island, all 1.8 by 2.2 miles of it.

Allenby Island was the remnant of a long extinct volcano, one so old that little in the way of

geography would tell the casual visitor its origins and nature. It was shaped somewhat like a

teardrop with a ramp-like terrain; Port Kathleen, at the bottom, was virtually at sea level, while

the Institute, at the far end, stood at an elevation of almost two thousand feet, making it a bit

cooler and breezier than the area below, but not by much.

A lone road snaked back and forth down the vegetation-covered slope formed by an ancient

lava flow to keep the trip from having too severe an elevation for the little electric cars to handle,

though for those afoot or on horseback, there were all sorts of trails, old and new, and short cuts.

Sir Robert kept to the road for almost half the distance down, though occasionally being passed

by a cart going up or dbwn and politely nodding to them as they passed while refusing offers of

rides.

He stopped for a moment at one worn trail head and then took it, instantly plunging into the

dense tropical forest that was the island's true master and owner. The trail eventually reconnected

with the road, but was hardly a short cut down; rather, it was occasionally used as a short cut to

the beach, it being at the highest point up the mountain where it was possible to get down to the

beach without plunging off a rock cliff.

A few hundred yards to the east of the road the trail suddenly broke into the clear, revealing a

small, intimate meadow in which grew bright green grasses and flowers but, for some reason, no

trees or vines or other large shrubs. Botanists had theorized that some mineral either present or

lacking in this particular segment of rock was producing this effect, as there was no

climatological reason for it, but it had never been satisfactorily explained. In the center of the

meadow was an abrupt outcrop of ancient black lava upon which nothing would grow. It was a

huge mass of obsidian or an obsidian-like rock, quick cooled and glassy, and while it was well

worn, its persistence over the eons it must have stood there was another meadow mystery.

There were a great many insects in the forest, and tens of thousands of birds, but no land

animals, big or small. Over the years some rats had come from ships that called, but those who

survived the eradication campaigns and the numerous cats mostly stuck to the more civilized

areas of the island; the jungle was not for tough and world-wise rats any more than it was really

for people.

The sounds of birds and insects were all around him, lifting his spirits and making him feel

truly alive. Not obtrusive, they were simply a comfortable and natural background to this remote

little spot. He approached the glassy black mass and walked around it once, studying it, although

he'd been here and seen it thousands of times before. It had, of course, acquired the nickname "the

altar stone" even before he'd bought the place, although it was clearly a natural formation linked

to larger deposits below. Its rough shape and downward slope could, with a bit of imagination, be

said to resemble a facsimile of the island, complete with a depression down the center. The entire

stone was perhaps eight feet long and three feet wide, a bit too long to be an island model, but

that never stopped anybody.

Sir Robert looked at the depression, walked down to the foot of the stone, then knelt for a

moment and examined something at the base. He stiffened. "That idiotic fanatical bastard!" he

muttered under his breath. "Well, we'll fix him now!"

He got back up and began to walk away from the slone. He was almost at the edge of the

meadow when he suddenly stopped again, turned, and looked puzzled. He could sense a

wrongness, but for a moment he couldn't really place just what was wrong. Then he had it. The

birds, the insects, even the distant roar of breakers and the sound of breezes through the treetops

had ceased. It was as if he were suddenly covered by some huge and invisible bell jar, allowing

sight but nothing else to.penetrate. It was the most unnatural thing he'd ever experienced, and he

had the good sense to be as frightened of it as he was curious about it.

Suddenly he heard a sound, back from the direction of the altar stone. A sharp, odd sequence

that sounded very much like a great door opening, swinging wide, and then being closed again, a

sound coming not really from the stone but from somewhere deep beneath it. Again there was

silence, then the sudden, unmistakable sound of something coming, something huge, as if great

feet were slowly and methodically climbing a great stairway from beneath to the surface.

Sir Robert frowned once more and tried to figure out the nature of it. Broadcast, somehow?

Some sort of beam striking the meadow and making it, or perhaps the stone, some kind of radio

receiver? It made sense. It fit in with all the other known facts. Anger replaced confusion within

him. Just as the ancient shamans had carefully sculpted acoustical canals in their idols so as to

make the masses believe they spoke, he had repeated the trick in a materialistic age using the

most modern techniques. Now, he thought, I understand how it works. Now I know it all.

With that thought came the sudden realization that all this would never have been revealed to

him unless it no longer mattered. Looking around, he entered the trail and the forest but stopped

as the sounds from the meadow made it seem as if some great beast had now reached the top and

was out in the open. It was such a convincing illusion that in spite of himself he stopped, turned,

and looked back at the meadow and the altar stone. Nothing was visible in the eerie silence, but

now, as he looked on, the grass in front of the altar stone bent and twisted as if crushed by an

enormous foot, followed by yet another giant imprint a few yards further on.

Sir Robert turned and began to run down the path. He reached a junction of two trails, one well

worn and leading back to the road, the other leading away towards the cliff trail down to the

beach. He did not hesitate but.took the slightly overgrown cliff trail. The road was his logical

choice, and even if he'd met other people out there it would not stop that madman from killing

them all to get to him. That he would not have. The cliff trail was also the most direct route to the

village, although it was almost never used for that.

There were sounds behind him, sounds of some great beast crashing through the dense

underbrush. Beamed-in illusion or true monster, it made no difference; the thing was almost

certainly death and it was stalking him.

His heart pounding, he broke through the last of the bush and came to the edge of the cliff. It

was more than a hundred foot drop and quite sheer, and he was forced to run along for a few

hundred yards, fearing that the terrible thing, whatever it was, that chased him would spot him

and simply knock him off the cliff. He was determined not to give its controller that satisfaction.

If he could not outrun it, he would make bloody well certain that no verdict of death by accident

or natural causes was possible.

He reached the trail break where it wound down the cliff to the sea and took it, going as fast as

he dared. He was not in top condition, but he was no heart candidate, either. He jumped a few of

the switchbacks when he dared to save time, and heard it break from the trees behind and above

him. He dared not look back, but made for the beach as fast as he could. He jumped the last six

feet into the sand and fell momentarily, then got up and continued to run along the beach towards

the town and also out towards the water.

There was a rocky outcrop ahead, and he knew that the town lay not far beyond it. As he moved

to the water's edge, he suddenly caught sight of the steeple of the small church and felt

encouragement. He might just make it! Slowing, he risked a look back, and saw a huge

disturbance in the sand near the bottom of the beach trail; now the sand was falling away, as if

pressed in by some great weight, a body that had to be twenty feet tall if it existed at all and with

a stride to match. He knew in an instant that he could not make it, and made his way out into the

water. Even now sounds were damped, and the breakers came at him not in silence but as if far

away. He knew the water was quite shallow at this point, but he hoped that the rough water would

diffuse any projection if that was what his stalker was.

The great footprints reached the edge of the water and then began to walk along, paralleling his

progress. He felt suddenly elated. Oho! Don't like the rough water, do you?

Another five minutes and he would be within hailing distance of the town. Another five

minutes of wading in waist-deep water and surviving the occasional high wave and there would

be plenty of witnesses, probably too many for such as this. With the supply boat due in today, his

assassins would miss their chance.

He had nearly reached the outcrop after which the town would be in full view and he was

suddenly feeling confident. He risked stopping for a moment, ten feet or more out, and turned.

"Got you, you bastard!" he yelled back at the apparently empty beach. "You cut it too fine this

time!"

At that moment a huge breaker came in and struck him in the back, propelling him forward,

towards the beach. He stumbled and dropped into the water, losing the papers he'd managed to

cling to, and then picked himself up as quickly as possible. He had been pushed forward a good

four feet!

Suddenly something he could not see grasped him by the head and shoulders and lifted him out

of the water. He was flung by some invisible force fifteen feet or more into the air, dangling and

struggling as if held by some great hand.

The "hand" shifted and held him suspended now by a hold on his waist, and he found himself

lifted still higher, perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet, and brought close over the sands as if

whatever had hold of him was studying him for a moment. He yelled and screamed, hoping that

some noise, anything, would carry to the town that was so very near.

And then the great hand slowly tightened, more and more, and his eyes bulged and his mouth

opened wide, only now it was incapable of sound.

And then the bloody, mangled carcass of what was now hardly recognizable as human remains

dropped to the sands below, out of the reach of the water that might have saved him.

Quite abruptly the area was alive with the screeches of sea birds, the buzz of insects, and the

roar of crashing breakers once more.

JIGSAW

The entire beach area had been covered with a huge patchwork of tarpaulins so that it

resembled a sports stadium field being protected from the rain, though it was in bright sunshine.

Security officers stood at all access points to the beach area, extending from the trail above all

the way to the point at which the body had struck the sands. The body itself had been

photographed and then removed, but all else was as undisturbed as it could be considering the

circumstances.

Two men walked down the beach from town: one a short, burly man built like a barrel with

flaming red hair and an unkempt beard to match, the other tall, athletically built, with a long, lean,

angular face and sharp nose. His long hair was turning a premature dark gray.

"Lucky you were so close and could get here on short notice," commented Constable Julius

"Red" Mathias, the shorter and older of the two men. "I mean, this is the cushiest job in law

enforcement up to now—nothing to enforce and plenty of tropical breezes and really good pay to

boot—but this thing would drive anybody nuts." Mathias had a pronounced Midlands accent

tempered only a bit by being away from Britain so long.

Gregory MacDonald chuckled sourly. "Luck had something to do with it all right, Red, but it

was all bad and all mine."

"Ain't as unlucky as Sir Robert, you might note," the other quipped, sticking an unlit, half-

smoked cigar in his mouth.

MacDonald noted it. "Thought you were going to quit those."

"Y'don't see me smokin', now do you? Call it me pacifier."

They reached the scene and MacDonald was impressed. "Have 'em roll it back a ways, Red," he

instructed. "I want to take a look at what we're really dealing with here."

Red gave a sour laugh and spat. "Oh, this is a winner. A classic, lad. The sort of thing that

makes up all at once for a century or two of crime-free living here."

At the constable's order, the crew began to slowly but professionally roll up the tarps one at a

time, exposing the death scene first.

"Where'd you get all these people, Red?"

"Oh, they's mostly security staff from the Institute. The place is crawlin' with 'em, so why not

use 'em? The others doin' the heavy work are mostly men from the town. Those security fellows

fought like hell my bringin' in the others, but when you see what we got you'll understand why I

didn't feel right just leavin' this all to the Institute boys."

It didn't take long to see what the old cop meant. One look at the tracks with their great stride

told anyone that either this was the most elaborate hoax in criminal history or something was

loose on the tiny island that couldn't possibly be hidden.

"You made casts of the footprints?"

Red nodded. "Yeah. Wait'll you see 'em, Gregory my boy. If that thing's for real, I for one sure

as hell don't want to meet it."

In spite of the sand and the disruptions and, of course, the weight of the tarp, it was clear from

just looking at the things that the old boy was right. MacDonald got out his tape measure and

discovered that the damned things were more than two feet long. He measured the stride, not once

but at almost every point back to the cliff and found them very consistent. Whoever or whatever

did this was very thorough.

Equally revealing was the impression it had made jumping from the top of the trail to the beach

below. MacDonald examined it all and then stood up and shook his head. "Whatever it is, I'd put

it at somewhere around fifteen feet tall and weighing maybe two or three tons. How the hell does

it stand upright without a tail or some other counterbalance? There weren't any drag marks

around, were there. Red?"

"Nope. What you see, allowin' for the necessaries, is what you got. Other than Sir Robert's own

footprints goin' first to the beach and then to the water over there, and the footprints of the pair

that found it all, there was nothin' whatever on the beach but what you see. Of course, there's a lot

of prints now, but they was to lay the tarp and photograph the scene, and it's pretty consistent."

"And one way," MacDonald noted. "This monster—how did it leave? The tracks are clear from

here, then they go almost to the water's edge, walk along it for a bit—I assume that area of no

prints is a high tide mark—and then . . . what? Sir Robert gets into the water, the thing doesn't

enter but tracks him, and then suddenly it gets Sir Robert and flings him a good ten feet inward of

the breakers. So we assume that Sir Robert wasn't far enough out, or somehow came in to where

this thing could reach, and it plucked him out."

"You're soundin' as if you think it was a real creature."

"For now we'll stick with it, but that leaves me with a real problem. Okay, so the thing gets its

claws on Sir Robert, lifts him up, does him in, and drops him on the beach. Now what does it

do?"

"Huh? Um, yeah, I see what y'mean. No return footprints."

"It doesn't fly away—some of the prehistoric monsters bigger than that could do it, but they'd

take a mile of runway at the minimum and really mess up the beach. If somebody hoisted it out,

in broad daylight, such a ship or derrick large enough would be seen by the town or by the whole

damn island and sure as hell couldn't be broken down in—what was the gap?"

"No more'n two hours between death and discovery, or so Doc says."

The younger man nodded. "All right, then. So the only place it might go is into the water—its

stride and the high tide might mask that. But if it could stomach the water, then why didn't it just

wade in after Sir Robert? Why play cat and mouse and then wait to hoist him inland?"

"Maybe it's perverse. Cats like to play with mice and rats a long time before they kill 'em. Who

knows what somethin' like this'd be like?"

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