Alpha and Omega

by Harry Turtledove

  Yitzhak Avigad had known this would be bad. He hadn’t known it would be so bad. But how could you get angry at a mother whose only son had just vanished off the earth, even if he’d gone straight to heaven in the company of Jesus? You couldn’t.

  “What was I supposed to do, Rivka?” he asked, as gently as he could. “Shoot him? That might have stopped him from going to Jesus—if I had a gun.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Chaim’s mother tossed her head. “I didn’t mean shoot him. I meant stop him.”

  “How?” Yitzhak had to hang on to his temper. Rivka hadn’t seen the look on Chaim’s face when Jesus descended. (She hadn’t seen the same look on Muhammad al-Muntazar’s face, either. But he was just an Iranian, not her baby.) “What should I have done?”

  “I don’t know. You were only a few meters away.” She threw the fact in his face. “Something!”

  “I’ll tell you what I could have done,” Yitzhak said. Rivka leaned toward him. The apartment at Kibbutz Nair Tamid had never seemed so cramped. Yitzhak went on, “When we went to the States to look at the red heifer—”

  “Yes?” She seemed ready to tear a response from him.

  “I should have stopped at a hamburger stand and bought him a bacon double cheeseburger,” Yitzhak said. Rivka gaped. He nodded. “That might have done it. As long as he stayed ritually pure, though…this was going to happen.”

  “We went to so much trouble. He had to put up with so much, and do without so much—” Rivka started to cry.

  “I was one of the people who kept him from having it,” Yitzhak said. “We believed in what we were doing. So did he.”

  “I never would have started if I’d known it would lead to—this,” his sister-in-law said. “I wanted him to be happy and frum and maybe a priest after the Temple got rebuilt. That would have been wonderful. I didn’t dream he’d turn into the Messiah and—and go away forever.” More tears slid down her cheeks.

  Yitzhak wondered if Mary said things like that when Jesus started His career. You always wanted your children to be special. But who wanted—or expected—a son that special? But Jesus had called Chaim—or more likely the Jews through Chaim—his elder brethren. And, through Muhammad al-Muntazar, he’d called Muslims his younger brethren. Once the videos were fully translated, there was no doubt of that. If God or the Son of God or a prophet or whatever Jesus truly was had said such things, how could you not take them seriously? You couldn’t.

  Yitzhak didn’t try to tell Rivka any of that. Too much, too soon. He did say, “You don’t know what’ll happen. You do things and hope for the best and see how they turn out. The only One Who knows what’s going to happen is God.”

  “Much good that does me.” She didn’t hide her bitterness.

  “It does what He wants it to do,” Yitzhak said. “I don’t think we’ve got anything to do with it, unless He decides to listen to prayers.”

  “If He listened to prayers, I’d have Chaim back,” Rivka said. “He won’t listen to anybody or anything.”

  “Be careful what you say.” Yitzhak felt he should whisper. But what was the point? God heard him any which way.

  “Do you think it makes any difference?” Rivka replied. “He knows it’s true.” She tapped her forehead with a finger. “And it’s here, too.” That finger tapped the smooth curve above her heart. “If He doesn’t like it, He’ll do whatever He does. Like I care one way or the other.”

  “But—” Yitzhak wanted to say she had a better chance of heaven if she acted the way God wanted her to. Seeing Chaim in the next world didn’t mean so much to her, though. How could it?

  “But nothing,” Rivka said. “I’m a good Jew. We all are here. And then God goes and does this to me? He’s got a lot of nerve.”

  Yitzhak remembered Chaim’s dissatisfaction with the Book of Job. Rivka was dissatisfied with it, too, in her own way. Not for her was Job’s unquestioning submission. If God did something she didn’t like, He’d hear about it from her. Maybe that was the difference between the Iron Age and modern humanity. Maybe it was just the difference between Job and Rivka Avigad.

  All Yitzhak could say was, “I’m sorry,” one more time. “I loved him like my own son—you know that.”

  “Uh-huh. I do.” His sister-in-law nodded. “You’ve been more like a father to him than Tzvi was, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah.” Yitzhak’s mouth tightened. After the divorce, his brother hadn’t wanted thing one to do with Rivka or Chaim. He’d never get the chance now.

  She shook her head, not at him but at fate. “I know he’s gone to a better place.” Her mouth twisted. “How many million people have said that? But I really do know. I saw it happen. Knowing doesn’t help.”

  “I found that out, too,” Yitzhak said. “He isn’t coming back, and we’ll miss him the rest of our lives.”

  “He isn’t coming back,” Chaim’s mother repeated. “As long as we’re here, he might as well be dead. That’s what makes it so hard. I keep thinking he’ll ask me a silly question or want some ice cream or…or something.”

  “Me, too.” Yitzhak hesitated again, this time for a different reason. He went ahead anyhow: “One of these days—whenever you want—once things straighten out a little—”

  “If they ever do,” Rivka broke in.

  “Yeah,” Yitzhak agreed. “If they ever do, can we talk about you and me—the two of us—one of these days?”

  He wondered if he’d botched it. He feared he had—it sounded like a botch to him. He also wondered if he’d startle her too much for her to take him seriously. The worst thing she could tell him was no. How was he worse off?

  How? he asked himself. Easy. Then you’ll know she isn’t interested instead of just wondering. That’s no good.

  He realized she wasn’t startled. Which meant he wasn’t as good at keeping things to himself as he’d thought he was. Oh, well.

  “You could have asked me any time the past ten years,” she said. That wasn’t exactly true. He’d been married to Sarah part of the time, and getting over losing her after that. Still…He had wasted too much time. Rivka went on, “You never know how things will go, but we can find out. How’s that sound?”

  “As good as anything can right now,” Yitzhak answered. How good was that? Rivka had said it—they could find out.

  * * *

  —

  This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but with breakfast, Gabriela thought. Eliot wouldn’t have approved. Well, T. S., Eliot went through her head—a joke she’d first made in high school. And she knew some things old Thomas Stearns hadn’t. It looked as if the world might end, some time in the not too indefinite future. Meanwhile, she got hungry.

  So did Lester Stark and Saul Buchbinder, who shared the table with her. Rhonda Stark went right on sleeping late, Second Coming or no Second Coming. Gabriela admired her sangfroid without being able to match it.

  “How do we end this? Why doesn’t God have better writers?” Buchbinder grumbled. “Jesus takes the Messiah and the Mahdi up to heaven. So? Who wins? Who loses? Which side were we supposed to be on?”

  Gabriela thought those were all terrific questions, even if she could answer none of them. She felt like a cat trying to figure out how and why people did things. Any guess she made would look too much like a cat’s in God’s eyes.

  Reverend Stark buttered a roll and put cream in his coffee. Fiddling with his food buys him time to think, she realized. “We’re likely in the Last Days,” he said after a sip from his cup. “God hasn’t intervened so openly in the world since the Crucifixion…or since he gave Muhammad the Qur’an.” He might be a cat, but he was an analytical cat—a variety Eliot never wrote about.

  “You don’t like saying that, do you?” Gabriela asked.

  “No, but what choice do I have after everything that’s happened?”

  �
��Good for you!” Admiring his integrity, she air-clapped. “Plenty of people wouldn’t change no matter what happened.”

  Buchbinder said, “It’s funny. I’m not the most observant Jew ever, y’know, but I always figured Christianity and Islam were to Judaism like Windows is to the Mac OS. They’re clunky ways to get to what oughta be simple and neat. Now I find out they all come from the same software firm! Sheesh!”

  “I can tell you what some of the problem is.” Stark managed a wry grin. “Humility. I have to keep reminding myself—humility. I don’t know it all. Boy, did I get my nose rubbed in that.”

  In his own way, he was admitting to being a cat. “You aren’t the only one,” Gabriela said.

  “That’s a different part of the problem,” he said.

  “Now you’ve lost me,” she told him.

  Saul Buchbinder nodded. “Me, too.”

  “Look at it like this,” Stark said with a commanding gesture that reminded Gabriela she was sitting across the table from a preacher cat. It was impressive and intimidating at the same time…if you were a cat yourself, anyhow. He went on, “Before, we thought the Second Coming would settle things.”

  “Maybe you did,” Saul gibed.

  “It settled one thing, anyway,” Gabriela said. “God’s there, all right.” She wouldn’t have bet on that before this started. She just hoped God would forgive her her trespasses when her celestial credit card came due—or, depending on how you looked at things, forgive her for clawing the couch and pissing on the rug. Deliberately not looking up at—through—the ceiling, she added, “This is sending all the scientists back to the drawing board.”

  “More to it than that,” Stark said. “God’s there—but when Jesus came and took the Messiah back with Him, God didn’t tell anybody what the right way to believe was.”

  “I thought that meant all three were fine,” Gabriela said. “I still think so.”

  “Many people do.” Stark’s courtesy never failed him. “Maybe they’re right. But some Jews will say, ‘We rebuilt the Temple. That’s why this happened.’ Some Christians will say, ‘The Son of God’s more important than the Mahdi or the Messiah.’ And some Muslims will say, ‘It’s the way the Qur’an said it would be.’ ”

  “People like that should just shut up,” she remarked.

  “Maybe.” No, Stark seldom came right out and disagreed. But he had his own ideas. “Remember, though—if they’re right, the Tribulation’s coming. We’re already seen a lot of prophecy come true.”

  “Oy! My aching back!” Saul put in. Except for the Oy!, Gabriela was thinking the same thing.

  “My aching back is right,” Stark said. “God’s alive and well. He’s watching us. So what we do had better please Him if we know what’s good for us.”

  “Always a big if,” Gabriela said. The lyrics from Santa Claus Is Coming to Town chimed in her head. But there was a huge difference between presents or no presents and heaven or hell. A huge difference. “If all the, the Abrahamic religions are all right in God’s eyes, the way it looks, isn’t everybody at least trying hard to get along the most important thing right now?”

  “It sure is,” the preacher said. “We’ve already been trying that for two thousand years, but don’t you think we’ve got extra reason to now?”

  “My aching back!” Buchbinder repeated.

  “Tribulation,” Stark said solemnly. “We may find out who’s right and who’s wrong. Prophecy makes that plain.”

  “Or we may find out the details don’t matter and trying is what counts,” Gabriela said. “That’s what ‘elder brother’ and ‘younger brother’ meant to me.”

  “Believe me, I hope—I pray—you’re right,” the preacher said.

  Gabriela refilled her empty cup. She added cream and sugar to the steaming coffee, then caught the waiter’s eye. He hustled over. He was short and thin, medium brown, with wavy black hair. That and the singsong way he said, “Yes, ma’am?” made her pretty sure he came from India.

  “Bring me a shot of rum,” she told him. “A double, in fact.”

  “Ma’am?” His eyebrows jumped. It wasn’t even half past eight yet. Israelis scorned lushes, and the waiter must have picked up the locals’ attitude if he didn’t have it to begin with. Stark seemed startled she was drinking so early, too.

  She just looked at the brown man. He shrugged, went away…and came back with the rum.

  She poured it into the coffee. It almost made the cup run over—almost, but not quite. When she drank the corrected brew, it warmed the cold spot in her belly. “You believe Tribulation’s coming anyway?” she said to Stark. It was a question, and then again it wasn’t.

  He nodded. “Yes. I do.”

  He might not hesitate. Years in the industry had taught Gabriela that coming right out and saying yes could be as bad as saying no. She answered, “I’m hoping not.” Even so, she felt like another. But one, even a stiff one, was medicinal. If one wasn’t enough, all the rum in the world wouldn’t be. But Gabriela also hoped she wouldn’t need it.

  * * *

  —

  After a big earthquake, aftershocks went on for days, months, even years. Eric remembered the 1994 Northridge quake. Right after it, people walked on eggs, amazed at what had happened and afraid something worse would. It hadn’t then, but…

  Jerusalem had that feeling now. What was coming next? Eric wasn’t anxious to find out. Some people seemed to be. They thought they already knew. Eric didn’t know whether to be more afraid that they were right or wrong.

  He didn’t want Armageddon. He wanted a normal life. He wanted to publish what he’d unearthed, and to find out what being married to Orly was like. The bit he’d known so far was great. Maybe one of these days…kids?

  Did you want to raise kids in the Last Days, if these were the Last Days? If you didn’t, wouldn’t the other side win by default? Eric thought so, even if it wasn’t clear who the other side was.

  Signs seemed moderately promising. A large Israeli medical mission went into the West Bank, and neither Fatah nor Hamas fighters opened up on it. The seventeen different sides in the Syrian civil war had stopped shooting at one another for the moment, and the Iranians, the Turks, and the Russians were pulling troops out of what was left of the country. Even Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo were trying to get along. Maybe none of that would last, but you never could tell these days. Maybe it would, too.

  He was walking through the Old City when somebody called, “Professor Katz!” in English.

  He turned. “Hello, Barb,” he said. “Haven’t seen you for a while. I didn’t know you were still in Israel.”

  “Where else would I go?” Barb Taylor answered. “Aren’t these wonderful times to be alive in? I saw the Second Coming! On TV, but I did. If that doesn’t make me one of the luckiest people in the world, I don’t know what would. And I know God loves me. That’s all I need.”

  “Are you sure?” Eric asked.

  “I’m not worried about it,” Barb declared. He must have given her a look, because she nodded and said it again: “I’m not. I’m heading for heaven. I was sure before, but I’m really sure now, know what I mean?”

  “I guess,” Eric mumbled. God was there. Some people, like Barb, had believed already. Adjusting came easier for them. Eric couldn’t help believing now. If somebody hit you over the head, you believed in baseball bats. That didn’t make you like it. He still wanted to be a secular humanist.

  Barb Taylor beamed. She was a sweet-natured person, dim but sweet. “I’m sure you’re going to heaven, too!” she said, as if that were his fondest wish.

  It should have been. He realized as much. Making himself conform to the new reality wasn’t easy. “You sure?” he asked with a lopsided grin. “I’m just a Jew, after all.”

  “God loves everybody.” Barb spoke with absolute conviction. “Look at what Jesus
told the Messiah and the Mahdi.”

  Eric didn’t laugh. But he didn’t let that pass, either. “Tell it to Brandon Nesbitt,” he said. “Tell it to the President of Iran.”

  She waved her hand. “God loves everybody.” If she said it often enough, she might make it true. She added, “All three of them went to heaven together. You were there when they did. I saw you on TV, too.”

  “Yeah, I was there,” Eric allowed. “Scared the crap out of me. I don’t think it’s as simple as you make it out to be.”

  “We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t working out God’s plan—all of us,” Barb said. “He knows what He’s doing.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of, Eric thought. Somewhere, the pans on the scales of his cosmic balance swung a little. Maybe not literally. Maybe just in God’s mind. Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. So much for God loves everybody.

  But Barb beamed at him. “It’ll be all right. God’s peace and happiness last for eternity.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Eric wondered if he meant it. Weighed in the balances. Found wanting…Stop that!

  She fluttered her fingers in a gesture that looked more California than New England. “I am. God will take care of it. Now I’ve gotta run. See you.” Away she went, plump and dowdy and…saved?

  How could you know? Even with God in the picture, you still had to do the best you knew how to do. Eric glanced east, toward the Temple Mount. But the answer wasn’t there. The answer, if there was one, lay inside him. It always had.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks to Alan Abbey, who caught some places where I was stupid. The ones still here are my own.

  BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE

  The Guns of the South

  THE WORLDWAR SAGA

  Worldwar: In the Balance

  Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

  Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance

  Worldwar: Striking the Balance