Chapter 9
The She-God is not a fully developed ethereal power. She is presumed to be benevolent, but there are elements of cruelty and vengeance in her holy soul. The She-God carries within her the simmering power of all women who have been wronged throughout history, who have been raped, murdered, enslaved, and otherwise downtrodden. She is, indeed, a vast repository of angry souls, all seeking redress. The She-God is forming; the She-God is coming. And when this most powerful of all female entities is manifest, all humankind will tremble before her.
—Notes of Amy Angkor-Billings, 7th Chairwoman, United Women of the World
That evening Lori Vale found herself unable to sleep, and lay awake in the darkness. She had considered a number of alternatives for her sleeping arrangements, and had finally settled on this one, waiting until the others were asleep and then sneaking out of the helicopter cockpit, locking it behind her.
The supply tent at one side of the camouflaged encampment seemed preferable, where she lay now on the fabric floor, with a window flap open to allow in a fresh night breeze. The sand beneath the tent was comfortable, better than the air mattress in the helicopter. She kept a gun handy, just in case.
In a very short period of time, Lori had exerted control over a small group of women and children who had escaped with her from Monte Konos. The she-apostles were in the care of the two matrons, the translator, and Fujiko Harui, and Lori was giving the adults orders that they followed without argument, orders that involved the physical well-being of the children.
As she had noticed before, the little people didn’t really seem like children to her, and she didn’t know how much control she actually exerted over them. They were more like adults—very old and independent adults—in young bodies. As Lori made such observations, it seemed to her that any modicum of control she exerted over the children was only physical . . . but the she-apostles were not primarily physical beings. Since they truly were reincarnated, by definition this meant that they moved from one physical form to another, that they inhabited another, more spiritual realm.
As these thoughts kept her awake, Lori wondered if her parochial mental processes could really comprehend such astounding concepts, if she had the intelligence, experience, and other requisite abilities to grasp the subject. She also asked herself if her own mind was in the physical or spiritual realm . . . or if it could possibly occupy both simultaneously.
Sometimes the she-apostles reminded her of little angels, and thinking of their cherubic faces now, she smiled into the darkness beneath the eaves of the tent.
Through the open window flap she saw glittering stars encrusting a black canopy of sky over the desert. Though it had been hazy only a short while earlier, she now found it amazing how many distant suns were visible, and felt reassured by their presence. They were more than balls of flaming energy and light; somehow they imparted spiritual strength to her, a sense that they were watching over her, protecting her.
At long last she dozed off, and when she awoke only one bright star remained visible. The celestial light was brilliant and large and quickly grew . . . and seemed to draw closer. She thought it was accelerating toward her.
Inside a nearby tent, someone slept soundly, making buzz-saw noises. But she hardly noticed it. Like a fawn caught in a blinding spotlight, Lori Vale was transfixed by the light.
Abruptly she became aware of an Otherness, a black halo around the brightening illumination. A stygian companion traveling at the same speed as the light. It chilled her blood.
The dark halo grew larger and swallowed the light in front of it. An inky black sphere now, it drew close to Lori and she felt magnetized by it, pulled toward a great, yawning abyss, like a black hole. She screamed and almost tumbled in helplessly, when suddenly the light returned, from where she could not determine, and the blackness faded, faded, faded . . . until it could no longer be seen.
Now the light became brighter, a miniature sun, but somehow it did not burn her eyes.
“My Lord?” she whispered, without knowing why.
“Hama oro ibil,” a soothing female voice said . . . and she understood it: Do not be afraid.
Then a powerful epiphany struck Lori, and in that instant she realized that the words were in the secret tongue of the she-apostles of Jesus Christ, and that it was one of the lost languages of earth.
A chill ran down her spine.
Floating off to one side, in a golden glow, Lori saw the childish, angelic countenance of Mary Magdalene, with her lips moving as she uttered the arcane words. “Ilya dusil jerxi aba enge, naba ilya.” . . . You draw strength from us, and we from you.
Illumination streamed through the window into the tent, bathing Lori Vale in warmth, and for an instant she was transported to an ethereal realm of light in all forms and textures, so that she gasped from the astonishing beauty of it. Then, before she was ready, she felt herself transported back—in the blink of an eye—to the shadowy temporal tent where she dangled between consciousness and dreams.
A distant light receded in the sky, became a star, and finally disappeared entirely. The heavens became completely dark, as if all the solar lamps in God’s empyrean universe had been switched off.
Within the teenager’s slumbering, barely conscious mind, she floated on a limitless, sparkling sea, on a tiny cosmic life raft. She became convinced that she had been saved from something terrible.
From the black sphere.
What had it been, and what had rescued her from it?
As moments passed, Lori decided she had only been dreaming, but this thought tumbled away over a precipice, and she lost it.
“My Lord,” she whispered in her sleep. And the same in the ancient, secret language of the she-apostles. “Jelana Ve . . . “
* * *
It seemed more like a night for witches than for angels. Through her open window flap, Lori saw bloodlike streaks on the crescent moon, and icy clouds drifting across it, borne on a high wind over the Mediterranean.
An hour ago, as she emerged from the strange dream, she had called out the name of the Lord. In two languages—or so it seemed to her at the time. But a secret language of the apostles? Where did she get such information? Directly from God?
With her mind fatigued and overburdened, she wanted to put on the brakes, and tried to convince herself that her thoughts were no more than the products of a wild teenage imagination, perhaps the residue of past drug abuses. She began to play devil’s advocate with herself. Dreams could be deceptive, imparting authenticity to bizarre scenarios. She might only be imagining that the apostles had their own secret language. A dream was only a dream. It didn’t merge into the real world, no matter how lifelike it seemed.
But what was “real,” and what was not? Did a teenager even have the capacity to decide on this important question, based upon the filter of her limited personal experience? The world . . . and the universe . . . were much larger than her infinitesimally small brain.
She wondered if she might solve the conundrum from different angles. Just as she was considering this, Lori heard something outside her tent. Like the wind, or the rustling of fabric.
Poking her head out through the door flap, she saw people standing some distance away, their stocky, robed shapes profiled against the starlit sky and crescent moon. The people were not moving.
Lori squinted, counted eleven of them, and then they all moved, in unison. She caught her breath. They were coming toward her, walking in a herky jerk fashion, large heads bobbing.
For a moment, she lost perspective and felt dizzy, until she realized that they were all very small, and they were right in front of her, not nearly as far away as she had thought.
The she-apostles? But she only had four in her camp, not eleven. Arab children, then?
Whoever they were, they tossed the hoods of their robes back, revealing their youthful faces in the moonlight. She recognized them all as she-apostle toddlers and babies. Anxiously, she counted them again, and noted that Martha of Galilee was not among them. Lori recalled that one of the she-apostles—Lydia—had said this Martha was a fake, and that the real twelfth she-apostle remained missing.
Eleven.
Another trick of the mind? A dream? Curiously, even the babies, some of them less than six months old were walking. How could that be possible, and how had seven small children walked so far from Dixie Lou’s camp?
“I don’t understand. I—” Lori’s words faltered. There had only been four in her helicopter. How had the rest of them gotten here?
A small voice said something, from the group. “Olto Karida. “
Lori identified the speaker. Veronica, saying the same thing she had said the day before, when Lori sat in a circle with Fujiko and four of the children. This time, though, Lori knew what it meant: Beloved Mother.
But I’m not her mother. What does Veronica mean by that?
She looked from face to face, identified each of the silent visitors. Only Martha was missing.
“Olto Karida,” the children said, in unison. Beloved mother. They moved close to her, clutching her robe and her hands.
* * *
Seated on a fiber mat with a computer on his lap, Rashid Ali Khan perused the web as he did early each morning. Dressed in a white desert cloak of with a turban, he was outside his dirty beige canvas tent, in front of the doorway. The sun had not risen yet, but to the east, on the Mediterranean horizon, the sky began to brighten. Soon he would kneel here to pray. He considered himself a good Muslim, and performed the traditional prayers five times a day, from dawn to sunset. Nestled in the sand beside him was a metal laving bowl, with ablution water in it.
His missing leg ached from the coolness of the air, as it often did, and he reached around the computer to scratch the nub of the stump, just below the knee. As a boy in the Sinai he’d lost the limb, after stepping on a long-forgotten land mine. For years he’d cursed his fate, but after the blessing of his marriage to Malia and the two sons produced by their union, he’d felt differently—more gratitude than misery. Unhappiness was a relative state, he’d come to realize, and a matter of perspective. Any person could lament his lot, but Rashid never liked that course, didn’t like the way it made him feel. He much preferred to be upbeat, even when the ferocious winds of life blew proverbial sand into his eyes and stung his skin.
The image of Malia came to mind, and he felt a longing in his heart and in his loins for her. He didn’t like to split his caravan as it was now, leaving the women, children, and old people behind. But the demands of business had required that he and the other men travel light and fast, so that they could deliver their goods—clothing and household products—to a wealthy merchant in time for the opening of a large store. Rashid traded in a wide variety of merchandise and kept it all organized with a computerized inventory and order system. That’s what he usually took care of each morning, sending e-mails on business matters.
He sneezed loudly, the force causing his stuffy head to throb. For more than a day he’d been feeling nasal congestion, perhaps a strain of flu that had been going around the caravan.
The others weren’t awake yet, and no one even seemed disturbed by the sound he’d made. He heard the fitful snoring of his brother Meshdi, coming from a nearby tent. The rumbling stopped, and in the ensuing silence Rashid thought of how much he loved the serenity of the desert. This morning, in the dry, still air not an animal, bird, or insect stirred. He took a deep breath, and his fingers danced over the keyboard. He preferred this somewhat antiquated method of using a computer, instead of voice activation, mental links, or other high-tech methods. He was an active person, liked to move around. For him, the life of a Bedouin was ingrained in his soul. He could not stand the thought of being sedentary.
The tapping of the keys grew louder and faster, and he brought up the Global News Network website, highlighting events of the day. No matter how far he was from the busy centers of world commerce, he liked to stay in touch with what was going on; he prided himself on his knowledge of current events. Each day he checked the news before taking care of business.
What’s this? he thought, as he scrolled through the articles.
Half of the current stories were about a new publication, The Holy Women’s Bible. It had been released the day before, authored by the United Women of the World . . . a pig-swill story about the reincarnated female apostles of Jesus.
He laughed. Just another Christian fringe organization. There were so many of them. Though there were some sensible Christians in the mainstream—he’d done business with a number of them—the large number of “born-againers” and other radicals on the right wing were incapable of carrying on a rational conversation without quoting scripture, and distorting it to serve their own purposes. He was thankful that the vast majority of Muslims were not like that. Truly, Allah had blessed his people with infinite wisdom!
He tapped the keys again, closed and opened computer windows to return to his personal mailbox. His in-box contained no new e-mail. Most peculiar. His number-one wife Malia usually transmitted a message to him every day. He scratched his bald pate, under the carefully wrapped turban, and was about to send a note to her when he noticed a tangerine orange sun half-visible on the eastern horizon. Averting his eyes from the orb’s brilliance, he shut down his computer, and with water from the laving bowl he ritualistically washed his hands, arms, feet, head, and face. Then, with his head covered, he rolled out his fiber mat and knelt in prayer, with his body turned toward the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Outside each tent the others were up now, bearded men in burnooses and turbans, kneeling on their prayer mats.
“Allahu akbar,” Rashid intoned, with the others. God is greatest. He went on to murmur a prayer from the sacred Qur’an: “Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds! The compassionate, the merciful! King of the day of judgment!—”
When the holy words were complete, the pious men put away their prayer mats and laving bowls. They were only a few kilometers from the desert town of Awen, where their goods would be delivered. It would be a busy day, and Rashid was not feeling that well. He would write to Malia tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.
* * *
Dixie Lou Jackson, a black female who grew up in poverty and became a prostitute and a murderess, could become the most important woman in the world, if the Holy Women’s Bible was successfully received around the world. Though she’d seen a “message sent” confirmation that the entire book had been transmitted over the Internet, she still worried. Had her incredibly important publication actually gone through?
Another serious problem. After transmitting the holy book, she had sent an emergency e-mail message to the UWW base in Tunisia, where she intended to set up a new headquarters. Under the protocol she had established, there should have been an immediate response, but there had been none. This gave her an uneasy feeling, a sense of being alone. What if the Bureau had gotten to that base and destroyed it? Or, what if they had laid a trap there, and were waiting to spring it on her when she arrived?
Odd hieroglyphics had appeared on the last page of the Holy Women’s Bible computer file, and on her e-mail message to Tunisia. The purported glitch with Malia’s computer, but what if it was something else?
And she had other big concerns. Since leaving Monte Konos, the seven she-apostles still in her custody were behaving more and more strangely. They didn’t seem interested in playing with toys, didn’t even seem to care when their favorite foods were withheld from them. Even though the gospels of these seven were purportedly complete, Dixie Lou had been using the translators to try to get the children to talk more about ancient times, to reveal information she was sure they were withholding. It was something the Chairwoman had been sensing in recent days, that they knew something very important, even essential, but were keeping it to themselves.
Considering how to deal with them, she sat alone in her tent. Through a mesh window she saw the sun rising over Libya’s northern desert, splashing the sky with tints of red, orange and gold. Sunrises and sunsets never ceased to delight her, filled as they were with subtle colors that changed from moment to moment.
This was a Muslim country, and as a black woman Dixie Lou knew something of the faith from childhood friends and members of her family, who had converted to it. She knew Islam had a code of honor and high moral standards, but it was one of the male-dominated religions that would require the most attention from United Women of the World, in order to improve the position of women. In the Muslim faith women did not lead; typically they wore veils and followed the commands of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Under such circumstances the radical male government of Libya would not be pleased to learn of the existence of a rebel contingent of women on their soil.
For a lot of reasons, she hoped no one would think to look for her here.
Hearing a noise behind her, she turned.
Deborah Marvel poked her blonde head in through the open flap of the doorway. “Some of the councilwomen are troubled that only your political opponents were left behind on Monte Konos, presumably to die there.”
“Who’s asking?” Dixie Lou snapped.
“Sorry, I should have said all of them are asking.”
“Including you?”
She shook her head. “I’ve always been your friend, Dixie Lou. I’m only relaying the message.”
“Tell them it was a coincidence. Katherine must have been meeting with her friends when the BOI struck us, and they just got unlucky.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Deborah said. She bowed and left.
As far as she knew, the council had ten members now instead of sixteen (assuming Wendy Zepeda and Fujiko Harui were still alive), and all would vote as Dixie Lou wished. Anyone who didn’t would be eliminated.