City of Ruins

by Mark London Williams

  “So where we are now, this trailer—this is one of their seats of government? Another lab for experimentation?”

  No. This is where Grandfather Rolf lives now. He is a gardener for the human tribe that lives here. They call themselves Morongo, and to survive, they provide gambling and games of chance for the light-skins. Rolf takes care of these trees here. They yield a type of fruit called dates.

  “Have you heard of a place called Peenemünde?”

  What’s that?

  “A terrible place, created by a group called the Third Reich. Rolf worked for them before he was brought here. Human mammals enslaved others of their species, forcing them to build machines to kill even more of their kind. I would hope that they are not allowing Rolf to make more Peenemündes here in Eli’s — ”

  KA-BOOM!

  One side of the small trailer has just blown out, sending shreds of dirty clothing, decomposing food scraps, and numerous metal containers with the word BEER on the side flying through the air, over the date trees.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” the Bearded Boy screams. He had been hiding under my cage the whole time, and now he tries to climb in with me. The Weeping Bat flies overhead, crying, and Rocket comes running out of the burning trailer.

  “No, Grandfather! No, I won’t let you do it!”

  “I only have one WOMPER left!” Rolf screams back at him. “Give me that shielding!”

  “No!”

  “You took it from the lab for me!”

  “Not for this!”

  Rolf, for all the snggg-tlln his anger gives him, cannot catch up with Rocket. They are running through the trees, and in his frustration, Rolf even tries throwing dates at Rocket, but they MERELY bounce off him.

  Strong Bess staggers up, waving her arms in front of her. “Smoke…” she says.

  She keeps the hair on her head short, groomed into small spikes, but it is spikier now since she’s been singed in whatever conflagration took place in Rolf’s trailer. Her face has been badly burned.

  “Trying to protect…Rocket…Stood in the back, to listen…” she pants. “The world…trying to blow up the world…Can’t see…very well…”

  Yes…In all the commotion, Silver Eye is able to sort through — to “hear” — many of the panicked thoughts in the air. Rocket is afraid his grandfather will somehow blow up the world with a WOMPER…

  What the humans call a Wide Orbital Mass-less Particle Reverser. A highly unstable particle. The very particle trapped in the crystals used by Hypatia and Sacagawea. And Sandusky, Eli’s nest-sire, used them in his original time experiments. Rolf must be experimenting here, too, but his trailer hardly seems like it could house the necessary lab equipment.

  …afraid an unstoppable time reaction will swallow the whole world.

  “I have heard legends about such things,” I explain to Silver Eye and Bess. “We have a story about a Saurian world called Aniok, once considered the most advanced of the Saurian planets, that vanished when they tried experiments to slow down the effects of time’s passage on their entire world —”

  The humans have a similar story about an island called Atlantis —

  “Not the whole world!” Rocket yells. He’s run back toward our cages, with Rolf chasing behind him. “I didn’t agree to that!”

  “You agree to whatever I say you’ll agree to!” Rolf shouts. He runs back into his trailer, and emerges a few moments later with one of the favorite implements of human mammals: a gun. “I will use this if I have to.”

  “Even you couldn’t bring yourself to shoot me, Grandfather.”

  Rolf takes a few steps closer, looks at Rocket. “Don’t be so sure.” Then he swivels and aims his gun at Silver Eye. “But I could certainly shoot this dog of yours. No more circus without a mind-reading dog, eh?”

  Cages are such a bad idea. Silver Eye is pacing, nervous.

  “Don’t do it, Grandfather.”

  I hear weeping, but it’s the Bearded Boy crying, not the bat, who’s flying overhead.

  “Don’t do it.”

  Rolf’s finger starts to slowly squeeze the trigger.

  “Don’t!” And then Rocket takes a parcel out of his jacket, and I can view it clearly. It looks like part of the shielding Sandusky would have used to contain decaying particles, containing their own gerk-skizzy-ness for a controlled reaction, and providing enough positrons in a lab for the WOMPER to constantly charge, and then reverse, sending them all moving “backward” in the time stream.

  Primitive at best, and certainly too dangerous to use without rigorous scientific conditions prevailing.

  “Time hopping cannot be done lightly! There can be bad times to meet!” I say, but it doesn’t help.

  Rocket holds out the package. “Here,” he says to his grandsire. “No shooting. No more hurting anything, or anyone, Grandfather. You’re old now. No more hurting.”

  “Hurting can be necessary,” Rolf hisses.

  And just as Rolf is about to grasp the shield fragment, Rocket throws it in the air — where the Weeping Bat snatches it. Rolf and Rocket struggle for the gun, but Rolf seems to remember some kind of Cacklaw-like battle training from his past, and kicks his grandson in the midsection, briefly freeing the gun so he can move it —

  “No!” The Bearded Boy bursts from under my cage where he had been hiding, and tackles Rolf, who had taken aim at the bat.

  But the shot goes off, anyway, and there is a great swngll of wings, as the Weeping Bat is either hit or startled, and drops the shielding to the ground, where it lands on a mound of date-tree branches withering near the remaining three walls of Rolf’s trailer.

  Panting badly, Rolf performs a high speed limp to reach the metal fragment before the Bearded Boy can. Rocket gets his wind back, and goes after his grandfather too, but Rolf is able to get to the fragment and sprint-limp, in a gra-bakky but effective way, back into the trailer, where through the blasted wall I can spy a generator and what looks like a crude, unprotected time-sphere apparatus...

  …and it’s hard to know what happens behind the surviving three walls other than to hear Rocket’s “No! No! No!” and a long “Owwww!” followed by a high speed humming and a laugh. And then after that…

  …everything whites out, and I find myself back in the Fifth Dimension, where I really hadn’t expected to be at all. At least not for a few more time cycles.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eli: Huldah

  583 B.C.E.

  It takes a few minutes for the woman to come over to me. I’ve taken Thea down a long wet stone staircase — you could barely call them stairs, since going down them was more like reverse rock-climbing in the dark — that led to a large pool, a kind of spring, inside a man-made cave. There’s light in here from torches placed into the rocks, or held by some of the people who move around in their rough robes and bare feet — it seems a lot of the people here can’t even afford sandals.

  The woman I’m waiting for wears them, though. But it’s not like she looks rich, or fancy. Her skin, which is already dark, like Thea’s, is caked with grime, and her thick, curly black-and-gray hair keeps flopping around as she steps among the piles of straw or rags that pass for mattresses, where all the sick people, the slow pox victims, lie.

  Some of them shiver — the way Thea does, shaking against my body. Her shaking has been getting worse. A lot of the people on the straw beds are sweating, twitching, shouting into the air, and even my lingo-spot can’t sort out all the screams, though I hear different versions of “God!,” and the word please a few times, too. And some of the — victims? patients? — just lay quietly, eyes open, but not looking at anything. At least, not anything in this room, or this world. You’d almost think they could see into the Fifth Dimension, they seem to be looking so far away.

  The woman has some helpers — other women, some old men, and at least one boy, all of them skinny, like they haven’t had enough to eat. They’re going around, dabbing people’s heads, squeezing drops of water on them. But I can’t
see that anybody here is getting “cured.”

  One of the patients starts laughing at nothing, and it reminds me of how weird Thea was acting when Mr. Howe and I were in her room in the DARPA tunnels.

  Finally, after carefully pouring drops of water down an older woman’s throat and patting her forehead with wet rags, the black-and-gray haired lady walks over to me. I can tell she must be the one I’m supposed to see; she seems to be calmer than everyone else around her. She doesn’t say anything for a while, just looks at Thea, deep into her eyes, then touches her face.

  Thea looks back at the lady and says “Mermaid.” In Hebrew. That was one of Thea’s family nicknames, and this woman looks like she could be an aunt of hers or something.

  “You’re not from anywhere around here, are you?” the woman asks.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I say. But I can only say it in English. And this woman doesn’t have a lingo-spot

  “What a strange tongue. Do you understand mine?”

  I nod.

  “Then news of this place must have reached you. This was Jerusalem once. The City of David. God’s favorite. Or so we thought.” She looks around at the people on the straw mounds. One of the sick people again shouts, “Please!” The Healer motions for one of her helpers to go over to the bed and see what’s wrong, and the skinny boy runs over. “It’s all just ruins now, after all these years of kings — our kings, their kings — and all their wars. But we’re the ones left in the ashes. The ones the Babylonians didn’t even think were worth taking into slavery. Most of the people you see here were already poor, helpless, hopeless, even before the wars. And because these people were ignored, scorned, that’s why our city fell. That’s why our king was murdered. Jeremiah told us we’d stopped listening to God.”

  She sighs and looks back at all the sick people and then at Thea and then at me. “I imagine you’re here because you think I can take care of her?”

  I nod.

  “Is she your wife?”

  My face goes so red that I wonder if everyone can see it, even in here where it’s so dark. I mean I know they got married young back in these old days, but come on.

  “The man has stopped shouting now.” The boy who’d been helping out has wandered over. “But now he doesn’t move at all. Perhaps, Prophet, you should check him.”

  The woman turns to the boy. “Thank you, Naftali. But you can call me by name. ‘Prophet’ is a title others gave me. But I am no more favored in the eyes of heaven than you are. Than any of us.” She looks around the cave, at all the people who are still moaning and yelling, then back at me and Thea. She puts her arm around Thea’s shoulders and draws her close.

  “My name is Huldah. Leave your friend here,” she says to me. “I will look after her, though I can’t promise anything. This new fever only appeared recently, after the first stranger arrived.”

  “ ‘First stranger’!” I repeat the words out loud. She must mean A.J.

  “Such a strange tongue. But I expect we will come to know what you want. Perhaps you and the stranger are even countrymen. That would make sense. I expect that because of this, you didn’t receive the most hospitable welcome when you arrived. But some people think what the Rebuilder asks is heresy. That it will bring more trouble to us. And with all the leprosies and plagues and invasions, we have had enough trouble. Lead him out of here, Naftali,” Huldah tells the boy, and then, looking at me with fierce eyes that also remind of Thea, says “I will send for you when we know something.”

  She takes Thea toward one of the empty piles of straw. “Wait,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me.

  “Seraphic plague,” the boy says.

  “What?” I say back, in English. He looks at me, but is able to figure out the question from the look on my face. After all, it’s probably the oldest question there is, going back to caveman times.

  “Seraphic plague. That’s what they call it. What the Gehenna-marked have. Because it makes people see things that aren’t there, like the seraphim.”

  He can tell I still don’t get it. “Seraphim. Angels. From God. It’s not that they start to think they see angels, it’s that they start to think they are angels. Even though Gehenna is where they say the dead go. I guess if you have the plague, it’s like being caught between life and death. People who have it think they see everything. And then they go crazy, or they die. That’s why they’re Gehenna-marked. Come on, I’ll take you up to the Temple ruins and we’ll throw rocks.”

  “Not now.” I go over to Thea. “Stay with me,” I tell her, so softly I’m pretty sure no else can hear us. “Please. I can’t afford to lose you, too.”

  I spend the rest of the night and most of the next day by Thea’s bedside. I don’t even realize I’ve drifted off to sleep until Naftali shakes me awake. I’m still holding the rage I was using to dab Thea’s face. She’s still sleeping, but not well.

  Huldah’s there, too. “You both needed rest,” she says. “Now I think you need some air. And sunlight. Let Naftali take you.”

  I nod and stand. And then I wave, even though Thea’s still tossing in her sleep. Guess I better leave before I get too corny and blow her a kiss. I let the boy, Naftali, take me by the hand and lead me back up the slippery, rocky steps.

  The boy is crying in my arms. We’ve thrown rocks and it’s getting dark, and it turns out his family was taken away, or maybe even killed, by the soldiers who came through here and burned everything to the ground.

  He wants me to comfort him like a parent would, but how can I do that when I’m just an older kid? Maybe I better take him back down to Huldah. But then, how do I know he won’t get slow pox, helping out down there? Which leads to a really weird thought: If he’s seen so many terrible things in real life, like his family being hurt, then if he got slow pox, or seraph— whatever they call it — and started seeing things that weren’t there, could that really be any worse?

  Could things sometimes get so bad that you’re better off with a sickness that makes you think you’re somewhere else?

  Naftali pulls his head away from me and wipes his eyes.

  “Jeremiah says someday it can all be better again, that the city can be rebuilt, that God will change our fortunes again, but you can’t rebuild a family, can you?”

  I think of my dad, getting lost in his work, trying to rebuild our family, somehow, and I think of my mom, still lost somewhere in the time stream, and I don’t have an answer for him.

  “The other stranger wants to help rebuild everything right away,” he tells me, “but Jeremiah says the time has to be right, or you’ll just have the same old problems all over again.”

  Naftali seems to brighten up, just a little, because he’s finally thought of something to do: “I can take you to Jeremiah! Maybe he can understand you better, since he already has a stranger to talk to.”

  He takes me through what’s left of the palace, where I guess the king lived. Now it’s just blackened stumps of wood and big tumbled rocks.

  Not too far away, we walk past what’s left of the temple. Those are famous ruins. They were still fighting over them when I was born. Usually it involved the killing of innocent people. Just like Naftali’s family.

  I would see Jerusalem a lot on the Comnet news, because people thought God was such a tiny idea you could only think of God as being specifically Christian or Jewish or Muslim, and they’d blow something up, or pull a trigger, to prove it. But I don’t remember ever seeing something like this on the news: a giant statue of…a cow, or something, but fallen over, with one of its horns cracked in pieces on the ground, and a permanent startled look on its face. Even in the setting sun, you could see this was one big cow.

  “What is that?” I ask. Naftali may not understand the words, but he sees my pointing finger.

  “An ox,” he tells me. “From the time of King Solomon.”

  One big ox.

  “There were four of them. Huge. Tremendous. All standing back-to-back, holding a gigantic bowl filled with wat
er, on their back. And so huge, so God-size, that we called it the Molten Sea. The priests would use the water to clean themselves. Those of us who were poor would try to use it, too, sometimes just try to collect the water that would splash out, in our hands, or in bowls, so we wouldn’t be thirsty.” He stands staring at the place where his family tried to get some extra water. “Now everybody’s thirsty, I guess.”

  He shows me the remains of two giant pillars that stood by the front entrance, tells me about the walls where grain was stored for the year, and shows me another place, an altar, where animals were sacrificed.

  “People would take one of their best goats, or sheep or oxen, whatever they had, for one of the feasts, like Rosh Hashanah, or Pesach, and they’d have the animals’ necks cut, and then the meat would be burned. You were supposed to be giving back to God some of the good things you’d been given.” Naftali stops and looks around the ruins. “Nobody tells you how to give back any of the bad things. I guess you’re just stuck with those.

  “Anyway, it made the priests mad when Jeremiah would come around and say that doing the sacrifice in exactly the right way wasn’t really what God wanted. He said it was more important how we treated each other, that was the main test.”

  We make a wide circle around some of the timbers and stones and it’s almost completely dark now and with the ground so slippery from the frost, in all this wreckage, I keep tripping and banging my legs.

  “Ow!”

  “No! Don’t go that way!” Naftali says, like he’s a little worried for me. “Over there was where the Holy of Holies was supposed to be. That was the room the high priest would go into on Yom Kippur. It was forbidden to everyone else. That was the day all the grownups were supposed to tell their sins, tell everything they did wrong, and what they wanted to do better in the year that was coming. Maybe that was the way they tried to get rid of the bad things they did. I don’t know if it always worked. But the high priest would go in there — in that special room — and say the name of God.” His voice gets quieter, almost a whisper. “The real name. Not the short versions like Adonai or Yahweh. But the whole long forbidden name that only the high priest is supposed to know. If anyone else says it, they get burned to a crisp.”