“I read that in Judaism, in one of its sacred books, they sometimes refer to Heaven, or the afterlife, as ‘Gan Eden.’”
“Is that ‘Garden’ of Eden?”
“Yeah, they use the terms interchangeably sometimes—‘Heaven’ and ‘The Garden.’ Sounds like somebody knew they were similar. I guess the Garden here was just an earthly version of the infinite one there. Which kinda makes sense, really.”
“Anyone know they were both libraries?” Dex didn’t mind that Heaven was full of books. He knew that, perfected in the Light, he’d be able to read them. One of the times he was there, in the midst of all the madness, he’d felt a nearly irresistible urge to go find something, something he later realized had to be a book, a book that was his alone. It felt so intensely personal that he hadn’t mentioned it to Daphna. He’d been dreaming about it almost every night.
“Negative on the library,” Daphna said. “There’s definitely nothing about God having a bajillion books. I found a lot about angels, though. No one said they were librarians, of course, but they’ve been described as winged figures robbed in white with golden belts. That means they’ve been seen before. And maybe that means people have been to Heaven and came back, maybe without using the Aleph.”
“Or because an angel came here.”
“What?”
“People could know what angels look like if angels came here.”
“Oh, right,” Daphna admitted, disappointed. “There are stories about that in the Bible, I think.”
Neither twin said anything for a moment.
Finally, Daphna said, “Dex, I’m sorry I acted so crazy in there. I know it’s just us. And I’m glad you’re with me.”
Dex nodded at his sister. “Me, too,” he told her.
“Anyway,” Daphna said, “time to face the music.”
Daphna pushed the lift button and the door began to grind its way up. She took Dex’s hand while they waited because she knew she could face anything with him by her side, and it seemed he was finally going to take his place there again.
Dex let Daphna take his hand. He supposed it was better to face the world with someone who had your back, even if she was often on it.
When the door was high enough, brother and sister simultaneously drew in deep breaths and slowly let them out. Then they walked hand-in-hand out onto the driveway.
But they’d taken no more than two steps before the loudest explosion they’d ever heard sent them diving face first onto the pavement.
CHAPTER 3
the church of us
The twins cowered on the ground covering their heads, both certain that a bomb—the bomb—had been dropped on their house. They stayed lying there, eyes clenched, bodies stiffened, waiting for—What happened when a bomb blew you up?
“Dex?” Daphna finally said. She didn’t feel blown up. It didn’t seem like the house had exploded, either. She peeked out above the crook of her elbow. The house was fine. All the houses were.
Dex looked up, too, but just as another deafening boom exploded. The twins could tell this time that it had come from above. Cringing, they looked up. A third explosion came. The sky seemed to shake with it.
These weren’t bombs. They were thunderclaps—ungodly loud thunderclaps.
The twins tensed in expectation of the next earsplitting crash. They stayed silent and waiting for a long minute, barely breathing. When Daphna finally felt none was coming, she took in a breath and asked, “Can it thunder with no clouds?”
Slowly, Dex got to his feet. Daphna did the same. They scanned the sky.
Another boom came, and this time lightning immediately followed it, jagged white lines crisscrossing crazily for a moment over the horizon.
“This has nothing to do with us,” Dex said, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the sky. A spectacular daybreak was lit up the world in a thousand shades of rosy red. There were no clouds in sight.
Daphna offered no reply. She was awe-struck. It looked like special effects.
But the spectacle dissipated quickly as the light increased. When the display was gone, Daphna lowered her gaze. “Look,” she said, alarmed, pointing at the street.
Dex looked. Dr. Fludd’s black Cadillac SUV was still parked right there in front of the house.
“Oh, no,” Daphna muttered, already hurrying over to peer through the tinted windows. “The Church got her,” she moaned. “We’re just two stupid kids! No one would believe us if we claimed Jesus was born from a mother with a rib like ours—but she’s the most famous scientist in the world! Oh, God!”
Dexter shook his head at his sister’s melodrama. “Or,” he said, “a colleague picked her up.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Why not? They’re all workaholics. Or more likely, Daphna: she has two cars.”
“You mean three?”
“Why not?” Dex said, looking back at the garage. There was enough room in there for four cars. “Hey—” He’d noticed something on the ground under the code panel mounted on the house, a yellow square of paper. He walked over and grabbed it—a sticky—then handed it to Daphna.
“‘Sorry to leave so early,’” Daphna read. “‘Have a great day at school—Roberta.’”
“So, there,” Dex said. “One way or another, she went to work.”
“What’s it doing on the ground outside?”
“Easy,” Dex said. “She’s not used to having kids and didn’t think of leaving us a note until she was in the car, but she didn’t want to risk waking us up coming back in, so she stuck it on the panel knowing we’d see it when we closed the garage. But it fell off.”
It was reasonable, Daphna had to admit, but she was unconvinced and feeling profoundly uneasy—more profoundly uneasy. After punching in the code to lower the door, she took her phone out and tapped Dr. Fludd’s number. She listened, then put the phone away.
“No answer,” she said. “I don’t like this, Dex. I don’t like this one bit. I’ll keep calling, but come on—let’s get going.” After a quick glance at the sky, she added, “Before the sky falls on our heads.”
Feeling intensely vulnerable, Daphna shot a look up and down the street. The houses all seemed sinister, and she wondered why she hadn’t checked them out last night. Instead of reading useless birth announcements all that time in the hospital, she should have found a way to research Dr. Fludd’s neighbors! Tension yanked her shoulder muscles taut as she walked tentatively to the sidewalk, motioning her brother to follow.
Dex, annoyed with the histrionics, only very slowly obeyed. Daphna looked like she thought she was leading some kind of lame military exercise. Thunder was just thunder, no matter how loud. A fancy sunrise was just a fancy sunrise. Parked cars were just parked cars. None of it added up to anything—anything he cared to think about, anyway.
Dex caught up with Daphna at the end of the street where she’d stopped to wait for him, somewhat testily, he observed. Together, they turned right and passed a synagogue with massive Ten Commandments tablets for one of its front walls. They had to be well over a hundred feet tall—God-sized. Neither had noticed it last night, but neither commented on it now. Up on a hilltop next to the synagogue sat a large orange brick church. Three tall white crosses of different heights stood in front of its impressive glass entryway, pointing proudly at the now frightening sky.
Daphna saw Dex looking curiously at the long line of vehicles turning into the synagogue’s parking lot, so she said, “The new year, Rosh Hashanah—it started last night.”
Dex shrugged.
It was obvious her brother didn’t want to talk any more, but Daphna had to get her mind off that horrid thunder and this new anxiety about Dr. Fludd.
“On the radio this morning,” she said, “I heard more people are joining religious institutions right now, especially churches. That apparently happens after near-disasters because people think there was a reason they were spared.”
Dexter snorted. “We’re the reason they were spared. They
should all join the Church of Us.”
Daphna didn’t even hear this. She could somehow feel her heartbeat in her throat.
“And I also heard,” she added, rambling again, “there’s some huge Jesus exhibit opening at the Portland Art Museum today. They’re unveiling a bunch of modern works from around the world. Crazy interpretations of famous works of religious art, I guess. One painting has everyone eating fast food at the Last Supper.”
When Dex half-heartedly raised a brow at this, she added, “The last meal Jesus had with his—his followers or whatever they were called.”
“Disciples,” Dex said. “Didn’t we see that on a tapestry at the Vatican—next to that one of Jesus on the cross with some guy catching his blood?”
“Right!” Daphna said. “Anyway, it’s sold out and people are scalping tickets for hundreds of dollars! To an art museum! The news guy said we need a new vaccine for Jesus Fever. What?”
Now it was Dex who wasn’t hearing his sister. His annoyance about so many people suddenly finding religion had turned to outrage. The powers-that-be had decided it would be safer to keep the twins’ special blood a secret.
Daphna had readily agreed that it was safer that way. She didn’t mind a bit that they’d not been part of the “official” story, which was that Dr. Fludd had come up with the cure on her own at pretty much the last second. The one and only mention they’d gotten was a brief write-up in the papers saying that, though the “star-crossed twins” had been present at the first site of infection, and though their adoptive mother was the first to die of the disease, they did not have the virus nor any special immunities to it (though they were under observation at OHSU as an extra precaution).
It also said that the nation-wide manhunt for them had been an “unfortunate distraction” and they were no longer wanted for questioning in connection with the deaths of two local clergymen. Daphna thought this was a more than adequate consolation prize. But Dexter thought it stunk. He didn’t care what was wise or prudent. He wanted to be recognized for what they’d accomplished, for all they’d accomplished against such incredible odds. But of course he couldn’t say that. Of course he had to bite his tongue and agree.
But now, hearing that so many people wanted to thank God for saving them when He would never, ever help, lest He encroach on the free will that was His ultimate gift to mankind—the gift that required Him to hide himself from the world He made and supposedly loved so much—it was an insult Dex suddenly couldn’t bear.
Daphna had forgotten what they were talking about, even that they’d been talking. She was oblivious now to her brother’s degenerating mood because her own already sour mood was doing the same. Wilson High School sat at the very top of the long hill. How could it not have occurred to her until now how exposed they’d be on the way there? As they walked up the main road into Hillsdale, Daphna turned around every few steps, scanning for trouble. Whether or not anything had happened to Dr. Fludd, she was absolutely certain their lives were only seconds away from ending once and for all.
CHAPTER 4
something bad
Daphna had been battling this paranoia for a month, though she didn’t think it could be called paranoia since the danger was real. But the dread hadn’t been this powerful since they’d first gotten set up at OHSU, when she’d been hair-on-fire terrified. Dr. Fludd had been too, even though she’d sent backchannel assurances to the Vatican promising them, in so many words, that she had nothing to say to anyone about a rare structure she in no way had discovered that could trigger adult stem cells capable of producing offspring in a female without a mate.
Daphna knew how hard this was for Dr. Fludd because it was something she’d suspected was possible her entire career. Finding the explanation for Jesus’ “Virgin Birth” was the discovery of a lifetime—to say the least. But they all knew it would be a very short lifetime if she shared it. Daphna was sure the Secret Keeper of the Church would make sure of it.
As frightened as Dr. Fludd had been, there was the plague to deal with, so she was equally, if not more, concerned about collecting their blood, extracting the protein, and having it rushed all over the world to labs that could synthesize it. The poor woman was impossibly busy. She didn’t leave the hospital once while they were there, not until last night when they’d all left together.
Dr. Fludd hadn’t been able to keep an eye on them most of the time in the hospital, so she had a guard posted at their door. That didn’t help Daphna, though, because she kept waiting for him to murder them in their sleep and then take their bodies away to bury their ribs in the Vatican’s secret cemetery. So she pretty much didn’t sleep.
Daphna tried to tell Dr. Fludd that Dead Face, the assassin who’d threatened her and attempted to kill them, had been vaporized in the Light after they’d tricked him into taking them into Heaven—though she knew full well that didn’t matter since the Secret Keeper could easily send someone else to do his dirty work, a nurse for example. Daphna’s blood pressure spiked every time one of them came near her, which caused frequent concern, which caused them to be near her more. It was vicious cycle of stress.
But Dr. Fludd wouldn’t hear any of it, anyway. Despite what she’d seen with her own two eyes, she threatened to call in a psychologist, so Daphna clammed up about it all. Dr. Fludd thought—no, she knew—that there was a scientific explanation for everything, including all supposed miracles and religious phenomena, and the twins’ stem-cell triggering ribs only reinforced that—proved it, as far as she was concerned. She was certain that the monster that came into her lab after their ribs was just another Church assassin, and she was utterly ashamed about having babbled in her exhaustion to the President about creatures from the Garden of Eden.
The thought of telling her their father was Adam and that they were adopted by Eve after he died in Turkey was absurd. Daphna was uncomfortable sharing any of it, anyway, at least until they knew Dr. Fludd much better. In the end, all Daphna could do, especially with Dexter doing nothing but laying there, was keep her mouth shut and her eyes open—and wait for someone to come.
Only no one did.
Each day got a little bit easier, and after two weeks, Daphna let Dex convince her that the Secret Keeper was satisfied that none of them was going to call a press conference. Dr. Fludd kept the guard, but the twins were eventually allowed to leave their floor for a part of each day to alleviate their boredom.
Dex had taken to going out on the Deck to watch the tram run up and down the mountainside between the hospital and the Waterfront below. Daphna tried to stay holed up, but one of the nurses badgered her into going to use the Fitness and Sports Center. She agreed when she realized she could walk on a treadmill and continue reading the papers, along with a Bible she’d found in the hall.
However, this required Daphna to leave the Hospital proper, which she almost couldn’t get herself to do. As she hurried across the driveway the first time, she could have sworn someone stepped out of the shadows behind her and was walking quickly to catch up. She’d spun round, but no one was there, no one but some cops and a boy in a baseball cap sitting on a bench taking notes in a book. She only went a few more times before she couldn’t take the stress anymore.
Now Daphna wondered how she’d forgotten all that visceral fear. Maybe it was having given up the usefully distracting fantasy about the birth announcements. The killers were surely just waiting until they all left the hospital—and for all she knew they’d already gotten Dr. Fludd! Daphna reached for her phone again, but she saw something, a movement behind her as they crossed the street in front of an ice cream store. She wheeled around.
It was a mother pushing a triple stroller with three crying babies fighting over a stuffed snake.
“Dexter,” Daphna hissed, barely suppressing panic as the woman went by, “this is stupid. We’re sitting ducks out here! After school we need to visit the synagogue and church back there to see if we can learn anything we don’t know about Heaven.”
“I d
on’t think so,” said Dex. He’d been watching Daphna spin around in the street like a demented ballerina, as if snipers were aiming at her from imaginary balconies. Maybe she thought one of those babies was a ninja assassin in disguise.
“What do you mean, you ‘don’t think so?’” Daphna demanded, stopping mid-whirl as they reached the opposite sidewalk. They were standing at the merge point between the main road and another that joined it, curving down from their old neighborhood, Multnomah Village.
“By, ‘I don’t think so,’” Dex said, “I meant, ‘I don’t think so.’ Or to put it another way: I don’t think so.”
“Dexter,” Daphna frowned, “something bad is going to happen. I just know it. I can literally feel it in the air.”
“Why now?” Dex asked, not particularly interested in his sister’s newfound psychic abilities. “It’s been a month. No one murdered us. The sky didn’t—”
At that moment, another shattering clap of thunder cracked overhead, obliterating Dexter’s last word. The twins covered their ears because it actually hurt. Everyone else on the street did the same. The lightning flashed just after, a spider’s web that seemed to drape itself for a moment over the globe. Cars screeched. There was a collision up the hill near school, a multi-car collision, followed by more screeching as traffic came to a halt behind it.
Horns blared, but Daphna just stared at Dex, waiting for him to accept the obvious. “Well?” she demanded.
“Look, Daphna,” Dex said. “Let me put it this way: I’m retired from the Saving-the-World business.”
Daphna continued to glare at her brother with the embers flaring up in her eyes.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Dex asked, thinking about the blissful feeling he’d experienced in Heaven, the feeling he’d thought about pretty much all day every day at the hospital. “We get killed, right? So we die. You seem to have forgotten that our friend in the Church is very concerned about our ribs. He’ll bury us in his little secret cemetery, back in the earth, safe and sound. And then two more lucky winners will get born to deal with two new ribs. Meanwhile, we get white robes and gold belts and wings. And we’ll be with Mom and Evelyn forever.” And he could find that book—his book. And read it.
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