Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  “Can you tell us what’s on your mind now?” Eric asked.

  Yoram looked at the beer left in the bottle as if he’d never seen anything so interesting. In a low voice, he said, “I wish they’d never started rebuilding the Temple.”

  Whatever Eric had thought he might hear, that wasn’t it. The glance he sent Orly went past bemused to astonished. “You were all for it,” he blurted.

  “I know. Funny, eh?” Yoram smiled a small, sweet, sad smile. “Only goes to show you should be careful what you wish for. Because you might get it.”

  “What’s that mean?” Orly asked, blunt as usual.

  Yoram finished the Goldstar. The way he stared at the dead soldier made Eric bring him another one. Yoram sketched a salute as he swigged. Then he said, “They’ll start sacrificing at the Temple any day now. It’ll be back in business.”

  “I know. I don’t like that, either,” Eric said. “A lot of people won’t like it when they see how many animals die and how much blood gets splashed around. We’ll have to worry about PETA along with Hezbollah and ISIS.”

  “PETA?” Orly asked.

  “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” Eric explained.

  “Jokes,” Yoram Louvish said. “I come over here with worries, and he makes jokes.”

  “I wasn’t kidding,” Eric said. “Some of them are terrorists, too. They’ve caused trouble in the States, raiding labs and like that. I’d be amazed if they don’t have a branch here.”

  “Okay, you weren’t joking.” Yoram drank more beer. “But I’m not worrying about these PETA people or ISIS and Hezbollah, either. Not even about Iran.”

  “For God’s sake, who are you worrying about, then?” Orly asked.

  “You said it,” Yoram answered.

  Orly and Eric spoke together: “Huh?”

  “God.” Yoram looked up through the cottage-cheese ceiling.

  “That’s—” Eric started to tell Yoram it was silly. However much he wanted to, he couldn’t.

  “You see,” Yoram said. “All this has happened so God can do…whatever He’ll do. When Kupferman offers the first lamb on the altar in front of the Temple…What happens then?”

  “Why are you telling us? Why not Kupferman?” Orly asked, which struck Eric as a good question.

  And Yoram Louvish had a damn good answer: “Because Shlomo doesn’t want to listen to me. If God chars him off the altar, he’ll be happy. He thinks he will, anyway.”

  Eric nodded. Kupferman looked forward to the end of the world with the same passion as any Christian or Muslim fundamentalist. What surprised the American was that Yoram didn’t. Eric asked why not.

  “Because I like it here,” Yoram said. “I’m just not ready for that kind of change.”

  “But if that change is ready for you…?” Orly said.

  Louvish gave her a crooked grin. “I know. I helped start all this, and now I don’t want to see how it ends. Funny, huh? So how come I’m not laughing?” He stood. “Thanks for letting me bend your ears.”

  “It’s okay,” Eric said. Instead of heading for the door, Yoram went into the john. Vitamin P, Eric thought.

  “Boy, he’s got it bad,” Orly said in a low voice.

  “You aren’t kidding,” Eric agreed. “Too late to worry now, you know?”

  His wife’s expression spoke loudly, and what it said was, You American. She spelled it out: “It’s never too late to worry.”

  “I guess not,” Eric said, the other choice being a fight he didn’t want. “I—” He broke off because the toilet flushed.

  Yoram came out. “Trying to decide how meshuggeh I am?” he asked. “Believe me, I hope they chase me with a butterfly net.”

  Eric was an American, and tried to deny everything. Orly said, “If you talk crazy, why shouldn’t we think you are?”

  “I have one excuse—if I’m right, I’m not crazy.” He left before either of them could say anything more.

  They looked at each other. “Oy,” Eric said.

  Orly snorted. She didn’t like Yiddish. (Meshuggeh was Hebrew, too.) Few Israelis did. It reminded them of the ghettos they’d escaped. (It reminded Eric of his parents talking about things they didn’t want him to understand.) She said, “It’ll be all right. If the Messiah and the Mahdi can get together without trying to knife each other, Yoram’s worrying about nothing.”

  “Alevai,” Eric said. That was also Hebrew borrowed by Yiddish. It meant, May it be so. But Yoram was bound to be right about one thing. God would do what He wanted, not what His people did.

  The priests wore spotless white robes. They closed them with red sashes, each tied on the left. Their headgear reminded Chaim of a turban, except that it was open on top, while the ends of the cloth strip fell down to their shoulders.

  They undoubtedly thought they looked holy. Chaim Avigad thought they looked silly. He didn’t know what Muhammad al-Muntazar thought. The Mahdi stood waiting while he wrangled with the priests.

  “He can’t come in here,” a man in white said. “No gentile can come into the holy places reserved for Jews.”

  “You idiot!” Chaim shouted. One cool thing about being the Messiah was that he could yell at grown-ups. Gray streaked the priest’s beard, but he turned pale. Chaim went on, “Were you out to lunch the other day? He went into the Holy of Holies with me! Not just the Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. He touched the Ark, and God let him live. You say I can’t bring him in here? Who do you think you are?”

  “I—” The priest gulped. “I’m trying to do what’s proper.”

  “You’re not very good at it,” Chaim said. “Move, before something horrible happens.” He gestured. “C’mon, Muhammad.”

  “I’m coming.” Among the white-robed priests, the Mahdi might have been an ink blot with shoes. But they parted before him and Chaim like the Red Sea parting before Moses.

  TV cameras followed the newcomers. Learned commentators were probably picking apart what Chaim told the priest. If Jews were good at anything, it was splitting hairs. Christians and Muslims would be listening, too. In the days of Herod’s Temple, news took weeks or months to go from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. Now the world seemed to know about things five minutes before they happened.

  “Don’t you get sick of being watched?” Chaim asked Muhammad.

  “Oh, a little,” the Mahdi answered. They both laughed.

  There was the altar, and the ramp leading up to it. Atop it stood Shlomo Kupferman. Now he wore High Priest’s regalia, which he hadn’t when he sacrificed Rosie. That didn’t make Chaim like him any better.

  They didn’t sacrifice animals up there. They had a place just north of it where that was done. It had two dozen metal rings to hold down the lambs or goats or oxen while their throats were cut, eight stone columns, and eight marble tables. The columns had hooks to hang the carcasses on and let them bleed out; the tables were for rinsing the organs that would go into the fire.

  A chorus of Levites chanted prayers as priests led four lambs from a chamber where they’d been inspected for blemishes. “This reminds me of the butcher’s shop back home,” Muhammad said. “We sacrifice, too—a goat after we make the hajj to Mecca.”

  He wasn’t mocking the ceremony, then. That made Chaim feel better. The lambs went willingly. They didn’t know they needed to fear. Nothing stank of blood—yet. Tomorrow’s animals might not be so complacent.

  Sacrificers eased the lambs into the rings, which they lowered to restrain the animals. The men cut the lambs’ throats at the same time. Blood drowned the lambs’ startled bleats. This was going out around the world. Chaim wondered what people thought. If they couldn’t stomach it, why weren’t they vegetarians?

  The priests caught the spurting blood in gold and silver mizrakim. Two men used their fingers to sprinkle it against the sides of the altar; two
others poured it out at the base. Shlomo Kupferman looked down in satisfaction. “We come into our own once more!” he said. “These rituals have not been carried out for almost two thousand years, but we revive them.”

  “What does he say?” Muhammad whispered.

  Chaim told him. He used the same Hebrew words Rabbi Kupferman had. But the Mahdi understood him. God had given them the gift of following each other. What they were supposed to do with it…Chaim didn’t know yet. God had His purposes: Chaim was sure of that.

  Six priests carried the washed and dried legs and innards of each lamb up to the altar. As they cast the flesh onto the fire burning atop it, Kupferman took his text from the eighth chapter of I Kings. Chaim echoed the words for Muhammad: “ ‘Lord God of Israel, there is no God like Thee, in heaven above or on earth beneath, Who keepest covenant and mercy with Thy servants that walk before Thee with all their heart: Who hast kept with Thy servant David that which Thou promisedst him: Thou spakest also with Thy mouth, and hast fulfilled it with Thine hand, as it is this day.

  “ ‘Hearken Thou to the supplication of Thy servant, and of Thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place, and hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place, and when Thou hearest, forgive.’ ”

  Kupferman paused to arrange the offering on the burning logs with a golden poker. Chaim whispered, “This is how King Solomon prayed when he sacrificed at the First Temple for the first time.”

  “Ah, Solomon.” Muhammad nodded. “God gave it to him to bind winds and demons—so the holy Qur’an says.”

  He too spoke in a low voice, but drew Shlomo Kupferman’s formidable glare. Chaim surprised himself by smiling back at him. He might be tough, but was he tough enough to outdo the Messiah and the Mahdi? I don’t think so! went through Chaim’s mind.

  For a second, he wondered if that smile would make Kupferman blow a gasket. But the High Priest seemed to remember that he had a ceremony to get through. He looked away from Chaim and toward Muhammad. The Mahdi nodded with grave courtesy. He doesn’t know Kupferman yet, Chaim thought.

  Perhaps spurred by that nod, Shlomo Kupferman returned courtesy for courtesy. When he resumed his prayer, he went further into I Kings 8 than he might have intended at first: “ ‘Moreover concerning a stranger, that is not of Thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for Thy name’s sake—’ ”

  “Well done! Well said! Truly the hand of God must lie behind it!” Muhammad exclaimed when Chaim gave him Kupferman’s words.

  The rabbi continued: “ ‘(For they shall hear of Thy great name, and of Thy strong hand, and of Thy stretched out arm;) when he shall come and pray toward this house; Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to Thee for: that all people of the earth may know Thy name, to fear Thee, as do Thy people Israel; and that they may know that this house, which I have builded, is called by Thy name.’ ”

  Muhammad’s somber features glowed. “Your Bible has fewer false places in it than I thought. For we Muslims do fear God, even as Jews do. Christians, too—I suppose. And we prayed here when it was the Dome of the Rock. Truly God speaks to all.”

  “Yes,” Chaim said. And so does Kupferman, and it must be harder for him than it is for God. But if Kupferman made the effort, couldn’t God do the same?

  No sooner had Chaim thought of that than a thin line of fire came down from the sky and engulfed the sacrifice.

  * * *

  —

  Whenever the Israeli TV camera near the altar panned across Muhammad al-Muntazar’s face, Gabriela had to remind herself not to mutter under her breath. Sitting beside her in the studio, Lester Stark fumed enough to set off the smoke detectors.

  It wasn’t that they lacked permission to use the Israeli feed. They had it. But a Muslim had gone into a part of the Temple that was supposed to be for Jews alone. Why couldn’t a Christian like, say, Reverend Stark do the same?

  Gabriela had had it out with Shlomo Kupferman in an unpleasant phone conversation the night before. “Listen, Ms. Sandoval,” Kupferman said, “the Iranian has the Messiah on his side. If Jesus comes down from heaven and tells me to let Lester in, I’ll do it. If the Messiah tells me to, I will. Till then, I’m hanging on to as much of the traditional arrangement as I can.”

  She had no comeback for that. She didn’t even try to get Stark or Saul Buchbinder to change the Religious Affairs Minister’s mind. Both Jesus and Chaim Avigad failed to come through. Stark swallowed his pride with a show of grace. He was doing commentary for millions of Christians in the USA, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, and wherever else Christian people understood English.

  The camera showed the lambs getting their throats cut and priests gathering the blood so they could sprinkle it on the altar. “What exactly are we seeing here, Reverend Stark?” Gabriela asked, lobbing him a softball.

  “It’s called blood sacrifice,” he said. “In a way, I respect the Israelis for not flinching from it. That’s quite remarkable, really. With these offerings, Judaism comes back to its ancient roots, and it comes back to them with the two young men called the Messiah and the Mahdi watching. That they’re friends, not mortal enemies, may be the most hopeful sign from the past few days.”

  Priests carried the disjointed lamb carcasses up the ramp to the top of the altar. Gabriela wondered what city folks in the States made of genuine gore. The blood and guts on TV dramas and video games was fake—you wouldn’t be able to stomach it if it were real. Most violence and mayhem got edited out of TV news these days. But the lambs had had their throats cut, even if it didn’t go to the States live and in color. That was their blood sprinkling the altar. What did the priests’ fingers feel like, all sticky with it? If you hadn’t grown up on a farm, you wouldn’t know.

  Onto the fire went the lamb pieces. Kupferman stirred them with a gold tool from the Reconstruction Alliance’s museum. It looked like Fort Knox’s fireplace poker. Glancing down at notes on her iPhone, Gabriela said, “No one’s worn the High Priest’s regalia since the first century. Caiaphas would have worn it when Jesus talked with him.”

  “That’s right.” Stark nodded. “A lot of what we’re seeing here today is what our Lord would have seen before the Crucifixion.”

  Kupferman preached in Hebrew, and Biblical Hebrew at that. Gabriela knew a few polite phrases of the modern language, no more. Stark read Hebrew well, but had trouble following it when spoken. Fortunately, the Israelis had e-mailed them a summary. Their press office was almost as efficient as their military.

  Stark used the King James version with his audience. “Some of them will have different translations, but that’s all right,” he’d told Gabriela before the ceremony began. “Even people who don’t use the King James respect it.”

  “They should,” she’d said. “It’s a miracle.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She’d felt proud she’d confused him. “The only great work of literature ever produced by a committee,” she’d explained.

  “Oh.” He’d laughed more than she expected. “You’ve got something there, all right.”

  “And it’s in the public domain, too, so you don’t need to worry about copyright.”

  He’d rolled his eyes. “You’ve got something there, too.”

  But the Religious Affairs Minister went deeper into I Kings than the press office thought he would. Gabriela was relieved that, with the English in front of him, Stark got the drift. “Generous of Rabbi Kupferman to include the Iranian in his prayers,” he said.

  “Why did he do that?” she asked.

  By the way the televangelist shrugged, it had surprised him. “Fear of the boy the rabbi calls the Messiah? Or simply fear of God?”

  “Either or both could do it,” Gabriela agreed.

  Then fire from heaven took the sacrifice. Staring at it in her own wonder and fear, Gabriela st
opped wondering why Shlomo Kupferman did things.

  After a moment, she glanced over at Reverend Stark. He’d talked about God his whole adult life, but he was no more ready for a genuine, no-shit miracle than she or anyone else was. The gobsmacked expression on his face, as if he’d just been whacked in the kisser by a big salmon, said so louder than words.

  Words…Saul Buchbinder’s voice from the control room was loud in her earpiece, and no doubt in Stark’s as well: “C’mon, you guys! You’ve got to talk through this!”

  “The only thing that occurs to me right now is a call Jack Buck made when I was a little girl watching baseball on TV,” Gabriela said slowly. “Ozzie Smith hit a walkoff homer, and he said, ‘I don’t believe what I just saw! I don’t believe what I just saw!’ But the home run was real, and so was…this.”

  Lester Stark also got his motor started. “God seems to have accepted the offering the Jews made to him from the altar at the Temple. Unless I’m totally wrong, we’ve just witnessed a miracle unknown since Biblical times.”

  “Good! That’s good!” Buchbinder was all enthusiasm and all business. “Keep going! Look at Kupferman’s punim!”

  That had to mean face. Zero Mostel would have been jealous at how the Religious Affairs Minister’s eyes bugged out. “By the way Rabbi Kupferman looks, he didn’t begin to expect that God would receive the sacrifice like this,” Stark said, picking his words with care.

  “He looks…the way people look when they see a miracle. The way Reverend Stark and I look here in the studio right now,” Gabriela said. “I don’t think English or any other language has words strong enough to describe it.” Again, because words were all she had to work with, she tried them anyhow: “Have you seen how a cat puffs out its fur and bottlebrushes its tail when you slam a door and scare it? I’m all over goosebumps, and if my hair isn’t standing on end I can’t tell you why not.”

  “I wasn’t going to admit it, but I’m the same way,” Stark said.