by Gore Vidal
So I faced the abyss. The great nullity. There is nothing now except the Hacker. He alone determines what was, which determines what is. "So you are the Prince of this World," I heard myself say, not to poor Marvin Wasserstein, the simple bearer of bad news, but to the Hacker himself wherever he is, whoever he is.
"You refer now to the Devil who tempted Jesus in the garden."
"I refer to the devil, who is the Hacker. How can he be stopped.>"
"He can't be stopped in the sense that the damage he has done, thus far, can be undone, but this tape is absolutely secure. In a sense, Christianity will be what you say it is."
"Then he will have failed, since I shall tell the story that we all tell."
"Exacdy." Marvin rose. "You must be very careful in your dealings with visitors ..."
"Like you.>"
"Like me. Yes." Despite the teeth, Marvin has a pleasant face. "After all, Vm first and foremost a private eye, a shamus, a detective for hire ..."
"Hired by General Electric.>"
"Yes. But reporting to Dr. Cuder. He is particularly eager to see that the true gospel is revealed when we dig up your cathedral next year, according to our timetable." This time Marvin switched on the Z Channel. On the screen, I could see a laboratory full of technical equipment, involving numerous spinning disks and unfurling tapes. Marvin indicated the TV set. "That's where I work on the tapes, trying to second-guess the Hacker by isolating the viruses."
"What will happen if someone comes to me after you do?" This was the crucial question.
"After I leave you—as of this moment for you.^"
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"No. After, let us say, next year when my gospel is discovered."
Marvin looked suddenly blank. Then he shook his head slowly from side to side as if trying to clear it of some thought that he could not grasp. "After next year.> But there is no such thing as next year where I am. There is only now."
"There is only now here, too, but here you are, Mr. Wasserstein, as well as being there, many, many years from now."
"True. I can come back on the rewind." Suddenly, Marvin looked—^tricky.> "But there is no fast forward when it comes to time."
I could tell he was lying. "Of course there is. You are almost two thousand years in the fixture as far as I'm concerned. So why can't we go right on pdst you up there, and see what will come next, let us say, once my gospel is released to the world.>"
Marvin frowned. "That is not the way it works. When I leave you here in the past, I do go forward to the fixture, but I can go no fiirther than what is for me now. Of course, someone from the period after my now could channel back to me or to you as I've just done."
"As Dr. Cuder did to Dr. Cutler . . ."
Marvin now looked very bleak. I felt sorry for him. I can't think why. After all, he is alive where he is and I'm just a shadow on a tape, though I can't say that I feel particularly unreal. My hemorrhoids still bleed; Atalanta's teeth still ache.
"Could it be," I said, turning the knife, "that there is no fixture after yoi> Or after the second Dr. Cuder who is, perhaps, ten years ahead of your now.> Could it be that Jesus will have returned and the Day of Judgment has put an end to the Prince of this World and all his works, to the Hacker, too. I have grasped," I said, inspired, "the situation. The end
is finally coming and the Kingdom of God is about to happen in your time, not, as we thought, in ours. You want to alter in some way what will be but what will be will be." I cannot think why I was so confident. Inspiration, I suppose. Everything was beginning to fall into place.
"Give me a break. Pm just a computer flatfoot." Marvin was glum. "All I know is, as of now, we can come back to what was but not forward to what will be, and those who arc ahead of us, as far as I know, don't visit us. Of course, we may not be as interesting to them as you are to us. You know that you are now about to meet James, kid-brother-of-your-Lord, in Jerusalem. ..."
"I've already met him, thirty years ago. ..."
"I mean you will soon be meeting him in your gospel. You'll find him changed fi-om before."
I was beginning to get a headache. "I shall be describing the time when Saint Paul and I went to Jerusalem. Pm not about to . . . channel back, am I?"
"No. No. Unless you want to. I could arrange that."
"As you will arrange my trip to Golgotha.^"
Marvin did not answer. "In a sense, James is the key to your whole gospel. He is—^was—^will be always kid brother to Jesus and his heir in—and out—of the church. I know that you must observe the story fi-om the point of view of Paul, but in the quarrel between James and Paul, listen careftiUy to what James has to say,"
Marvin started toward the Sony, whose screen still showed his laboratory at General Electric. As good manners require, I accompanied him to the set. He placed one foot inside his laboratory; then gave me a firm handclasp. "Shalom," he said. "We'll meet again soon. Perhaps in Rome."
"Golgotha?"
"Definitely there." Then he stepped into the tube, and
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I could see him at a fax machine, reading the incoming messages. I switched off the set.
It was only then, as I still felt his handclasp, that I realized that he was not just air and shadow, like Chet and the Cuders—a hologram—but a man who had come to me all in one piece from the future. The Cuder Effect has been fine-tuned. The ground rules are changing. The state of the art grows more perfect. But to what end.> I am sweating, I note, though it is a chilly day and there is a north wind from the steppes.
I think the end of the world may be about to happen— in their time, of course, not ours. But will it be the result of the return of Jesus or will the Prince of this World himself put out the lights.> The batde has begun. I am the batdeground.
I put in a call to Chet. He was out. I left a message on his machine.
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ready for the immediate end, which now seems to be taking place in the year two thousand and one after His birth, though I'll believe it when I see it. In this, if nothing else, I may have lost faith. In the hope and charity department, I am A-1.
We arrived at the lunch hour. This always meant trouble in those days. There was a long table for the Twelve, the original Jews who had been with Jesus and believe in the Resurrection but also are firm believers in Judaism. Essentially they believe that He was the messiah on sort of a trial run but until He returns to judge the quick and the dead and all that. He is not the Son of God that Saint preached. But then the James crowd were always Jews first and it is a wonder that Saint was able to get on with them as well and as long as he did. James hated Saint. I could see that from the first moment when we were told that we could sit at the table for Seven, which is reserved for non-Jewish Christians.
"But," said Saint, batting his eyes winningly, "we are not Seven but Nine, and as the table of Twelve has only three places set, why don't you, James, and your two brothers in the Lord, let us sit with you?"
James was a tall man with a beard and small eyes that one could never quite see as he kept them half shut all the time. He was going blind, we later learned. As kid brother of Jesus, he insisted that the leadership of the church was his, and there had even been times when he acted as if he and not his brother were the messiah. Fortunately, the Resurrection had settled that bit of sibling rivalry.
"The presence," said James, "of non-Jews is very distressing to many members of our congregation, particularly at table where we are entirely kosher, and often dairy. That is why the two tables have been a compromise that the brethren can live with." James was staring with disgust at my
hyacinthine golden curls and cornflower-blue eyes, the perfect Gentile youth so hated by every proper, self-loving Jew. "Barely," he added.
"Timothy has been circumcised," said Saint, intuiting James's revulsion. "Timmy, show Brother James your ..."
''Not in the dining room," said James, looking ill. Then he let us all sit at the table for Twelve. The other two me
mbers of the Jerusalem church ignored us. We were served quite a good kosher lunch by two wealthy Jewish widows, who are knovm in the community as yentas, a Jewish word meaning ladies-in-waiting for the return of the messiah.
"I have already deposited the Jesus-tithing from Asia Minor at the bank in the Temple, to your account." Saint smiled at James, who pretended indifference. Actually, James was something of a financial wizard. Where Saint could raise money through salesmanship and creative bookkeeping, not to mention the all-important Follow-up strategies, James was a master of the Temple stock exchange, which had so annoyed his brother, Jesus, or so we say.
The story of how James cornered the date market in 51 A.D. is still regarded in world financial circles as one of the great capers of modem finance. It took great daring and skill and, of course, luck. James always substituted the word faith for luck whenever he reminisced about those extraordinary three days when he, personally, owned every date west of the Euphrates. That was a heady time. Later, he was less lucky, or faithful, to use his word.
Saint gave James the receipt from the bank. James tried not to show his excitement, but his hands trembled when he saw the very large sum that represented five years of tithing in the boondocks. "We shall invest the principal in mutual caravans," he said in his shrill voice which, some said, was in imitation of his brother Jesus, while others thought that
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James had been the role model for Our Lord, who was plainly not exactly James's lord.
James was very much a Jew first, with a very good job in the high priest's personal secretariat, as financial adviser and occasional mohel or circumciser. Basically James and the Jerusalem church took the line that Jesus was the mes-siah who was intended to turn Israel into the mighty Kingdom of God which would then bring on Judgment Day and all the rest. The misadventure high atop Golgotha in suburban Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified by the Romans not only as a Zionist troublemaker but, in fact, as the actual King of the Jews, was not exacdy what Jewish tradition required. The Resurrection three days later was a relief to everyone; but then the trip to Heaven for what He said would be a short confab with God never really set well with James and the others. The prophets had never predicted any of this, which is why Saint always emphasized our logo, the cross, as something new, straight from God, unexpected. Final. So far, that is.
"We have stopped talking about my brother's return in the immediate future," said James, staring with dislike at the plainly Gentile freckled red-haired youth from Ephesus for whom Saint had developed a passion, to the boy's annoyance since there was no way you could say no to Saint if you were a Christian lad and wanted to be saved. Saint had us all, literally, as well as figuratively, by the balls.
"Surely you, of all people, have not lost faith." Saint was mild, but I recognized the sudden drop in the register of his voice, which meant that a ferocious denunciation was starting on its way.
"My faith, Solly"—James called Saint by his Jewish nickname, in order to enrage him—"is unshakable. But what you are selling to the unclean"—Saint's eight converts gave
James very dirty looks indeed over die plates of kosher food served by bejeweled yentas—"is not my Kingdom of Heaven which, as you know, requires an independent Palestine—no foreign mandate is acceptable nor even an international peacekeeping security force, since the unclean can never be allowed within the Temple precincts. No, Solly, we appreciate the way you're spreading some aspects of Judaism around the pagan world. It can only do them good, of course, not that we give two figs or even dates, because we are the ones chosen to establish the Kingdom of Heaven. The messiah is for us. Everyone else on earth will then be judged by him."
This is almost the opposite of Saint's Message, but he was not about to start a riot at the very heart of Judaism. I could hear Saint grinding his teeth as he held back what might have been a major denunciation. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth," Saint muttered.
"What Lord do you have in mind, Solly.>"
"Jesus Christ, there is no other."
"My brother Jesus—no Christ—^was a Jew like me. He was no king, though as the heir of the royal house of David he wanted to be King of the Jews and tried to be, and failed—for now," James added, without much conviction. For the first time I realized how far afield Saint had gone firom these narrow-minded Temple Hebrews.
Saint was getting red in the face but he did not lose his formidable cool. "Are we not all of us Christians.^"
James scowled. "We are Hebrews."
"Then am I a Hebrew.^ Yes, I am. Am I an Israelite.^ Yes, I am. Am I descended firom Abraham, too? Yes, I am. Are we also ministers of Christ.^ Do I speak as a fool, perhaps? Yes, I am. And I am more."
"I am more," said James. "I am the heir of Jesus, my
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older brother. I am the rightful King of the Jews, and I want nothing to do with your congregation of pagans."
"Except to take their money." Saint indicated the Temple receipt in James's hand.
"I did not ask for it. But I take what is given. I must warn you, Solly, that we are investigating certain charges against you. Specifically, you are on record as saying the Law of Moses has been repealed by my brother and that there is a new religion which you call Christian and which non-Jews are certainly firee to believe in. But never pretend that Jesus himself was a Christian. He was simply a devout Jew of the Reformed Temple Party. ..."
"Devout Jews do not rise fi-om the dead and ascend to Heaven in the fijll view of witnesses now alive. I have built a Church upon the divinity of His mission, on His death and Resurrection. ..."
"He is the messiah, we think, or he will be if he returns. Otherwise, he is just another herald like John the Baptist. But whether herald or messiah-to-be, he worked specifically to overthrow the Romans in order to establish the dominion of Israel and to prepare for the Kingdom of God. The good news he brought us has nothing to do with these pagans." He indicated Saint's entourage.
Saint's response was shrewd: "They are the wild olive shoot that has been grafi:ed onto the Judaic stem. The roots are Israel, of course, always, as I preach."
James rose fi-om the table. "Do not forget the fate of Stephen. He preached against his own people, and we stoned him to death."
"How could / forget.^ I was the case officer at Mossad who fingered him."
"That will certainly count in your favor during the trial."
Saint was very grim. "Am I to be tried by the Sanhedrin, like Stephen?"
"No. By us. The Jesists, as they call us at the Temple."
"What is the charge?"
"In general, infidelity to the Torah. Specifically, at Eph-csus, you told a Jew that since he followed Jesus he need not circumcise his son."
Saint laughed. "There is no truth in that. To the contrary, I have even gone so far as to insist that many of the Gentiles close to me undergo circumcision. Timothy, show him your member."
James was appalled. "Please. Not in fi-ont of the yen-tas." Then he was gone. Saint was very thoughtfiil.
Certainly we were in enemy territory.
Jerusalem was a very depressing place thirty years ago. The Zionist gangs were working hard to overthrow the Romans, who were not about to be overthrown. There was a new messiah at least once a month, and every last one of them was arrested and executed by the Romans. Usually, as traitors to the empire, they were crucified, which could make for some confusion in later times if we had not been so carefiil, the Gospel writers and Saint, to eliminate ft-om our stories all of the so-called messiahs.
I realized that I must now start putting down my recollections of Jesus; they are secondhand, of course. Without access to Mark's seminal work, I shall have to rely pretty much on memory. Of course, when I go on to Rome ft-om Jerusalem I will be seeing him. . . .
How curious that as I write this narrative it is as if none of it had actually happened, and that I am experiencing the story as I write it; yet all that I am doing is recalling those things that I have know
n for forty years, I think. I am describing Jerusalem as of 53 a.d. when I first arrived there
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with Saint. Then, two years later, we will be in Rome where Mark and Peter are both living. ...
Now I must try to recall my first reading Mark's testament. He lived at the edge of the Field of Mars, near the obelisk whose shadow falls on Augustus's mausoleum at his birthday. The apartment has one window that looks out over the Tiber toward the green deserted other bank with its high hill, the Janiculum.
Yes. I can still see the room. Good. Smell the fish sauce that he puts on the fiied bread bought fi-om a vendor in the street below. Mark is a bit older than I; he is entirely bald. The testament is on a table. He invites me to look at it. I do. There is a quotation from Isaiah. But what.^ My memory's gone blank. I can see myself turning the pages but I remember nothing that was written on them. A perfect blank. I am getting a headache. The Hacker.> If he has found some way of entering my mind then I must find a way of keeping him out. For one thing, when I do see Mark, and I will, because I do remember him and his apartment with the pile of rugs in one corner—he not only sold rugs but he was often paid to act as appraiser by retail merchants; he was very knowledgeable, as his mother was Persian. . . .
Jerusalem was a very exciting place thirty years ago. The liberation forces were uniting in order to overthrow the hated Roman colonizers. James was the leader of the movement, though we did not know it at the time. ...
I have just been to the New Star Baths, where I got rid of my headache. Then, in the steam room, I found Chet.
"Did you come in on the Z train from Westport.^"
"No. I channeled in. I'm using a New Age channeler. That way there's no record at GE."
"Aren't you hot in ail those clothes.>"
"I'm a hologram. Remember?" He held out his arm. I tried to grasp it but there was only steam. "I've talked to Dr. Cuder. His story conforms with yours. He also swears that nothing on earth could induce him to go to work at Gulf 4-Eastern or teach at City College."