by Edward Lee
Simon seemed pleased. “Federate Intel wanted a specimen, and they got it. They’ll keel over when they see this.”
“It’s beautiful,” Esther whispered. Her eyes beamed as if in reverence.
“I cut it off of Luke after it strangled him.”
Snakes, Sharon thought. Lucifer’s first disguise.
Could she really believe it? That Lucifer and his minions had taken over Heaven as snakes?
Her faith was gone now. She’d be foolish to deny the existence of God when proof of the existence of His nemesis lay right here in the cove.
But God had abandoned Heaven.
God had abandoned her.
There was no point in praying now.
Esther’s finger traced down the snake’s long green-black body. She was touching an aspect of her own god.
“You’re both Satanists,” Sharon croaked at them. “You’re both absolutely evil.”
Esther and Simon jerked their gazes around.
“The little virgin finally speaks,” Esther announced.
But Simon seemed perturbed. “How come you haven’t killed her yet?” he posed to Esther. “We’ve got to leave soon. You should have killed her hours ago.”
“Stop being so cold-hearted,” Esther toyed.
“Put her in the disposal chute and flush her into space,” Simon ordered. He looked down at the snake. “I’ll put this in a cryocase and load it onto the escape skiff.”
“Go ahead and kill me,” Sharon said through parched lips. “I don’t care.”
“Look,” Simon told the Deaconness. “This isn’t the time to be squeamish. If you won’t do it, I’ll do it.” He picked up the laser, was about to turn it on.
“But I was saving her for you, Simon.” Esther stroked his back. “What kind of man are you? She’s a virgin.”
Simon paused to reflect. “Well. Hmm.” He looked at the chronometer.
“And I’d love to watch,” Esther added in a sultry tone.
“We’ve still got over twelve hours before we’ve got to be at the pickup point.” The beady eyes ran up Sharon’s body. “Come to think of it, it might be fun.”
“Oh, good!”
Esther came forward with a pair of snips, began cutting off Sharon’s uniform, pulling it out from under her in strips.
Sharon didn’t care. She just felt numb.
“So pretty. So sleek.” Esther grinned down at Sharon’s nudity. She parted Sharon’s legs on the gurney, ran her hands up and down inside of her thighs. “So warm and fragile and perfect.”
So, this was it? This was Sharon’s providence after a lifetime of serving God? To be raped and murdered on a deep-space exploratory vessel?
Damn you, God, she thought. The sins of the world aren’t my fault. I loved and served You, and You repay me with this. …
Simon grew flustered, fidgeting in place. He rubbed his own crotch at the sight of her.
“At least tell me why,” Sharon’s voice grated. “At least give me an explanation. Why this conspiracy between the two of you? Why set all those men up for their deaths?”
“Because dead men tell no tales,” Simon replied, running a finger around his collar. “No one can know about this—or I should say no one outside of Federate Intel’s most exclusive power circles. Especially not the Vatican.”
“The man who tried to kill me right after we launched,” Sharon began. “You forged his autopsy and genetically altered him to appear as a Red Sect member. Why?”
“Just as a safeguard,” Esther answered. “In case things went wrong in some unforeseen way, Red Sect would be blamed. The bomb in his abdominal cavity was supposed to destroy the evidence after the fact, but you and Tom fucked that all up. None of that mattered, though, after we debarked from the Solon Station. He was just a suicide operative, brainwashed and modified. In all, it worked out fine.”
“But you two are Federate Intel plants yourself,” Sharon pointed out. “Why sabotage the mission at all? The Vatican authorized the mission!”
“Yes, the Vatican knows that the Extrasolar Array discovered Heaven, and the Vatican authorized the survey mission. But Federate Intel’s preliminary probes told us full well what had happened. And that’s something that the Vatican can never be told.”
“There are four billion Christians on earth. They have a right to know.”
Simon laughed. “Think about what you’re saying. What? We’re supposed to tell the Pope that we found Heaven but that God abandoned it? We’re supposed to tell all the Christians of the world that demons have taken over Heaven? Don’t you understand that we could never tell them that?”
“But it’s the truth!” Sharon shouted.
“That’s irrelevant. The Christian Federate is the most efficient governmental system in the history of mankind. No disease, no poverty. Crime is only one percent of what it was a hundred years ago. Our technical superiority has all but abolished global war. The Eugenics Laws are exponentially perfecting the human species. Everyone’s productive, healthy, and happy. And we’d lose all that if the world ever found out what we’ve discovered here.”
“It’s crypto-fascism! It’s all a lie!”
Simon shrugged. “So what? It works.”
Esther continued to fondle Sharon’s body. “And it works because the system has produced a population of people like you. Human sin will always rage beneath the surface. Just as it says in your dead New Testament: we’re all born in original sin.”
“But the Federate, by its very design, can maintain control of the world where no other government could.” Simon put his arm around the Commander-Deaconness. “Esther and I have been infiltrating Federate programs for years, on behalf of Federate Intelligence. It’s not about power, it’s about efficiency. We’re the true power behind the Pope, and we always will be. I’ve armed a nuclear-drivehead to destroy the ship. The Vatican will interpret the Edessa’s destruction as the wrath of God. Meanwhile, Esther and I will be secretly picked up by a Federate Intel vessel in an escape skiff. And the world will continue to advance toward perfection.”
Sharon felt dead already. It was the truth that had killed her. It was God’s abandonment, which paved the way for people like this…
“And speaking of original sin…” Simon trembled in precursory excitement. He unseamed the front of his uniform. “It’s nothing personal, but…I’ve never had a virgin.”
Sharon squirmed against the brace clamped across her waist, but most of her paralysis remained. She could barely move her head from side to side. When she tried to move her hands, only a finger or two twitched. She couldn’t even close her legs.
And it was between those legs—that splayed, nude V—that Simon knelt.
“Now I’m gonna bust you open,” he whispered. “But don’t worry. It’ll be good for me.”
Sharon closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and just waited for it. It didn’t matter now, did it? She’d obeyed God’s word and saved her virginity for a good Christian man, a man to be wed to in Jesus’ name. Instead she would have it savaged by this loathsome pervert. It was Sharon’s fury at God that stultified all of her other emotions.
Simon lowered himself closer. His drool dripped in her face.
Just do it and kill me, you evil son of a bitch.
But then she heard two barely audible sounds—
pzzzzt! pzzzzt!
And then he was screaming. It was an ear-splitting, nearly machinelike scream grinding out long and hard.
Sharon heard a thunk! and snapped open her eyes. In that instant, Simon was gone. He’d fallen off the gurney before he could penetrate her. Esther was chuckling; an awful scent filled the air.
What happened? Sharon wondered.
Suddenly, though, she became aware of a strange weight down around her thighs.
By now the paralysis had worn off enough for her to incline her head. First, she looked up at Esther who stood at the foot of the gurney, smiling, hip-cocked. In her hand she held the laser.
“You didn
’t really think I was going to let him do it, did you?”
Sharon’s eyes darted down. Lying askew between her own legs were Simon’s legs: severed and instantly cauterized at mid-thigh.
Simon howled like some rough animal in a trap.
“I’ve always hated that skinny, weasel-faced asshole,” Esther commented.
“You fucking BITCH!” he yelled. He was palming his way backward, toward the exit, his stumps smoking before him. “What have you DONE!”
“For one thing, I sure as shit fooled you, as well as the rest of your Intel cronies,” Esther coyly replied. “And it wasn’t easy.”
“WHY?” he shouted. “We had it all planned! It was all working perfectly!”
“Simple minds. You think you’ve got the Pope in your back pocket? You think you’re the secret power behind the Vatican?”
“That’s the only way it can be! You KNOW that! We’ve trained together for YEARS! What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Getting rid of a ridiculous little pervert, that’s what.” Esther aimed the laser at him.
“Who got to you?” Simon managed through the waves of pain. “Who paid you off? Was it the Japanese? The Fourth Commitern or one of the Haddinite militias?”
“Wrong,” Esther said. “I belong to a faction that’s existed, under many names, for thousands of years. Wasn’t it clever how your Intel scientists grew the marked skin-graft over your suicide operative? Well, the process can be achieved both ways.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Ever smiling, Esther unseamed her uniform, disrobed from the waist up. The years had treated her well; her breasts remained robust, nearly sagless, her stomach flat. Her skin shone in unblemished white. Then she peeled the skin off.
She’d nicked her side with a small scalpel, began to peel the skin away from her breasts and abdomen in a single sheet.
“Jesus Christ,” Simon whispered.
Now her real skin was revealed, the skin she’d been born with. Encompassing most of her chest and belly was the all-too-familiar scarlet pigmentation: the Mark of the Red Sect.
“I was bred for this,” she explained. “I was reared for this day, to infiltrate Federate Central Intelligence and foil their greatest discovery. And we will use that discovery for our own end. Our god has defeated yours, and we will prove that to the world.”
The single bizarre name beat in Sharon’s head: Surkulik, the demon of inversions and false faces. She stared at the puzzling shape and swore she could see a face.
“You won’t get away with this,” Simon assured her from the floor. His stumps looked like circles of char. “I won’t let you!” He reached up desperately toward his collar and slipped something out. It was tiny, like a silver toothpick: the firing device for the nuclear drivehead.
“You don’t have the guts, Simon,” Esther goaded him. “You’re just a sniveling closet-pervert who lives for your own aggrandizement. You’re not man enough to sacrifice yourself for your ideals.”
Even legless, defeated, and thoroughly undermined, Simon managed a smile. “Watch me,” he said, and then he snapped the tiny firing device in half.
His entire face drooped when nothing happened. Esther laughed. “I disarmed the drivehead hours ago, you shit-head. And now I’m going to disarm you.”
pzzzzt! pzzzzt!
Two quick zips of the laser lopped off Simon’s arms at the elbows. He fell back flat against the floor, stumps flailing. More machine-like screams rocketed through the unit.
Esther winked at Sharon. “This laser’s getting a bit old, isn’t it? What do you say we try…this?” and she picked up the milliwave pistol.
She applied the milliwave beam to Simon’s forehead. The brain began to boil, steam jetting from nostrils, ears, and mouth. More crackling resounded, like something in a deep-fryer.
Simon was long-dead when she finally put the pistol away.
Sharon knew what was next, and it all conformed to everything they knew about the Red Sect. In their random terror was their undisclosed statement. To torture, murder, and destroy, without ever saying why.
“Now you do the same to me,” Sharon reasoned.
The doctor sighed in an elated exhaustion. Sweat shined like varnish on the scarlet breasts and belly. In this moment of exuberance, Esther looked as vibrant, invigorated, youthful as Sharon herself.
“No,” she said. “It’s nothing like that at all. You have your Bible, but we have our own testaments too. They’re just as old, just as hallowed. Sharon, I was able to infiltrate Federate Intel due to a divine plan. You’re part of the same plan. I’m surprised you haven’t realized that yet.”
Sharon’s voice sounded like creaking wood. “What do you mean?”
“Under heaven lay umbra, hiding the chosen. I was chosen, in secret. Surkulik is a great god, a deity of inversions hidden behind falsehoods. Those same inversions and falsehoods have protected me from the scourge of the Vatican and all its technology, just as they have protected you. Your Federate medical background is false. Your birth records are false. Even your genetic register and the certification of your tubal ligation are false.”
The tiny snick of the scalpel at Sharon’s side told her what she already suspected by now. The lambent white skin of her chest and belly was peeled off, exposing the Red Sect’s genetic brand beneath.
An air-shot zapped at her neck.
“Go to sleep, little virgin.”
««—»»
Sharon awoke in snatches. She was inside the escape skiff. Esther had re-armed the nuclear drivehead and destroyed the C.F.S. Edessa. It was not a Federate Intel vessel that had picked them up. It was a Red Sect vessel. In and out of consciousness, Sharon remembered little. Her dreams were horrid and vast.
Eventually they returned to Earth.
When she was allowed to remain in a normal waking state, she found herself secluded within a secret Red Sect facility, deep underground. As she had been during her final hours on the Edessa, Sharon was braced to a gurney here too, but by her ankles and elbows now. She was fed intravenously; she was tended to by quiet nurses whose eyes seemed to sparkle with envy. Every so often Esther would come in to see her.
“The transfections are working marvelously,” the woman told her. “Twenty more young faithful girls such as yourself are successfully gestating.”
Sharon’s state of pregnancy soon became obvious, her belly growing more rotund every day. “Who is the father of my child?” she asked dully.
“Technically, Tom,” Esther informed. “After Simon killed him, I extracted some spermatozoa, cryolized it, and brought it back. Your egg was fertilized ectogenically and replanted into your womb. Of course, this was after I spliced some additional gene markers into your egg.”
Sharon didn’t understand. “Additional…markers?”
“Reproductive markers. All cells have them in their DNA coils. I extracted hundreds of them from the specimen Simon retrieved.”
Then Sharon remembered. “The snake,” she said.
Esther laughed. She moved a small holo-terminal over to Sharon, opened the screen. “You’re a smart, inquisitive young woman. Here. Investigate. And you won’t even need a biochip for full access. We’ve long since broken all of the Federate’s earthbound passwords. I’ll give you a hint. Access the vocabulary banks, then remember that Surkulik is a god of puzzles, inversions, and falsehoods. And remember our prayer. It’s your prayer now, Sharon.”
Esther walked away, leaving Sharon to occupy herself with her former skills. She immediately accessed SURKULIK and ran a like-find request.
The screen read:
one (1) entry found:
target word SURKULIK is like:
adj. [from Latin: surcul«sus or surculus]:
SURCULOSE: producing or possessed of suckers as in woody surus branches or tentacles.
Then: Tentacles, the thought tapped in Sharon’s mind. The snake…
It wasn’t a snake. It was a tentacle.
&nbs
p; Next, she recited Esther’s hint: And remember our prayer. God of falsehoods. God of puzzles and inversions. The name itself—Kilukrus—was an inversion of Surkulik, whose puzzle was originally hinted at via the simplest puzzle of all: the Red Sect’s bible, The Order of Kilukrus, was bound in reverse. Hence, Surkulik was Kilukrus in reverse.
Next she input the Sect’s intercession:
Under heaven lay umbra, hiding the chosen
She decided on the next simplest cipher in history—an acrostic—and highlighted the first letter of each word:
Under heaven lay umbra, hiding the chosen
This spelled:
uhluhtc
Meaningless, she thought.
Then she ran it in reverse:
cthulhu
Frustrated, Sharon turned off the holoscreen. She idly rubbed her belly. The word meant nothing to her.
— | — | —
About the Author
Edward Lee is the author of almost fifty novels and numerous short stories and novellas (or is it novellae? Hmm.) Several of his properties have been optioned for film, while Header was released on DVD in 2009; also, he has been published in Germany, England, Romania, Greece, and Austria. He has a number of hardcore Lovecraftian books The Innswich Horror, Trolley No. 1852, Pages Torn From A Travel Journal, Going Monstering, and Haunter of the Threshold. One of Lee’s creative ambitions was to one day write an effective M.R. James pastiche. The Dollhouse is that story.
