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Chapter 11

The Christ Clone Trilogy 03 - Acts Of God

James Beau Seigneur

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Good, good," Decker said. The look of relief on his face was in earnest.

"When can we expect you back, then?" Milner asked.

"I'm not sure," Decker replied. He wished he could just leave it open-ended but he knew he had to give them some kind of answer. "Maybe a week," he said finally.

"Where will you be?" Jackie Hansen asked. Decker didn't want to answer. He needed uninterrupted time to think things through and once this conversation was done he didn't want to have to talk to anyone close to Christopher for a while. Worse still would be receiving a call from Christopher himself; Decker was certain that Christopher would be able to see through his act and know something was wrong. Still, he needed to give an answer.

"I'll be at my house in Maryland," he answered. "I'll see you when I get back," he added, hoping to bring the conversation to a close.

"Okay," Jackie said, instinctively complying with his intention. "Well, I'm glad you're all right."

"Thanks," Decker responded.

"Enjoy yourself," Milner said halfheartedly. "And next time you decide to take off, make sure you have your phone with you."

"Yeah, I'm sorry," Decker said. "I guess I left it in my office."

And with that Decker ended the call. Milner knows something's wrong, Decker thought. He didn 't believe me. Quickly he ran over in his mind everything he had said for anything that might have given him away. Then he remembered: Debbie Sanchez had not been in the office the day before he left. If Milner followed up on it, that mistake would surely confirm his suspicions that something was indeed wrong.

Before he left the restaurant, Decker made two more calls: one to arrange for passage on the next U.N. flight to the U.S. and the other to have Bert Tolinson, the man at the agency that took care of his house, get the place ready for an extended visit.

That evening Decker caught a United Nations troop transport in Tel Aviv bound for New York. The accommodations were less than those to which he was normally accustomed, but there was no one else on the plane except the crew, so he had plenty of privacy. Though he tried, he could not sleep. From New York he took a commuter flight to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. It was on this second leg of the flight, and on the way to his house in Derwood, that he first began to notice something that he would soon realize had far greater meaning than he could have imagined.

Having raced the sun across eight time zones, Decker arrived at his house in Derwood, Maryland, at about the same time of evening that he had left Tel Aviv. Now, despite all that was on his mind, after visiting the grave of his family in the backyard, he went inside and quickly fell asleep.

Monday, June 8, 4 N.A. (2026 A.D.) — Derwood, Maryland

Decker rolled over on his back and allowed his eyes to open slightly. Closing them again, he groaned and fell back to sleep. It was seven minutes after noon before he was finally really awake. He woke with one thought so clear that it had doubtless been deliberated for hours by his unconscious mind. In the brilliant light of day, with the sound of birds outside, it seemed inconceivable to him that he ever could have imagined such awful things about Christopher. Yes, there were some things that needed to be explained, but he must have been out of his mind to have thought .... He didn't even want to think about what he had thought. It was all so ridiculous. He shook his head in disbelief and more than little embarrassment.

Of course, there were extenuating circumstance that facilitated Decker's willingness to believe such things. After all, he had been kidnapped; and while the KDT apparently had not intended to harm him, he did not know that at the time. It was a traumatic experience and he realized now that it was foolish of him to think that he was immune to its ill effects. One of those effects, no doubt, was being open to suggestion: the suggestions of Scott Rosen and of the dream.

The clock beside his bed said it was 12:30 p.m. Adding eight hours to that meant that it was 8:30 in Babylon. He toyed with the idea of whether he should call or just get on a plane and go back. He opted for the latter. Right now, he was going to get out of bed, go downstairs, and fix himself some breakfast. Then he would call and find out when the next plane was leaving for Babylon.

Decker opened the refrigerator and freezer in unison. Bert Tolinson had done his job well — all his favorites were there. For a fleeting moment he thought maybe he wouldn't go back right away after all. He really could use a vacation. As he fixed breakfast, with the smell of bacon and waffles and coffee in the air, it was hard not to think back to better days: days of getting up early and having breakfast with Hope and Louisa before they headed off to school, days of driving to the kiss-and-ride at the Metro with Elizabeth. He would never have that back.

But he would have Elizabeth.

Christopher had promised him that. The joy of that thought made him all the more embarrassed that he could have doubted Christopher.

Decker carried his breakfast into the living room and turned on the television. It wasn't the same as having breakfast with a real live person but it was better than eating alone.

The picture came on immediately and Decker was greeted by a very unusual sight: the reporter on the screen had bandages on her forehead, cheek, chin, and two on her neck. She was obviously in some discomfort. Decker's first thought was that she had been in an accident or mugged but it was not just the one reporter. The camera moved to another reporter who was wearing multiple bandages as well. The scene then went to a reporter on a nearly abandoned street, interviewing whoever could be found of the local citizenry. Had Decker looked more closely at the background, he would have recognized the scene as DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., not far from the headquarters for NewsWorld Magazine for which he and Tom Donafin had both worked, and normally one of the busiest areas of Washington. But Decker was not interested in where they were. What had captured his attention was that almost everyone in the picture was bandaged. The few who were not revealed by their lack of gauze and tape what the rest had hidden: ugly, red, ulcerous lesions.

"TV stop," Decker said, and the picture froze. "Restart at beginning of this program." Instantly, the program started again at the top of the hour. Decker had always found this to be one of the most useful features of interactive television. Without missing a thing, it was possible to have any program in the past two months replayed. It was even possible, as the current example demonstrated, to restart a program that was in progress by accessing a delayed video feed.

Replaying from the beginning revealed that the whole program was focused on an unexplained worldwide outbreak of lesions which affected nearly the entire population. According to the news anchor, the epidemic had begun with a reddening of the skin and mild itching which continued to worsen until lesions began to form and finally erupt. Suddenly Decker recalled something he had noticed that had been too insignificant to pay much attention to before: people scratching — nothing ominous, just minor but repeated scratching. It had been most obvious on the shuttle from New York and on the Metro ride from the airport. But as he thought back, he remembered seeing some of the crew on the U.N. troop transport scratching, as were people at the restaurant where he had eaten in Jerusalem. Then, as he recalled his phone conversation with Jackie Hansen, he remembered that she too was scratching.

Decker flipped through the channels. On most of the general interest channels the story was the same, with pain-racked, bandaged reporters interviewing bandaged health officials or bandaged politicians or bandaged people on the street. Nearly all business had come to a halt. Only the hardiest ventured out at all. Most governments around the world had shut down except for essential services. Later, there were public service advisories on how to treat the lesions to prevent infection and reports of long lines of people waiting to buy gauze, tape, and pain relievers at the few drug stores that remained open.

"As for the cause of the lesions," one of the reporters was saying when Decker paused on that channel, "while most scientists tell us it is still too early for any scientific evidence to have been collected and analyzed, one scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking off the record, told me that there is clearly one distinguishing factor between those who have the sores and those who do not. So far, only those who have taken the communion have the sores."

It's happening already, Decker thought. This is what Rosen was talking about when he said that things were going to get much worse fast. There must be some connection between this and why he had seen so many KDT arriving in Petra. But though he recognized the connection, he had no idea what the KDT were planning next.

Decker did not call that day to make arrangements for passage back to Babylon, nor did he do so the next. He told himself that there was no hurry and that if he went out in public and was recognized, it would not be received well that someone so close to Christopher did not have the mark and the sores. At the same time, it made no sense to Decker to go out and get the communion when that would cause him to get the sores. He had enough food to last for a while and anything else he needed Bert Tolinson would get for him. It was far more reasonable, he thought, just to wait. In reality, however, Decker was again beginning to wonder if he had not been right about the dream after all. What had changed his mind? he wondered, though he could not yet admit to himself that a change had occurred. Why had the certainty of a few hours before so quickly evaporated? Was he now thinking more clearly or was he once again falling into the role he had played two thousand years earlier: a part he played so well that after two millennia the role still bore his name — Judas.

Table Of Contents

Chapter 11

Table Of Contents

The Christ Clone Trilogy 03 - Acts Of God

James Beau Seigneur

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Judas

10:05 a.m., Sunday, June 7, 4 N.A. (2026 A.D.) — The wilderness of Jordan, north of Petra

The dusty gray four-wheel-drive truck sped across the off-road terrain north from Petra, negotiating its way around rocks and ruts. Having long since given up on the notion of conversing with her passenger — he had not said ten words since he got in the vehicle outside the Siq of Petra an hour before — the driver thought about plans for her upcoming wedding. When she received her assignment to drive Decker to Jerusalem she had expected a hostile passenger, still enraged about his abduction. Instead he seemed almost in a trance, so preoccupied with his thoughts that he acted as though she wasn't even there. Time and again he ran his right hand up the side of his face and over his head, pulling at his thinning gray hair as it passed between his fingers.

Alternating between nervous twitching or tapping his foot on the floorboard to a frozen tableau, Decker tried to understand, tried to think if there was something that he had missed. But there seemed no doubt what Tom had meant. Christopher was going to leave Tom in Lebanon.

It must have been, Decker thought, his eyes squinting in reflection, that all the similarities between his current situation and what happened in Lebanon all those years ago had caused him to have the dream again. That part was simple enough. Still, that did not negate the larger meaning. How could he have missed it for so long? All these years and it had not sunk in until now. Could it have been just an accident? Decker's mind was filled with the single thought and its awful implications. It didn't make sense; it couldn't have been an accident. Decker knew that if he was right, he had discovered the single slip in an otherwise flawless plan. It had seemed so insignificant at the time, but if he was right. . .

Another hour passed before the truck finally came to a real road, bounced onto the blistering hot blacktop, and turned west. Decker's mind flashed back to the road in Lebanon where he and Tom Donafin had been rescued by the convoy carrying Ambassador Jon Hansen. Had that really happened just by chance? he wondered.

About three miles down the highway, the driver pulled to the side of the road and stopped behind a Japanese-built station wagon. "The key is in the glove box," she said as she handed him a canteen full of water. "Just keep heading west for about thirty kilometers and you'll come to Jericho."

"Thanks," Decker said reflexively as he took the canteen and the leather satchel that held Elizabeth's Bible, and got out of the truck. The temperature was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit with the sun beating down through perfectly clear skies, but Decker was oblivious to such details. Going to the car, he mindlessly opened the door, got in, and closed the door behind him. The driver who had brought him from Petra sat in the air-conditioned comfort of her own vehicle waiting for him to start the car, but despite the heat Decker just sat there, absorbed in thought. Finally, when she was about to go and check on him, Decker remembered something about the key being in the glove box and reached over to find it.

Without looking back at the driver, Decker started the car and drove off. Only the intense heat of the steering wheel in his bare hands broke Decker's concentration and he used his shirttail to hold the wheel as he tried to determine how to turn on the car's air conditioning. It was fortunate that the car was pointed toward Jericho, for he had no recollection of the woman's directions and no thought of where he was going.

Decker got past the U.N. border guards in Israel without incident, though they were a bit unnerved to have a high official of the U.N. arriving unexpectedly. Their response gave no indication that he had been reported missing. Apparently, Rosen was right: Decker traveled so frequently that after being gone for only four days, no one was seriously concerned about where he was. This was a point of some relief as Decker had no desire to explain where he had been or what had happened to him until he first had some time to think.

He found a small restaurant off the beaten path where he thought it unlikely that anyone would recognize him. As he ate, he agonized over what to do next. Certainly he should call someone to let them know where he was and that he was all right — all right, he thought in pained irony, now there was a relative term. He decided the best course of action would be to call Debbie Sanchez, his second in command, tell her that he had taken some time off and would be gone for another week or so. She could tell anyone else who needed to know. That should work, he thought; Debbie would probably be irritated that he hadn't told her of his plans ahead of time, but she was too new in her job to question him or demand an explanation. When she got over being mad, she'd probably welcome the opportunity to be in charge for awhile.

Decker crossed his fingers and hoped the video on the telephone might be broken — it was going to be hard enough to sound like nothing was wrong without trying to look the part as well. He could turn the video off, but that would just raise questions; and he couldn't lie and say the equipment was broken because the monitor at the other end would indicate that it had been turned off.

Putting on the best face he could manage, he dialed the phone. Debbie Sanchez had worked for him for less than a year and although she was a very intelligent woman, he hoped she might not be able to see through his performance.

"Ms. Sanchez' office," a woman said. Decker looked at the face on the screen. It was Kwalindia Oshala, Debbie Sanchez' administrative assistant.

"Mr. Hawthorne!" she said. The inflection in her voice and the look on her face made it clear she was surprised to see him. This was not a good sign: obviously there was some concern about his unplanned absence, even if they hadn't begun an all-out search.

"Yes," Decker answered, as if everything was fine and he had not noticed her surprise. "Let me talk to Ms. Sanchez."

"Sir," she responded, "she's out. She's covering for you at a meeting of the World Press Club." Decker had forgotten about being scheduled to speak, and for an instant he felt guilty about missing the appointment.

"What about Martin?" he asked, referring to Debbie Sanchez' aide.

"He's covering for Ms. Sanchez at a meeting in Beijing," she answered.

Decker really didn't want to leave a message with a secretary. That would hardly seem like appropriate behavior from someone who had been missing for the past four days. He quickly discovered that the option was not really open to him anyway.

"Mr. Hawthorne," Kwalindia said, "Jackie Hansen left orders for me to contact her immediately if you called. She said not to let you off the phone until she talked with you."

Decker thought fast but came up with nothing. This was not working out as he had planned. If Jackie was so insistent on talking to him it probably meant that Christopher wanted to talk to him, and he was not at all prepared to do that just yet: not until he had time to think this whole thing through. But he couldn't refuse to talk to her. There was nothing to do but hope he could talk to Jackie briefly and try to appear as if nothing was wrong. "Put me through to her," he said reluctantly, with a pasted-on smile.

"Jackie Hansen," came the answer a second later, followed by, "Decker! Where have you been!?"

Decker was about to try to answer when he heard another voice from out of camera range. "Decker??" the voice said. It was Robert Milner. "Let me talk to him!" A second later Milner came into view on the screen. "Decker, where have you been? Are you all right? We were about to send out search teams!"

Mentally Decker groaned, but his face maintained its smiling innocence. "I'm fine," he answered. "I just decided I needed a little vacation."

Milner was dumbstruck for a moment that Decker would so trivialize their concern by not even offering an explanation. "I'm sure you deserve it," he said, finally, "but it's customary to let someone ... at least someone on your staff, know where you're going and when you'll be back."

"I'm really sorry," he said, trying to come up with some believable lie. "I mentioned it to Debbie Sanchez before I left. I guess I didn't make a big deal of it. I should have been clearer. I certainly didn't mean to worry anybody."

"Just so you're okay," Jackie interjected.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I hope that Christopher .. ."

"No," Jackie responded, anticipating Decker's question. "I asked him about you yesterday, thinking that he might have sent you on some mission somewhere; but I didn't tell him why I was asking or mention that nobody else knew where you were. I didn't want to worry him before I knew if something was really wrong; he's got enough on his mind right now."

"Good, good," Decker said. The look of relief on his face was in earnest.

"When can we expect you back, then?" Milner asked.

"I'm not sure," Decker replied. He wished he could just leave it open-ended but he knew he had to give them some kind of answer. "Maybe a week," he said finally.

"Where will you be?" Jackie Hansen asked. Decker didn't want to answer. He needed uninterrupted time to think things through and once this conversation was done he didn't want to have to talk to anyone close to Christopher for a while. Worse still would be receiving a call from Christopher himself; Decker was certain that Christopher would be able to see through his act and know something was wrong. Still, he needed to give an answer.

"I'll be at my house in Maryland," he answered. "I'll see you when I get back," he added, hoping to bring the conversation to a close.

"Okay," Jackie said, instinctively complying with his intention. "Well, I'm glad you're all right."

"Thanks," Decker responded.

"Enjoy yourself," Milner said halfheartedly. "And next time you decide to take off, make sure you have your phone with you."

"Yeah, I'm sorry," Decker said. "I guess I left it in my office."

And with that Decker ended the call. Milner knows something's wrong, Decker thought. He didn 't believe me. Quickly he ran over in his mind everything he had said for anything that might have given him away. Then he remembered: Debbie Sanchez had not been in the office the day before he left. If Milner followed up on it, that mistake would surely confirm his suspicions that something was indeed wrong.

Before he left the restaurant, Decker made two more calls: one to arrange for passage on the next U.N. flight to the U.S. and the other to have Bert Tolinson, the man at the agency that took care of his house, get the place ready for an extended visit.

That evening Decker caught a United Nations troop transport in Tel Aviv bound for New York. The accommodations were less than those to which he was normally accustomed, but there was no one else on the plane except the crew, so he had plenty of privacy. Though he tried, he could not sleep. From New York he took a commuter flight to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. It was on this second leg of the flight, and on the way to his house in Derwood, that he first began to notice something that he would soon realize had far greater meaning than he could have imagined.

Having raced the sun across eight time zones, Decker arrived at his house in Derwood, Maryland, at about the same time of evening that he had left Tel Aviv. Now, despite all that was on his mind, after visiting the grave of his family in the backyard, he went inside and quickly fell asleep.

Monday, June 8, 4 N.A. (2026 A.D.) — Derwood, Maryland

Decker rolled over on his back and allowed his eyes to open slightly. Closing them again, he groaned and fell back to sleep. It was seven minutes after noon before he was finally really awake. He woke with one thought so clear that it had doubtless been deliberated for hours by his unconscious mind. In the brilliant light of day, with the sound of birds outside, it seemed inconceivable to him that he ever could have imagined such awful things about Christopher. Yes, there were some things that needed to be explained, but he must have been out of his mind to have thought .... He didn't even want to think about what he had thought. It was all so ridiculous. He shook his head in disbelief and more than little embarrassment.

Of course, there were extenuating circumstance that facilitated Decker's willingness to believe such things. After all, he had been kidnapped; and while the KDT apparently had not intended to harm him, he did not know that at the time. It was a traumatic experience and he realized now that it was foolish of him to think that he was immune to its ill effects. One of those effects, no doubt, was being open to suggestion: the suggestions of Scott Rosen and of the dream.

The clock beside his bed said it was 12:30 p.m. Adding eight hours to that meant that it was 8:30 in Babylon. He toyed with the idea of whether he should call or just get on a plane and go back. He opted for the latter. Right now, he was going to get out of bed, go downstairs, and fix himself some breakfast. Then he would call and find out when the next plane was leaving for Babylon.

Decker opened the refrigerator and freezer in unison. Bert Tolinson had done his job well — all his favorites were there. For a fleeting moment he thought maybe he wouldn't go back right away after all. He really could use a vacation. As he fixed breakfast, with the smell of bacon and waffles and coffee in the air, it was hard not to think back to better days: days of getting up early and having breakfast with Hope and Louisa before they headed off to school, days of driving to the kiss-and-ride at the Metro with Elizabeth. He would never have that back.

But he would have Elizabeth.

Christopher had promised him that. The joy of that thought made him all the more embarrassed that he could have doubted Christopher.

Decker carried his breakfast into the living room and turned on the television. It wasn't the same as having breakfast with a real live person but it was better than eating alone.

The picture came on immediately and Decker was greeted by a very unusual sight: the reporter on the screen had bandages on her forehead, cheek, chin, and two on her neck. She was obviously in some discomfort. Decker's first thought was that she had been in an accident or mugged but it was not just the one reporter. The camera moved to another reporter who was wearing multiple bandages as well. The scene then went to a reporter on a nearly abandoned street, interviewing whoever could be found of the local citizenry. Had Decker looked more closely at the background, he would have recognized the scene as DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., not far from the headquarters for NewsWorld Magazine for which he and Tom Donafin had both worked, and normally one of the busiest areas of Washington. But Decker was not interested in where they were. What had captured his attention was that almost everyone in the picture was bandaged. The few who were not revealed by their lack of gauze and tape what the rest had hidden: ugly, red, ulcerous lesions.

"TV stop," Decker said, and the picture froze. "Restart at beginning of this program." Instantly, the program started again at the top of the hour. Decker had always found this to be one of the most useful features of interactive television. Without missing a thing, it was possible to have any program in the past two months replayed. It was even possible, as the current example demonstrated, to restart a program that was in progress by accessing a delayed video feed.

Replaying from the beginning revealed that the whole program was focused on an unexplained worldwide outbreak of lesions which affected nearly the entire population. According to the news anchor, the epidemic had begun with a reddening of the skin and mild itching which continued to worsen until lesions began to form and finally erupt. Suddenly Decker recalled something he had noticed that had been too insignificant to pay much attention to before: people scratching — nothing ominous, just minor but repeated scratching. It had been most obvious on the shuttle from New York and on the Metro ride from the airport. But as he thought back, he remembered seeing some of the crew on the U.N. troop transport scratching, as were people at the restaurant where he had eaten in Jerusalem. Then, as he recalled his phone conversation with Jackie Hansen, he remembered that she too was scratching.

Decker flipped through the channels. On most of the general interest channels the story was the same, with pain-racked, bandaged reporters interviewing bandaged health officials or bandaged politicians or bandaged people on the street. Nearly all business had come to a halt. Only the hardiest ventured out at all. Most governments around the world had shut down except for essential services. Later, there were public service advisories on how to treat the lesions to prevent infection and reports of long lines of people waiting to buy gauze, tape, and pain relievers at the few drug stores that remained open.

"As for the cause of the lesions," one of the reporters was saying when Decker paused on that channel, "while most scientists tell us it is still too early for any scientific evidence to have been collected and analyzed, one scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking off the record, told me that there is clearly one distinguishing factor between those who have the sores and those who do not. So far, only those who have taken the communion have the sores."

It's happening already, Decker thought. This is what Rosen was talking about when he said that things were going to get much worse fast. There must be some connection between this and why he had seen so many KDT arriving in Petra. But though he recognized the connection, he had no idea what the KDT were planning next.

Decker did not call that day to make arrangements for passage back to Babylon, nor did he do so the next. He told himself that there was no hurry and that if he went out in public and was recognized, it would not be received well that someone so close to Christopher did not have the mark and the sores. At the same time, it made no sense to Decker to go out and get the communion when that would cause him to get the sores. He had enough food to last for a while and anything else he needed Bert Tolinson would get for him. It was far more reasonable, he thought, just to wait. In reality, however, Decker was again beginning to wonder if he had not been right about the dream after all. What had changed his mind? he wondered, though he could not yet admit to himself that a change had occurred. Why had the certainty of a few hours before so quickly evaporated? Was he now thinking more clearly or was he once again falling into the role he had played two thousand years earlier: a part he played so well that after two millennia the role still bore his name — Judas.

Table Of Contents