Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  Were Neandertals enough like real humans to have the Messiah resurrect their souls? Or was that the real question? Wasn’t it something more like, Did God breathe His spirit into Neandertals, too? Eric shook his head. Talk about unscientific!

  Or was it? Now he had evidence he hadn’t had before. If the evidence pointed this way, wasn’t he supposed to go with it?

  The kid squeezed through the opening blown in the long-sealed Golden Gate. The Messiah was supposed to bring the resurrected dead into Jerusalem by that route. Jesus had done things the Messiah was supposed to do. Jews who didn’t accept Jesus thought that was staged. How about this? Eric had no idea.

  The stairs up from the Golden Gate hadn’t been climbed much the past 1,200 years. What had been the point? Archaeologists had explored the gate while Britain held Palestine, but the Waqf didn’t encourage them. The Muslims didn’t want anyone finding anything there, since they denied that the Haram al-Sharif ever housed Jewish Temples.

  Battered or not, the stairs were climbable. The Israeli boy came out on the Temple Mount and ran across it as fast as he could.

  Eric got a good look at his face. The kid looked scared to death. If he was the Messiah, it hadn’t been his idea. And, considering the ghosts or spirits or whatever the hell they were that streamed after him, Eric didn’t blame him.

  Several people took a couple of steps toward the boy. After those couple of steps, everyone thought better of it. Eric didn’t blame them, either. He’d taken his own step and a half, then stopped. He glanced at Orly, wondering if she’d flay him for acting like a gutless American. She didn’t. Her feet stayed rooted to the paving stones, too.

  * * *

  —

  Get out of my head! Chaim wanted to scream it. Maybe he did scream. He wasn’t sure what was really going on and what was in his mind. He also wasn’t sure there was any difference.

  Ghosts…Spirits…Souls…They howled within him in languages he knew and ones he didn’t. They wanted something from him, something he didn’t know how to give them.

  Now he understood why Jewish law reckoned graveyards sources of pollution. The ancient rabbis must have stumbled across cases like his. Running into ghosts could drive anybody out of his mind. Chaim feared they were driving him out of his.

  He almost broke his neck scrambling up the cracked and pitted stairway up from the Golden Gate. What would have happened if he did? Would he have turned into a spirit, hovering around his body like the rest of them? How weird was that?

  When he got onto the Temple Mount, he kept running. He looked toward the Tabernacle and rising Temple. If he rushed in there, maybe the Ark would solve his troubles. Or it might strike him dead—he was carrying as big a load of pollution as anybody could.

  Chaim didn’t want to chance it. If he ran far enough and fast enough, maybe…Maybe he could somehow shake the ghosts. He would have done anything just then to get free of them.

  Someone pointed at him and yelled, “Look! It’s the Messiah, come at last! God bless him!”

  Even bedeviled by spirits, Chaim almost burst out laughing. The Messiah? Him? That was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. He was nothing but an ordinary kid who wasn’t even ritually pure any more.

  Or was he? He hadn’t had a chance to wonder. Things were happening too fast. If he wasn’t the Messiah, how was he raising the dead? For that matter, if he was, how was he doing it? He had no idea. He only knew he was. No—he knew one other thing, too.

  It scared the crap out of him.

  If Rabbi Kupferman had only listened, if he hadn’t stuck the knife in Rosie…Chaim wouldn’t have jumped off the platform. He wouldn’t have run through the cemeteries or found out he could do—this.

  He would have been much happier, even if he’d stayed on the platform and watched Rosie’s body burn. He hadn’t imagined that could be possible. Well, it was.

  The roaring between his ears wouldn’t go away. He feared it would keep getting louder, till his head exploded. Every time he went near a place where somebody was buried, that added one more voice to the clamor. And people had been buried all over the place. That was why everybody’d gone through such contortions to keep him ritually pure till now.

  Chaim laughed wildly. He didn’t have to worry about that any more. He’d spent his life looking forward to the day he didn’t have to. Now the day was here—and he had bigger things to worry about. Not fair!

  If you looked at things like the Book of Job, what did you see? You saw God wasn’t fair. At least Chaim thought he did. God didn’t have to be. He just had to be strong. And was He ever!

  If one spirit at a time had spoken to Chaim, he might have figured out what they were trying to tell him. He’d heard the first few as individuals while he was on the causeway, though he’d had no idea what was going on then. But now they were all screaming at the same time. He couldn’t understand any of them.

  Once, God confused everyone’s speech at the Tower of Babel. Chaim had his own Tower of Babel inside his head. He felt as if the original, which reached to the heavens, were weighing him down.

  He ran down the ramp on the Bab al-Maghariba. As soon as his feet hit the plaza in front of the Western Wall, the chorus got louder again. Not many people were buried on the Temple Mount—it was both rocky and holy. Not many had been buried here, either, but enough to stoke the din.

  Men praying at the Western Wall stared at him—and at his semitransparent entourage. Some ran way. Some pointed. Someone shouted, “The Messiah has come!” People trotted toward him.

  That was the last thing he needed. He didn’t feel messianic. He felt exhausted. He’d done a lot of running—which he hadn’t been able to till then. He was sweaty. He could smell himself. He wished everybody, living, dead, and divine, would leave him alone.

  “It’s the Messiah! He’s come!” The cry rose from a dozen throats.

  “Shut up!” Chaim screamed. “Stop that!”

  The Jews running toward him skidded to a halt, faces gray with fear. Some prostrated themselves before him, as priests had prostrated themselves before the Holy of Holies back in the days of the Temples.

  Chaim hardly noticed. What he noticed was that, when he shrieked, the spirits roaring and bellowing and calling through the fastnesses of his mind fell silent.

  Sudden hope filled him. Maybe he could deal with this after all. Maybe he wouldn’t go crazy trying. Or maybe he already had.

  * * *

  —

  Yitzhak Avigad wanted to run to his nephew as Chaim dashed across the Temple Mount, but his courage failed him. Shame filled him; he’d seen combat, so nothing should have fazed him. But what should have been and what were were two different beasts. Arabs with rifles and RPGs fell within his mental horizon; the Messiah didn’t.

  He stayed where he was, then, and let Chaim dash by. Only after Chaim was gone did Yitzhak shake himself and get moving. Even then, he was ahead of everybody else. What were you supposed to do when something miraculous went by in front of your nose?

  You were supposed to praise God. Saying it was easier than doing it. It wasn’t that Yitzhak didn’t want to praise God. But he was too freaked out for that to be easy.

  He’d thought he knew how things were supposed to work. They’d rebuild the Temple. Finding the Ark just seemed a lucky bonus. Once the Temple went up, they’d worship the way Jews had in ancient days—the right way, he was convinced. And that, alevai, would hasten the coming of the Messiah.

  It seemed logical, as far as religious matters could. But man made his plans and God made His. When man’s plans bumped against God’s, man’s came in second. Anyone who didn’t believe it could ask Brandon Nesbitt.

  Yitzhak started down the ramp after his nephew. He was halfway to the bottom—halfway down to the plaza in front of the Western Wall—when Chaim let out a shriek: “Shut up! Stop that!” His neph
ew’s voice didn’t just break. It shattered—baritone at the start, shrill soprano at the end.

  Part of Yitzhak wanted to go faster. Part wanted to run away. He didn’t freeze in place, but he didn’t speed up, either. Shame washed over him again. But he was doing everything a man could do. If that wasn’t enough, he would have to take a beating from his conscience.

  He got to the bottom of the ramp, even if not so fast as he wanted. Orthodox Jews surrounded Chaim and the spirits of the dead he’d raised. Moses in the middle of the Red Sea with it pulled back around him might have looked like this.

  “The Messiah!” The Orthodox had been shouting when Yitzhak started down from the Temple Mount. They weren’t shouting now, in deference to Chaim’s scream. They weren’t shutting up, though.

  “What are you doing?” a man asked as Yitzhak pushed past him. “Who do you think you are?”

  “That kid’s uncle,” Yitzhak growled. He didn’t wait for more argument, but went up to Chaim—and Chaim’s ghostly retinue. Yitzhak heard only a distant rumble from the spirits, like voices in a far-off room. By Chaim’s anguished look, he’d heard much more.

  “You all right?” Yitzhak asked, as casually as he could.

  “I’m better now,” Chaim replied. “I was really yelling at all these people, but the dead ones listened to me, too.”

  “If you’re…If you’re…” Yitzhak needed three tries, but he brought it out: “If you’re the Messiah, they would.”

  His nephew winced. “Don’t you start, too.”

  “I don’t want to start anything,” Yitzhak said truthfully. “I just want to help if I can.”

  Chaim’s voice was bleak: “I don’t know if anyone can. I don’t know if I can help myself. I don’t know what to do about it.” He looked even younger than he was. “I’m scared.”

  Remembering his own thoughts of a moment before, Yitzhak said, “You aren’t the only one.”

  “I guess.” Chaim sounded shaky. “But it’s not happening to anybody else. I’m in it.”

  He was the heart of it. It was what it was because he was what he was. Yitzhak was convinced of it. As gently as he could, he asked, “What do you want to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Could I get something to eat, and maybe a soda?” Chaim was still a kid, all right. Or if he was something more, he was something more with its head on straight.

  He startled a laugh out of Yitzhak. “If we can’t find a place that sells falafel or shawarma, we aren’t trying. C’mon.”

  His nephew came. So did the ghosts. More seemed to pop out from between the paving stones with every step Chaim took. People weren’t supposed to be buried here, but Jerusalem had been around a long time. Maybe they were Jordanian soldiers killed in the Six Day War, or Turkish troops from World War I. Or maybe they were Jebusites, from the days before King David took the town. Or they could have ended up dead anywhere in the 3,000 years between.

  With the souls of the dead came the curious and awestruck living. After Chaim screamed at the Orthodox who’d been praying at the Western Wall, they kept their distance. But they followed nonetheless. They’d been waiting for the Messiah since the Second Temple fell. Now they thought they had Him.

  Yitzhak wasn’t sure they were wrong, either. He was sure he could find a falafel stand. Even the Messiah got a yen for deep-fried garbanzos. Everybody else did.

  An old, bald Israeli and a girl a couple of years older than Chaim—the old guy’s granddaughter?—stood behind the counter. Yitzhak ordered and paid. They had a TV. The girl stared at Chaim, and not on account of the ghosts. “Oh,” she breathed. “You’re…him. I just saw you.” Her eyes were enormous.

  So were Chaim’s, for a different reason. “Uh, hi,” he managed. He’d never had anything to do with girls before. This one was, if not beautiful, definitely cute. Chaim noticed. Definitely. Well, well, Yitzhak thought. Something new has been added.

  Sometimes too much happened at once. You needed to pay attention to six things at the same time. You couldn’t pay proper attention to any. If you did, you’d lose track of the rest.

  Lester Stark felt that way now. Chaim Avigad—Messiah or Antichrist? The red heifer’s sacrifice measured against Jesus Christ’s. The red heifer’s sacrifice as a harbinger of the rebuilt Temple. The Resurrection of the dead? Was it that? Was it a warning the Last Days were near? And what would they be like when even North Korea could throw nukes?

  Try as he would, Stark couldn’t track all his worries at once. Whenever he got a handle on one, others slipped from his ken.

  “It’s enough to drive you crazy!” he complained to his wife.

  “Not me.” Rhonda looked up from her mystery. “God will do what He does. I can’t change it, except maybe by praying. So I pray, but maybe I’m praying ’cause I’m destined to pray.”

  That only made Lester Stark groan. Adding free will and predestination to everything else felt like something that would bring a piling-on penalty in a football game. His own prayers had been for the strength and wisdom to keep track of everything going on in Jerusalem now. That seemed too much for one man to get.

  He nodded sheepishly. “You’ve got better sense than I do.”

  “Ha!” she said, which might have meant anything.

  Stark pressed ahead with his own thoughts: “I have to talk to that boy. But why would he talk to me? To him, I’m only a Christian.”

  Rhonda said, “Talk to Rabbi Kupferman. If anybody can fix it, he can. Of course, he’ll want to talk to the boy, too.”

  “I told you you had good sense.” Stark kissed her. He was embarrassed he hadn’t thought of it. And if he couldn’t talk to the boy, talking to Kupferman would be the next best thing. He hadn’t wanted to call the rabbi because of the pressure Kupferman would have felt to bring off the sacrifice of the red heifer to perfection. Well, now that was over—and Kupferman, and everybody else, had something new to worry about.

  When Stark called Kupferman, he got voicemail. He knew he shouldn’t have been disappointed, but he was. Rabbi Kupferman had always answered for him—but not today. It wasn’t as if nothing was happening. Still…

  “This is Lester Stark,” he said after the beep. “Call me back when you get a chance, Shlomo. A lot going on, isn’t there?”

  Ten minutes later, his phone rang. He’d hoped it would, but jumped anyway. When he answered, Kupferman’s gravelly voice growled, “What do you mean, Chaim’s the Antichrist? You’ve got some nerve.”

  “I didn’t say he was,” Stark answered. “I said he might be. And I said he might be the Messiah, too.”

  “He’s raising the dead. Who else is he?” Kupferman said.

  “Neither of us knows by Whose power he’s doing that,” Lester said. “Till we do, we’d better keep an open mind, eh?”

  “Better an open mind than an open mouth,” Kupferman said.

  “Why did he try to keep you from sacrificing?” Stark asked.

  “Because he cared more about the stupid cow than about the Temple,” the rabbi answered. “Because even if he is the Messiah, he’s still wet behind the ears.”

  Was he? Lester Stark held his tongue. To him, it looked as if the Jewish hierarchy now was doing what it had 2,000 years before. It had an authentic miracle in front of it, and what did it care about? The minutiae of running the Temple or rebuilding it. Jews couldn’t see that what went on beyond their corset of laws was more important than what the corset shaped. They couldn’t…think outside the box. Stark smiled. The modern catchphrase fit what had happened long ago.

  He did say, “Maybe you should pay more attention to him and less to the Temple.”

  “I don’t tell you how to run your religion. You wouldn’t listen if I did,” Kupferman said. Lester Stark flushed; the rabbi was right. “Why do you think you can mind my business?” he added.

  But a question like that
demanded an answer. “Because this is the most important time in the history of the world. If things go wrong now, disaster isn’t a big enough word.”

  “Why worry so much? Don’t you trust God?” Kupferman asked.

  “Of course,” Stark said. “But Satan is in this game, too.”

  “Christians worry about Satan a lot more than Jews do,” Kupferman said. “Besides, even you believe God will win in the end. You wouldn’t be a Christian if you didn’t—you’d be a Manichee or a Zoroastrian. Right?”

  “Well, yes,” Stark said. Jousting with Kupferman was like getting grilled by an older brother. That was true on a personal level and a religious one. Judaism was Christianity’s older brother. Judaism had borrowed Satan from the Zoroastrians by the time Job got written, but still recalled days before that. Satan as God’s opponent was always part of Christianity. Stark took the notion for granted. Running into someone who didn’t was a jolt.

  Kupferman realized as much. “Okay. So relax. God will take care of things. Everything will be all right.”

  “It will if we help God,” Stark said. “I don’t want to work against Him.”

  Rabbi Kupferman’s amusement flickered and went out. “Then shut up about the Antichrist. You’ll get people killed if you don’t. You’re liable to get Chaim killed. Muslims believe in the Antichrist, too. But your happy ending isn’t the same as theirs. The only thing that’s the same is, Jews get screwed both ways.”

  Lester knew his own ignorance about Muslim beliefs. To him, Muhammad had plagiarized the Old and New Testaments and added his own flourishes. That Muslim beliefs could be true struck him as wildly unlikely. That Kupferman might feel that way about Christianity had never fully struck him…till now.

  In numbers lay strength. In Alabama, Stark was always part of a large majority. Not in Israel. And, while there were a billion and a half Christians, there were also more than a billion Muslims. You couldn’t ignore them.