“Perhaps,” said the Bishop. “Perhaps. But there are inconsistencies, holes in it all, as our young friend here pointed out. There’s no room up there for secret laboratories and wide scale experimentation on people. It is a close community and is rather open to all. A think tank, not a place for experimentation. I’ve seen the blueprints. There is no way such labs could have been added without everyone noticing; they take time to build and expert, specialized staffs to maintain. No, my friends, this is the real thing. This is Satan’s work, working through men as he always does. People will regard the Antichrist as a great human being capable of miracles and speaking in God’s name. Our materialism, the materialism of our society, leads us to reject the truth when it stares us in the face. Hell has been handed the opportunity and the method and it is taking advantage of it. Do not dismiss their off-handed powers lightly or try rationalization too much, or we shall lose.”
“Oh, Willie, enough of that spiritualistic clap-trap,” Frawley snorted. “Next thing you’ll say is that since it’s in the Bible we shouldn’t stop it, that it’s our duty to let the world be destroyed or dominated by these madmen.”
“No, we must try and prevent it at all cost. God is not as absolute as all that. Men and women must struggle to the last breath against Satan and retain their trust in the Almighty. God’s mercy saved this brave lad in the church from their pet demon. Still, I can not deny that I worry about our role in this.”
“Eh?” MacDonald felt like an observer at a tennis match.
“The beast shall be delivered a mortal wound by the people of God, and that wound will be healed, or so it says. The beast will be apparently vanquished, then resurrected by the Antichrist. We’ve come far, gentlemen, and we’ve accomplished a lot under their very noses, but I worry that this is partly playing into their hands. I can’t help but wonder if we are the instruments that are to mortally wound the beast in God’s service. We could very well triumph in this and actually advance their own mad cause.”
After so long sleeping on hard straw mats or the harder ground, Angelique found it next to impossible to sleep on a bed even when it was covered with a silk sheet. They had made her slippers which allowed her to walk through the whole of the house, which was mostly carpeted, and that certainly had lifted her spirits, but the clothing was more important to her, as it restored a sense of both freedom and dignity.
She stood there as Maria tied off and put the finishing touches on a beautiful light blue silk dress. It had been designed as a sari, and it gave her an exotic, third-world appearance that seemed almost natural in an international and cosmopolitan setting. It took some time to get used to moving in it, feeling something soft against the skin, but it felt almost sensuous. With a little help—some cleaner and polish for her jewelry, which was welded on, and some dark red lipstick, and a touch of exotic Oriental perfume, she hardly knew herself looking in the full-length mirror. The girl that she saw there was yet a third persona, not the crippled and defenseless girl from Quebec nor the priestess of some ancient time, but rather an attractive, exotic, even sensuous woman from some far off land, who looked quite foreign but even more mysterious and sensual for all that.
The men of the house, even MacDonald, were equally impressed and affected by it, and by the inner change it seemed to bring in her. She felt human again, part of the human race, and it showed.
With Maria’s help in translation, they had quickly worked out a somewhat elaborate sign language for her, so she had a method of communicating even with those she no longer could understand. She was now feeling somewhat irrepressible. She wanted to feel some of that freedom in more than this cloistered setting. She wanted to go out and see this place, this new corner of the world.
At first they were hesitant, but they realized that no one can be a freak and a specimen but so long without going mad. She needed to reclaim her humanity.
The first few forays were brief and in a lot of company—a walk down the narrow streets of Sausalito, feeding the birds on the pier, eating ice cream bought from a vendor. She drew some stares, it was true, but also a lot of admiring glances from strangers, and after she saw some of the normal denizens of the Bay area in their crazy costumes and painted faces, she realized why the location had been chosen.
Ultimately, one of the staff would drive just her and Maria into the city itself. She liked the feel of San Francisco, and liked browsing in the shops, particularly in the silk shops of Chinatown. Maria was always there, dressed in a curly blonde wig and dark glasses, the worldly-wise guide.
Still, she felt only a visitor here, not a part of things. She could read none of the signs, understand none of the prices, and could make no sense at all out of the ceaseless babble around her.
One evening in late September they were walking back to the car as it was growing rapidly dark. They had limited themselves to the daylight, mostly for safety’s sake, but Angelique found she had no sense of time at all and Maria had lost all track of it. The area where they’d parked seemed now full of shadows, dim and deserted.
They didn’t even notice a group of four big, young men on a street corner until, when they were actually at the car and Maria was fumbling for the keys, they were suddenly all around them in the otherwise deserted lot.
Strong hands pushed both women with force up against the car and then turned them around. The four stood there, grinning and leering, and there were knives in the hands of two of them.
“Look, you can take the money, the car. Just go and leave us alone,” Maria told them, trying to sound brave when she was actually scared to death.
“Yeah, well, maybe we take more than that, babe,” said one, obviously the leader. “What’s she? Some kind of Affrican princess or somethin’?”
“Y—yes. African. She doesn’t speak any English.”
“I never had no Af-rican meat before,” one of the others noted. “Not the genuine article. And you, babe, you look good for the bunch of us yourself.”
Angelique could not make out the words, but she felt almost overwhelmed by Maria’s terror and there was no mistaking the intent of the men. She repressed her own fear and mentally called for the spirits to attend her, even in this desolate and unnatural jungle.
One man reached out to undo Maria’s jeans, while another closed on Angelique with intent clear in his mind, and something snapped inside her.
Feet shot out powerfully into one man’s stomach, knocking him back into the one behind. Somehow, in one motion, Angelique had landed on her feet with the knife from the first one in her hand. It was a strange sensation; she was working on instinct and with such speed that the men all seemed to be moving in extreme slow motion.
The knife plunged into the one closest to Maria while Angelique’s body knocked the other away. Although tiny, Angelique had tremendous power and speed. Her sari unraveled and fell away, and as they were getting up to come at her she was already in their midst. She leaped like an antelope, a foot striking one’s Adam’s apple while the other came down, maintaining perfect balance. She whirled, and before another could leap on her the knife in her hand whirled, too.