Jack L. Chalker - The Messiah Choice

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newspapers delivered to this spot until they were long outdated, but his computer link gave him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

MacDonald sighed. "I wish I could have seen the body as it was, but I'll look at the pictures.

Never as good as the real thing, but it'll have to do."

"Couldn't be helped, lad. What would y'have me do? Leave Sir Robert there? I mean, it's one

thing if it'd been some janitor, but this was the boss!"

"I understand. You did what you could. The two that found the body—no chance of complicity

in the affair?"

"I'd doubt it. Low-level clerks workin' in the supply system in town, not even Institute folks.

Comin' out here on a slow day to enjoy a few hours beach time on the boss and maybe a little

nookie. Besides, their only prints, to and from, cross a high tide mark after the high tide, so they

couldn't have been here until at least ten thirty, and that's too late."

"Just checking. Anybody who notices something like that doesn't need me, though. You're a

good cop, Mathias." They stopped at the base of the cliff trail. "Okay, they find the body, run

back into town, fetch you and a few others, and you all come running up the beach and see the

scene. Then what?"

"I checked the body and ordered everybody back from the scene. It was some time before I

could tell whose body it was for sure, although I knew from the clothes who it had to be. I sent

me gal Friday, Sandy, back to ring up the Institute and give 'em a tentative I.D. Warned 'em to

come only by the main road and then to the beach, too. They didn't listen. The whole place up

there erupted with security about five minutes later, but I yelled and cussed a blue streak at 'em

and threatened to shoot any one of 'em that came down."

"You don't carry a gun. Even most of them don't."

"Yeah, but in the shock and all they didn't remember that. Otherwise we'd have had a bloody

mess out here instead of a near perfect reconstruction. Those photos, by the way, were done by

the Institute but I doubt if there'll be any funny business with 'em. Took 'em in three dee, so they

should be good'n gory. Got top shots of the whole scene, too."

"Uh huh. But—after you'd gotten all you wanted, did any of them make their own

investigation? I didn't see much sign, although it's hard to tell around the body site."

"Nope. Bunch of 'em spouted stuff into their walkie-talkies and the like, but they didn't even act

all too curious. Of course, I was doin' all the procedures right and they'll have copies of the

photos—probably have sent 'em to everyplace in creation by now."

Together they walked up the trail to the top, trying to retrace the path of the victim. At the top

stood a tall, tanned man in a loud shirt, jeans, and dark sunglasses, a walkie-talkie on his belt.

MacDonald recognized him. "Really nice operation you've got here, Ross," the younger man said

tauntingly. "You're so thorough that nothing less than a fifteen foot prehistoric monster could

chase and kill the boss in broad daylight without anyone seeing. Real secure."

Ross didn't seem pleased. He was an American with a hard New York accent and he looked like

a bad tourist loose in the tropics. "All right, can the sarcasm, MacDonald. We were penetrated

and we blew it."

"Penetrated! I'd say you were invaded!"

"Oh, you don't believe this horse shit about a monster any more than I do and you know it. I

don't know how they did it, but somebody's drinking vodka toasts right now and laughing at us as

we run around looking for sea monsters." His tone dropped and sounded icy and threatening. "I

will know, though. My ass is more on the line than yours."

MacDonald sighed. "Well, let's see what you didn't manage to muck up in your zeal to get here.

Want to come along?"

Ross did, and the three of them started back along the trail. "Not my fault we jumped to get

here," the security man said defensively. "Hell, man, we get word of a gruesome death on the

beach and some preliminary indication that it's Sir Robert. You'd have done the same thing in our

place and you know it. Beats me why you're here anyway."

"I spent several years at homicide back home. You know that. As soon as the identity of the

victim was confirmed the boys at headquarters ran everybody in the company with any sort of

background like that through the computers and came up with a number. Then they matched them

to where they were and my name came up, my being at that time somewhat drunk and disorderly

as befits a vacation about three hours flying time from here. I'm not happy with this, either, Ross,

but the buck got passed to me and I'm it." He stopped and examined the foliage hanging

overhead. "Anybody in your organization tall enough to break those limbs?"

Ross looked up and saw what the company man meant. The trail had been cut with a hand saw

and was kept open the same way with weekly trims, but the area was otherwise overgrown and

the trail had been cleared only to a height of eight or nine feet, the reach of the man with the saw.

From all the signs, something a lot taller and wider than any man had come through here.

"If there ain't no monster they sure as hell went all the way," Red noted.

They reached the junction to the road, but MacDonald followed the signs even though the

foliage was thinning and those signs were getting fewer and fewer and walked up towards the

glen. The ground was hard there, with much exposed rock, and not well suited to footprints.

The glen, however, was a different story. Although the grass had begun to recover, the huge

impressions in the ground of the clearing were still evident, even with a horde of security men

running through. The men didn't weigh two or three tons.

Ross sighed. "There aren't any prints beyond the altar stone," he told the other two resignedly.

"We checked."

MacDonald examined the massive stone carefully, checking all the points where it intersected

the ground. He hadn't paid much attention to the place in previous visits, but it was clear that if

that stone was hinged or moved in any way it had been covered by experts beyond his ability to

expose.

Gregory MacDonald felt quite at ease in what he always thought of as his Sherlock Holmes

disguise, but it had been a long time since he'd had any chance to use it on a real crime. In the

three years since resigning from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, his powers of deduction

had been mostly put to use in testing and designing corporate security plans for the company's

many worldwide enterprises, many of which were security sensitive, and many more of which

were exposed to terrorism and other criminal threats beyond the ability of any single nation's law

enforcement or security apparatus to thoroughly safeguard. Sir Robert had always suspected and

believed that the best policemen were of the same mentality as the best criminals, simply

restrained by moral codes, culture, or nature from working the wrong side of the law.

MacDonald enjoyed his job, but he hadn't expected to be on or near Allenby again for some

time. Although company owned, the island was well defende,d by a multinational professional

security force. Red was basically the company cop, a retired desk sergeant who had served with

Sir Robert in Korea long ago. He took care of white-collar crimes, such as embezzlement,

pilferage, fraud, and the like, having jurisdiction over the twelve hundred men and women on the

island who were company employees and performed the mundane tasks that kept the operation

going. This was really more up Ross's alley than Red's and more in the security force's

jurisdiction, and that fact bothered MacDonald. Why had they so meekly allowed Red to control

the entire investigation? That wasn't like Ross or Jureau, men who loved to be in charge unless

they were ordered otherwise.

Clearly Ross was simmering at being essentially second to MacDonald, whom he hadn't liked

since the company man had taken a small team and penetrated all the way to the Lodge almost a

year earlier. Clearly, too, there was some resentment that the company thought it necessary to

dispatch their own expert to the scene; it suggested that they didn't trust the security force.

MacDonald didn't trust them, either, for it was never clear from whom their orders came or

even from what branch of whose security forces. He couldn't help but wonder if their seeming

lack of interest in this affair didn't indicate a more sinister role in all this. He certainly dismissed

Ross's own idea of the culprit or culprits; Sir Robert, caught alone on that beach, would have been

far more valuable alive than dead.

Once the trio walked back to the main road they had no trouble tracing the victim back to the

Lodge. Many had seen him and spoken to him, and all had been questioned and their

interrogations recorded.

The Institute itself never failed to impress MacDonald, although it was neither pretty nor

natural-looking. It sat atop the highest point of the ancient Caribbean volcano, almost two

thousand feet above the sea. At the far point was the Lodge, a hotel and restaurant for everyone

who worked there, an imposing structure looking much like a British manor house, huge and

imposing. Arranged in a semicircle just in front of the Lodge were six identical two-story

buildings where much of the actual work went on, three on each side of the circle. These were

mostly of red brick with red slate roofs, and all looked rather drab.

The road circled around this complex, forming a center island in front of the Lodge, and here

one could see that something extraordinary was going on. There were seven of them, all facing

southwest, seven enormous dish-shaped antennae with massive feeder and transmission horns

pointed at their cream-colored middles. These were the eyes and ears of the Institute, putting

them in instant two-way communication with six major defense agencies in six countries, as well

as with the Magellan Corporation's own headquarters and far-flung enterprises. More impressive

even than the antennae, though, was what was beneath them.

The town and the Lodge had come first, built by an eccentric British millionaire back in the

days when that term meant something. It was technically under the sovereignty of the Mornkay

Federation, a tiny group of former British-owned islands that together formed one of the smallest

and poorest nations in the world, let alone the Caribbean. Allenby was, in fact, their major tax

base and primary source of revenue, and Magellan ran it as if it was an independent little

kingdom, which for all intents and purposes it was. No Mornkay citizens even lived on the island,

and rather liberal payments that were all that kept the government from complete collapse kept it

that way. The Queen, and perhaps the Governor General didn't need permission to set foot on the

place, but the Prime Minister did.

In front of the Lodge, which had been renovated and turned into its comfortable hotel-like

present existence, there had been a monstrous excavation, and within that hole had been placed a

building no less than two hundred feet tall, lead-shielded and practically bomb-proof. In there,

too, had been placed the most technologically advanced, state of the art supercomputer, the

System for Artificial Intelligence Networking and Telecommunications, or SAINT for short. It

was so advanced, so new, so radical, that it was the latest word in artificial intelligence

computing. Some said it could think for itself, although that was denied. Certainly it was like

nothing else on earth, able not only to sift through enough transmitted data to fill a library as high

as the moon every day, but to actually evaluate and flag what its operators considered important

enough to warrant human attention.

Access was through the six research buildings and tremendous layers of security and a series of

complex, mostly automated booby traps. SAINT was its own master security force, and it was

formidable indeed.

MacDonald went immediately to the building just to the right of the Lodge and then back to the

small but efficient hospital area. Dr. Brenda Andersen was expecting him.

Andersen was a tough, no nonsense sort of woman, a Dane employed by the company who

was, in title, "Resident Surgeon," but was actually a fancy general practitioner, mostly setting an

occasional broken bone and giving out pills for a variety of aches and pains. She and two medics,

one a trained nurse and the other an x-ray technician, handled the medical chores for the entire

island from this small clinic and from a similar one in town. They had provided her with facilities

and equipment sufficient to handle even major surgery, but for anything serious she usually had

patients airlifted by jet helicopter to far more elaborate facilities in one of the nearby friendly

island nations. The doctor was in her mid-forties, no beauty but with strength and character in her

face and manner. She was there, as she herself admitted, as "a refugee from socialized medicine."

"So," she said quietly. "I had some feeling that they would send you." She had a thick accent,

but her command of the language was absolute.

"Bad pennies always return," he responded lightly. "You've done the preliminary autopsy?"

She shrugged. "As much as can be done. The remains are pretty much of a mess. You want to

see them?"

He nodded. "And your conclusion?"

"A wine press could not have done a more complete job," she told him. "Except, of course, it

vas no press, but an encirclement or constriction around the whole of the torso." She reached

down and picked up a blood pressure pad. "More like one of these things the size of a man's torso

that you wrap around and then squeeze until it almost all meets. Or, perhaps, as if crushed to

death by two gigantic, powerful hands."

He nodded soberly. "What the hell have some of you people been experimenting with up here?"

He meant the comment in jest, but she took it seriously.

"Look, you may find that someone here did the job, you may find it was all some sort of fancy

trick, but there are no monsters here. This is a think tank, as you would say, not a place for mad

scientists to build some sort of Frankenstein. Oh, some of these people might well be mad, and

some might even set out to design and build such a thing, but there is no place for them to do it

here. From here they would get the blueprints; it would be built elsevere, far away from this

island."

He put up a hand. "All right, all right. But they do have both a biological laboratory and a

robotics lab here, do they not?"

She nodded. "But the bio lab could not create anything of such size and force, and as for—oh, I

see! You are thinking perhaps a machine."

"It's a possibility. It might not need to be so tall, it might be designed to make absurd tracks

with precision, and it might weigh two or three tons. It also might well be remotely controlled and

would not work well in the water."

She walked over to a cabinet and-opened a door. "Well, it would have to be one very strange

machine to make tracks like this and only this." She took out a huge, heavy plaster cast and laid it

on her desk. "One of the first casts from the beach, brought down here at my instruction."

He gaped at the thing. It was one thing to see the impressions in the sand, another to see what

was made from them. It was a huge print, rather rough and malformed, but still clearly

representative of the shape that made it. It was monstrous, resembling the sort of feet that must

have been on tyrannosaurus Rex or some other bipedal dinosaur of the primeval past. It was

certainly unlike anything either he or the doctor or perhaps anyone else had ever seen before.

"So, what do you think now?" she asked him, sounding a little smug. "Tell me the robot that

could make that."

"Oh, if it was a robot, I'll know it soon enough. I'm running every supplies list for the last three

years past a bunch of clerical assistants. You couldn't hide the physical components needed to

build it, and you could hardly smuggle it in in your suitcase." Still, he thought, there was a way, a

fairly easy way, to have done just that. When one has an experimental prototype computer that's

several stories by a couple of square blocks large and always is being fixed, modified, or

upgraded, who would even notice a few tons of sheet metal and machinery? Only one man might

notice, and he was certainly high on MacDonald's suspect list.

For the moment, though, he put such things aside, and with the doctor went to view the

remains.

"Very little has been noticeably disturbed by the autopsy," the doctor assured him. "When your

subject is already turned almost inside out it is not difficult to do the examination. The experts

that are supposed to be coming in later today will do more to it."

The sight was not a pleasant one. As Andersen had said, the victim had been crushed to death

by persons, mechanisms, or creatures unknown. The lower calves and feet remained reasonably

intact, and the torso was a mess, but it was the head that was hardest to look at. The eyes had

nearly popped out of their sockets, the veins all at the surface, the tongue nearly bitten through—

it was a sight that no one who saw would ever forget. Although he'd seen hundreds of corpses,

including strangulations and mutilations, in his career, MacDonald felt his breakfast in his throat.

Still, he was undeterred and professional about it, forcing it all back for later nightmares. He was

quite well aware that this was the case of a lifetime, the sort of thing that, if solved, would make

him an international celebrity and almost a worldwide legend among detectives in his own time.

This sort of thing fell into the lap of very few detectives, and he knew it.

He was having the time of his life.

He made a slow, methodical examination of the body. "Any sign of foreign material on the

surface or in the wounds?"

"Quite a bit, although nothing that I can not account for in other ways. After all, the contents of

his clothing were also crushed. Still, I assume that the professionals will send everything through

the labs. Nothing remotely resembling lizard scales or metal filings from a killer robot, if that's

what you mean."

He sighed. "Listen, Doc. Something killed this man here, on the beach, less than twenty-four

hours ago. Every single shred of evidence suggests that it was a great prehistoric sort of beast that

suddenly appeared in the meadow, chased Sir Robert down the trail to the beach, then caught and

killed him there and vanished. Now, either such a beast exists, which means it should be easy to

find considering it roams the existing trails in broad daylight, or someone made it seem as if it

exists. If the latter is the case, it would mean that damned near every person on this island had to

be in on it or else it involved some high level of technology right out of science fiction. And that

kind of technology is just what the folks who come and stay here are in the business of dreaming

up. Now, you tell me: which of the three theories would you pursue first? Or do you have

another?"

"I do not," she admitted, "unless you mix in black magic of some sort. If you find the method

you will find the murderer, that is true. But if it is someone who can do this sort of thing, what

defense will you or any of us have if you get close to it?"

"Because," he said, "anybody smart enough to do it is also smart enough to realize that if I go,

an infinite number of replacements will arrive. My main concern is motive. Why do it in such a

flashy way, certain to attract a tremendous amount of attention?" He thought a moment.

"Magellan is a privately held corporation chartered in the United States. Sir Robert owned about

half the existing shares, and as far as I know he never married. I wonder who gets those shares?

They're almost certainly worth billions."

The doctor shrugged. "His heirs, I presume, whoever they may be, unless he left it all to some

home for stray cats. Whoever they are, I wonder if they even know?" She paused a moment. "You

will be here for the funeral?"

"Of course, and beyond that, too. Wouldn't miss it. After all, I'm going to be here for the formal

autopsy." He looked one last time at the remains. "Closed casket ceremony, I bet. The mortician

who could make that even halfway presentable wouldn't be doing cadavers—he'd be painting the

Sistine Chapel at the very least."

THE DAMSEL IS DISTRESSED

The two men stood at the edge of the helipad just down from the Institute and watched the

helicopter come in. It was the company's fanciest model, with all the luxuries and amenities of the

very rich and well connected and jet powered, too.

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THEMESSIAHCHOICEJackL.ChalkerCopyright©1985byJackL.ChalkerISBN:0-812-53290-2LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:85-6241e-bookver.1.0ForAugustDerlethandBillCrawford,bothgonebutnotforgotten1SPIDERSANDFLIESHorrorsandmonstersarecreaturesofthenightthathavenobusinessbeingupandaboutonabright,warm,sunnymorni...

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