“I disagree! Despite the short-term reversals, eventually we could infiltrate every army, navy, and air force in the world. We can rule the planet, Councilwoman Marvel! Think of the power we would have!”
“We should be thinking in terms of responsibility, not of power.”
“Don’t quote Amy to me,” the Chairwoman said, referring to a limited edition handbook written by Amy Angkor-Billings. “I don’t need a conscience.” She stared into her empty wine glass.
A great clamor arose outside, bullhorns and crowd noises. The two women hurried to the office window and pulled open a heavy drape, providing them with a vantage of the eastern approaches to Vatican City. At the NATO barricades thousands of people were milling, stretching as far as the eye could see. Some stood atop cars and trucks, and more packed the rooftops.
Dixie Lou threw open the window, allowing her to hear chanting from the crowd.
“Dixie Lou! . . . Dixie Lou! . . . Dixie Lou!”
Leaning out of the window, the most famous woman in the world shouted ecstatically to the throng, the front edge of which was perhaps a hundred meters away. They noticed her, and the crowd noises increased, and became more unruly. Sirens began to whine in the distance.
In the mass of people, Deborah saw a number of anti-Dixie Lou Jackson signs, and more of them streaming toward the front of the throng, like a river in their midst, pushing people out of the way. Fights broke out.
Seeing only what she wanted to see, the Chairwoman exclaimed, “Today the Vatican, tomorrow the world!”
Chapter 30
There are dead people in her past.
—From a BOI report on Dixie Lou Jackson
The following day, Dixie Lou Jackson presided over her council from the bronze Throne of St. Peter, inside the cavernous basilica. She held the unsheathed Sword of She-God on her lap, a weapon with newly fitted rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds.
Looking up at her, Deborah held an old fashioned clipboard, with a document attached to it. “I have the provisions report you asked for,” she said. “As you know, Chairwoman, we’re under siege, and it’s not the first time that’s occurred here. In 1082 Pope Gregory VII held out against King Henry IV of Germany, and in—”
“Don’t waste my time with useless information!” Dixie Lou thundered. “Who cares about the history of the Vatican?” She rapped the sword on the bronze arms of the regal throne. “Just give me what I ordered.”
“We have enough food and water for at least seven years, and enough wine for eternity.”
“The Catholics do like their grape juice, don’t they?”
Tight smile. “Yes, they do.”
“Seven years,” Dixie Lou mused. “That’s a lot of time.”
“Not historically. They may just decide to wait us out, and we can’t extend our time by anything appreciable. If we try to move provisions in through the hidden passages, they’re sure to be discovered and shut down.”
“If NATO pushes this siege, we destroy everything—the Dome of St. Peter’s, in the Sistine Chapel, all of it.” She brought out the detonator in her pocket and held it up in the air. “Boom!” she said. “And they all fall down.”
“Your other bargaining chip—Pope Rodrigo—may not last that long. He’s seventy-nine and deteriorating under stress.”
“Well, get him a doctor. Pump wine into him intravenously. Whatever it takes to keep him going.” She stared at the detonator for a moment, then put it back in her pocket.
Deborah didn’t find the Chairwoman funny. She was in a particularly cruel mood, cracking facetious jokes. Deborah herself had engaged in a number of conversations with the Pope and liked him, despite his tendency to sermonize. If the truth be told, she enjoyed his company a lot more than that of Dixie Lou, and always tried to make him as comfortable as possible. A distinguished gentleman with impeccable manners, he seemed to appreciate her efforts.
“Incidentally, I think those battle reports we’ve been getting are a fraud,” Dixie Lou said. “Someone has broken our Internet encryptions. I’ll bet our forces are actually winning.”
“But our codes are unbreakable.”
Pursing her lips, Dixie Lou nodded in resignation. “You’re right, so it must all be true, and true that the allied nations are attacking the BOI, too. What do you hear about the submarine we have under construction in India?”
“It’s behind schedule. Trouble getting parts, and costs keep going up.”
“Tell them hurry up. I want to load it with nukes.”
“We don’t have any nuclear capability,” Deborah said, startled. “It’s only a conventional submarine.”
“I was just kidding,” Dixie Lou said.
But the comment bothered Deborah, making her wonder if this crazy woman had secret nuclear weapons somewhere, and she was trying to get a delivery system for them. There had been rumors, and she was clearly insane.
“We need to be very careful not to make any public comments that sound threatening,” Deborah said. “We’ve gained slightly in public opinion polls, but we probably can’t get much above our present thirty-two percent, not with all of the inflamed Christians. It’s bad enough what we’ve already done, but if we start talking about nuclear weapons we’ll be universally loathed. Everything we’ve worked for: the
Holy Women’s Bible
, better lives for women, all will be lost. . . .”
Although Dixie Lou appreciated Deborah’s wise counsel, she didn’t always appreciate her directness, which sometimes bordered on lack of respect. “We should put our approval rating on a wall graph,” Dixie Lou said. “I want to see it rise. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Chairwoman.”
In her mind’s eye, Dixie Lou tried to envision how her Vatican adventure would play out for history . . . for
her
story, as she liked to say it in public now, having purloined credit for the phrase from Amy Angkor-Billings. The way Dixie Lou Jackson held out in the holy city against overwhelming NATO forces would become as legendary as her time spent in the desert, or as the years she devoted to Monte Konos. She began to think about a name for the Tunisian desert place where she’d fled with the she-apostles, and about a new name for the Vatican—appellations that would extol the virtues of the women’s movement and especially of herself.
Returning to awareness, she noticed Deborah Marvel gazing up at her, awaiting her command. This would be a good time for Dixie Lou to pull one of the surprises she enjoyed so much.
“Hereafter you shall be known as Cardinal Marvel,” the woman on the throne announced, in her most somber tone. “Step forward.”
Perplexed, Deborah did so.
Leaning down from the high chair, Dixie Lou touched the tip of the Sword of She-God to Deborah’s forehead, and said, “There, it is done.”
“What is this all about, Madam Chairwoman?”
Like a scolding teacher, Dixie Lou shook her head. “Henceforth I am to be referred to as Grand Messenger of the Holy She. The UWW is disbanded, in favor of this new, more appropriate umbrella organization. The Holy She. Has a nice sound to it, don’t you think, infinitely better than the Holy See they used to call this place?”
“I had no idea you were contemplating such a change. Shouldn’t we discuss it more, consider the public relations consequences and other aspects?”
“You sound like a scratched record, repeating the same thing over and over.” Her voice took on a mocking, mimicking tone: “ What will the public say? Shouldn’t we discuss it in council? Don’t you want additional opinions? The charter requires this or that—But Deborah, has it occurred to you that there is no charter, because the UWW no longer exists? It’s a whole new ballgame, Cardinal, and you’d better get used to it.”
“I don’t mean to question your decision, uh, Grand Messenger.”
“Then go forth and announce it to the other seven. They are all cardinals, too, and you are first among them.”
“I appreciate that, Grand Messenger.”
“That’s all,” the Grand Messenger said, noting that Deborah was staring blankly at her, with her blue eyes glazed over. “I must prepare for a proclamation this afternoon, notifying the world of my decisions.”
“Yes, Grand Messenger,” Deborah said..
As the newly appointed Cardinal departed, Dixie Lou told herself that she didn’t entirely trust her, despite her years of loyal service. If she’d learned anything at all in her lifetime, the self-anointed Grand Messenger knew that things changed, and often not for the better.
* * *
The blonde woman ran up the narrow interior staircase that led to the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, five hundred thirty-seven steps. She wore purple jogging shorts, a matching tee shirt, and a headband. As a jogger, Deborah Marvel saw a lot of the Vatican that most people never saw. She enjoyed exploring nooks and crannies.
Reaching the outdoor viewing deck on top, she was breathing hard. She ran in place while a female soldier watched her from a rocket launcher position, one of three on this level. The other two were out of sight, around the curve of the deck.
Gazing out at the smog-choked, pewter-blue sky of Rome, Deborah saw the NATO military encampments along the Via della Conciliazione and other streets leading to the Vatican. Tanks and artillery pieces had high-caliber guns aimed at St. Peter’s, and she wondered if this revered holy site—built so many centuries ago—would be destroyed, tragically. An artillery shell could blow off the top of the Basilica at any moment, killing her instantly, along with the UWW soldiers in the defensive nests up there.
Actually she might welcome death, to free her of her problems, especially her own feeling that she should have done more to prevent Dixie Lou Jackson from wreaking such havoc on the world. But she didn’t know what she could have done, and her own death would only make Dixie Lou worse. Sometimes the woman did listen to Deborah, though examples of that were diminishing.
And I can’t attack her physically
, Deborah thought,
or she could set off the explosives.
At the sound of something behind her, she turned and was surprised to see Dixie Lou herself, dressed in running clothes, emerge from the stairway and reach the viewing deck. Earlier Deborah had seen her jogging in the Piazza di San Pietro, but thought she didn’t want to undertake the steep climb to the top of the cathedral.
“Not bad, eh?” Dixie Lou said, breathing hard. “You didn’t think you could outdo me, did you?”
“No, ma’am. I’ve never considered anything like that.”
“I wonder, old friend. I wonder.”
Deborah tried to put on a cheerful expression, but her mind was filled with troubling thoughts. Atop this holiest of all Christian shrines, stretching toward the heavens, she considered the fate of her soul, and of Dixie Lou’s, and of the Pope’s. Their time on this earth might be over soon. It had been a terrible mistake for the UWW to attack the Vatican, a sacrilege.
“What are you thinking about?” Dixie Lou asked.
“Nothing much. Just clearing the cobwebs out of my mind. That’s why I like to jog.”
“Cobwebs? You have nasty spiders prowling through your brain?”
“Once in awhile,” Deborah admitted, knowing she could never hope to conceal all of her thoughts from this prying, intelligent woman. Better to admit small flaws than to put on a face of perfection, which would make her look suspicious.
Deborah looked away. She wanted more than anything to push Dixie Lou off the top of St. Peters, avenging what she did to Katherine Pangalos, and preventing her from harming any more people. But she didn’t know if she could accomplish it. The little black woman looked strong.
“I have a few cobwebs myself,” Dixie Lou admitted. “Exercise is good for the mind and the body, and I want you in top form. We have important work to do.”
The Chairwoman turned and started back down the stairs, with Deborah Marvel following.
Chapter 31
Truth can kill the soul, or resurrect it.
—Amy Angkor-Billings
All day long, two translators had been working with Martha of Galilee, but the brown-skinned baby had not revealed any new gospel details. While she had ceased an initial onslaught of fussing and crying, she was refusing to cooperate in any other manner.
Despite being only a little more than seven months old, she could walk already, and now she was pacing the room with her herky jerk walk, acting like an adult jammed into that tiny, unformed body. She was talking rapidly, as Dixie Lou stood with the translators, watching her.
“What’s she saying now?” the Grand Messenger demanded.
“More bad things about you, I’m afraid” replied a translator who had a dark brown pageboy haircut. She made several entries in an electronic unit, then showed Dixie Lou the transcript screen.
As the black woman read, she felt so much rage building inside that she wanted to take the baby and fling her against a wall . . . or out a window. “What sort of garbage is this? She calls me a murderess? A murderess? It is a lie!”
“Of course, Chairwoman,” the other translator, a platinum blonde, said. “We know that.”
“I’m no longer the
Chairwoman
,” Dixie Lou said, slapping the woman across the face with the transcript unit, and then following that up with a bare hand. “I’m the Grand Messenger of the Holy She!”
“I’m sorry. Of course.” The woman backed up. “I was so focused on this difficult child that I forgot.”
“A murderess!” Dixie Lou exclaimed. “The same thing that lying teenager said about me on television.” A moment later, she grinned viciously. Do you suppose Martha watches television?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am. Not here, anyway. And her mother is so poor that they probably didn’t even have electricity in Mexico.”
Dixie Lou watched the child as she paced the room, moving at a surprising clip despite her awkwardness. Abruptly, Martha stopped and looked up at Dixie Lou with feral eyes that almost seemed to blaze reddish brown instead of brown. She walked toward Dixie Lou. The Grand Messenger backed away, and for some reason remembered touching Lori Vale and seeming to share a peculiar vision with her, like a dream version of Lori having a baby. But this was not Lori’s child. This was another one, the missing twelfth she-apostle.
Martha spit words out in a sharp tone, then turned her back on Dixie Lou and marched off.
“She called you a murderess again,” the brunette said. “And a liar.”
Working late that evening Dixie Lou inflicted what she considered a mild form of discipline on the child—withholding food, milk, and sleep, in an attempt to obtain a new gospel from her. But the rude, stubborn little creature refused to say anything at all. She just glared with fiery, hateful eyes.
* * *
Since the Acting Minister was off consulting with an important, unnamed person, that left Kylee Branson in charge of the Bureau of Ideology. Some of the Vice Ministers theorized that Styx was meeting with high-level officials in the US government, using the diplomatic and political clout of his position. The timing of his trip seemed strange to most of the BOI people, however, especially the way he refused to take any of them into his confidence.
It was mid-afternoon. Branson sat in Tertullian’s windowless office with the lights out and only the computer on, casting an amber glow across the office. The headquarters complex was filled with people—virtually all of the employees and every Vice Minister except Tommy Lee Chang The optimum time to do what he had in mind.
He tapped deep-access keys and brought up the military codes.
Kylee had always been fiercely loyal to the Bureau of Ideology. As one of the most efficient managers, he had risen rapidly through the ranks, attaining an appointment as Vice Minister of Construction & Transport before the age of thirty. The nine Vice Ministers, while each bearing the same rank, were actually not equal. His first ministry had been the lowest, and gradually, as opportunities became available, he reached the lofty position of Vice Minister of Doctrine & Faith, second among vice ministries only to the Department of Minority Affairs, under Styx Tertullian. That was the way the departments had lined up under Minister Culpepper, anyway . . . and so far under his acting successor. In previous regimes, the departments had lined up differently, depending upon the political needs of the time and the priorities of the Minister. As a career bureaucrat, Kylee understood these things very well.
His path to the Bureau of Ideology had been, to say the least, an unusual one. Born Kaylee Branson (and not Kylee), the journey to his present position involved more than dropping the “a” from his given name. Considering all of this, the Vice Minister sighed at the memories of physical and emotional pain, including the sex change operation he underwent at the tender age of fourteen. Born a bouncing nine pound girl, Kaylee had—at her own insistence—been altered to a boy.
Just before her operation, the fights with her parents had been fierce, but ultimately Kaylee had won out by making a case to them that she didn’t feel comfortable as a girl, that she had always longed to be a boy instead. Besides, she pointed out quite correctly with her logical mind, it was easier for a man to succeed in business and politics than for a woman to do so. And, contributing to her decision, she was quite tall for a girl anyway, well over six feet. Thus there were practical and emotional reasons for the transformation. Her parents had finally assented, and had agreed to pay for the surgery.
Thus in a short period of time, Kaylee became Kylee.
Kylee’s father Lawrence Branson, a school district commissioner, then secretly changed school computer records to make it appear that his
son
had gone through school, instead of his daughter. A couple of well-placed bribes ensued, resulting in the alteration of county statistics as well, showing that a boy named Kylee had been born to the Branson family. That left school mates who remembered the girl, but she had been a quiet person, easily forgotten, and such memories faded with time. Kaylee went away to a boy’s boarding school under her new name, never returning to her home town. . . .
The Vice Minister thought about such things every day. His sexuality was at the core of his being, affecting virtually every decision he made. Now, as he sat at the computer, he voice-activated a code known only to three people—the Acting Minister, the Vice Minister of Military Affairs, and himself. It was to be employed only in cases of extreme emergency, to prevent Bureau secrets from falling into the wrong hands. He heaved a deep, agitated sigh.
During his rise through the ranks of the Bureau of Ideology, Kylee had experienced new feelings, new longings. Though he struggled to conceal it from everyone around him, something of his old female self had been resurfacing, a remnant that had been dormant and was now coming back. It was a subject he never dared to discuss with anyone, and to some extent he had been able to set it aside. He had worked extremely hard to get ahead in the BOI, the world’s pre-eminent bastion of male supremacy. On a subconscious level this might have been so that he could destroy his feminine side once and for all.
When Minister Culpepper died, however, things began to change. Kylee didn’t like the way Styx Tertullian treated him, always yelling and casting blame on him unfairly. Kylee was certain that Styx resented him for his superior breeding and Ivy League education, too, since Tertullian’s background had been blue collar. But that was only part of the problem. Maybe Tertullian—a self-proclaimed misogynist—sensed something hormonal about Kylee, that he wasn’t what he appeared to be. That could be dangerous, if he ever ordered a close scrutiny of school and county records and something turned up . . . a loose bit of incriminating information that had been overlooked. Or if he ordered a probative medical examination.
In recent weeks, Kylee had been having second thoughts about what he’d done to his own body, deep regrets and feelings that he had betrayed all of womanhood by abandoning them. This was quite a quandary, especially for a person in his position—now second in command of the Bureau of Ideology. It was during this time that he decided to take a drastically different course, to make up for what he had done, what
she
had done. Thousands of people would die in the BOI headquarters because of the action she was taking now, but it could not be avoided. Sometimes it was necessary to make a statement, and perhaps the She-God had placed her here for that reason.
A woman could outperform a man after all, and Kaylee was proving it.
She tapped a single key, and three seconds later heard the first blast, followed quickly by another, and then another, like deadly dominoes. There were explosives wired into the headquarters complex, designed to protect BOI secrets when no other options remained. She only counted three blasts, because the next one took her—and the remainder of the BOI headquarters facility—with it. . . .
* * *
When Mrs. Bonham returned from grocery shopping, her house was no longer there. And neither was her house guest. Unknown to the old woman, Kaylee Branson had tracked Styx down and made her last BOI management decision, taking care of an essential detail. In fact, the two explosions that Kaylee originated had occurred simultaneously, timed meticulously to avoid harming an innocent old woman.
Too bad
, Mrs. Bonham thought, picking through the rubble and finding a piece of the chain that had been holding Styx Tertullian down. Once, he had been such a sweet boy, and in time she might have salvaged something of the old personality.