Reduced to this, the distance between the Hapharsi and Magellan was not that great at all. “But is there no hope?” she asked it. “Is this, then, the way humanity dies?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. They move deliberately to structure events to fulfill a prophecy. Left unchecked, they will force the final war. In this, you are the key. No army can prevail against them. No long-range determination will break them. The choices given to the few who must fight will be increasingly severe, the price extracted for a temporary respite will be high. They can lose a thousand times. Ten times ten thousand times. They will not stop, and they need win only once. It has been thus before and will be until they prevail.”
“But this need not be the time?”
“This need not be, but without shedding of innocent blood there is no remission. To save yourself is simply to choose the correct path, though that is hardly simple. To save the world requires the ultimate choice, the Messiah Choice. Each in turn will face it, you more than once, but at the right time and the right place it must be made by another.’’
“But we are humans, not gods! We carry the seeds of our imperfections within us! We are no Messiahs, who can take upon ourselves the sins of the world!’’ She thought again of her own private Hell, the hospital, the pain, the total lack of movement, on and on, year after year… She knew, even now, that she could not make such a choice as that.
“To gain strength and inner peace, be one with nature. To reconcile yourself to your condition, you must accept it and embrace it. Renounce all but nature, and gain your power from it alone.”
“The spell can not be broken, then?”
“Any spell can be broken, and will be. But to break it you must face its creator, and that time is not yet, and may or may not be, for choices lie between. It is given only to One to know, and I am not He. If you are true inside yourself, what matter who or what you are? Your choices will shape, but not necessarily determine the outcome. If evil may use the tools of good, then so the reverse is true. Merge with me now, and be cleansed.’’
And she merged and saw the world with eyes that saw what no human’s could. She saw the beauty of every glistening dewdrop on every leaf, and the wonders of color in the ripples of a pond. She saw the beauty in a blade of grass, and felt the awesome power of a storm at sea. She saw and felt the joy and wonder in the faces of innocent children of all races and colors, and shared that wonder herself, becoming again the child of wonder and so beholding this corner of the dominion of God.
She walked in wild abandon with the spirits of the elements, and rode their breezes around the world. The Earth was alive and still wonderful, if one but stopped to see. There was nothing that anyone really needed that nature and the spirits could not provide, yet to mask one’s humanity built a wall between it and nature that obscured the basic truths. And yet, the ordeal was to come, and she was human and as weak as the others. She could deal with the mystic world, but she no longer had a place in the material one.
Maria had been piloting the boat mostly on instinct and the basic directions that were given to her—west southwest—but now she could see lights in the distance and much closer some navigation markers in the water that could only lead to the harbor in the distance.
She was amazed it was really there, and that she had found it so easily. She began to wonder, just a little, if maybe there was more to this magic stuff than she’d thought.
She got down to where she could make out the darker outline of the small and remote island even against the darkness of the night. She had no intention of coming right into town; they would almost certainly have some people watching there.
Instead, at minimum throttle, she worked her way south of the town, since it looked like there was something of a beach there, while the north edge was rocky and had lots of rocks painted white and a few battery powered warning lights.
About a hundred yards out from the beach she cut her engines entirely and tested the direction of the flow. The tide was coming in, by luck, and she was being taken towards the sandy shore.
The boat was now a liability to her, since it could easily be traced back to its origin and would raise signals all over the southern Caribbean. There were drain plugs in the deck, but they looked like they’d need tools and strength to get out and she had nothing.
She raised the rear hood and looked down at the engines. They were tandem outboard motors, and they didn’t have much gas left in them. The accelerator was a simple chain running under the floorboards to the motor throttles, though, and that gave her an idea. She pulled on the chains, getting a fair amount of slack, then tried to run them a little extra way around the metal fittings so that they kept the throttle out. It didn’t hold, and she looked around. There were still some sticks and branches in the boat from their attempt at camouflaging it, and she tried and tested a couple until she got one that she felt, with a twist and a jam in there, would hold out the chains.
She then went forward, took a deep breath, and turned the key, hoping the engines were hot enough to fire with the throttles open.
They were, and did, and the boat took off, away from the beach, throwing her backwards in it. She got up quickly, then jumped overboard, not waiting to think and just praying she’d clear the engines. She went down into the water, then back up, and looked around. She heard the motor sound off in the distance and fading, then looked back at the beach. It was going to be a good half-mile swim, but with the tide.
It still took what little of her strength remained to make it, and when she stood up and walked onto the beach, she collapsed, coughing and breathing hard, and lay there for several minutes recovering, hardly thinking at all.
She knew, though, that she could not remain on the beach all night. This wasn’t Allenby with its company and its guards, but it was civilization of a sort never the less.
She looked at her arm in the dark, and brushed away the sand clinging to it. Maybe it was too dark to read anyway, but she could see nothing there but a few faint marks of blue on her deeply tanned skin. The water had washed away the information it contained.
She tried to remember the words, and couldn’t quite. She sat up, drew her legs to herself and put her arms around her knees and stared out at the dark sea. Oh. Angelique! I made it but I blew it! she thought despairingly.
And suddenly, as if in answer, the information returned. Art Cadell. American. White little house facing the sea with beach. Bessel Island, near little fishing village…
Was this Bessel? It had to be. And here was the beach. But she was all in, and in no condition to go calling in any event. Sandy, nude woman who even MacDonald wouldn’t recognize steps in with this story. She could see it now.