The Messiah Choice (1985) Read Online Free PDF

looked at the girl in the wheelchair and sighed. Why do the paralyzed ones always seem to be extraordinarily beautiful? he wondered.
    Angelique was in fact a stunner, with lush reddish-brown hair, big green eyes, and the face and body of a very young Brigit Bardot. She was petite, beautiful, and she was, from all appearances, a quadriplegic.
    The totality of her disability, particularly when coupled with her radiant, almost charismatic beauty, shocked both men, and for a moment both just stood there, not moving.
    The wheelchair, however, was no ordinary wheelchair, as she proved, spotting the two standing at the edge of the tarmac. It had considerable bulk below and behind and might have weighed a ton. Without any assist from anyone, it started up and glided towards the pair.
    As she reached them, both men saw that she was wearing some sort of headpiece plugged into the chair which included a tiny microphone. It resembled the communications gear of a modern telephone operator. The helicopter was completely switched off now, and they heard her say softly, "Arret!" The chair halted immediately. The nurse and Meadows had followed her and now stood behind, although it was Meadows who took the lead.
    "Mademoiselle Montagne, let me present Mr. Byrne, the Institute's director, and Company Investigator MacDonald, who is in charge of our own inquiry into the facts of your father's death and is a fellow Canadian, I might add."
    She looked at them rather nervously. "How do you do, sirs," she managed, in a pleasant, French accented soprano.
    "Welcome to our island," Byrne managed, trying to sound both fatherly and formal at the same time and coming off mostly stuffy. "Actually, it's your island now, too, of course. You must be fatigued by your long journey. Would you care to come up to the Lodge right now and get settled in? Weighty matters can wait.''
    "I am feeling fine, Monsieur, and not at all out of sorts. I did little on the journey but sleep and think. I have not as yet had time to get used to all this."
    "Well, we understand that it must have been a shock to learn of your father's death—" Byrne began, but she cut him off.
    "No, no! You do not yet understand, I fear. Until only four days ago I did not know that he even was my father."
    That startled them both once again. It was a day for shocks. MacDonald's curiosity broke through the ice.
    "Um, you mean that you didn't know Sir Robert at all?"
    "Oh, oui, I knew him as 'Uncle Robert,' and I knew who he was, but all that I knew, all that my records ever said, was that I was the orphaned child of two people I thought were my parents, and that my father had been killed while serving with Sir Robert in Korea. I was raised mostly in a convent in the Gaspe, with Sir Robert a frequent visitor. I knew he had set up a trust fund for me, and this chair is the product of one of his companies, but that he was actually my real father—
    mon Dieu! —1 wish I had known!"
    Byrne looked even more uncomfortable. "I suggest we still go up to the Lodge and get out of the sun. It's air conditioned there, and we can have some tea or whatever and talk more comfortably. We have a small tram over there with a wheelchair lift—a few of the Fellows of the Institute also have need of wheelchairs—and we can be up there in no time at all."
    She nodded. "Very well."
    She commanded the chair, he noted, with simple commands in French in a very definite and slightly unnatural tone of voice. It was an amazing device to him, and one that, he knew, would be beyond the financial reach of many others who could use it. She could even make very small adjustments in its steering by uttering sharp nonsense syllables or clicks with her tongue.
    The ride up was in silence, taking but four minutes. MacDonald kept his eyes on her throughout, drawing what deductions he could from the little he had. For one thing, it was unlikely that she'd been in this condition for a long time—the body was perfect, the muscle tone