by Boyd Brent
Sixteen
David and Carradine stood before a window on the ship's starboard side. Below them planet Earth was wrapped in a blanket of grey cloud. Every now and again the blanket was illuminated by flashes of lightning over Europe and central Africa. David clutched his walking stick and leaned against the window. “You think there are any people left down there?”
“Earth has been deprived of sunlight for six thousand years. Nothing has grown. And nothing has eaten.”
“Perhaps there is life beneath the oceans.”
“Perhaps. But there will be no life where you're going.” David scratched his neck and stumbled slightly. Carradine observed him. “I'll reduce your tranquillisers. You may have some uphill walking to do.”
“And they say empathy is dead.” David traced a finger along the glass and cut Earth in two. “Goliath believes that killing me will summon the Architects back here. You think they exist?”
“The information revealed by the Event Helix makes one thing abundantly clear: the universe was no accident. Goliath has unimaginable data at his disposal. The conclusions he draws may seem insane to some, but only as a man's conclusions may seem insane to a cockroach.”
“So you believe that killing me will summon them?”
“If Goliath believes it, only a fool would question it.”
David leaned more of his weight against the window. “Maybe the Architects won't be too pleased about what he's done … bringing an end to humanity.”
“I do not agree. Any method of summoning the Architects has been designed by Them. This suggests your death was meant to signal the end of their humanity project and usher in a new era.”
“And where is your place in all this? You're human. You like the idea of being supplanted? You must have thought about terminating Goliath.”
“Terminating him? Goliath is the future. There can be no progression without him.”
“Your idea of progression and mine are not the same. That's why I have to outlive him.”
“And I am going to usurp the Architects and become the supreme ruler of the universe.”
“Looks like we've both got our work cut out for us.”
***
The following morning, David was asleep on the floor of the cage when the vessel assigned to him reached down and shook him awake. David opened his eyes and said, “Winston?” The vessel pulled him to his feet. David braced himself and glanced about for his cane, but found he had the strength to stand without it. Carradine's reduced the tranquillisers. He began to walk up and down inside the cage. “I used to be like you once. At the time I didn't much care for it, but at least back then an enormous lunatic wasn't intent on hacking my head off. Something I can't let happen.” David stopped and looked at the motionless, white-eyed man. “Keeping my head … it's become quite a responsibility, and one I did not ask for.” The vessel became animate, as though it had been switched on, and manhandled him out of the cage. It stopped in the middle of the lab and placed a hand on David's shoulder. The ground upon which they stood, marked out by a faint grey outline, began to shudder and move downwards …
They were lowered into a docking bay where a small craft sat facing an airlock. The craft was sleek and black, with gull-wing doors. The vessel picked up a length of rope from a table and bound David's hands before him. Goliath poked his head out of the craft. “You are being bound for your own protection, son.”
“So people keep telling me.”
“It is my wish that you reach your place of execution in a reasonable condition. With the exception of a severed head, I'd like the Architects to see you have been treated with the utmost dignity.” Goliath ran a hand across his own head. “Irony sure can sting. Can't it?” David slid into the seat beside him. “No need to answer. Hell, you look like you've been stung half to death already. You wanna perk yourself up a bit? Some of that empathy you're famed for would not go amiss at this juncture, otherwise you might make a fella look bad.” David looked up at Goliath and Goliath observed the expression on his face. “Reports of your empathic nature appear to have been greatly overstated. No matter. We will work with what we have.”
The gull-wing doors lowered and sealed them in. A safety harness came down and secured David in his seat. Goliath's safety harness would not fit him, and had been removed. The giant leaned forwards to prevent his head touching the roof. “It's a tight squeeze. But the good news is our journey in this craft is going to be a short one.” Goliath punched some keys on the display before him, and the cargo doors opened outwards to reveal the curvature of the Earth. The craft moved out of the bay doors. David placed his bound hands on the dash, leaned forward and stared down at the planet. Its surface was obscured by a thick blanket of dust – like a balaclava without holes for sight or breath. Goliath continued, “That asteroid sure kicked up a lot of dust. Took a bite out of the side of the planet like it was an apple.”
David scrutinised the thick blanket of cloud. “How do you know?”
“I've seen the bite already, in the Event Helix. And you are about to see it for yourself.”
The craft entered the dust cloud and was buffeted like a plane in a storm. They dropped suddenly, and Goliath's head smacked against the ceiling. The impact was severe, and for a moment David imagined it had knocked him out. It had not. David looked down at his bindings and realised he'd been pulling on them so hard his wrists were torn and bleeding.
When eventually they passed through the cloud, the surface of the planet appeared to David like a wasteland: a barren place that had never nurtured life. The oceans had turned into black oil slicks that crowded around islands and continents like armies of darkness. The impact crater covered two thirds of south America. It was exactly as Goliath described: a bite out of the side of the world. Goliath made an adjustment to the guidance system and said, “Over by those mountains … that was known as the Holy Land.”
“Holy?”
“As in divine. A place associated with the Architects. And that rock rising there at two o'clock … that is to be your final resting place. Mount Sinai.”
The craft landed on a plateau – a flat and dusty place with no vegetation. To the north, tornados waltzed back and forth across the horizon like demons celebrating humanity's end. The gull-wing doors opened and Goliath shoved David out. David stood slowly and leaned against the craft, his eyes glued to the north. Goliath climbed out of the craft and said, “Welcome home, son.” He reached for a sword on the craft's back seat. “It's a pity you won't have time to get reacquainted with the place.” He slid the sword into a scabbard across his back and reached into the craft for a length of chain with a loop attached. He walked around the back of the craft and placed the loop over David's head, pulling it taut. “Apologies for this indignity, son. But the last vestige of humanity cowers within you, and that humanity is now so rare it's a prize of sorts.” Goliath wound the chain about David's wrists and secured it. “Leading you to your place of execution by a chain is in no way a slight to you. More an indictment of my own accomplishment.”
“You've accomplished nothing yet.”
Goliath stepped away and yanked on the chain. David stumbled forwards and fell on his knees. “I suggest you get up. The terrain is likely to get rocky.” David thrust his bound hands into the soft ground and pushed himself to his feet. As they trudged across that barren land, David appeared to all intents and purposes like a child struggling to keep pace with an abusive parent – a child ever mindful of the tornados to the north.
Goliath stopped in his tracks, five metres from David at the end of the chain. David watched him. Over his right shoulder, Goliath called, “Come here.” David did not move. Goliath tugged on the chain and David fell flat upon the ground. He lifted his face from the dirt and blew some from his lips. The ground shifted before his widening eyes, as though something slithered beneath it. David closed his eyes and shook his head. He opened them a moment later to see Goliath's boots. “I understand your reticence, son. But do you think on
your belly is an appropriate place to be?” Goliath cast his gaze over the land. “Think of all those souls you represent – brave souls who held what they considered to be darkness at bay for a considerable length of time. It's up to you to make them proud. Be honourable. Meet your fate with dignity.”
David pushed himself onto his knees and used what felt like the last of his strength to stand. They walked side by side to the edge of the plateau where Moses reportedly read God's commandments to the Israelites. Below them yawned a drop of several hundred metres. David thought of Winston's words: Even when things seem hopeless, they are not. Opportunities will present themselves. You must be alert to these opportunities. And seize them. David possessed barely the strength to stand, let alone be alert, but he spoke aloud, slowly and deliberately. “Even when things seem hopeless, they are not.” Goliath removed the chain from David's neck and forced him to his knees at the edge of the precipice. “I sure do appreciate that final piece of advice, son.” David closed his eyes and, if another outcome other than the one now unfolding existed, he willed it into existence with a hunger for justice that made his body tremble. He heard steel being drawn from leather. “It's time, boy.” David opened his eyes, leaned over the precipice and saw something between him and the ground that did not belong there. A Shadow Strand? It turned slowly and gathered light as a spindle gathers silk, but it gathered not silk or light but time. An opening appeared and widened like the eye of Cyclops. Through this 'eye' David saw golden sand and the tops of trees. Goliath spoke, but his words had slowed to a deep, indistinguishable drone. David looked up at Goliath, whose sword was drawn back ready to strike, and on his face an expression of expectant rapture. David watched the blade move slowly, ever so slowly, towards him – or maybe it was not moving at all. David cast his gaze down at the Shadow Strand. A word entered his consciousness, and that word was 'opportunity.' David nodded and braced himself to stand, but did not possess the strength. And so he closed his eyes and toppled from the edge of that plateau like a man made of stone. The sword swished through nothing, and a cry rang out that would have been heard for miles around …
Seventeen
Jerusalem AD 36
The light through which David plunged was bright enough to blind him and hot enough to melt him. Or so it felt. The ground reared up, and David struck a sand bank and tumbled head over heels to the bottom. He lay on his stomach with his right cheek pressed into the sand and his knees tucked under him. He squinted into the alien light. A group of children watched him open-mouthed. David had not seen a child since he'd been one himself. He smiled and murmured “innocence” and, as he did so, a boy pitched a rock at him. It struck David on the side of his head and he groaned. The sound of his vulnerability triggered taunts in a language he didn't understand. Their words began to possess meaning, as though a translator was hard at work inside his skull. “Evil spirit! Go back to the sky! Go!”
David looked at them with one black eye, the other swollen and closed, and called out, “How about showing me some empathy? I've come a long way to find it.” By way of a reply, a large rock struck his head.
Eighteen
Voices penetrated the darkness – the voices of men, not children. David gazed through the slits of his swollen eye lids. He was lying on his back under a thatched roof, and a damp and cloying heat besieged him like something foreign and unfamiliar. Four men stood over him and spoke in quiet, conspiratorial tones. All had dark hair and dark beards, and wore robes of sackcloth. One amongst them had a staff which he thudded twice against the ground. The others fell silent. “The children saw him … saw him fall from the sky. As did their mothers. What is he if not a deliverance from God?”
“A trap laid by Satan.”
The man leaned on his staff. “On what reasoning? Did he crawl from the depths of the earth? No. He fell from the heavens. And look: the resemblance to our Saviour … it is miraculous.” David felt their scrutiny like a heavy blanket laid upon his sunburned flesh. The doubtful man said, “His nose is a little long … his collar bone more pronounced than our Saviour's.”
“You have seen what they have done to Him. Broken His body. Smashed His face. How easy it would be to achieve the same with this body … this face.”
A third man spoke. “ … He has not been circumcised.”
“Something that can easily be rectified. This is His doing. He raised Lazarus from the dead. So why not bring this … this man down from the heavens?”
“Simon is en route to the cells now. We will know soon enough.”
“Our Lord goes before Pilot the day after tomorrow. If He is condemned, and this deliverance crucified in His stead, then we must prepare it.”
“Simon will bring details of His injuries. In the meantime we will summon a rabbi to carry out the circumcision.”
David drew breath at this, and once he started it felt like he couldn't stop. He coughed violently, and when he spoke he did so in the language of his captors, but his throat was so dry, and his tongue so heavy, that he did not recognise the sound of it. “I did not fall from the heavens!” His black and swollen eyelids shifted as he looked for their reactions. Three of the men had stepped back from the bed and vanished. The man with the staff leaned over him, then laid the staff against the bed and reached for a cup of water. He lifted the back of David's head and placed the cup to his lips. David drank deeply from it. The man laid his head back on the pillow. “You were seen falling. By seven children. Their mothers. A washerwoman.”
“I fell … but not … not from the heavens.”
“Then where? From a mountain ledge? A tree? There is only the sky … and beyond the heavens.”
“The future … I fell from the future.”
One of the men stepped forward. “What does it matter? His presence here, and the manner of his arrival, is a miracle – one capable of giving our Messiah more time. He is clearly a gift from God, The Father has provided a way for His son to remain on Earth longer.”
“And His resurrection?”
“Will come at the anointed time. A time as yet unknown. Why else send us this offering now?”
A fifth man spoke up from the back of the room. He spoke slowly and deliberately, as though short on patience. “The captain of the prison guard is newly arrived from Naples. Quintus Saron. By all accounts he is greedier than his predecessors. It will take a bribe of at least thirty pieces of silver to get anyone into our Lord's cell.”
The man with the staff nodded. “Judas. He has prayed for a way to atone, and his prayers have been answered. We must send word. Simon has dealt with Quintus already. He will tell him this man is a relative of Christ, that he is close to death. And he believes that Christ can heal him.”
“If Saron is as corruptible as reports suggest, he might do better telling him the truth.” They gazed down at David and scrutinised him again.
“Please. I cannot die. Not yet,” he pleaded.
The door opened, and another man entered the room. The faces vanished from around David's bed. He tried to sit up, but was forced back down by straps that pressed into his ribs. The visitor spoke in hushed tones. “Another has fallen from the sky! Upon the same spot as the first.”
“Does he look like our Lord? Are we to be deluged?”
“No. This one is different.”
“Where is he?”
“Hidden in Joshua's barn. He is dead. Deformed. Like something the devil has chewed and spat out upon the Earth.”
The doubtful man said, “You still think this man a deliverance from God? I say we slit his throat and burn his remains with the other.”
The staff crashed into the floor. “Open your eyes! Our prayers have been answered. Our Lord still has work to do. And this man, this doppelgänger, might die in his stead. Now take us to this second man.”
They left, and the door closed behind them. David heard three footfalls upon the wooden floor. The face of the impatient man loomed over him within the folds of a dark hood. Once again the man's voice
was calm but laced with impatience. “You have an accent. You have spent time in the western provinces of the Roman empire? Perhaps England. Londinium?”
David shook his head. “I've never even heard of it.”
“How could you? If you were dropped from the heavens by God's hand.”
“I told you. I came from the future.”
The man lowered his hood. He had a scar that snaked from his forehead down to his top lip like a question mark. “I am known as Saint Peter's Provider.”
“Saint Peter?”
“You have not heard of Saint Peter?”
David shook his head.
“He awaits the dead at the gates of heaven. I have sent many to meet him.”
“You're an assassin?”