The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  “Does it mean anything in practice?”

  “Yes. After fifty years, the leased land reverts to the original owner or his descendants. This goes a long way to forestall landed gentry with a vast peon underclass.”

  Lee jammed her hands under her head and tracked the moon-like object as it, little by little, made its way to one of the six exit gates at the horizon’s edge. “Being a believer is not an option in this world, is it?”

  “Option? In this universe, Yahweh is as real as the dirt under your feet and the wind in your hair. A belief in his existence is not a question or a point; it is a given.” Hagar looked fixedly at the glowing embers. “No, what is demanded is practice. His people are to follow his precepts and code of ethics.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be a challenging code to uphold, one that only the impossibly righteous can adhere to and fulfill?”

  “Huh? Nah, it’s all rudimentary. Don’t steal or kill. Don’t fuck a goat or your sister or someone’s wife. Be a good neighbor. A conviction requires the testimony of at least two witnesses. Basic property right laws. Stuff like that.”

  Lee seemed startled by the answer. She mulled this over, quiet for a while.

  “Hagar, what is Yahweh?”

  Her companion eyed her. Eventually, she resumed gazing at the bonfire. “He is a meme lord.”

  “A meme lord,” repeated Lee.

  Hagar turned on her side. Propping herself on one elbow, she faced Lee. “The original plan here was to have people in the likeness of Adam and Khavah: automatons without reasoning faculties. In other words, ideal meme carriers. All they had to do was to be fruitful, multiply, and take it on the chin. Essentially, that’s what the Seraph lady was talking about. Shit happened, though. All the same, as long as people obey and faithfully and fervently transmit the memes from one generation to the next, it gets the job done.

  “At some point, Yahweh wanted a flock of his own,” Hagar went on. “The Pharaoh holding in slavery the Yisra’elites was the break he was looking for,” she continued. “That was his opportunity to play the savior and get the freed people to follow him.”

  Lee said, “I never understood how after repeatedly witnessing the awesome powers of Yahweh in their journey through the desert, the Yisra’elites could have rebelled over and over again—rather than shit their pants in fear.”

  Hagar’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “They could not have, of course; he hardened their hearts to achieve this end. Thus, Yahweh was able to beat into them time and again his precepts, like a smith beat­ing metal on an anvil, forging and molding. The old boy needed the precepts baked in, beyond the ability of humans to question or to evolve past them.”

  She grimaced. “Yet, the upkeep job is never done. Bnei Yisra’el are made to ferret out and stone those who manifest streaks of independent thinking. This is why El Shaddai has a standing order to kill the children who disobey. Kill those brothers, sisters, friends, or spouses who try to coax one to serve other gods. Kill any and all who entertain heretical thoughts. Kill the offspring for the sins of their parents down to third and fourth generations. Like with a tumor, if one really wants to root something out, one also takes out the surrounding cells.

  “Remember that from a meme lord’s point of view, the very capacity of humans to reason is evil.”

  Hagar leaned over and kissed Lee. “Let’s catch some sleep.”

  “Sounds good,” said Lee and smiled back.

  Morning came and their journey continued.

  After a couple of days, Hagar and Lee left Reuven country, crossed Binyamin territory, and arrived at the highlands of Yehudah, which along with the province of the Ephraim tribe, made up the backbone of the Yisra’elites’ domain.

  At long last, they reached the territory where they could seek audience with Yahweh. It was time to make their presence known to the deity and cast the dice.

  In a terebinth grove amid the hills, they located a horned altar of white stone. Hagar slaughtered a sheep they had purchased earlier, and the two carried it up the hill.

  “I don’t understand why we are sacrificing an animal as a way to get Yahweh to notice us. Isn’t he omniscient?”

  Hagar’s eyes shone in amusement. “No, of course not. Have you not read Genesis?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, three men appeared to Avraham: Yahweh and two of his minions. After they dine, Yahweh tells Avraham that a great outcry against the offenses of Sdom and Amorah has reached him. And then he says: ‘I will go down and see if that is so.’ I thought it should be clear from this account he is not omniscient.”

  “I remember reading this,” Lee said distantly. She reflected some more. “Come to think of it, it also did not occur to me that at times he manifested in a body.”

  “Well, yes. That’s how, for example, at Mount Sinai the elders of Yisra’el saw El Shaddai in person and noted the pavement in the likeness of blue sapphire underneath his feet, which incidentally is a description of the solid sky-canopy above us.” She abruptly turned her head back then motioned Lee to be quiet.

  Moments later, a group of dark-skinned men worked their way through the trees. They wore long, matted hair in dreadlocks and carried drums, flutes, and lyres.

  “It is a band of nevi’im,” said Hagar in a low voice. “Ecstatic dancers.” She sounded uneasy. “They are human conduits to Yahweh. Via music-induced trance, they open themselves up to his will and commands. Nevi’im are a literal mouthpiece of a deity, and at times its arm.”

  The two women hid in the bushes, while the group sacrificed a goodwill, joyful offering on the altar.

  Lee’s voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Can you sense Yahweh’s thoughts much as they do?”

  “After a fashion. However, if I open myself up fully, I will be vulnerable, and he can seize hold of me.”

  “What do you sense?” Lee was curious.

  “Nothing much. At any rate, while you were sleeping, I have learned Yahweh has dwellings at Shiloh, Beit-El, Dan, Beit-Lekhem, Gilgal, Khev­ron, and the Mitzpah in Binyamin territory. Think of these dwelling places as embassies he established throughout the land: actual grafts of the divine realm here, in the common realm. This is where people can come to petition or express their gratitude.” Hagar went on after a moment, “I want us to approach Yahweh of Khevron. I perceive the least amount of aggression in him.”

  “What an odd thing to say! Is there more than one Yahweh?”

  “Well, no,” said Hagar, but she looked unsure. “Are you familiar with the inscription in Kuntillet Ajrud, where it says: ‘I bless you by Yahweh of Shomron’ and then also, ‘I bless you by Yahweh of Taiman’?”

  Lee shook her head. She hadn’t.

  “El Shaddai’s varied manifestations may occur concurrently in several ways and places. Some are diminished such as the burning bush. They all make localized decisions, autonomous of each other, and I suspect have certain quirks and maybe even behavioral traits distinct to them.” From the corner of her eyes, Hagar noted that the band of nevi’im was departing. She gestured, and the two of them approached the altar.

  Hagar turned and inspected Lee.

  The other woman turned leisurely, raising her arms. “Pretty enough for a sacrifice, darling?”

  Hagar rolled her eyes.

  “So why were you checking me out?”

  “The divine realm does not have a cycle of life,” Hagar explained. “In a real sense, it is static and everlasting. It has neither death nor reproduction. Therefore, before we commence, I need to see if you have any vestige of either—as neither may encroach upon the divine sphere.”

  “Huh?”

  “Anything from a garment afflicted with fungi, to touching corpses, to physical defects. But in your case, I have but one question. Did you menstruate in the last one week? Namely, discharged any reproductive fluids?”

  �
��It was more than a week.”

  Hagar smiled at her. “I pronounce you in a state of grace and ready to aid me as I reach out to the divine realm.”

  “I don’t get it. We are to be clean of any traces of death, and then we go ahead and slaughter an animal for sacrifice?”

  “I’m not sure how it works,” Hagar admitted. “At any rate, one’s life­force is in the blood. By draining and splattering it over the altar, we return the life to the creator. The rest is just meat, suited for eating.

  “Each altar acts as a conduit to the divine realm. Yahweh will notice the sacrifice and his attention will be directed at us.” She sent Lee a reassuring smile, noting her unease.

  “Is it going to work?”

  “You better pray it does.” Hagar chortled. This inane expression carried a very literal, real meaning in the world they were in. “The alternative is to try to reach the divine realm by ascending Mount Hermon.”

  “Are you not going to do some sort of incantation?”

  Hagar shook her head and motioned Lee to be silent.

  She skinned the dead ram and drained the blood into a flask. She grabbed hold of the vessel and splattered the blood around the edges of the altar. As Lee watched, Hagar cut up the carcass, washed the internal organs in a basin stationed nearby, and laid it all on a fresh bed of wood they had set up earlier. In a short while, flames were leaping about.

  The two of them looked on as the smoke curled and snaked its way up to the great sky canopy.

  “What’s next?”

  “We await a response. It can take a while.”

  The smoke dissipated into the cloudless sky. This was the point of no return, which was likely to be concluded either in their death or a way back to Earth. From that point forward, they were in the hands of a vast, ruthless power.

  Chapter 14

  As they sighted a village nearby, Hagar thought it was a good time to make their acquaintance with Yahweh’s people, Bnei Yisra’el.

  They crossed barley fields and were about to enter the village grounds when the sounds of shouts and outcries greeted them. Hagar signaled Lee, and they stayed put among the olive and pomegranate trees.

  A sizable crowd came pouring out of the town gate, pushing in front of them a young woman. They positioned themselves on all sides, and in short order, dozens of them pelted her with stones. From their vantage point, Hagar and Lee could not see the girl through the throng, only hear the piercing screams of pain. It was an execution.

  With a cry of fury, Lee jumped to her feet. But before she could take a step, Hagar tripped her with a scissors motion of her legs, leaped on top of her, pinning her down. She brought close her mouth to Lee’s ear. “You contravene with any of El Shaddai’s commandments, and it’s over; we are stuck in this world for eternity.” She glanced up quickly. No one had detected them. “Do you understand me?”

  She did not let go until Lee reluctantly nodded. Hagar motioned her to follow. And without talking or looking back, they walked away.

  Once they were some distance away, Hagar turned and glared. “You idiot girl,” she spat. “In the universe we’ve left behind, Yahweh does not exist, as even the most dim-witted people sense. So self-deluded Jews can profess to love him, pretend to follow his creed. But of course none, say, will actually obey his edict to stone disrespectful sons. If they don’t, there will be no divine retribution. Here, if they circumvent his precepts, El Shaddai will sell them into slavery. That is, if he is in a lenient mood.

  “Let me spell out to you some of the consequences that might have befallen these people had your half-cocked attempt would have aborted the execution. Yahweh would have afflicted the people of this village with boils, tumors, festering sores that cannot be cured. Subsequently, he would have smitten them with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind. Starving and crazed, they would have eaten their own young. As a finale, El Shaddai would have struck the survivors with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew—until they were all dead.”

  “What a horrid, horrid custom,” sobbed Lee in frustration. The possible enormity of her attempt at intervention did not seem to register. “I don’t regret trying to stop it.”

  Hagar tried to keep her voice level. “You sought to temper with a social ecology you know nothing about. This is not a disparate collection of dictates; it is a cohesive system of ethics.”

  “Screw this.” Lee’s face twisted in anger. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

  “No. Vengeance and vendetta do.” Hagar grabbed Lee by the arms. She was going to try another tack with the woman. “The community stone the girl, and the issue is contained. Without it, it is blood feud between the families, countless die, and it can go on for generations. You pull on one thread, and the whole tapestry comes unraveling, and its free-for-all, each family or clan for itself.

  “You mentioned eye for an eye. In the absence of this institution­alized proportionality, all hell breaks loose. The point is not that it is an eye for an eye, but that it is only one eye for one eye. And often not an actual eye at that. At times, it is a matter of restitution, equivalency, as a live ox is given in exchange for one that has died.”

  They walked on, each immersed in her thoughts.

  “I reckon her family lost a great deal of stock,” Hagar suddenly said. “If my guess is correct, the patriarch and the other males of the family have failed to safeguard the girl’s chastity. In the eyes of the community, they showed a lack of strength of real men.”

  “She probably had premarital sex, and they stoned her for this,” Lee said contemptuously.

  Hagar smiled in irony. “As if on Earth, girls are not getting killed for this very reason. But no, while premarital sex is a gross impropriety, it is not a capital offense. Had she come clean, the ravisher would have been obligated to pay a bride-price and forced to marry the girl, assuming a permanent economic responsibility for her.”

  “Shotgun wedding, old school,” said Lee, smiling and regaining some of her usual spirits. “So then, why do you reckon the girl got stoned?”

  “For the same reason anyone ever gets stoned here: she threatened to undermine the very fabric of the community and mores of society. Marked and never released through a divorce to be available again, she was either to lead a life of a spinster or marry her ravisher. But worst of all, to offer herself to another man without first being released by her ravisher is an abomination, on par with a sister tricking a brother into bedding her.”

  Hagar pointed at a distant settlement that came into view.

  It was a village of the Zarate clan. And the name of their host was Avinadab. Member of the Levi tribe, he acted as the village priest and as one of the elders. He was also a bit of an outsider, being with his family in the hamlet for only one generation and not a member of the Yehudah tribe, at that. Avinadab was the first to spot them as they walked into the settlement. Lee and Hagar introduced themselves as two widows on a journey back to their homeland in the distant Ophir, and he invited them to stay the night at his house.

  They entered what appeared to be a semi-enclosed courtyard, milling with people, goats, and sheep. In the center, a large cauldron was hanging over a bonfire. The women stopped the grinding and the loom work and approached the visitors.

  Avinadab made introductions.

  His surviving wife was Ephah, a kind-looking matriarch with gnarled hands and a stooping back, wearing a cylindrical, silvery amulet around her neck. The priest then said, “Those are the children with whom Yahweh has favored your servant.” He gestured toward his older son. “Yoash, first yield of my manhood.” Yoash nodded in greeting and introduced his woman, Keturah, and their two sons. Next, the Levite introduced his second son, Gideon. “My strength, my big-boned donkey.” In turn, Gideon introduced his woman, Tamar, a stocky teenage woman, heavy with a second child and adorning an ostentatious nose ring. And last was Shmuel,
a house slave.

  “With Yahweh’s blessing we will continue to multiply, and the seeds of Bnei Yisra’el are to be as the sand on the shore of the sea,” intoned the elderly Levite.

  “Amen,” murmured a few of the family members.

  Tamar spread her arms, directing her gaze at Lee. “Gray hair is a crown of glory,” she intoned. “Welcome to our humble house, old one.”

  “Ah, thanks,” said Lee dryly, reminding herself that in this world people whose hair turned gray were venerated.

  Watch your step as you climb down the stairs, O gray one, transmitted Hagar.

  Go and fuck yourself.

  Hagar smothered a chuckle with a strangled cough. “Avinadab, your grace and hospitality are without parallel,” she announced, regaining her decorum.

  The patriarch smiled in appreciation, bowing his head. “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the palate and healing to the bones.” He led them to a basin, where they washed their feet and from there to a larger room past a small shrine with figurines of teraphim.

  Soon, they were all seated on cushions around a low dining table amid colorful woven rugs.

  Earlier, Hagar had instructed Lee what to do in the eventuality they were being questioned. She needn’t have fussed; no one inquired into or expressed any curiosity about their background.

  Hagar wished to praise. It was but good manners, expected of guests. “Your nation’s laws are the same for all—whether for the poor or the rich. You are light for all nations.” As soon as she said it, she realized it was a mistake.

  An awkward silence settled among the diners. Avinadab scowled. “I don’t know whether the laws of other nations treat all people alike,” he stated at last. “Nor do I concern myself with such things.” He gazed at Hagar, the suggestion of a frown still marred his face. “Gods direct the footsteps of men. It is not for beings of mere dust and ashes to decide on what is good or evil. All nations should follow the words of their deities.”

  Lee intervened. “Forgive the impudence of youth, Avinadab.” She tried to redirect. “Like everyone else, I have sacrificed. But I have never sought understanding. Pray tell, what is the purpose of sacrifices among the Yisra’elites?”