Anneka hisses irritably and for a moment her host glares at him. “I’m hungry. The prey merely leads me on a longer pursuit than usual; I’ll reap his soul for our Lord in the end. In person, or by taking for myself a vessel, a Ganymede who will—”
“Stop. Stop right now.” Schiller glares at his unruly handmaid. He has overindulged Anneka disgracefully since initiating her in the back of the BMW the month before, he realizes. After the initial shock and pain she has grown to take delight in her new power, and more; for as the Third Revelation explains, to those of the Inner Temple no delight will be forbidden once the kingdom of the Lord arrives on Earth, and that’s the work they are engaged in right now. If Schiller wasn’t queasily troubled by his own imagination when he visualizes what it would be like to slowly undress Grove himself, the remains of his Baptist indoctrination wouldn’t have bubbled to the surface, with its legacy of hellfire and damnation. “Enough. We’ll get to Mr. Grove in due course. Make sure he’s on the special invite list to the next party.” That’s the list of those who qualify for the full VIP cost-no-object treatment, helicopters and cocaine and oiled, nubile bodies: access all areas. Schiller’s own host takes over, and he hears his throat forming words in a language no human larynx was meant to speak: “I will take him for mine own if it comes to it, Daughter.”
Anneka’s host retreats. She sits up primly, knees together. “Yes, Father.” She pauses. “What else?”
Schiller glances at his wristwatch. “It’s almost eight. Where are they?”
“I can check.” Anneka’s laptop sits atop her briefcase, on the coffee table. She clicks away for a minute. “Not far, they should be here within ten minutes. Traffic diversions near the Blackwall Tunnel, I think.”
“Well and good.” Schiller breathes deeply. “The next party is the last one before Parliament is due to go into recess. I think we should strive to induct our friends Grove, Redmayne, and Irving. The PM will be an adequate bellwether, I believe. Their personal security might be problematic, however…”
“I believe I can take care of that,” Anneka volunteers. “They’ll only be accompanied by two bodyguards at most for an event at a private estate on the Foreign Office cleared list—it’s not like the United States.” (Public officials in the United States of America are unusually [even uniquely] well guarded by the standards of other democratic nations.) “I’ll have Dan slip them the roofies and Bernadette can store them in a warded cellar until we can Elevate them. In extremis we could send them to Heathrow for initiation into the Middle Temple. If our Lord will provide, I’m sure a couple of our people under cover of a suitable glamour will be able to replace them with no one the wiser, at least for an evening.”
“Hmm.” Schiller thinks about it. “As long as the substitution takes place as close to his induction as possible, I believe it will work. Once our friend Jeremy has joined us in the Inner Temple his guards are surplus to requirements.” He smiles. “It is asking a lot of you, though—of you and of Bernadette and of my other handmaids—to bring your grace to so many men.” Schiller has only brought five handmaids into the Inner Temple since his arrival in the UK. The question of who he can trust is troubling, as is the not inconsiderable effort and pain of growing new distal segments after each initiation. Obeying the injunction to be fruitful and multiply is distressingly time-consuming: at this rate it could take months of doubling cycles before the entire adult population of the British Isles have been blessed by the Lord of the New Flesh.
“Can you Elevate some more sisters to work alongside us?” She smiles back at him. “I’m sure your host is nearly ripe again.”
“There are no suitable”—Schiller changes tack—“but that won’t matter anymore, will it.”
“Not once our Lord numbers the most important members of the cabinet among his faithful congregation?”
“Indeed.”
Anneka gives him a long look. She is unusually perceptive, for a handmaid, Schiller notes. All too often the shock of induction damages something, renders them incurious or dreamily withdrawn, as if soul-burned. But not Anneka, the jewel in his crown. When he installed her host, bringing her into direct communion with the Lord without an intermediary, it seemed to awaken something in her. The arrival of the millennium has freed her from her feminine sense of sin and shame, but it has also unlocked her potential. If it wasn’t the host of the Lord himself that she nurtures within her womb, he might almost take her for the Scarlet Whore of Babylon: she is insatiable for converts, zealous in her pursuit of the mission, and frighteningly ambitious. “Are you sure,” she asks slowly, “that you are not unconsciously delaying the inevitable because it suits you to be the only man in our Lord’s house?”
“I wouldn’t—” Schiller meets Anneka’s amethyst gaze, lips suddenly dry. Someone else looks back at him, the bell-like clarity of her voice striking echoing chimes in the back of his head. His Lord is surfacing in her mind, finally awakening to perceive itself through the prism of her soul. The Sleeping God’s noosphere expands with each Inner Temple initiate who achieves this state of enlightenment and grace. “Do you think so, my Lady?” he hears himself asking, and anticipates her answer before she gives voice to it.
“I will provide new converts for your baptism,” the half of him that speaks through Anneka replies, “and you will plant your seed in their wombs so that they may be born again as handmaids. I will mold them from high-priced sex workers rather than from the daughters of the Church, and they will spread the good news far and wide; it is time to rapidly expand the ranks of the Lord’s army rather than slowly growing the hands and hearts of the Inner Temple.”