Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  Gabriela was used to people in the business going on about God. So many of them did it so often. Some of the ones who didn’t were Scientologists. She wondered what they thought of all this.

  But those God-shouters hardly ever gave Satan equal time. Satan wasn’t a big deal among her associates. Folks assumed they were heading straight up to the Pearly Gates. Nobody’d worried about the Opposition since the Stones song way back when.

  The TV business mirrored America. In Puritan days, hellfire and damnation were staples of the religious diet. No more. Hell now was like sex in Victorian days. If you didn’t think about it, it would go away.

  Unless it didn’t.

  Gabriela admired Stark for looking the Devil in the eye and puckering up to spit therein. That he thought he had to, though, terrified her. So did everything else that had happened lately. Once you’d been scared like this a few times—fright oddly different from the one when the dirty bomb knocked her sideways—how much did one more round matter? As long as it didn’t make you keel over on the spot, not much.

  “We haven’t heard from all the precincts, either,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Stark asked.

  “Christians have a notion of what will happen when everything hits the fan. Jews do, too.” Gabriela pointed east. “So do the Muslims.”

  “Oh. Yes.” Now the minister looked uncomfortable. He’d talk about Christianity and Judaism till the cows came home—as the red heifer had. He had much less to say about Islam. Now he went on, “I don’t believe they have a true religion or Muhammad was a true prophet. And I don’t believe we need to worry about their view of the End of Days.”

  Gabriela thought he had more in common with Kupferman than he realized, remembering the Religious Affairs Minister’s dumb-ass camel driver crack. “Over a billion Muslims would think you should be dunked in boiling butter for saying things like that,” she returned. “Suppose they aren’t so wrong after all? Then what?”

  As he had before, Stark said, “We see how it plays out, that’s all. What else can we do?” He sounded more harassed than usual. Gabriela felt proud of herself. She could make him antsy if she worked at it. Almost plaintively, he went on, “Aren’t things complicated enough?”

  “I think so,” Gabriela said. “I guess you do, too. But does God?”

  She got the last word. Only later, as they went through a smoother version of their latest argument for the cameras, did she wonder if she wanted it.

  * * *

  —

  Jamal Ashrawi healed more slowly than he wished he would. He wasn’t so young as he had been. A doctor bound his chest in suffocatingly tight bandages to immobilize the broken ribs. “Take it easy while things get better,” the man advised.

  “What choice have I got?” the Grand Mufti asked. “I’m too wrecked to go anywhere in a hurry.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. The diploma behind him came from the University of California at San Francisco. Haji Jamal despised the United States. But a U.S.-trained doctor, he judged, was more likely to know his stuff than one who’d studied in Cairo or Beirut or Teheran.

  The West knew more about the things of this world than Muslims did. Christians and Jews would go to hell when they died. But when his body was afflicted here and now, such knowledge suddenly seemed much more valuable.

  “Do you need more pain pills?” the doctor asked.

  “Please.” Ashrawi tried not to seem too eager. The Qur’an did not forbid them. He liked the way they cut his aches and the slow, dreamy feeling they gave him. If it was like the feeling you got from wine, he understood how hard it was for the Prophet to ban alcohol.

  “Wait one moment.” The doctor had a safe in a back room there, and kept his medicines inside. He returned with the pills. In the West, they would have sat in a plastic bottle with a cap that was hard to take off. Here, he handed them to the Grand Mufti, who dry-swallowed one and put the rest in a pocket.

  “Thank you,” Ashrawi said.

  “You took a battering,” the physician said. “I’m glad you’re better. More and you would have been in God’s hands, not mine.”

  “While they were beating me, I knew I was in God’s hands,” Haji Jamal replied. He’d also been in the Iraqi’s hands. Had the man wanted him dead, he would have died—and his bodyguards might have joined the killers afterwards. Ashrawi didn’t care for the irony.

  The doctor nodded gravely. “I understand. Thanks to God, you are recovering now. Praises to the compassionate, the merciful.”

  “Just so,” Jamal Ashrawi agreed. The suffering he’d gone through reminded him of his years.

  “Now that you have the pills, I have done all I can do for you today,” the doctor said. “I hope you will excuse me, but other patients are waiting.”

  “It’s all right.” The Grand Mufti could be magnanimous. He’d taken one of the marvelous pills, and he had more. He didn’t need the doctor now. “I will visit you again in a couple of weeks.” Sooner if I run out of pills, he thought.

  “I am at your service,” the other man said. And what did that mean? That the doctor knew how much he liked the painkillers? As long as the man kept giving them to him, what difference did it make?

  Ashrawi had just left the office when his phone rang. “Yes?” he said.

  “May God’s blessings visit themselves upon you and yours.” The speaker’s voice was cultured, intelligent, and Iranian.

  “What is the latest in your part of the world?” Haji Jamal asked cautiously. Not much news came from Iran since the missile attack on Israel failed and the Mossad mounted its swift retribution. Ashrawi kept trying to believe that.

  “I have great news,” the man said. A government functionary? An ayatollah? Often, in Iran, there was no difference.

  “Tell me!” Haji Jamal exclaimed, as if he were astonished. It was all he could do not to laugh. Why else would the man call?

  “An official announcement will come soon, but you deserve to know ahead of time because of your struggle against the Zionist entity,” the Iranian said.

  The pain pills slowed Ashrawi’s thoughts, but didn’t seem to blur them. “An official announcement of what?” he inquired.

  “Of the fact that the Mahdi has come among men in the holy city of Qom,” the Iranian answered. “Together with the returned prophet Jesus, peace be unto Him, the Mahdi will sweep the Jews away. All the rocks and trees will proclaim that they have Jews hiding behind them waiting to be killed.”

  “Not all trees.” Haji Jamal was proud, too—of his own learning. “The gharqad—the boxthorn—is said by Bukhari and Muslim to be a Jewish plant, one that will shelter the wretches even in those times.”

  “I have not heard that before. I shall pass it along to those who can judge its truthfulness,” the Iranian said. Ashrawi fumed despite the pill. The man had his nerve, to doubt him. The Iranian went on, “Never mind the gharqad for now. The Mahdi!”

  “Yes, so you said,” the Grand Mufti answered. “I have one piece of advice for you, one you won’t want to hear.”

  “But you are going to tell me whether I want to or not, aren’t you?” the Iranian said.

  “I am, because you need to listen to me,” Haji Jamal said. “Be careful before you proclaim the Mahdi to the world. If you are wrong, God will make you sorry. He will make you and your countrymen look like fools, and the man you have declared the Mahdi will not live long.” How much would the Iranians care? No more than Palestinian outfits that routinely used suicide bombers.

  “Have no fear on that. God is with us here. He has made the signs plain enough. The Mahdi will come to Palestine to slay the Antichrist the Jews have raised up,” the Iranian said.

  “May it be so.” Ashrawi left it there. Maybe the man was right, and things would go as he said. Or maybe he was talking nonsense. He was an Iranian and a Shiite, after all. I
n fact…“Why are you telling me this?”

  “So you can preach the Mahdi’s coming, and the Jews’ downfall,” the Iranian replied. “Let pious Palestinians know what lies ahead. Tell them not to despair. God is on our side. He always has been, and always will be.”

  Go ahead. Preach. And when the “Mahdi” turns out to be a crop-headed Iranian taxi driver with drool running down his chin, you can look like an idiot along with everybody else in your country. If the Mahdi did appear, the reborn twelfth descendant of Ali, if the Shiites were right…If that happened, and if the Grand Mufti didn’t acknowledge the Mahdi when he had the chance, who would take him seriously again?

  “Preach,” the Iranian said once more.

  “Have no fear. I will,” Ashrawi told him. The Iranian rang off. The Grand Mufti hadn’t said what he would preach. A good thing, too; he had no idea.

  * * *

  —

  The rabbi frowned as he examined the paperwork. “This is all irregular,” he said at last.

  “Yup,” Eric agreed. Orly looked proud as she nodded. Eric went on, “It’s legit, though. Marry us, please.”

  “I’ve never seen so many formalities waived.” The rabbi plucked at his gray beard. Conservative and Reform Judaism went nowhere in Israel; here, if you weren’t secular, you were Orthodox. Orthodox rabbis held a monopoly on marriages.

  Eric played his trump card: “If you think anything’s wrong, call Rabbi Kupferman and ask him.”

  “That…probably won’t be necessary.” The rabbi didn’t want to have thing one to do with Kupferman. In his shoes, Eric wouldn’t have, either. Kupferman was Trouble with a capital T.

  Orly gave him a sweetly predatory smile. “Then marry us.” She didn’t add, And quit fucking around, but she might as well have.

  “I suppose I’d better,” the poor man said. “Who knows what would happen to me if I didn’t?” Eric thought he was talking about Orly, not Kupferman.

  Now that she’d got what she wanted, she stood demurely by Eric and held his hand while the rabbi went through the service. Eric understood only bits and pieces. It was chanted, and the language was archaic. An Israeli fluent in modern English would have had trouble with Spenser, too.

  He did make his proper responses. And he stomped a glass when the rabbi wrapped it in a towel and put it by his foot. That symbolized the destruction of the Temple. Once the rebuilding was finished, would it vanish from the ceremony? He didn’t know, but thinking about it was interesting.

  He also knew enough to put the plain gold band on Orly’s index finger, not her ring finger. She could move it later. “I pronounce you man and wife,” the rabbi said.

  They kissed. Eric figured Orly would leave the rabbi dead on the floor if he tried to stop them.

  “Congratulations,” the man said when they broke apart. “Yes, mazel tov.” The second time, he sounded as if he meant it.

  “Thank you,” Eric said.

  “What will you do now?” the rabbi asked. Kupferman would have known better than to come out with a question like that.

  Because this fellow didn’t, Eric and Orly both laughed. The rabbi turned a shocking—and, no doubt, a shocked—pink. “I think we’ll do some of that, yes,” Eric said.

  “It’s one of the reasons people get married,” Orly said.

  The rabbi went pinker yet. Eric hadn’t thought he could. “It shouldn’t be the only reason,” he managed.

  “I didn’t say it was,” Orly answered sharply. “I happen to love him.” She took Eric’s hand.

  “Me, too,” Eric said. He wondered if they’d laugh at him for saying he loved himself, but they understood what he meant.

  “Let me try again,” the rabbi said. “Where will you go for your honeymoon?”

  “Oh, a long way off,” Orly said.

  “The Sheraton Plaza,” Eric agreed. Kupferman or somebody had pulled strings to get them a luxury suite for a couple of days—and nights. Then they’d head back to the cramped apartment. Neither said anything about that.

  “With so many places to choose from…” the fellow began.

  “We’re archaeologists,” Eric said. “Everything that’s going on is going on here.”

  “Ah. I knew I’d seen you before,” the rabbi said. “You were in the crew that found the Ark. Do you know how jealous I am?”

  Eric squeezed Orly’s hand. “I’m sure you can find yourself a nice girl, too.” He enjoyed being difficult.

  “I’m married, and that isn’t what I meant.” The rabbi seemed to buy a clue. “As you know perfectly well.”

  “Who, me?” Eric denied everything.

  He and Orly took a cab to the hotel. By his looks and accent, the driver had come from Russia not long before. He showed a fine command of Arabic invective, though, as well as mat. The traffic made bad language as necessary as a spare tire.

  “Here,” he said, screeching to a stop in front of the Sheraton. “Twenty shekels.” He was very plain about the money.

  Eric tipped him five shekels, which made him happier as he zoomed away. A warm-brown bird with a crest tipped with black and with boldly striped black and white wings and back flew off, path as darting and erratic as a butterfly’s. “Hoopoe!” Eric exclaimed in English. “How do you say hoopoe in Hebrew?”

  “Dukhifat,” Orly answered, so he learned a new word.

  The desk clerk gave them a fishy look when they checked in with no luggage. But their reservation was in order, so they got their key cards. Up they went. After Eric opened the door, he grabbed Orly, picked her up, and carried her over the threshold. She squawked: “Be careful! You’ll hurt yourself!”

  She wasn’t much smaller or lighter than he. But some things needed doing. When they went inside, they found champagne sitting in an ice bucket by the bed. “How about that?” Eric opened the card attached to the bottle. “It’s from Yoram.”

  “French stuff, too, not the swill we make here,” Orly noted. “That was sweet. Expensive, but sweet.”

  “Sure was.” Eric nodded toward the bed. “And now, doubly official Mrs. Katz…”

  “If you get any hornier than you already are, I’ll throw you out the window,” Orly said.

  “Long way down,” Eric said.

  “Mm—I suppose so,” Orly said. “So all right—shall we try the champagne?”

  “We’d better,” he answered. Everything went fine. Eric made the second ceremony official the same way he had with the first one over on Cyprus.

  After a while, even wedding-day eagerness flagged. “Wow,” he said lazily. “Happy wedding day!”

  “It is,” Orly agreed.

  “Wow,” he said again, and then, “After a while, we can call room service.”

  “Okay,” she said, and reached for him in a tentative way.

  He felt tentative, too, or something like that. “John Henry the Steel-Driving Man would need a rest right now.”

  “Then we’ll rest.” Orly grabbed the TV remote instead.

  Eric snorted. “Boy, the romance wears off in a hurry.”

  “Hush.” She turned on CNN. Like most Israelis, she was a news junky. And, for a wonder, CNN was actually showing news. Ratings was a god more pitiless and fierce than Jehovah.

  “In Teheran,” a female talking head said, “Iranian authorities have unveiled a young man who they claim is the Mahdi, the revived twelfth descendant of Ali, who was the prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law. In Muslim beliefs, the Mahdi and Jesus—who is a prophet in Islam, but not the Son of God—will lead their faithful to victory in the final days of the world.”

  “Cheesy,” Orly said. “We find the kid who may be the Messiah, so they trot out the Mahdi. I don’t know if it’s funny or pitiful.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. The image cut to a feed from Iranian TV. Two mullahs were leading the kid to a lectern in front o
f a huge portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini. The dead ayatollah’s stern visage was meant to dominate proceedings.

  Somehow, it didn’t. Eric had got a good look at Chaim Avigad when the ISIS guys attacked the Temple. The kid had been scared to death, but he’d also had a direct connection to Something. It wired him, as if he’d stuck a wet finger in an electric socket.

  This Iranian kid looked the same way. He had big, doelike black eyes that made you forget the rest of his face—and Khomeini, too. He was older than Chaim, old enough to grow a beard, but it was soft and thin. “God has called me to do this,” the subtitles said for him. “It was not my idea, but God must be obeyed.”

  “Yeah, right. Tell me another one,” Orly jeered.

  “I don’t know.” Eric heard his own worry. “He’s got the same spooked look Chaim does.” That was a good word. If you went up against God, you were out of your weight.

  “God has chosen you to show the Jews what liars they are—right?” Even in subtitles, the guy interviewing the so-called Mahdi sounded like a son of a bitch. Orly flipped him off.

  “God has chosen me to do His will,” the Iranian kid said.

  “He has chosen you to punish the wicked Jews.” Again, the interviewer’s voice admitted no possible doubt.

  CNN cut away. Eric wished they would have stayed; things were getting interesting. “Another anti-Semitic asshole,” Orly said.

  “I don’t like to argue with a beautiful naked woman, especially one I’m married to…” Eric said.

  “Then don’t,” Orly told him. “How can anybody take those Shiite yahoos seriously?”

  Wasn’t that the Jewish equivalent of the Iranian’s going on about wicked Jews and impious liars? It sure seemed that way to Eric. But Orly would so not want to hear that. He said, “The fellow who was talking with the kid has his head wedged. But the kid…? I don’t know. If God can land on one boy with both feet, why can’t He land on two?”

  “What’s next?” Orly wasn’t buying it. “Some guy from Mountain Flats, Arkansas, who says he’s the second coming of Jesus? Will you believe him, too, when he gets on TV?”