Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  Two archaeologists started to go into the chamber behind the wall. “Stay back if you value your lives!” Kupferman shouted, in English and Hebrew. “The Ark will not let itself be touched by profane hands!”

  Eric wasn’t sure he believed that. Not long ago, he would have said he didn’t. But the Ark was floating above the ground. If it could do that, what else could it do?

  God knows, he thought. And maybe that didn’t mean Nobody knows this time. Maybe it meant what it said.

  Wasn’t that scary?

  “Are those the poles people carried it by all those years ago?” Orly asked.

  “What else?” Eric said. “Not likely anybody went in there and changed them.”

  She nodded. “What happens if somebody picks up the Ark by them now?”

  “Good question,” Eric told her. “If there are no other questions, class dismissed.” She gave him a dirty look. He said, “Hon, how do I know? Maybe they break. But maybe they don’t. Look at it. It’s floating there. How much does it weigh? Anything?”

  Orly blinked. “That’s a good question, too.” She frowned. “It has to weigh something.”

  “Beats me. Last time I worried about physics was in high school, and Mr. Goldberg didn’t give any exceptions for miracles,” Eric answered. Sounding flip when he talked about miracles was the ironic, detached, twenty-first-century way to deal with them.

  The other was just to believe in them. That was how Kupferman dealt with them. To Eric, it was also how the bastards who’d dirty-bombed Tel Aviv dealt with them, to say nothing of the televangelists back home. He didn’t want to be like them.

  What if they’re right? Every time he looked at the Ark, floating there with no visible means of support, the question got louder inside his head.

  “Move back!” Yoram shouted. “Give the cameras a chance!”

  Reluctantly, the archaeologists obeyed. When Yoram told you to do something, you did it first and wondered why later. It had to have something to do with yelling in battle. Eric wished he could make people listen that way, but not enough to wish he’d been a combat soldier.

  When bathed in the TV lights, the gold sheathing the Ark reflected so much that details were hard to make out. The only exceptions were the cherubim on the lid. Eric could see those better than he had before.

  The better he saw them, the more they alarmed him. It wasn’t that they weren’t splendidly worked; they were. He could make out every vane on every feather in their wings, every detail on their faces. But those faces…

  Inhuman was the first word that sprang to mind, but it wasn’t right. The cherubim looked out toward him and the other archaeologists. Those two golden visages peered toward them, through them, past them, toward…something else, something people weren’t meant to see. Whatever it was, it filled them with savage, terrible joy. Their eyes were wide, nostrils distended, lips slightly parted, and teeth longer and sharper than teeth had any business being.

  Next to Eric, Orly shivered; he felt it against his shoulder. When he slipped an arm around her, she nodded and drew close. If she wasn’t seeing the same thing he was, he would have been surprised.

  Not everybody noticed, or cared. Shlomo Kupferman leaned forward, his eyes as wide as those of the cherubim. The better to see you, my dear, Eric thought. “Beautiful,” the rabbi whispered.

  “How do we get it up into the city?” someone asked.

  That brought Kupferman back to himself. “I have Levites waiting at the top of the tunnel,” he answered. “As they did in David’s day, they will bring the Ark into Jerusalem.”

  Eric swallowed a giggle. If you walked into an Orthodox shul, the shammes asked you, “Cohen or Levite?” Most people answered, “Yisrael,” and went in. Like most Katzes, Eric was a cohen, a descendant of the priestly class—and, from what the DNA guys said, that was a genetically traceable clan. In the days of the Temples, the Levites were priests’ assistants and singers and musicians and gatekeepers and guards. They and the cohanim got precedence in reading the Torah, but that was it. Thinking the old distinctions mattered for anything more was crazy.

  A lot of what had happened in the Holy Land lately was crazy. If God wasn’t pulling the strings…it looked even crazier.

  Which means what? Eric wondered. Thinking God was pulling the strings struck him as crazy, too. It meant Rabbi Kupferman might be right: a terrifying thought. Or it meant the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was, or a TV preacher like Pat Robertson or—less obnoxiously—Lester Stark.

  God’s most passionate advocates made atheism looked good to Eric. Looking good to him, though, didn’t make it true. Adjusting to that notion was harder than adjusting to a stick shift after driving an automatic.

  “The Ark isn’t going anywhere now,” Yoram declared. “First we finish the in situ photography. God won’t mind. The Ark is holy, but it’s also the most important find in—well, forever. No one will forgive us if we don’t learn everything we can before we move it.”

  Would Kupferman forgive? Eric waited for him to swell up and turn purple at delaying by even a millisecond. The rabbi didn’t. Eric thought it was because Kupferman had his own archaeologist’s hat on. But he proved wrong.

  “It will go into Jerusalem and into the new Temple when God is ready,” Kupferman said. “It waited outside the city till David took Jerusalem from the Jebusites. It waited in a tent in Jerusalem till God found Solomon worthy of building His Temple. And it waited here till He found us worthy of recovering it. Take your pictures, Yoram. God wouldn’t have let you find it if He didn’t mean for you to.”

  “I don’t know what He means me to do. I only know what I mean to do.” Yoram snapped away.

  * * *

  —

  Brandon Nesbitt wanted to punch somebody. The soldiers who kept Gabriela and him from going into the Temple Mount and getting a firsthand look at the Ark would have done nicely. But they had Galils and watchful expressions. Brandon didn’t think he could get away with slugging one of them. He didn’t think even Oprah could, not with these dudes. And if Oprah couldn’t, it was serious.

  He wouldn’t have minded popping one of the Levites, either. They looked like weirdos. Nobody’d worn those turban-like hats, tunics, and baggy pants—all white linen—with a long, multicolored sash around the waist for two thousand years. The Levites didn’t carry rifles. But they looked as serious as the soldiers. Chances were they’d been through the IDF and would clobber him if he took his frustrations out on them. Too bad!

  There was the Ark on the monitors. It floated like a special effect, but it wasn’t. It was real. If the scientists figured out how to bottle that, what would it mean? Would it put the airlines out of business? Or automakers? Or Saudi Arabia? With antigravity, why would you need a 747 or a Cadillac Escalade or the fuel to run them?

  Brandon pointed a mike at the nearest Levite. “What’s your name?”

  “I am Avraham Moser,” the man answered in careful English.

  “When you’re not a Levite, what do you do?”

  “I am always a Levite. It is part of my…inheritance. I make my living as a graphic designer, if you mean that.”

  “What do you think of the Ark?”

  “It is wonderful. What can anyone think?”

  “Do you believe it can strike people dead?”

  “If the Bible says it, how can I not?”

  For Brandon, not believing the Bible was easy. The same held true for most of the Western world. The principal exceptions were American evangelicals. He wanted them to watch Gabriela and him. Otherwise, his opinion of them couldn’t have been lower.

  What they meant by the Bible wasn’t what this Levite meant. They had an extra Testament bolted on. Muslims believed in the literal truth of the Qur’an. How would this guy like getting lumped with them? He’d give you lumps for suggesting it.

  True believers of an
y stripe—Muslims, Jews, evangelicals, Nazis, PC people—horrified Brandon. You couldn’t reason with them. They had assumptions where reasoning should have lived.

  But what if this crowd was right? “How do you suppose the Ark floats, Mr., uh, Moser?”

  “God lets it, so it does,” the Israeli answered. Shlomo Kupferman had said practically the same thing. It didn’t explain anything, not to Brandon. But it seemed to satisfy Avraham Moser completely.

  Brandon tried a different question: “Where do you get your regalia?” Moser looked blank. Doesn’t know what regalia means, Brandon realized. “Your clothes. Your, um, Levite’s uniform.”

  “Oh. The Reconstruction Alliance. They…weave them.”

  “That’s Rabbi Kupferman’s outfit, right?” Brandon knew it was. But the lip-movers in TV land couldn’t remember their own names without checking their driver’s licenses, let alone the handle for a bearded Hebe’s religious movement.

  “Yes, of course.” Avraham Moser had no doubts. Kupferman was a much bigger deal in Israel than in the USA. He couldn’t very well be a smaller deal here than in the States. Even here, he counted for a right-wing nut…or he had till the Arabs dirty-bombed Tel Aviv and till the archaeologists found the Ark.

  Now? Brandon didn’t think anybody knew anything now.

  Someone shouted in Hebrew. Brandon would have had trouble understanding English from down a big, deep hole. This way…“What’s up?” he asked the Levite.

  “He says it isn’t coming up now.” Moser couldn’t hide his disappointment. “He says they aren’t ready.”

  “Oh. Crap.” Brandon passed the word to Gabriela. She said exactly the same thing. They both hated standing and waiting for something that wouldn’t happen. What reporter didn’t? Brandon forced a laugh. Hate it or not, he’d done it often enough—too often. Maybe he could get a quote before he headed back to the hotel. “Do you think everything that’s going on means the Messiah will show up soon?”

  “I don’t know,” Avraham Moser said. “But if we work for the Messiah’s coming, that makes it more likely, yes?”

  Brandon Nesbitt shrugged. He didn’t worry about it, except that he wanted an interview if the Messiah did come around. He wanted something else, too…“Are the tablets God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai inside the Ark?”

  The Levite’s eyes widened. “How can anyone know? Only the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies with the Ark, and only on Yom Kippur—one day a year.”

  “Wouldn’t it be something if they were?” Brandon persisted.

  “I don’t think anyone will find out, not for certain,” Moser said. “To touch the Ark is to die.”

  “Yeah, the rabbi told Gabriela the same thing,” Brandon replied. “You don’t think that works after so long, do you?” He figured that, if the Ark had killed people—or given them emerods!—it put the whammy on them because they believed it could. If you didn’t buy into a curse, how could it bite you?

  Moser’s eyes got wider. He sidled away from Brandon as if he didn’t care to stand too close when the lightning crashed down. “I don’t want to find out. If you are smart, you don’t, either.”

  Keep talking. Scare off the competition, Brandon thought.

  Time to vote. Yitzhak Avigad marked his ballot for the Pious Bloc’s slate and watched while it went into the box. Of course, as an American remarked long ago, one on the tally sheet was worth two in the box. Every party would have observers to make sure nobody got creative counting.

  He nodded to Chaim’s mother as they left the polling place. “We’ve done what we can,” he said. “Now it’s up to the fools everywhere else.”

  “How can they not give the government to people who know what to do with it?” Rivka Avigad said, adding, “People who know what God wants them to do?”

  “How?” Yitzhak raised an eyebrow. He liked his ex-sister-in-law: more than he’d ever said, in fact. Talking about it would have felt like poaching on Tzvi Avigad, even though his brother was long out of the picture. But no denying Rivka could be naive. “They’ve kept us out of the government since Israel was founded. Why should they change now?”

  She took him literally. “Because of everything that’s happened,” she answered.

  “Sure,” Yitzhak said, and then, “Hope so, anyway.”

  The polls were good—better than he ever remembered. If the results lived up to them…Israel would have a new direction. And if it didn’t, the pollsters would look like fools. One way or the other, they would know tonight.

  “Will they let us go home to Nair Tamid soon?” Rivka asked. “It would be nice to get back where we belong.”

  “I’m tired of it here, too.” Yitzhak shrugged. “But if it’s still radioactive there…”

  She said something about the Arabs who’d bombed Tel Aviv that should have turned the ground here radioactive or melted it under her feet. Yitzhak nodded. He didn’t think Israel had taken enough reprisals. If the government changed, if they got people with sense running things, he could hope that would be different, too.

  But reprisals might be secondary. If they rebuilt the Temple and did God’s work, revenge would take care of itself. “Almost two thousand years,” he murmured.

  Rivka nodded. “We’ve waited so long,” she said. “Alevai, we won’t have to much more.”

  “Alevai omayn,” Yitzhak echoed.

  “Do you want to come to supper tonight?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll fix something for myself.” He didn’t feel sociable. His brother’s wife knew better than to push him.

  His apartment was as bare as if he were an officer on occupation duty. That wasn’t because he’d been forced out of Kibbutz Nair Tamid; his flat there had been just as empty. The only decorations were two photos of a woman with dark, curly hair. Sarah’d been shopping in Jerusalem with some girlfriends, and they’d paused for lunch in a crowded café…minutes before a suicide bomber turned it into a slaughterhouse.

  One of the girlfriends lived. She identified what was left of Sarah. Nobody let Yitzhak see the remains before they went into the coffin. The Jewish custom of quick burial was a mercy—as with surgery in the days before anesthesia, the worst was over in a hurry.

  As with surgery of that sort, the pain didn’t go away once the cutting stopped. Much lingered yet; a big part would linger till the day when Yitzhak went into his own coffin. One of these days, he might get up the nerve to tell Rivka that pain shared was pain lessened. Or, of course, he might not. He hadn’t yet.

  He threw a frozen dinner into the microwave. Americans called that nuking their food. After Tel Aviv, Yitzhak didn’t want to think of it that way. While the dinner spun, he poured himself a slug of local brandy. It was a savage hangover-maker if you drank too much. Imports were better—and more expensive. The cheap, nasty stuff would do.

  The microwave dinged. Yitzhak ate mechanically. He was still hungry when he finished, so he had an orange and another knock of brandy. He chucked the trash and washed his silverware. Then he turned on the TV. The polls would close any minute. They were doing news to lead up to the results.

  A bomber in Beersheba tried to disrupt the voting there, but blew himself up on the street, and no one else got hurt. If the one in Jerusalem had been that clumsy…

  Another American saying popped into his mind. If pigs had wings…He didn’t know much about pigs, but he got the idea.

  Eight o’clock came. The polls closed. Results started showing up right away. The count was electronic; once ballots were verified, no more waiting for polling officials to mark tallies and total them.

  “It appears preelection polls did foretell which way the new government would lean, but not how far it would go,” a newsman said. “The Likud and religious parties will have a large majority in the next Knesset. Labor and the centrist Kadima Party have lost many more seats than
expected. Even with the Arab parties, they won’t be able to block or delay measures the new government proposes.”

  “Thank God!” Yitzhak had prayed things would go this way. But you couldn’t be sure till you saw the numbers.

  Cheers from other apartments said he wasn’t the only one watching. Somebody started singing “Hatikvah,” the Israeli anthem, loudly and off-key. The bellowing patriot would have got tossed from any karaoke bar from Metulla to Eilat.

  In the distance, an assault rifle emptied a clip in nothing flat. Another answered, and another. They all sounded like Galils. Yitzhak hoped they belonged to exuberant Israelis celebrating. If they didn’t, a small war had started.

  He didn’t hear screams or alarm sirens. So it was kibbutzniks going nuts. Yitzhak felt like squeezing off a few bursts himself.

  Instead, he turned back to the TV. Returns flooded in now, and the look of the new Knesset was firming up. Likud and the religious parties would grab more than two-thirds of the seats. That wasn’t a sea change; it was a tsunami.

  And the Pious Bloc looked to be the second-biggest party on the right. Yitzhak pumped a fist in the air. Maybe Kupferman’s TV appearances from under the Temple Mount made a difference. Maybe finding the Ark did. Or maybe people were wising up.

  The TV cut to Likud headquarters. Party officials and campaign workers there seemed half-jubilant, half-stunned—they hadn’t looked for such a huge win. The leader came to the microphone. He acted more like an American pol than an Israeli; he’d been educated in the States and lived there for years.

  “This is a new day!” he shouted. “The people have spoken, and we are proud they’ve spoken of us!” He couldn’t go on, because everybody else in the crowded room started yelling. When he could make himself heard, he said, “We’ll do what’s right for Eretz Yisrael. Nobody else looks out for our country, so we have to take care of ourselves. Right?”

  “Right!” the crowd roared.

  “I have to think that after all we’ve been through, God wants it to be this way, and I thank Him, too.” The Prime Minister was as pious as a telephone pole, but he knew his constituency. “The first appointment for the new Cabinet I want to announce is the Minister for Religious Affairs, Rabbi Shlomo Kupferman.”