Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  “If I can’t see history made, I may as well see it unmade, eh?” he said now, and pointed at the Dome of the Rock.

  Israeli archaeologists and technicians swarmed over the building like ants over cake forgotten after a picnic. Like ants, they’d take the Dome away one chunk at a time. Unlike the picnic pests, they’d put it back together.

  Yoram Louvish knew more about the disassembly project. Eric hadn’t asked him much. He didn’t feel good about what the Israelis were doing or about his own deliberate lack of curiosity. Hadn’t otherwise decent German officers not wanted to know what was happening to Jews during the Second World War?

  Nobody’s getting killed here. He’d told himself the same thing again and again, trying to salve his conscience. Some days, it worked better than others. He didn’t even know it was true. It might not be. When these buildings came down, who could guess what the Muslims would do?

  Eric feared he could. To Munir, he said, “I wish it would have turned out some other way.” Orly nodded again, this time with less constraint. She wasn’t wild for the Third Temple, either; nowhere near.

  Munir said something harsh in Arabic before returning to English: “It’s all madness. The whole world is madness, with no way out.”

  “You aren’t saying anything I haven’t been thinking,” Eric told him.

  As if he hadn’t spoken, the Israeli Arab went on, “It’s like a bad dream, only no one can wake up from it. The monsters will get us if we don’t watch out—and we can’t watch out.” He paused to grind out a dead Marlboro under the sole of his sandal, then light a new one. After a drag and a cough, he continued, “I’ve given Louvish my resignation from the team.”

  “You don’t want to do that!” Orly exclaimed before Eric could. “Think of your career!”

  “It doesn’t matter now. I’m better off away from it all,” Munir said. “This isn’t archaeology any more. This is religion and politics. I spent my whole life trying to steer clear from both of those, and look what it’s got me.”

  As if to underline his words, a guy in a crane swung toward the Dome of the Rock’s actual dome. He taped a sheet of paper to each gold-plated panel, so the Israelis could put it back together right. Eric imagined a Palestinian saboteur sneaking among the panels and scrambling the sheets. When the building went up again, it would go up wrong. And how loud would Muslim countries yell if that happened? Loud enough so you could hear them on the moon.

  “Bite your tongue!” Orly exclaimed when Eric suggested that. Munir, on the other hand, laughed harder than Eric thought the joke deserved.

  “It’s okay,” the American said. “Nobody here but us chickens.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” Munir added, proving he knew too well that Orly was. “I do not care for destruction of any kind, even funny destruction. Peace be unto you both. Peace be unto all of us.” He touched the brim of his cap with an oddly courtly gesture, dipped his head, and walked away.

  “I want to believe him, but you never can tell,” Orly said when he’d got far enough away not to be able to hear. Eric wanted to tell her she could count on Munir, but if this crazy summer had taught Eric anything, it was that you never could tell.

  With Orly unhappily trailing, he went on to the Dome. A twentieth-century scholar said it had an elegance of proportion that outdid any other building. Eric wouldn’t have argued that, either. The doors, in every other side of the octagon, faced the four cardinal directions. They were open; he supposed they would get taken down and carted away soon.

  “You are?” an Israeli corporal barked when he saw they wanted to come in.

  They gave their names. “We work with Professor Louvish,” Eric added.

  The noncom grunted. “You, too, eh? Okay, you’re allowed.” He stood aside.

  Eric and Orly looked at each other. “ ‘You, too’?” Eric said. Orly shrugged. Neither of them had seen any other archaeologists from under the Temple Mount but Munir al-Nuwayhi, and he hadn’t come this way.

  Inside the Dome of the Rock, the Byzantine architects and artisans who’d built it for Caliph Abd al-Malik let their color sense run riot. The stone paneling and columns were of marble. The columns had gilded acanthus capitals that reminded Eric of the ones in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (or, in those days, Constantinople). The mosaics were green and blue and mother-of-pearl, with gilt accents. On the wooden interior of the dome were more splendid golden designs and inscriptions.

  A fence separated the faithful from al-Sakhra—the Rock. That was just as well. When the Crusaders held Jerusalem, they’d cut chunks from the Rock as relics and sold them for their weight in gold. Not far from the Crusader quarrying was another, smaller, rectangular depression in the Rock. If Ritmeyer had things straight, that was where the Ark had rested.

  Eric eyed the depression. He had an advantage Ritmeyer’d lacked: he’d seen the Ark. Damned if it wasn’t the right size.

  Other marks on the Rock showed the Archangel Gabriel’s fingers—if you were a believing Muslim, anyway. Yet another was said to be Muhammad’s footprint. Normally, those would have interested Eric. Now he had eyes only for that depression. Yes, the Ark could have fit there. And yes, it was liable to fit there—again?

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Those ordinary English words, spoken in an equally ordinary American accent, almost made him jump out of his skin. He had to make a quick grab to keep his glasses from flying off his nose.

  That done, he recovered such dignity as he could, like a cat that had fallen off a sofa. His voice was nearly normal when he answered, “Hello, Barb. What are you doing here?”

  She beamed. “I took Yoram’s name in vain to get the soldiers to let me come onto the Temple Mount. Actually, it turned out he’d left my name with the guards, said it was okay for me to come.” That explained the corporal’s You, too? Barb went on, “I wanted to see things while they’re still here. There’s a last time for everything—everything in the whole world.”

  In a different context, the remark would have been a commonplace. A lot of what Barb Taylor said was a commonplace. In the Dome of the Rock, when it was about to come down and the Third Temple about to rise in its place, things took on new meaning. Maybe Barb meant them to. Or maybe Eric’s imagination was running away with him—again?

  “I wish she’d shut up and get lost,” Orly said in Hebrew.

  “Armageddon tired of this myself,” Eric answered in English, which proved that, regardless of the marbles in the Dome of the Rock, he’d lost his.

  Orly looked appalled. He felt appalled. If Barb got it, she didn’t let on. “Tired of what, Eric?” she asked.

  “Tired of everything that’s happened lately,” he replied. That wasn’t what he’d meant, but he wasn’t lying. He would have given anything for the world to get back to normal again.

  “You shouldn’t be.” Barb always sounded so sincere, you wanted to make her shut up. “They’re signs.”

  “So were the ones for Burma-Shave, and look what happened to them,” Eric said. Orly had no idea what he was talking about. Barb did, though he didn’t think she was old enough to have seen them for herself. He wasn’t. They’d have to say Myanmar-Shave if they brought ’em back now, he thought.

  “Talk about signs…” Orly sounded sincere, too, enough to raise Eric’s hackles. She asked Barb, “You think it will be a sign if they build the Third Temple, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Who wouldn’t?” Barb said. “If it comes back after so long, it can’t be anything else.”

  One of Eric’s firmest convictions was that anything could always be something else. That conviction had taken a drubbing lately, but he clung to it. Maybe he had the courage of his convictions, or maybe he was just a jerk. How could you tell?

  That wasn’t the direction Orly was going in. She said, “If the Temple goes up, won’t it be a sign Jesus didn’t
know what He was talking about? Didn’t He say it would get destroyed and never rise again?”

  Barb took a New Testament out of her purse. “That’s in Matthew…24:2: ‘And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’ So He did prophesy that the Second Temple would fall, but I don’t think He said anything about the Third Temple rising.” She flipped pages. “Almost the same text in Mark 13:2…and in Luke 21:6.”

  Orly muttered. Eric said, “That’s not how Christians in the fourth century looked at things, Barb. When Julian and the Jews tried to rebuild the Temple then, bishops quoted Matthew after they failed.”

  “Isn’t that interesting?” Barb said. “Only goes to show there are different ways to look at things.”

  Orly muttered again. Eric decided arguing with Barb had no future. She was too reasonable for her own good, much too reasonable to belong in the Middle East.

  She looked around the interior of the Dome of the Rock in wonder. “This is such a wonderful building. It’s a shame they can’t have it and the Third Temple here at the same time.”

  “American,” Orly said. Eric knew what she meant. In the USA, the Dome of the Rock and the Third Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher would have stood next to one another, and people would hit them all—and their gift shops—in an afternoon. Sacredland, they could call it, and build a Museum of Tolerance—and a Hindu stupa and a Buddhist shrine—close by.

  He laughed. The United States had done that, or something close. People there didn’t get shot or blown up over what they believed…or fall over dead for no reason. What was so bad about that?

  Nothing Eric could see. Then he remembered Brandon falling dead. He remembered the Ark floating three inches off the ground in the Shrine of the Book. However neat the American arrangement might be, he feared it wasn’t what God had in mind.

  And wasn’t that a shame?

  * * *

  —

  Chaim Avigad was so glad to come back home, he didn’t care whether Kibbutz Nair Tamid was slightly radioactive. Almost everybody who’d camped at Kibbutz Ha-Minsarah felt the same way. A few people stayed there. Everybody else rushed back.

  Rosie came home, too. She stood in her stall chewing her cud. How much did it matter if her grass made Geiger counters tick a little? Not much, when she didn’t have long to live.

  Every time Chaim bumped against that, it made him unhappy. Why did God want a red heifer’s ashes to purify things and make them ritually clean? It made no sense to Chaim.

  Then again, God had killed Brandon for not paying proper respect to the Ark. He hadn’t scared Brandon, or hurt him, or crippled him—He’d killed him. Along with millions of others, Chaim watched it happen. How much sense did a God Who could do something like that need to make?

  Not much. If you were strong, you just needed to use your strength. God had no trouble with that.

  Everything else was going as it should. Israel had chased the Arabs off the Temple Mount. The buildings the Arabs ran up there while they held the holy site wouldn’t last long. Chaim thought of them that way—like shacks squatters built on land that wasn’t theirs. If the Dome of the Rock was a world-famous treasure…so what? They had no business putting it there.

  Once the Dome and the mosque got knocked down, what did belong on the Temple Mount could rise once more. The Temple hadn’t been there for over nineteen hundred years? There’d been no Jewish state in the Middle East for that long…till there was again.

  The Temple would rise. The Ark would return to the Holy of Holies. Priests would sacrifice by the rules the Bible spelled out. And, the way prepared for him, the Messiah would come. Everything would change then.

  Jews had been waiting and praying for this since before the Second Temple fell. A few Jews had thought Jesus was the Messiah. A few Jews still did—a few, along with all those Christians. Chaim wasn’t one of them. He never would be. He wanted the real Messiah, not a long-ago phony. And the real Messiah was on the way. How could anybody doubt it? Chaim didn’t. He believed.

  So why aren’t I happier? he wondered.

  Yes, part of it was that they were going to sacrifice Rosie. It was such a big part, it had hidden from him that it wasn’t the only thing bothering him. Everybody else at Kibbutz Nair Tamid seemed excited at how things were going. Chaim didn’t feel that way. He didn’t wish things weren’t going this way. He was as pious as he’d been raised to be. But he saw questions where others saw answers.

  Why kill a red heifer to make everything ritually pure? That still topped the list. But more crowded behind it. Why did it take a dirty bomb in Tel Aviv to get people moving toward rebuilding the Temple? Why did people there have to die? Why did they deserve it?

  To Chaim, they were like Job’s children. They died to make God’s point to other people. How fair was that? Not very, not as far as he could see. God was God. He didn’t need to do things like that to people. He could get what He wanted without the…the collateral damage, that was it.

  But God didn’t bother. He went ahead and did stuff; tough luck for people who got in His way when He did. He was God Almighty. Chaim had no doubts about that. Things would come out as He wanted them to, whatever that was. But His work reminded Chaim of the first draft of a paper. It had everything it needed, but God could have done a better job fitting the pieces together.

  You could say that about how Brandon died. Yeah, Kupferman had warned him. The Bible said bad things happened if you messed with the Ark. Brandon should have known better. If he’d believed, he would have.

  Ever since the days of the Bible, God had lain low and kept quiet. He blamed Brandon for not paying attention to Him anyway. Was that fair? Brandon had done worse than trying to take the lid off the Ark. Were there any commandments Brandon hadn’t broken? Maybe Thou shalt not kill. Any others? Chaim doubted it. And Brandon got away with everything—till then. After that, it was all over. So was he.

  Was that fair?

  Chaim looked up at the ceiling. Where were You when the Nazis slaughtered us, when we really needed You? Why didn’t You do something about that instead of killing a windbag reporter?

  He got no answer. He hadn’t expected one. God had better things to do than answer kids with annoying questions. So did most grown-ups. Chaim had seen that when he asked Uncle Yitzhak about Job.

  What if you didn’t like any answers you came up with? What could you do about it?

  Try talking to God again, maybe. Right now, in spite of the silence he’d just met, that seemed less hopeless than it would have through much of Jewish history. You might get an answer. But would you want it?

  * * *

  —

  In Hebron, Jamal Ashrawi felt as safe as a man could when the Zionists were after him. They would cause an incident if they snatched him from the heart of Palestinian power or killed him here. That might not stop them, but the Grand Mufti hoped it would slow them down.

  He felt confident enough to risk a phone call. He had a message they needed to hear. It wasn’t his alone; it came from the whole Muslim world.

  Navigating the Zionist entity’s bureaucracy was an adventure. The first person on the other end of the call was a bored flunky, as rude as Israelis often were. “Religious Affairs,” she said. Quit bothering me, her tone added.

  “This is Ashrawi,” the Grand Mufti said in Arabic.

  “Who?” She didn’t know or care.

  “Ashrawi,” he snapped. “Put me through to someone who knows something, or else watch your miserable country get what it deserves. I would laugh.”

  “Cus ummak!” she told him. An Arab woman would never say that to a man. She went on, “Who are you?”

  “I am Ashrawi. I am the Mossad’s nightmare. I am Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, misbeliever, so put me through to the mi
nister or you and Israel pay the price.”

  “Who are you really?” the woman said. God made plenty of stupid Jews. Then she said, “You have to hold,” and music filled his ears.

  He went through more bureaucracy before he got to Shlomo Kupferman. He addressed him in English: he wouldn’t admit to speaking Hebrew, and had heard Kupferman was as stubborn about Arabic. “I have warning for you,” he said.

  “You are in a poor position to give one,” the Jew replied, also in English. What Ashrawi had heard was true, then.

  “I not speak just for myself,” the Grand Mufti said.

  “You have a tapeworm? We’ll send you medicine.”

  “Funny man. Listen to me, funny man, or you be sorry.”

  “Go ahead. Talk is cheap. No wonder Arabs like it so much.”

  Ashrawi reminded himself that other people depended on him. “You harm one stone from Dome of the Rock or Al-Aqsa, Muslims all over the world take it as an act of war. They avenge in God’s holy name.”

  “They can try,” Kupferman said.

  “No. You not understand. They can do,” Ashrawi insisted. “From thousands of kilometers off, they can. You must understand before you drown in stupidity. They have all tools they need to strike from far away, and have will to do it.”

  “Do you think any man’s power can stand against God?”

  “God is with us!” Ashrawi said.

  “You watched that fool die when he touched the holy Ark, and you are still mad enough to say such a thing?”

  “He was only a Christian.” The Grand Mufti disliked Christians and Jews for different reasons. Jews were worse politically, but Christians’ theology was more distorted.

  “You both added to the Scriptures, which need no addition,” Kupferman said. “Do your worst. God will protect us. But who’s looking out for you now, Mufti?”

  Ashrawi stared in all directions. Was an assassin with a scope-sighted rifle aiming at him? Would a missile-carrying helicopter swoop over the horizon? Did a drone cruise above Hebron waiting to lock on to him?