Part Two
THE SHE-JUDAS
Chapter 16
For the indignation of the She-God is upon all nations of men, and her fury upon all their armies; she hath utterly destroyed them, she hath delivered them to the slaughter.
—Isaiah 34:2, as amended in the
Holy Women’s Bible
During the arrival of the UWW military force and the battle against the Libyans, Dixie Lou made her move. “Hurry, hurry!” she exhorted the councilwomen, guards, translators, and matrons—and the one child they had to watch among them.
In the midst of it all, Deborah Marvel stuffed her own things into a pack. She didn’t have much in the way of possessions, just a small travel bag and a toiletry kit grabbed hurriedly during the escape from Monte Konos, along with a paperback novel that had been given to her by one of the pilots.
Angrily, Dixie Lou hurled a rock at a burly female soldier she didn’t think was working quickly enough to gather up camp supplies, hitting her squarely in the chest. The woman, who had dark facial hair and a scowl set deeply into her features, quickened her pace.
Carrying her pack and camp supplies to the command helicopter, Deborah grimaced, but knew to keep her opinion to herself. For years she had been Dixie Lou’s staunchest ally, voting with her at council meetings almost all of the time—believing in Dixie Lou’s vision for the UWW and for the welfare of women. As a reward for this support, Dixie Lou had promised to make her second in command in the UWW, the most powerful of all councilmembers and answering only to the Chairwoman herself.
But Deborah was beginning to wonder if she had made a Faustian bargain, if she had sold her soul to the devil. Dixie Lou had changed for the worse since replacing Amy, and had become increasingly brutal. The way she left Katherine Pangalos and five other councilwomen back at Monte Konos—all women with a history of voting against Dixie Lou in council matters. Hardly a coincidence, and they were probably all dead now, in the BOI military attack. Deborah also didn’t like the way Dixie Lou treated the she-apostles, using cruel forms of persuasion on them.
For now, Deborah was committed, though she would keep her eyes open.
She saw the fires of downed aircraft out on the desert. The Libyans had not sent enough firepower, at least not this time. Something exploded in the distance, and everyone hurried into the UWW vessels. Moments later Deborah was airborne, sitting with Dixie Lou aboard the command aircraft. Through the porthole the troubled councilwoman saw the blinking lights of scores of planes and VTOLs, all sleek and black in an assortment of shapes.
Inside some of them were children who had been brought along at Dixie Lou’s command, in all a dozen females around the ages of the authentic she-apostles, including the phony Martha of Galilee. They were human props to be used by the Chairwoman in the next stage of her plan.
Human props
, Deborah thought, agitated by this.
Am I one as well?
Sitting alone in the forward section of the passenger compartment, Dixie Lou was working on a speech, looking at herself in a mirror attached to a seat-back and using a recording cube to play back her own words. The speech, at least the parts Deborah overheard, concerned the creation of the
Holy Women’s Bible
and the “glorious” future of women. But the Chairwoman seemed to be in an even edgier mood than usual, and made a number of rude remarks to her aides and councilwomen, who subsequently tried to avoid her.
* * *
As the aircraft lifted into the afternoon sky, the Arab woman Malia came into Lori’s camouflaged camp, and said it was Dixie Lou leaving with a large UWW force. Malia also described the battle with Libyan forces. Lori’s first reaction was that this freed her up to take off herself without being detected, but she wondered if it could be a trick.
“Where is Dixie Lou going?” Lori asked, noting other Arabs milling about at the edge of the camp.
“North,” Malia said. “Out over the Mediterranean.”
“Toward Europe? But why?”
“I’ve brought someone who might know,” Malia said, nodding toward the robed people who had accompanied her.
At a gesture from Malia, one of the group stepped forward and tossed back the hood of his dark gray robe. Lori did a double take, then squealed with delight as she made the recognition.
“Alex!”
They ran to each other and hugged. She felt the hardness of the young black man’s muscles, lifted her lips to his and they kissed. Behind Alex, she saw Liz Torrence and Siana Harui, and she smiled at them. Crying out with happiness, Fujiko rushed to her daughter. “My baby! My baby!” Fujiko said.
“And you’re a baby, too,” Alex said, grinning at Lori, “still too young for me.”
“But now we have a chaperone,” Lori said, glancing over at Rea Janeg, who was serving a plate of figs and dates to the she-apostles, food that had been brought to the camp by nearby villagers. “She looks pretty tough, eh?”
“We’ll need her,” Alex said, giving her a playful nudge.
“How did you get away?” Lori asked, watching the little towhead Candace holding a fig, chewing around the edges of it.
“We ran off when they weren’t looking. The Arabs found us this morning.” Lori saw him gazing at the departing aircraft. She could barely hear their engines and rotors.
Alex updated her on the events in the other camp, including the conversation he overheard between Deborah Marvel and Nancy Winters, and how they did not like the idea of a fake twelfth she-apostle, because it could severely damage the UWW cause by discrediting it. He also told Lori he didn’t know where his mother was going, but said, “At last we’re free of her.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I have a bad feeling.”
* * *
Lori knew that she could not remain in the desert any longer, not after the battle in which Libyan aircraft were destroyed. Soon the authorities would be crawling all over the place, searching for evidence, making accusations.
But she had another important decision to make. Which direction should she go? Rea Janeg had assured her that the helicopter—with its long range fuel tanks—could still fly a considerable distance. Rea even drew a radius on a map, showing how far they could go with their remaining fuel. If necessary, they could fly to Spain, Germany, Turkey, or south into the heart of Africa, as far as Lake Chad.
While considering the options, Lori spent time that evening with the eleven she-apostles. Together, they walked out on the sand beneath the starlight, a short distance from the helicopter.
As one, they paused and formed a line, gazing to the north, in the direction the UWW aircraft had taken. Lori stood in the middle, with five children on one side and six on the other. As Lori knelt and held hands with the toddler Mary Magdalene and the baby Abigail on either side of her, she remembered what the latter had told her three days ago: “To speak the special tongue of the she-apostles you must learn to think without words. . . .”
All of them linked hands. Moments passed, and without the exchange of words, the answer came to Lori. She would leave first thing in the morning and follow the same route, across the Mediterranean. They were going to Rome.
Afterward, when she returned to camp and separated from the children, Lori had her doubts about the decision she had made. It had not been at all logical; in retrospect she could think of many reasons to take an entirely different route, getting as far away from Dixie Lou Jackson as she could, finding a safe place for the children. But that portion of her brain, with its capacity for sound reasoning, could not see into the realm where she needed to find such answers.
The whole concept of safety is an illusion
, she realized.
* * *
For several days, Raffaela and Arsinio Inez had been vacationing, a welcome respite from the rigors of their professional lives. Time and time again, however, their conversation turned to the young peasant woman staying with them, and her most unusual child.
“We need to consult with someone on this,” Arsinio said one day, as he and his wife stood at the living room window, gazing out onto a tropical, sunlit yard. It was late morning, with the moisture of recent rains evaporating from the broad green leaves of plants, forming a mist over the jungle. “You know some people at the university who should be able to offer good advice.”
She shook her head. “We need to be extremely careful about this. Let’s just assume for a moment that she’s right.” A woman who did not mince words, Raffaela was brilliant, with a unique ability to identify and hone in on important points. “Just think about that for a moment.”
“All right.”
The baby was asleep in the guest bedroom while Consuela was out with the boys at the beach, where they were teaching her how to ride a surfboard. For the occasion, Raffaela had taken the young woman into town the day before and purchased a swimsuit for her. Consuela had never owned one before, but said she knew how to swim, since she’d grown up near a lake where she’d gone swimming nude with other children. In the swimsuit she had looked quite lovely, with a pleasing figure. Gilberto and Jose had been only too happy to act as her beach escorts.
Arsinio cleared his throat, as he often did. “OK, I thought about it. Let’s just assume for a moment that she’s right. What are you driving at?”
“Just listening to Consuela,” Raffaela said, “it’s difficult to believe what she’s saying, her outlandish story of a harrowing escape from death when she and her baby were attacked inside a church.
In a church?
Impossible, my mind tells me. Her words are not convincing enough, not even with her terrified demeanor. But when all of this is added to the peculiar, even bizarre behavior of her baby, it gives me pause.”
“You’re saying it all adds up to something?”
The large woman nodded. “My darling, we lead sheltered lives. Each day you go to your office and decide what to export and how much to charge, while I go to the university and lecture students. But beyond our safe cocoons, our sheltered, predictable social life and pleasant vacation trips to the coast, there is a more dangerous realm, where strange and inexplicable events occur.”
“You’re saying you believe her, that she’s really being chased by ‘bad doctors?’”
“I don’t know, but you have to admit her baby
is
unusual. That could mean something. I’d like to hear a translation of what little Marta is saying. It doesn’t sound random to me; I hear a rhythm and a cadence, like a language. From a child who is only seven months old! And her eyes are so alert, so probing.”
“All right,” Arsinio said. “Let’s assume for a moment that bad people—real doctors or doctors in disguise—want this child. For what, I can’t imagine.”
“I can.”
Surprised, he looked at her.
“While we were in town, I bought a newspaper. A story on page two jumped out at me. It’s about the new
Holy Women’s Bible
. You said something to me about it the other day.”
“Just what I overheard at the
mercado
about some crazy women who put together a heretical book. The Pope says it’s evil, that no good Catholic should look at it.”
“Did you hear about the children?” she asked.
He looked at her blankly.
She handed the newspaper to him, folded open to the story. “Read the part I circled first.”
Her husband did so, studying three circled paragraphs. “Could it be?” he asked, as he finished. “They babble in a strange language—” He looked toward the bedroom where the child slept.
Raffaela nodded.
“But the UWW already has twelve she-apostles, it says here.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “I heard on the radio that a guard accused Dixie Lou Jackson of using a fake she-apostle, of falsifying part of their
Holy Women’s Bible
. If one of them is fake, it leaves eleven real ones. Or, there are really thirteen of them.”
“Don’t get drawn into this, Raffy. The
Bible
says there were only twelve apostles, and all were men.”
“We’re already drawn into this,
mi esposo
, and we need to be extremely careful. Consuela said a woman attacked her in the church, firing a gun. I don’t think we should tell anyone about the baby yet.”
“Well, the boys aren’t talking. Consuela pleaded with them not to, and they’re taking her seriously. For now, the secret is safe.”
“Yes, but for how long? I’m very worried about this, Arsinio, very worried.”
* * *
After a four hour flight, the formation of aircraft landed at a private airstrip near a large city, the twinkling lights of which Deborah Marvel could see across an expanse of water.
The passengers disembarked and hurried into black, shiny motor homes, said by a UWW officer to have stealth capabilities, as did the aircraft in which the group had flown here. Dixie Lou entered a large vehicle, while Deborah and the other councilwomen were escorted to a smaller one, accompanied by a muscular female driver. Deborah sat in the back, a plush blue velvet enclosure with leather bucket seats. The air smelled factory-new.
Security was everywhere, heavily armed women in pale gold uniforms with UWW patches on their lapels and sleeves. With Dixie Lou’s motor home in the lead, the caravan rolled toward the city specified by Dixie Lou when she described her plan to the council.
Roma . . . Rome, Italy.
The motor homes slipped into underground parking slots, beneath a television station building. Dixie Lou, wearing a heavy black coat, boarded an elevator, followed by her entourage of women carrying twelve imitation she-apostles.
She had an appointment for a recording session.
Chapter 17
Nothing is more destructive than righteous energy.
—Finding of the U.S. War Commission, a non-profit think-tank
Pope Rodrigo stepped back from the videophone image as loud, angry words poured across the connection, like a shrieking storm. Even though he was the most powerful, most influential religious leader in the world, he still had to endure this—his aged, senile mother in one of her moods. He closed a folder, pushed it to one side of the wide desk top and looked at the image of his tiny, stooped mother.
This was the office of one of his cardinals, who had gracefully loaned it to him while remodeling work was being performed in the papal offices. It was one of the last renovation tasks in an extensive schedule of construction and rearranging that had been ongoing for more than five years, throughout Vatican City. The changes had been controversial, as some purists criticized altering the arrangement of furnishings and art works that had been untouched for centuries, except for cleaning and repairs. But Pope Rodrigo had ignored the naysayers, and all of the cardinals agreed with him that the world headquarters of the old church needed to be refreshed. During the work, the catalogue of art pieces was continually updated, as were the Vatican maps, so that the public could keep track of where priceless artworks were now being kept.
“You’re such a big shot now,” his elderly mother said, in her native Catalonian Spanish, which her family had spoken for centuries. “You don’t come and see me anymore, so I always have to take the train to Vatican City. That’s a long way for an old lady to travel.”
He responded in the same dialect. “Mama, I’m busy. You know how it is. I’ve tried to explain so many times.” Nervously, he spun an ink pen on the high-polished mahogany and inlaid-pearl desk top. The office was dimly illuminated by porcelain table lamps. Through his window he saw the lights of Rome, outlining the modern and ancient structures. The “Eternal City” that had survived for so many centuries, and seen so many political changes.
“How many mothers do you have, Rodrigo?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Do I? For all I know, with your influence upstairs you have another mother on order, to take my place. A nice old lady, she’ll probably bring you
bollos
, the little sweet cakes you love.”
“Mama, you know that’s not true. You’re my one and only.”
“Then come to Segovia and visit me.”
He sighed. “I will.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise. I’ll check my schedule.” With the pen, he doodled on a piece of parchment, occasionally dipping the writing instrument in an inkwell for replenishment.
“Rearrange things if you have to. Cancel the President of France and the Prime Minister of Canada. Come and see your mother instead. I may not have much longer to live.”
“You’re in perfect health.”
“Perfect health for a ninety-eight-year-old lady isn’t so great. When may I expect you?”
“Soon, Mama, I promise.”
As he completed the call and shut off the connection it occurred to him, as it had before, how much she resembled the outlandish, Gaudi-designed apartment building in which she lived. An art piece to some and an eyesore to others, it had molded stucco walls without any perceptible uniformity and a fantasy park on the rooftop. He disliked the bizarre place, but she refused to leave it.
Emerging from the office into the mosaic-tiled reception area, he saw Sister Meryl sitting on a bench, with a thick, rough-bound book open on her lap. A tiny woman with large eyes, she wore a black habit with white trim around the hood.
He cleared his throat in an indignant fashion.
Startled, she closed the book and stood up. “Your Holiness, I brought the heretical material you requested. It has been printed from the Internet. I was just checking the page numbering to make sure it’s all here.”
“It looked like you were reading it.”
“I would never read blasphemy, Your Holiness.”
“Oh? And
I
would?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that everyone knows that this
Holy Women’s Bible
is ungodly. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“Then it’s your sacred duty not to listen.”
She bowed, and handed him the heavy volume, which had an unmarked cover.
As the Pope hurried to his office he took a deep, agitated breath. Previously he’d seen only a packet of draft pages obtained for him by a Greek priest, a computer printout comprising only a portion of the profane tome. Now he was anxious to see the complete version. He wouldn’t read all of it, just enough to select the most sacrilegious sections, which he would publicly condemn from the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica.
He collapsed into the leather chair at his immense desk and wished God had never permitted the hadean invention of computers. The devices were causing a lot of trouble, especially when combined with the Internet, making the Pope’s job much more difficult. He’d never learned to operate one himself, and never would, especially after this. Perhaps with prayer, God would find a way to rid the world of them.
The
Holy Women’s Bible
lay in front of him, an ominous presence. He flipped it open to the title page, then looked away. That nun had been behaving strangely. Should he have her investigated? She was a
woman
, after all, and these days a man—even a servant of God—could not be too careful. A lot was at stake.
For long moments, seeking inspiration, he stared at a fifteenth century painting of the bearded Jesus.
No
, he finally told himself.
I’m just acting paranoid. It has nothing to do with Sister Meryl
.
He glanced down at the desktop, at the folder he’d been reading before his mother called. His fingers tapped the gold Vatican seal imprinted on the cover. Inside was a letter. One of those arriving periodically on his desk, it had been scrutinized at lower levels of the church bureaucracy and referred higher and higher, each time with a comment sheet and recommendations, seven of which were now in the folder. Another problem . . . so many of them nowadays.
He reread the suggestions, then scanned the letter again, which had been written by President Markwether’s brother. Odd sort of fellow, Zack Markwether, and most peculiar that he would send the letter directly, instead of passing it through channels. This had not come from the President of the United States, as it bore no cover letter from that office. Filled with recommendations to tighten security, the letter had at first annoyed the Pope, and then—after further study—he had been frightened by it. Could the allegations possibly be true? Were there really gaping holes in Vatican security, dangerous oversights that were large enough to steer an ocean liner through? Such impertinent wording, but what if the man was right?
He sighed, looked at a medieval sculpture that depicted the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. The gaze of the Madonna seemed to be focused directly on him, and for the first time her eyes were not filled with compassion and love. Instead he saw—or
thought
he saw—worry in them, and fear.
With a smooth stroke of the pen, the Pope wrote an order to the Chief of Vatican Security, Aldo Gasperi. Then he turned to the other problem, the book of heresy.