“Harsh words.”
“But true. Men have written history, molding it into their own story. But what about ‘herstory?’ What about female traditions? In the years after Christ, our gospels were stolen from us and destroyed. Our gospels were omitted from the Bible. It was a terrible crime.”
“This is incredible,” the reporter said.
A wild glaze filled Dixie Lou’s dark eyes. “Listen to me carefully. Listen as a woman, not as a reporter, not as a pawn of the manipulators. The manipulators are out in force now, trying to put a spin on our message, seeking to distort it. They speak of us as false prophets, as servants of Satan, as child abusers. If women choose to believe such distortions, they are easily deceived, as they have been for millennia.” Looking directly into the camera, Dixie Lou added, “Isn’t it time for us to smarten up?”
* * *
At the edge of camp, a tall brunette guard spoke to Alex in a low tone, telling him what she had just learned about a female television correspondent who had been brought in blindfolded to see Dixie Lou, and about one of the she-apostles who was with them.
“Your mother is already broadcasting something,” the guard said. The day before, she’d told him her name was Annette Tormé.
“Any idea what?”
She shook her head. “The Chairwoman is an interesting woman. And most unpredictable.” The guard’s large blue eyes bore another message. They danced whenever Alex met her gaze. She seemed to want their relationship to go further, but Alex didn’t think he could do that. He could not get Lori out of his mind, couldn’t stop worrying about her safety. Where was she?
Pensively, Alex rubbed the back of his neck. He wore a light-green shirt, only buttoned halfway up, and faded khaki chinos. “I appreciate you telling me this,” he said.
“Perhaps you would care to look in on the broadcast?” Annette said.
“If I can do it without her noticing me.”
“Why don’t we go take a peek right now?” She pointed toward a cluster of tents, whose tops were flapping in a light breeze.
When they reached the tents and made their way silently past them, Annette suddenly stopped and put a finger to her lips. Alex stopped beside her.
Voices could be heard inside one of the nearby tents, off to his left. Two women conversing in low tones. One had a husky, throaty voice and sounded older, while the other, apparently younger, spoke in smooth, silky tones.
The elder was speaking. “The Holy Women’s Bible is a sham. I can’t stand the thought of it.”
“Calm down, Deborah,” the younger one said. “Only one of the gospels was improvised. The rest of the holy book—”
“That’s Nancy Winters,” Annette whispered. “She’s talking with Deborah Marvel, another councilwoman.”
They continued eavesdropping, but tried to look as if they were just standing there. A guard on the other side of the camp glanced at them, but looked away, apparently unconcerned.
“I just don’t like it,” Marvel said. “I know, I voted with the rest of us to falsify Martha’s gospel, but—”
Alex and the guard exchanged surprised glances.
“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Winters said. “The book’s been released on the Internet. It’s done. If anything leaks about this it will seriously damage our cause.”
“I know, I know, but what we did—”
“It bothers all of us, especially Dixie Lou.”
“I wonder if that’s true. She never mentions Amy anymore. It’s like she never existed. It’s like we never existed. We’re not mentioned by name in the Holy Women’s Bible, either. Dixie Lou only referred to the ‘council’ in general.”
The voices faded, and as they did, the pair of eavesdroppers moved away. “Do you realize what this means?” Alex whispered excitedly to the guard. “If Martha is a fake, that means one she-apostle is still missing.”
“I wonder where she is,” the guard said. Then, without warning, she planted a kiss on Alex’s lips.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he said, pulling away.
“I’ve been wanting to since the first moment I saw you,” she said. “But I must admit, I never liked your mother.”
Suddenly she hurried away without explanation, and disappeared around the side of a tent.
Curious, Alex walked in that direction himself. He passed the councilwomen who had been talking, but who were now silent. They continued on, and so did he, scuffing up sand and dust. Moments later he was on the west side of the encampment, separated from the dining tent by one of the camouflaged helicopters.
For several moments as Alex watched, Annette stood outside the dining tent. Then she ran inside, past a male news crewman who tried to stop her.
* * *
Startled, Dixie Lou and the young reporter looked up at her. Nearby stood a playpen with a baby in it, a child Annette had not seen before. On her right she saw a Global News television camera with a red light on it. The camera was directed toward Dixie Lou and the child.
“Oh, are you interviewing our Chairwoman on live television?” Annette asked, nervously. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
The reporter stared at her blankly.
Dixie Lou’s expression changed to anger. Her dark eyes simmered.
“I have something to say,” Annette announced, moving to the side of the baby, in front of the camera. She felt warm air blowing in from the desert, through the open tent flaps.
“Turn off the camera,” Dixie Lou demanded, glaring at the reporter.
But the camera’s red light remained on, making a live broadcast.
“Is there a camp emergency?” Dixie Lou asked, of the guard.
“It goes beyond this camp,” the tall guard said.
“Turn off the camera,” Dixie Lou said again. “Whatever this is, it isn’t part of the broadcast.”
“Tell her about this fake she-apostle,” Annette demanded. She gestured toward the baby.
The child didn’t seem to notice the tension in the air, and sat in her pen playing with a dark-skinned doll.
“Guards!” Dixie Lou yelled. “Then, with a sweet smile, she looked into the camera and said, “Her charge is preposterous, of course. She can’t prove it.” Her eyes, however, were filled with fear.
Annette struggled to remain calm. “We—I—overheard two of your councilwomen discussing Martha. They were in a tent, didn’t know I was listening.” She didn’t want to implicate Alex if she could avoid it, because she really cared about him.
Dixie Lou’s gaze didn’t waver from the rebellious guard. “Who did you supposedly overhear? Did you see them?”
“No,” Annette admitted. “I didn’t. But I know who they are. I just don’t want to get them in trouble.” She felt uneasy, way over-committed.
“You’re very young,” Dixie Lou said calmly, “and you have much to learn. Would you admit that you could be mistaken? The she-apostles are—quite understandably—a subject of intense debate all over the world. Perhaps the women were merely discussing that, and you misinterpreted.”
“I don’t think so.” Annette’s mind whirled, seemed incapable of focusing. She glanced at the camera, with its steady red light, its unblinking, probing eye. Her cheeks felt hot. Was this interview actually being transmitted live? She’d assumed so when setting up her impulsive plan—based upon what she had heard. There was supposed to be a direct satellite news linkup. But now she wasn’t so certain.
It occurred to her that she was debunking the entire Holy Women’s Bible by calling only one she-apostle and the Chairwoman into question, and this could cause the whole women’s movement to flame out, just as Councilwoman Marvel had feared. Because of this concern, Marvel and the other councilwoman had backed off, and maybe Annette should do the same, considering not only herself but the welfare of her fellow women. She hadn’t considered the far-reaching consequences before bursting impetuously into the tent. She’d only thought of her righteous rage at this terrible woman—Dixie Lou Jackson—and
the way she was ruining the legitimacy of the women’s movement.
“She doesn’t think so,” Dixie Lou said, a sarcastic tone. “With all her vast years of experience this guard doesn’t think so.”
The baby in the playpen began to fuss and whine, causing a white-uniformed matron to hurry in. “What is it, Martha?” she asked. “Too hot for you?” Blocking the child from the camera, the woman removed a shirt and long pants from the cherubic-faced child, exchanging them for a pair of pink shorts, with no top. The baby curled up as if to go to sleep, and the matron left.
“Guards!” Dixie Lou shouted, again.
This time they heard her, and two guards appeared. One was the short redhead with whom Annette often shared duty, Lipia Picard, with her usual stern expression.
“Remove her!” Dixie Lou commanded, pointing at Annette. “She’s completely lost her mind.” After this was done, Dixie Lou looked at the reporter and asked in a dulcet voice, “Now, shall we continue?”
“Is this some kind of a publicity stunt?” the reporter asked.
“Just a little bump on the road to women’s rights,” the Chairwoman said. “I’ve been facing and surmounting obstacles all my life, fighting for the truth, struggling for women to achieve equality with men.”
“Some would claim that you seek superiority over men,” the reporter said. “What do you say to that?”
With a smile, Dixie Lou countered, “But women are superior to men. In a future broadcast, perhaps I will list a hundred ways, or five thousand. But today, we are here to discuss little Martha of Galilee, and the astounding Holy Women’s Bible.”
* * *
Standing in front of the flat-screen television, Lori Vale shifted uneasily, kicking up a little cloud of sand at her feet. She stretched her arms, and spoke to Fujiko without looking to the side at her. Malia was smoking a cigarette, talking to her companions off to one side. Some of the smoke drifted Lori’s way, and seemed to follow her whenever she shifted position. Since quitting smoking, she didn’t like the smell of cigarettes, but didn’t want to be rude by saying anything to Malia.
“That’s why Martha didn’t come to me with the she-apostles,” Lori said to Fujiko in a low tone, “and why we only have eleven, not twelve. She’s a fake.”
“Dixie Lou didn’t have her talk on camera, because the kid doesn’t know a word of ancient Aramaic.”
“I feel sorry for the child, whoever she is,” Lori said. “She looks like she’s been drugged, undoubtedly to keep her from saying much of anything at all.”
Fujiko narrowed her gaze. “Dixie Lou must be going crazy, losing eleven she-apostles. I’ll bet she doesn’t know they’re with us, doesn’t even know if they’re still alive.”
“She probably doesn’t know where the last child is, either,” Lori said. “And neither do we.”
The last child, Lori thought.
She recalled the shared vision she’d had with Dixie Lou, and the baby Lori held in her arms at the end of it, with Dixie Lou backing up in terror. Could that child, with auburn hair like Lori’s own, be the twelfth she-apostle? Was Martha of Galilee waiting to be born?
And am I supposed to be her mother?
A shiver ran down her spine.
As Fujiko continued to talk, Lori didn’t really hear her words. They were just disjointed sounds, floating in the air between them. With all of the problems and uncertainties assailing her, Lori wished she had her best friend Alicia Koppel around, to obtain her advice. Alicia, while not well-read, had an innate, natural intelligence, and always knew the smart thing to do.
Looking over at Fujiko and hearing the kindness in her voice, Lori wondered if the two of them might ever become close like that, so that they could confide in one another. But Lori was not ready for that, not yet.
* * *
In the commotion, Alex Jackson slipped over to the tent of Liz Torrence and Siana Harui, which was temporarily unguarded. Both of them were inside. “Come with me!” he said.
“Where to?” Siana asked. A petite young woman, she had short-cropped black hair and the attractive Asian features of her mother.
“Do you care? It has to be better than this place.”
“He has a point,” Liz said, as she slipped into her shoes. Slender and pretty, she had large green eyes.
The three of them broke into a run across the open sands, heading in the direction of the Arab village. They struggled to the top of a dune and tumbled down the other side, then regained their footing and kept running.
Alex had hoped to locate a trail marking the route of the Arabs, but wind had blown the sand completely smooth.
* * *
A tornado of blind fury stood in the open doorway, ready to enter the tent and destroy all inside it.
“That was pretty cute today,” Dixie Lou said, a barely controlled growl from the storm of her face. She brandished a large, gleaming knife, and her gaze riveted on Annette Tormé, who lay on the fabric floor, her hands and feet shackled.
“Thought you’d surprise me with that little trick on live television, didn’t you?” Dixie Lou said. Hellfire burned in her eyes. “And while you were there, three prisoners escaped.”
Aloud, Annette prayed to the She-God for salvation.
With a quick motion, Dixie Lou plunged the knife into the guard’s chest, then watched as life flowed out of her.
Chapter 15
The name Jesus is not intrinsically male or female. Derived from the Hebrew word Yeshua, it means “Jehovah is salvation.”
—Editor’s unpublished notes, the Holy Women’s Bible
Western coast of Mexico . . .
Everyone else had gone to bed, but Raffaela Inez was restless, unable to sleep. She kept thinking about the young Mexican woman, Consuela, and her unusual baby. Raffaela had spent time with the child each day, listening to her babbling . . . and trying without success to understand her. In her medical studies, including research into the communication patterns of babies, Raffaela had never encountered anything like this before.
Consuela said “bad doctors” were after Marta. Preposterous. Or was it?
It was a warm evening, and Raffaela sat on a wicker settee outside, in the yellow illumination of a porch light. Medical journals were stacked next to her, along with the most recent Doctor’s Journal, forwarded to her by a colleague who knew she wouldn’t want to miss it, even while on vacation. Moths hurled themselves at the light and fluttered about, darting in front of Raffaela’s face, but she paid little attention to them.
Instead, she stared blankly at a current journal article on new prosthetic devices. Unable to focus on it, she put it down. Then, absent-mindedly, she flipped through the pages of the other journals, scanning old headlines and articles. Nothing of interest. With a sigh, Raffaela was stacking the journals neatly, when one of them fell on the floor and opened to an article she had not noticed earlier, under the heading, MYSTERIES OF LANGUAGE.
In the article the author—a German doctor named Werner Hinkel—summarized what was known about the means of communication employed by various animals, including elephants, dolphins, whales, and dogs. He said they showed emotions and intelligence beyond the range of human comprehension or interpretation, since humans tended to make the mistake of using their own experiences and reference points for everything, thus creating filters that blocked vision.
The doctor went on to assert that even plants had intelligence, and cited the example of a wooden fence that was being overgrown by ivy. A small boy, after playing near the fence, returned to his mother in her rose garden and said, “The ivy spoke to me.” The woman, trying to humor her child, replied, “That’s nice, dear. And what did the ivy say to you?” Without hesitation, and in a tone that she found eerie, the child said, “It wants to wreck the fence. It doesn’t like the fence there.” His words were barely out of his mouth when a large section of the structure slumped to the ground, under a strangling snarl of ivy.
“Children understand these things better than we do
,” Dr. Hinkel wrote. “They are much closer to the vast mystery of existence than we are, having more recently emerged from it in the process of birth.”
The concluding sentence particularly intrigued Raffaela: “Mothers, the next time your baby babbles at you, with sounds that make no apparent sense, try looking at it in a different way. Maybe it’s not gibberish after all; maybe it’s something else—the intelligent language of another dimension.”
Setting the article aside, Raffaela envisioned the innocent face of little Marta, who lay asleep inside the house, and she wondered what unknown thoughts were going through her mind.
* * *
Rashid Ali Khan was feeling better. Upon arriving at his Bedouin camp in the middle of the night, he’d been so ill with fever that his men had strapped him to a camel’s back, to prevent him from falling off. He remembered someone carrying him into his tent, and seeing his number-one wife Malia in flickering lantern light, hovering over him and assuring him he would get better soon. How many hours or days had passed since then? He wasn’t certain, but knew from the warm temperature in his tent that it was not morning.
Someone had opened the window and door flaps so that desert breezes could blow through, and as he awoke he had no bed coverings over him. The thin woolen blankets had been tossed aside. He’d probably done it himself in his sleep. His wife’s side of the low bed had been made up neatly. This large tent of the caravan leader had partitions inside, and a high ceiling so that a dozen men could stand in the reception area or sit comfortably for meetings and meals. The walls were hung with carpets and cloths with graceful Arabic designs.
As he sat up he stared at his small prayer rug, which someone had left rolled up at the foot of his bed. He wondered how many holy prayers he’d missed during the fever. He heard the rapid voices of women outside, but not of Malia. One of them said the men were on the nearby beach, fishing. Rashid’s laptop computer sat on a low table in one corner.
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