The Lost Apostles

by Brian Herbert

  Lori didn’t know whether to pull away or continue holding the child’s hands. She felt herself shaking with fear. In large part, she realized, it was a fear of the unknown. With a jerk of realization, she now understood why she had analyzed the prisoners in a visceral way, instead of trying to put labels on things or attach words to them. It was like the linguistic comments Abigail had made moments ago about the inadequacy of any lexicon to express true meanings.

  “I was able to think beyond words,” Lori said. “That’s how I knew the three women were lying.”

  “You are beginning to understand,” Abigail said. “We call it wordless purity. And earlier, you sensed something about the twelfth she-apostle that Dixie Lou brought in, before you knew she was a fake. What did you sense?”

  “That something was strange about the baby, something that troubled me deeply.”

  “And you could not put into words what you were feeling.”

  Lori nodded, but as she looked at Abigail, she realized with a start that the other children were moving in synchronization with her, making the same facial expressions and even mouthing the same words with her—despite what she had said about wordless thought. Apparently oral speech was a subset of their main communication method, which Lori didn’t feel close to comprehending yet. Did they communicate through facial expressions, through subtleties in the eyes, or in some other visual fashion? Did they read each other’s minds when they touched hands, achieving wordless purity? If so, perhaps it worked better for the she-apostles to communicate with one another in this manner than it did for them to make physical contact with an outsider, such as Lori. She felt as if she were peering into a realm of infinite possibilities.

  A shudder coursed Lori’s body. Looking up at the pilot, she saw that she still had her head in the engine compartment. The sounds of her tools seemed distant, as if coming from an entirely different dimension.

  Letting go of Abigail, the perplexed teenager rose to her feet. She shook her head, and it seemed to clear. All the while, as if she were a laboratory specimen, the children watched her, their eyes bright. . . .

  After testing the tandem engines another time, while Lori stayed with her, shadowing the process, the pilot climbed back down from the cockpit to the sand, muttering in displeasure. Her face was red, perspiring. Despite the chill in the air, she removed her jacket and tossed it aside.

  “Engines are overheating now,” she said.

  “Can you fix the problem?” Lori asked as she stepped onto the soft gray sand herself. She was growing increasingly concerned, beginning to lose her patience with the helicopter pilot.

  “I’ll figure it out.” Rea’s voice had an edge as she stared at the helicopter.

  Lori wondered if the pilot had the necessary knowledge, or if she might be delaying intentionally . . . preventing them from leaving. If that was the case, she was in league with Dixie Lou Jackson after all. The teenager felt her mind working in two ways as she thought about this. On the one hand, she still had access to her old way of thinking, and from an intellectual standpoint she suspected the pilot. Circumstantial evidence pointed to the possibility of deception. But on the other hand, utilizing her nascent visceral ability to discern another level, she didn’t suspect Rea at all, and believed in her.

  Just then, the children gathered around the pilot’s jacket, where it lay on the sand. At first the pilot didn’t notice them, but Lori did, and wondered what intrigued them so much about the garment.

  Dressed in a black shirt and trousers, Fujiko came out of her own tent. Rubbing her eyes, she looked at the she-apostles and the visibly upset pilot, then came over to see close up. “What’s going on?” she asked of Lori.

  “Things aren’t going well.” She described the mechanical problem. “Do you think she’s faking it?” Lori asked, keeping her voice low.

  “No.” The little Japanese woman shook her head, looked at the children. Lori followed her gaze.

  Veronica was reaching into the pilot’s jacket pocket, and what she brought out caused Lori’s pulse to quicken. A small handgun.

  The pilot saw this, and said, “Be careful with that!” She started toward the child.

  Lori pushed by her, grabbed the weapon first. It appeared to be made of composites, and weighed only a few ounces. “What are you doing with this?” she demanded.

  “We live in dangerous times,” Rea said, with a shrug.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Ours,” Fujiko interjected. “I knew Rea had the gun, saw her pick it up from a fallen guard when we were escaping from Monte Konos.” She paused. “I also have a gun. It’s in my tent.”

  “So the two of you are in this together?” Lori asked.

  “I didn’t know she had anything,” Rea said. “But she’s right. If I wasn’t on your side, Lori, I would have used the gun on you.”

  “But I searched carefully for weapons,” Lori said.

  “My coat was in a storage compartment on the ’copter when you checked me,” the pilot said, “and that small, lightweight pistol was zipped into an inner lining, not easy to notice.”

  “You needed people to help you search,” Fujiko said, without revealing exactly how she had concealed hers.

  “How do I know you didn’t intend to use this against me?” Lori asked, looking at Rea and holding the gun up. All the while, her thoughts churned, as she tried to sort them out, separating the intellectual from the emotional.

  “I forgot it was in the coat. Doesn’t that tell you something? I was upset about the engines running hot. You may have thought I was faking the mechanical work, stalling, but if I was doing that, I wouldn’t have forgotten about my ace in the hole, would I?” She nodded toward the weapon in Lori’s hand.

  “I’ve been wanting to trust someone,” Lori said. “Maybe it’s time.” She looked hard at the pilot and at Fujiko, and detected no animosity in either of their faces. Only fatigue, from the hardships all of them had endured. Her suspicion faded.

  “What do you have?” Lori asked, of Fujiko.

  The Japanese woman smiled. “More firepower than the two of you combined. A .45 rapomatic.”

  Handing the weapon back to the pilot, Lori said, “I want to believe in you, Rea.”

  Checking the clip and safety, and then slipping the gun into a front pocket in her jeans, the pilot said, “Listen, I hate Dixie Lou as much as you do. I only went to work for the UWW because of Amy Angkor-Billings, since I believed in her. After she died, Dixie Lou got crazier than ever. She seemed happy about Amy dying, maybe even had something to do with it. I wasn’t the only one to notice that. Mistrust isn’t evidence, but I’ve watched her, and something doesn’t seem right. She’s secretive and unpredictable, has temper tantrums that she tries to hide from important people. I guess I’m considered too insignificant for her to notice, but I have seen some of her bad side.”

  “So have I,” Lori said. “Alex and I saw her murder a guard.”

  “Really?” The stocky brunette scowled.

  “We saw her do it. She tried to blame us for it, but we know what really happened.”

  Looking at the two women, Lori said, “I guess we’re in this together now. I need both of you to help me keep an eye on the others.”

  “We already have been,” Fujiko said. “The matrons and the translator can be trusted, but not the ones we have locked up. Everything is perfect.”

  “Yeah, just perfect,” Lori said, shaking her head.

  “It’d be nice to know what Dixie Lou is up to,” Rea said, stepping back onto the platform to look inside the engine compartment. “She’ll want the children back, so we need to get this crate going.”

  She hardly had the words out of her mouth when an alarm sounded, then went off. All around them, camouflage energy crackled.

  “I think we should release the machine gun,” Rea said. “I know how to use it.” She was referring to a control panel in the cockpit that only Lori now had access to, having ordered the pilot to enable Lori to loc
k it up with her own access code.

  All of the authentic she-apostles were with her now, and Lori felt a need to protect them, without concern that any of them might be aboard an approaching aircraft. She didn’t want to harm the fake Martha, because she was an innocent child, but Lori’s priorities were different now. She knew that the eleven children with her were authentic, and she felt a deep responsibility to ensure their safety.

  Hurrying into the cockpit, Lori activated the codes to unlock the .50 caliber machine gun. She heard what sounded like an aircraft, getting closer. As she did this, the pilot ran aft through the passenger compartment, to a ceiling hatch. Throwing it open, she climbed up into a bubble chamber that extended to both sides, on top of the helicopter.

  From the cockpit Lori watched a monitor, and saw the same view as Rea, as the pilot swung the gun around toward the approaching craft. Through an electronic viewer that penetrated the protective camouflage cloth, Lori and Rea saw a slight abnormality in the air, approaching them fast.

  “It’s coming in on stealth,” Rea said, across the intercom system. “But they’re having problems with it, just like the earlier fly-over.”

  “Do you see the slight disturbance in the air?” Lori asked.

  “Yeah, but we’re not supposed to. I’ve got it in my sights.”

  Moments later the monitor showed the anomaly in the air veering off. The sound of engines faded away.

  Chapter 12

  If Jesus Christ came back from the dead, why not his female and male apostles, to foreshadow his second coming?

  —Amy Angkor-Billings, private journals

  The sun splashed pools of sunlight around the interior of the dining tent, which had mesh windows on the ends and sides. Dixie Lou Jackson had sent for her son, and he was being brought to her. She sat on the bench of an inflatable table.

  It irritated her that she had found no sign of the missing helicopter, or of the she-apostles that seemed to have disappeared into thin air. The difficult teenager Lori Vale had something to do with both problems; she was certain of it. But every search party had come up with nothing.

  She had one clue, though, albeit a thin one. The day before, she had gone into the village and questioned Malia at length, trying to see if she knew anything. Though the Arab woman had denied all knowledge, her behavior had been suspicious and her answers too brief, as if she wanted to conclude the discussion quickly and move onto another subject. Having grown up on the mean streets of Baltimore, Dixie Lou had some experience with human nature, and with liars. In any culture, they were the same. She saw things in the behavior of people, in the edginess of their words, the nervous movements, the moist, glistening brows and quivering upper lips.

  And Dixie Lou suspected that her son might have something to do with it as well. In her position, she had to suspect everyone, and he had never proven himself above reproach. . . .

  Feeling dismal, Alex entered the tent and sat on a bench at the other side of the table. His mother stared at him in an unnerving way, and he wondered what she was thinking . . . and why she had sent for him.

  “I thought you might like to see what we’ve been doing,” Dixie Lou said, smiling suddenly. But her dark eyes remained hard. On the table she had a laptop computer, which she always kept charged inside the command helicopter.

  Not saying anything, Alex scowled, causing his thick eyebrows to lower over his pewter eyes. His curly black hair was tousled.

  “I can’t go on-line with this computer yet,” she said, “not until we get to civilization and have it repaired. But back at Monte Konos, one of our computer whizzes set up an on-line Concordance of the Holy Women’s Bible. With it, we can search for any passage. There’s one about our enemies, but I don’t recall exactly where it is—” From memory, she voiced key words, and the computer searched, then brought up a passage in ornate script, which she turned toward Alex so that he could read it, too:

  Our enemies deserve what they

  have shown us—no mercy.

  “You seem disinterested,” Dixie Lou said, looking at him. She shut down the computer and folded its cover shut. “Is there something you wish to say to me?”

  “Only that I hate you,” Alex said.

  “I know you think you do, but that’s only because you don’t understand the big picture, the challenges I must deal with, the difficult goals we seek. You have no idea what I go through.”

  “Why can’t I talk to Liz Torrence and Siana Harui? They’re my friends, but that guards keep me away from them.”

  “I make the rules around here. That means I don’t have to explain them.”

  Shaking his head, Alex stared at the ceiling of the tent. “And why are you bothering to show me your Unholy Women’s Bible?”

  “Don’t get smart with me, young man.”

  “Or you’ll have me beaten?”

  The enigmatic woman showed no emotion in her caliginous features. “I’m trying to decide whether or not to kill you.”

  “Gosh, Mom, couldn’t you just withhold my allowance or ground me?”

  “I’ve never been much of a mother to you,” Dixie Lou admitted. “But you’ve never tried to be a son to me, either.”

  “Are you trying to bond with me now? Isn’t it a little late for that?”

  “Maybe so. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her eyes narrowed. “I know you had something to do with the disappearance of the children. And so did your little girlfriend. The only think I haven’t figured out is why are you still here?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I had nothing to do with it?”

  “Where’s Lori?”

  “I wish I knew. I only hope she’s safe.”

  “Get out of my sight!” Dixie Lou thundered. She shook a fist at him.

  “That’s more like it,” he said, as he stood to leave. “For a moment there, I almost thought you were human.”

  * * *

  A camel caravan snaked along the crest of a dune, forming a long profile against the sunset. High in the saddle of the lead animal, Rashid Ali Khan grimaced; his aching, stuffy head was shaken every time the animal jostled him. He had pushed himself too hard. All day long, he’d been suffering from what felt like a severe bout of the flu. It had begun early in the morning, and had gotten worse with each passing moment. Now he really needed to rest.

  Rashid raised an arm and called out to the men: it was time to make camp. He led the way down the face of the dune to a flat section of sand and hardpan where caravans often camped. At other times of the year, when the sun turned the desert into a furnace, Rashid traveled by night and made camp during the day. Now it was cool enough to travel by day and sleep at night, which he preferred. Maybe he would feel better in the morning after a good night’s rest.

  As he dismounted from the camel, his younger brother Meshdi helped him keep his balance on the loose sand and rock under his feet. Meshdi was smaller than Rashid, with a square jaw and small, narrow-set eyes.

  “Lie down for awhile,” his brother said, as he spread a fiber mat on a section of soft sand. “I will bring you something to eat and drink.”

  Despite his pride, Rashid didn’t argue. It felt good to stop, to free himself from the rolling, sickening motions of the animal.

  On this trip, the men in the caravan had delivered their goods to a wealthy merchant. Following a fine meal at the man’s home they had set out for home, along a route so familiar to them that they might have accomplished it blindfolded. That had been four long days ago, and Rashid was ready for this trip to be over.

  Late the next evening he would see Malia again, and she would nurse him back to health. She was a nurturing person; he always grew strong in her presence, and withered when away from her. It was worse than usual on this trip, because his feelings of longing for Malia were exacerbated by this sickness. He wasn’t the type to complain; never had been and never would be.

  I’ll just lay my head down for a few moments, he thought, as he stretched out on the thin mat. Beneath
his body the sand shifted, adjusting itself as he pressed his form onto it. To the west, the sun looked larger than normal and more orange, from the dust of the desert. He saw turbaned men removing bundles from the camels and opening them in order to set up the tents.

  * * *

  Across the world, in Washington state . . .

  “Well, what do you have?” Styx Tertullian demanded. He stood in front of Kylee Branson’s desk, glaring down at him.

  “But you just asked for it this morning,” the Vice Minister protested. “We’re working on the biblical fraud angle, just as you said.”

  “Just as I said?” With a swipe of his hand, Tertullian knocked a picture frame off the desk, onto the carpet. When the glass didn’t break, he stomped on it in order to develop the cracking and popping noises that he wanted for effect.

  Branson’s eyes opened wide in terror.

  “I didn’t just say it,” the Acting Minister roared. “It wasn’t a request. I didn’t just mention it in polite conversation, or propose it. I commanded it, and I expect immediate results!”

  “But sir, I already have a translator working on what that baby said on the computer screen, the she-apostle.”

  “And if the UWW translation was accurate?”

  Branson squirmed in his chair. His gaze darted around, as if looking for a means by which he might escape. “You just told me to check it.”

  “Are you paid enough to think?” Tertullian came around beside Branson, glared menacingly at him.

  “Well, yes sir, of—of course.” The man scooted his chair back a little, then had second thoughts and returned it to its original place. For him, there was no escape.

  “Then what is your contingency plan?”

  “Contingency—in case the translation was accurate? Oh, you mean have one of our disinformation labs make the Holy Women’s Bible look phony anyway?” He scratched his head, forced a smile. “We can come up with something convincing. Our proof could be set up using computer enhancement. We can use the Internet, just like they did.”