Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  “Sometimes I get feelings, you know? It’s not God telling me or anything—I’ll just have an idea about what I ought to do.” He paused for another bite. “Most of the time I’ve got to figure it out like anybody else.”

  “You’re doing a good job,” Shoshanah said. “Who knows what would’ve happened to the Temple if you weren’t there?”

  “Yeah, who knows?” Chaim had had his childhood messed up because of the Temple. Only now that he’d started walking wherever he wanted did he realize how messed up it was. He’d started to suspect that the Temple was only a means toward what God had in mind, not His end purpose. Which made all his years up on stilts and away from grass and dirt seem even more pointless.

  Shoshanah said, “You’re smart, too. You’ve got all the answers.”

  “Answers?” he said. “I don’t have all the questions. I’ve got these ghosts in my head—and you. You’re the good part.”

  Swarthy and suntanned, she turned red anyhow. “Me? I’m nobody. Don’t be dumb.”

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “You’re the Messiah. You can’t say stuff like that.” Shoshanah sounded angry.

  “I’m still me,” he said. “The other stuff—it happened ’cause God wanted it to. I had nothing to do with it. But I found you by myself.” Chaim paused. “I think so, anyway.”

  She laughed shrilly. “You better believe it, hon. God’s got better things to do than lead you to Grandpa’s falafel stand. Yeah, just a few—million.”

  To Chaim, the hon was more important than all the rest. He suspected Shoshanah was wrong. God kept track of everything—that made Him God. Chaim had trouble believing he’d stopped at this falafel stand by accident. He had trouble believing there was any such thing as an accident. But he didn’t argue with Shoshanah.

  He finished the falafel and wiped grease off with his napkins. Then he said, “I’ve got to go. Somebody I need to see.”

  “Somebody important, I bet,” she said without rancor.

  “You’re important. This is just—stuff.” Chaim made a face.

  She blushed again. When he leaned across the counter toward her, she leaned toward him. When God made kissing possible, He knew what He was doing. Other possibilities…The Song of Solomon was in the Bible, too.

  He didn’t want to leave. He wondered whether what he wanted had anything to do with anything. The Israeli soldiers grinned when he rejoined them. “She’s cute,” one of the guys in khaki said.

  “Yeah!” Chaim agreed. Their grins got wider.

  He went onto the Temple Mount. Kupferman was there, a hard hat doing duty for a kippah. He eyed Chaim with a curious expression: half resentful, half respectful. He might be Religious Affairs Minister, but he couldn’t tell Chaim what to do. The other way ’round, in fact. No wonder the resentment got in there.

  “Yes? What is it?” he asked, as cautiously as he had in him.

  Chaim said, “That Iranian who says he’s the Mahdi…”

  “Oh. Him.” Shlomo Kupferman’s lips curled under his thick white mustache. “What about him?”

  “Let him come here.”

  “What?” Kupferman’s eyebrows leaped. “He’s a fake, a propaganda tool. As phony as a three-dollar bill, they say in America.”

  “Let him come anyway,” Chaim said. “He needs to. I don’t know how I know, but I know.”

  “We don’t want anything to do with the ayatollahs.” Kupferman sharpened. “Or will you show him up for the fraud he is? Making fools of the mullahs is always worth doing.”

  “Think whatever you want.” Chaim didn’t want an argument, and he’d known he’d get one. Kupferman couldn’t do anything without one. “Just get him here.”

  That was the wrong way to handle Kupferman. He bristled. “Are you telling me what to do?” You punk kid lay under the words.

  Chaim looked at him. “Yes. You tell the other people you need to tell. Make it happen, that’s all. It has to happen.”

  “Says who? You or God?” Kupferman demanded.

  “You think I care about some guy in Iran?” Chaim said. “This is all part of…whatever it’s part of.”

  Kupferman pondered. “What will happen when this—this Shiite comes to Eretz Yisrael?”

  “I don’t know,” Chaim said. “Something important.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Kupferman muttered. He gnawed at his mustache. Chaim thought that was gross. As if Kupferman cared what he thought! But the rabbi did care about the bigger stuff. Kupferman scowled at him. “I wouldn’t do this for the President of the United States, you hear me?”

  “Okay.” Chaim thought the American President was a jerk, but he yielded a little because he knew he’d won. “You’ll do it for God, won’t you?”

  “For God,” Kupferman agreed. “It had better be for God.”

  * * *

  —

  Jamal Ashrawi’d never imagined his body could turn so many different colors. With those purples and reds and yellows, he looked like a sunset. But sunsets didn’t hurt every time they moved, or even if they didn’t.

  There were rumors something had happened to the Iraqi on his way back to wherever he went after the attack on the Temple failed. Some said his plane crashed. Some said his car smashed. Some said he just vanished. Haji Jamal couldn’t find out if any of the rumors was true. He hoped they all were.

  He winced whenever Ibrahim came to see him. He didn’t know if the bodyguard had another affiliation now. He didn’t dare try to find out, either. Such situations made life…complicated.

  “Boss, something’s on Al Jazeera you should see,” Ibrahim said.

  That seemed safe enough. Getting to his feet hurt less than it had a few days earlier. He was making…some progress.

  A senior Israeli military officer looked out of the TV. The Zionists wore boring uniforms: none of the gold and glitter Arab generals loved. Gold and glitter had nothing to do with how an army fought. Too many Middle East wars proved that.

  In excellent Arabic, the Zionist said, “We agree to the Grand Ayatollah’s proposal. We will send an airplane to Teheran to bring the young man called the Mahdi to Israel. Then we will see what God has in mind for him, for the Messiah, and for the world.”

  Ashrawi stared. “They agree? Just like that?” He could hardly believe his ears.

  “He says so.” Suspicion clotted Ibrahim’s voice. “Maybe something will happen before this plane lands at Ben Gurion.”

  “Maybe,” Haji Jamal said. “But would the Zionists risk infuriating the Muslim world like that?”

  “Satan drives them,” Ibrahim said. “Who can guess?”

  He had a point. Then Al Jazeera switched to a feed from Iran. The Grand Ayatollah spoke in Farsi with an Arabic translation on the crawl. “We have reached a temporary accord with the Zionists, so that the Mahdi may go to Jerusalem and fulfill his destiny. May God and Muhammad and Ali—peace be unto them—ensure that the result is successful.”

  “Shiites,” the Grand Mufti muttered. They were full of dissimulation. It was part of their creed, and had been for centuries. They believed it proper to pretend to be what they weren’t to avoid persecution.

  A commentator replaced the Grand Ayatollah. “Both Israel and Iran have appealed to the United States to help with security and intelligence measures. The Americans are said to have agreed. Such cooperation is also extremely unusual,” he said.

  “Madness!” Haji Jamal exclaimed.

  “When the End of Days draws near, can you expect anything else?” Ibrahim said.

  The commentator went on, “Perhaps the Last Days are approaching. Will the prophet Jesus—peace be unto him—come down from heaven to make it all plain?”

  The Grand Mufti’s jaw dropped. He might have expected that from Iranian TV, or from the Hezbollah’s st
ation. But Al Jazeera was almost as secular as CNN.

  He switched channels. His English would do. CNN had a good-looking woman reading the news. Ibrahim leered at her shamelessly uncovered hair. So did Haji Jamal, but not so openly.

  She was also talking about the arrangements between the Zionists and the Shiites. “Washington hopes this will bring a new era of cooperation in the Middle East,” she chirped.

  Ibrahim could follow English, too. He suggested what Washington could do with its hopes. Then he suggested what the pretty newscaster could do to him. “Hush,” Ashrawi told him. “I want to hear what else she says.”

  He wondered if the bodyguard would suggest what he could do to himself. But Ibrahim only grunted.

  “Some ministers also wonder what this meeting may mean,” the woman said. “Here is a statement Lester Stark issued from Jerusalem, where he is observing the building of the Third Temple.”

  Haji Jamal hated what the Zionists were doing to the Haram al-Sharif. When Stark appeared, he looked more like an executive than like the Christian ministers the Grand Mufti was used to. Ashrawi remembered seeing him on TV before.

  “Surely we are close to the Last Days, to the prophecies given in Revelation.” Stark’s English had an accent slightly different from the newscaster’s. But he didn’t talk fast, so Ashrawi could follow. “We have waited so long for the times the Bible talks about, but now they seem to be here.”

  Another preacher back in the United States said the same thing in different words. “The Christians can see it,” Haji Jamal said. “The Jews can see it, and God, the compassionate, the merciful, despises the Jews.”

  “Well, who doesn’t?” Ibrahim said.

  CNN put on a priest who taught at an American university. He was more cautious than the other Christians. “I don’t think we’ve had such an amazing sequence of events, events so difficult to explain by natural causes, since Jesus Christ walked the Holy Land two thousand years ago,” he said.

  “He is too stupid to know about Muhammad, peace be unto him,” Ibrahim jeered.

  The Grand Mufti shook his head. “He’s not stupid. He knows about God’s Prophet, but doesn’t accept him. Rejection is worse than ignorance.”

  When the American news channel started talking to a rabbi, Jamal Ashrawi turned it off. He didn’t need any more blather from Jews.

  “But they don’t know how the End of Days will turn out. I want to hear them wailing when God punishes them for turning away from the Seal of Prophets,” Ibrahim said.

  “Every man and woman will be a Muslim,” Ashrawi said dreamily. “Every pig will be slaughtered. The Christians who think Jesus is the Son of God will laugh out of the other side of their mouths.”

  “Out of the other side of their heads,” Ibrahim said. “The holy Qur’an doesn’t say Kalashnikovs will be used in the last battles against the misbelievers. But it doesn’t tell us they won’t, either.” He always had his AK with him.

  “Just so,” Ashrawi agreed. But not all misbelievers were Christians and Jews. Would God spare the Shiites? Would He spare a coward who failed to protect the Grand Mufti? Haji Jamal hoped not.

  Gabriela did her best to get permission to bring a crew to Ben Gurion Airport to film the alleged Mahdi’s arrival. After a couple of midlevel functionaries told her she couldn’t, she called Shlomo Kupferman. As he had before, he answered the call himself. But, when he heard what she wanted, he said, “No. That’s just not possible. Shalom.” She found herself without a connection.

  She didn’t give up. She asked Lester Stark to phone the Religious Affairs Minister. Stark did. The conversation didn’t last long. He put the phone back in his pocket, shaking his head. “He won’t let us,” he reported.

  “I already knew that,” Gabriela said. “Would he tell you why?”

  “Not really.” The preacher sounded unhappy. “I’ve seen him more gracious—let me put it like that. He doesn’t care for the idea that this Iranian is coming.”

  She still didn’t give up. Saul Buchbinder knew Kupferman, too. The producer called willingly—more than willingly, because he wanted exclusive footage as much as Gabriela did. But he also struck out. “The old mamzer knows more Yiddish than I thought,” he said. “He told me to geh kak afen yam.”

  “To what?” It meant nothing to Gabriela.

  “To go take a crap on the ocean,” Buchbinder translated. “To get lost, it means.”

  “I guess it would,” she said. She sat down with the producer and Stark. “What is Kupferman’s problem, anyway?” she grumbled. “He’s the Religious Affairs Minister. If he wanted the so-called Mahdi to stay away, the fellow’d never leave Teheran.” She said so-called whenever she talked about the Iranian, even when she wasn’t in front of a camera. Like Big Brother, the Israelis were watching her. Listening to her, too. Not saying so-called might make her seem to buy into the line the ayatollahs were putting out.

  Stark shrugged. “My guess is, somebody’s pushing him. And he’s better at doing the pushing than getting pushed.”

  “Plenty of guys who push a lot are like that.” Buchbinder sounded as if he spoke from experience.

  What he said matched what Gabriela had seen. Still…“He’s a big wheel here,” she said. “Who can put the screws to him like that?”

  “Maybe the Prime Minister, though I wouldn’t think so, not for this,” Stark said. “Or maybe the so-called Messiah.”

  Sure as hell, he could be dangerous. Gabriela thought he’d made a shrewd guess, though. “Have you made up your mind yet about what you think of him?” she asked.

  “No. I just don’t know enough.” The televangelist’s voice was troubled. “I’m sure he’s not the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. I’m also sure he has supernatural powers. How he gets them…I’m not sure of.”

  He didn’t insist Chaim Avigad was the Antichrist. He still thought it was possible. Buchbinder couldn’t resist needling him: “If Chaim is the Messiah, doesn’t that turn the whole New Testament into hooey?”

  “It may, but I don’t think it will,” Stark said. “Too much of what’s happened lately comes too close to prophecy to let me.”

  “Prophecy, sure, but whose?” Gabriela said. “Jewish? Christian? Muslim? Maybe you pay your money and you take your choice.”

  “I’m not worried about money,” Stark said. Really? Then why did you dicker so hard? she wondered. But the preacher went on, “When souls are at stake, what difference does money make?”

  “It will to some people,” Buchbinder predicted. He must have realized how that might sound coming from him, for he quickly added, “They won’t all be Jews, either.”

  “I didn’t think they would,” Stark said. “You know that.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Saul waved it aside.

  Gabriela listened to the byplay with amusement she didn’t show. Lester Stark wasn’t anti-Semitic in the usual sense. He didn’t think Jews were wicked. He just thought they were waiting for the wrong bus.

  For his part, Buchbinder wasn’t observant in the usual sense, but he was passionately Jewish. Listening to someone who was sure everything his ancestors had believed for the past 2,000 years was nonsense had to grate on him. Maybe it was better to be hated than dismissed.

  Or maybe not. Some of the stuff ISIS and Hezbollah put out would gag a serial killer. And Iran financed Hezbollah. God only knew what game the ayatollahs were playing.

  One more phrase liable to be exactly true these days.

  Since Gabriela couldn’t film the arrival of the plane from Teheran herself, she watched on the Israeli feed she was using. It was an El Al plane, so it looked like many that landed at Ben Gurion—the Israelis didn’t trust an Iranian jet in their airspace. But few incoming airliners had F-15s flying top cover.

  Touchdown was smooth. She breathed a sigh of relief as the plane stopped. What would the mullahs have done had any
thing gone wrong? Whatever they could, she was sure.

  No jetway here. No hike to baggage claim and customs. They wheeled stairs to the airliner. A squat, probably armored, limo rolled down the runway and stopped nearby.

  Several people got out. Gabriela looked for Chaim Avigad, but didn’t see him. The woman doing the English voiceover said, “Chaim Avigad will meet the so-called Mahdi on the Temple Mount. He declined to come to Ben Gurion International, saying he did not wish to disturb the spirits of more dead persons at this time. Acting for him is his uncle, Yitzhak Avigad.”

  The camera focused on the guy in the least expensive suit. Once reminded who he was, Gabriela recognized him. He looked uncomfortable. They all did, but the dignitaries had practice with awkward public situations. Yitzhak stuffed his hands in his pockets and bounced on the balls of his feet.

  A security guard went up the stairs to the El Al plane. The man did something Gabriela had never imagined she’d see: he knocked on the door. It didn’t open till he did.

  The first man out was another guard. This fellow carried an Uzi. Behind him came the—maybe so-called—Mahdi. Muhammad, called al-Muntazar—the Expected One—looked and dressed like a revolutionary Iranian. He was slim and swarthy and long-faced. He wore black trousers and jacket, and a shirt open at the neck.

  He looked around in wide-eyed wonder. “He has never left Iran before,” the newswoman said. “He won’t have to clear customs, either. He doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

  Gabriela laughed, though the Israeli woman wasn’t joking. She wished she could hear what was going on out there. Instead, she was stuck watching. She knew what an indignity that was.

  * * *

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