“Quite so. Well, listen—when you’re ready and able, let me know and I’ll introduce you to SAINT and show you how to use him.”
“Him? It is now a person?”
Sir Reginald looked a bit sheepish. “The voice is masculine, and I hold so many conversations with him, well, it just seems like a person to me, you see.”
“Um—I apologize for the question, but aren’t you sometimes concerned about it?”
“Huh? In what way?”
“I mean, it has more information than a hundred libraries, thinks millions of times faster than we do, and it actually does think and talk. What if it gets—ideas—of its own?”
Sir Reginald chuckled. “My dear, you must forget those hoary old sci fi horror cliches the telly always belches out. First of all, it only does what we tell it to do. It’s not off in a silicon corner hatching plots. SAINT serves and amplifies our own abilities, solves our questions, just like all the machines of the past once did. And if it still gets uppity, we can always pull its plug. Cut its power or simply cut off its air conditioning and watch it fry. I’d hate that—like doing it to one’s child, don’t you know—but it’s frightfully vulnerable.”
Finally the ordeal was over, and just about everyone drifted out. Still there, however, was Father Dobbs, who hadn’t said much more than condolences to this point, and Harold McGraw, her father’s attorney. Both now seemed interested in talking more and neither seemed to realize until then that the other was of similar mind.
“Father, why don’t we go back to my rooms and talk?” she suggested. “Monsieur McGraw, please make yourself comfortable and when we are done I will send for you. Fair enough?”
McGraw nodded and excused himself, and she and the priest went back to the suite. The tall, lean, balding clergyman looked and sounded more like an undertaker than a priest, and seemed to have a dour expression at all times as well. She bade him take a seat on the couch near the windows and waited.
“I hardly know where to begin,” Dobbs said uncertainly. “This has been a real shock to me, you know. I’ve known your father for more than thirty years.”
“Oui. Go on.”
“I—ah—I’m well aware as well that your feelings towards him are, at least, ambivalent.”
“No, I can not say that. I am most definite about my feelings at this point,” she told him coldly.
He got the message. “Miss McKenzie, the fact is that your father was a great man, a genius, and he did a lot of good. A saint, however, he wasn’t, and would never be. He treated you most shabbily, he knew it, he felt guilty about it, but he never changed that. That is one of the great many things in his life that can not be excused save by the mercy of God.”
“You came here, then, to ask me to forgive him? That I can do only in the Christian sense, I fear. As you say, forgiveness of his sins is in God’s hands. I am one of these sins and I am still here. He can not buy with his money what he did not earn with his deeds, yet I will pray for his soul in Purgatory. And my name is Montagne, s’il vous plait. If my father did not wish me to have his name in life I see no reason to change it now. I can pray for understanding on my part and salvation on his, but more than that—no.”
The priest nodded. “That is all that I can ask.”
“But you did not take me aside to talk solely of this.”
“No, that’s true. Miss Me—Montagne, pardon me. Would it shock you to know that your father believed that he might be killed?”
“I have no reason to know one way or the other, but this interests me. Go on.”
“He came to me not long ago—a few weeks at best—and at that time he said that he felt he might be done away with. He didn’t know by who as yet, but he was becoming convinced of it. He felt that he was being followed and monitored by those outside his employ, that they were stalking him.”
“Who is ‘they,’ if I may ask?”
“I wish I knew. But while your father never spoke much of theology, it was all he could talk about that time. I put it down to depression or perhaps an illness unknown to me, or even job stress, but he pressed and pressed. He was particularly concerned with interpretations of the Book of Revelations—the Apocalypse—and on things having to do with Satanism and paganism. I only knew so much and referred him to an expert in the field who’s in England, Bishop Whitely. I don’t know, though, if he ever saw the Bishop, who’s rumored in poor health and had to retire somewhat prematurely, but he told me that if anything violent or mysterious happened to him I was to convey this to you.”
She stared at him. “Do you know why?”
“I’m afraid not, nor do I know why this should be of any importance to you. I merely convey the message as I promised him.”
“This Bishop Whitely—who is he?”
“A noted academic and scholar in the church and quite a conservative theologian for an increasingly liberal denomination. He was formerly Bishop of Durham at Yorkminster, although briefly—that gave him a lordship, and he is about the fourth highest ranking cleric in the Church of England. I don’t really know him at all beyond that. He’s not really connected to the Canadian church. He is, however, an academician—most Bishops of Durham have been—and a former Oxford professor who still does some academic research work. He is also a theological conservative and a mystic, probably more conservative than the average Roman Catholic bishop by some measure. They got into some trouble with that Bishopric the last few times around, with one of them questioning publicly the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ.”
She was shocked. “And they let this man be Bishop of a supposedly Christian church?”
“We all have our problems, I fear, particularly with the hierarchies. Whitely was appointed ultimately to mollify Church conservatives outraged by many of those elevated to Bishoprics in the past couple of decades. That’s all I can tell you about him, except that I only really know him by several books he wrote on the Apocalypse and on prophecy, the occult, and such matters. He is fully as controversial in his own way as his predecessors were in theirs, but he is certainly the world’s foremost expert on those matters that so intrigued your father in his final weeks.”
She thought things over for a moment. “Tell me. Father Dobbs—did my father say anything about a dark man?”
Dobbs looked startled. “Why, now that you mention it, I believe he did! He mentioned something about there being no privacy from the dark man or something like that. I didn’t pay much mind to it, assuming it was a reference to someone in his business that was troubling him. Why? Does this give you more information to go on?”
“I—I do not know. Perhaps. Is there anything else?”
“No, not really, I’m afraid. But—tell me, where do you plan to go from here? Have you given it any thought as yet?”
She shook her head negatively. “I’m afraid not. I think perhaps I will stay here for a while. I have no real home at the moment in any case, and this is a good place to learn what must be learned.”
He nodded. “And keep away from the press. I’m afraid that once the news of Sir Robert’s death came out they scrambled for any and all information on you and discovered some pictures from someplace. They’ve run all over Canadian, American, and probably even New Zealand television and in all the newspapers. I’m told that there’s a standing offer of thousands of dollars to anyone who gets an interview with you and I know that security patrols have intercepted a raftload of reporters attempting to sneak onto this island. Perhaps it’s best you do stay here for a while, until you’re ready to test the waters, as it were. They’re like vultures— ghouls. And they act like you are their property.”