Corrupting Dr. Nice

by John Kessel

  Simon nodded.

  "Then get out of those filthy rags and get to work." Callahan turned his back on him.

  Simon headed to the historicals' lockers, segregated from the lockers kept for staff from the future. He wondered whether the out-of-commission transit stage was a coincidence or part of the plan. He had heard nothing. Should he try to contact Jephthah? But if he left the hotel in the middle of his shift at the very least he would lose his job, and at worst he'd arouse suspicions.

  On the shelf of his locker he found a note. Written in bad Hebrew, it told him to look into the closet outside the laundry. He changed from his tunic, robe and sandals into the dark blue coveralls the invaders insisted on, then headed down to the kennel. The dogs started barking as soon as he showed up. A devout Jew could not even own the representation of a beast, but these future people had an obsession with animals; apparently it was a considerable coup to own a pet from an earlier era.

  From the closet he got out the wheeled bucket, the mop, the cleaner. He filled the bucket from the hose at the sink, and squirted in some cleaner. The pungent ammonia scoured his nose. He rolled the bucket down to the aisle of cages. Some of the dogs stood on their hind legs, their front paws against the front of their cages, noses against the glass. Others just lay curled up, eyeing him miserably. He dunked the mop in the bucket, squeezed it out in the wringer, and began to work his way down the aisle, sweeping side to side, not hurrying, his mind on his plans for the night.

  At first Simon's passivity in the face of the futurians' insults had been an act, a veil over his fury. Ten years had complicated that. He looked at the future dwellers with a combination of awe and resentment, and could not accord their ordinariness--they seemed to be people just like him--with their power. Just when he had gained enough knowledge to have contempt for them, they would do something that revealed anew how alien they were. He could not imagine the world they lived in. A world without god, apparently, although they were obsessed with Yeshu and had stolen him away.

  A decade before, when Simon and Alma had first come to Jerusalem from Galilee, he had been mocked as a rustic who did not pronounce his alephs at the front of words. The city was in a queer state of shock. The Sadducees, living fat off the money they stole from the tithes meant for the support of the Temple, strolled through the streets with bland assurance. The Pharisees were more interested in following the Law than expelling these strangers from the future.

  The troops of the time travelers had taken the Roman garrison in Jerusalem in a single hour, had defeated the Roman legion from Caesarea in an afternoon. They had had to do remarkably little fighting. They brought Herod Antipas back from Galilee to nominally rule Judaea. The Romans and their Syrian troops now collaborated, and the Roman Prefect and the Legate were mere puppets. Though Simon took some satisfaction in seeing the Romans reduced to servility to the invaders, it was cold comfort. Jews were one step farther removed from ruling their own nation.

  So he mopped the kennel in a basement room of what had once been the great Herod's palace. As a boy he had envisioned this place with awe. But the time travelers had only to wave some of their toys at Herod for him to abandon it, like a puppy begging scraps beneath a table. The sight of Herod wearing his spandex jacket and sunglasses as he walked through the upper market with one of his whores turned Simon's stomach. It was easy to have contempt for Herod. But what if you felt yourself slipping away?

  Simon put the mop in the bucket, wrung it out and began swabbing down the floor along the second row of cages. At six pm--the invaders had given him a wristwatch, and he could indeed read it--he left his mopping. He took the canvas cart of laundry, filled it with old towels, and pushed it down the corridor. The hallway was empty. He wheeled past the laundry to a closet, took his keys and unlocked it. Inside were two cases marked "Transtemporal Music Imports."

  Quickly, he loaded the cases into the cart and covered them with dirty towels. He then ran the cart over to Trash and transferred the cases into plastic bags of refuse that were bound for the gehenna landfill. He made an aleph on the bags with masking tape and wheeled the cart back to the laundry. One of the other custodial staff, Jacob, was unloading sheets from an industrial dryer.

  "Shalom, Simon. How are you?" Jacob asked.

  "I am fine." Simon began unloading the dirty towels.

  "I did not near you singing tonight. Usually you sing while you work."

  "I have been in the kennel. The dogs do all the singing there."

  Jacob touched the music bead in his ear. "I have a new song for your son. One of the tourists gave it to me. It's called 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore.'" He pronounced the English with a thick accent. Simon had worked hard on eliminating his own.

  They shared an interest in the futurians' music. It was one of the few changes Simon could accept, one of the still fewer he and his son Samuel could share. But his own liking for the music troubled him. How could such infidels create such heartfelt music? Perhaps Simon's love for it was a sign that he was being corrupted.

  "I don't want to listen to secular music," Simon said. "I have work."

  Simon went back to the kennel and finished cleaning. At the end of his shift he washed up, hung his uniform in the locker room and put on his tunic, robe and sandals. He paused to feel the fabric of the uniform. He ran his thumb over the close woven cloth. The weave was as fine as that of the clothes of Herod himself, but inhumanly regular. They said that this cloth was made by a machine. The metal of the uniform's belt shone like silver, but was much harder.

  He drew his hand back, felt the cloth of his own robe. His father, a weaver, had made it for him. It brought back memories of the shop in Capernaum, his father bent over his loom. The boys in town had mocked Simon's father behind his back. To be a weaver, associating with women, was the lowest of professions. Simon had told himself that those who scorned his father could not live without his skill. But now these men from out of time, with bolts of cloth made by machines, had driven weavers out of business. He closed his locker, and left.

  At the security booth he was searched, then left through the staff exit. He entered the streets of west Jerusalem. All was quiet.

  He hurried from the time traveler's quarter, under the harsh sodium lights, and down the hill into the dark second quarter of the city, where the only illumination came from occasional oil lamps in hanging baskets. Few Jews were abroad so late. He met his friends in a large house in the northeast, beneath the wall near the Damascus Gate. The house belonged to Asher of Carmel, a merchant who supported their cause. The others greeted him with excitement, and they went up to the roof and knelt in prayer.

  "Oh God of Israel, grant that we may establish again your holy kingdom on earth," Jephthah chanted. Jephthah's dark beard shone with oil, his voice cracked with harsh emotion. He was young, handsome, a man of action. In the background, Simon listened to the rustling of hot desert winds in the palms of the courtyard.

  When they sat back, Simon told them about the malfunction of the time travel stage. Was this part of the plan? Jephthah and the others didn't know. Simon was to meet with Serge Halam the following afternoon, and undoubtedly the agent from the future would know something about it. Jephthah ordered Simon to pay close attention to the goings on inside the hotel to see if he could pick up any useful information.

  "Make sure you give no sign of what is to happen," Jephthah said.

  "What makes you think that I would do so?"

  "Ask your son, who wears their clothes and sings their music."

  Simon bit back his urge to reply. Where had Jephthah been ten years before, when Simon had been the most zealous of them all?

  They retreated to a room below, where Asher provided wine and bread. The others, like men hoeing over the same field for the one hundredth time, discussed their situation. Simon had once contributed to these obsessive complaints, these fervent oaths; now he sat silent, wondering whether he deserved Jephthah's suspicion.

  "Perhaps once we begin, the S
adducees will turn our way," said Joset.

  "As long as they get their penicillin, microwaves and frozen dinners, the Sadducees are lap dogs," Asher said. "The Essenes--"

  "--are of no use to us," Jephthah said. The Zealots had once pinned considerable hope on the assistance of the Essenes. Yeshu's brother James was one of these deeply religious mystics--but after the departure of Yeshu the Essenes advocated complete withdrawal from contact with the futurians. They had retreated to the dry hills south of the city. That left only the Zealots, and those Pharisees they could goad into joining them, to try to sway the confused citizens into revolt.

  Jephthah played with the blade of his curved dagger, speaking as much to it as to his fellows. "These dogs do not understand the power of faith. Their silk stockings and perfumed soap are not proof against faith."

  It was Jephthah's theory that as the presence of the invaders caused more and more changes, so that even the simple could not fail to see how their lives were being irrevocably changed, the situation was turning their way. Obscene music blared out of the loudspeakers in the market, boorish tourists in scanty clothing, complaining about the heat, poked their cameras into sacred tombs, young men abandoned the scriptures for comic books, young women learned foreign slang and chewed gum. Just last autumn a film crew from the future had insisted on shooting a musical in the Temple, and only with difficulty had been kept out of the Holy of Holies. Then the star of this film, this gentile singer Elvis, accosted a young girl in the market. A riot started. The time invaders had had to call in a Roman legion to put down the uprising. Most of Simon's fellow conspirators felt a crucial point had been turned.

  Simon hoped they were right. But he had had more contact with the futurians. Even Jephthah ought to be able to see that Halam, though he was helping their cause, was not a holy man.

  Late in the night, with a feel of morning in the air, Joshua and Elam returned from the landfill with the boxes. They carried them to the downstairs room just off the courtyard, behind a hemp curtain, where the other cases Simon had smuggled out of the hotel over the last month were unpacked. Black rifle parts gleamed in the guttering light from the oil lamp. Cases of ammunition were stacked in the corner.

  Jephthah picked up one of the rifles and ran his hand lovingly down its side. "The days of the invader are numbered. We shall slaughter them to the last man and his whorish concubine, and Israel in the light of God and the heart of faith will be free at last!

  "God will deliver them into our hands."

  FIVE: THE CONNECTICUT OATMEAL BATH TREATMENT

  When Owen opened the door to his room a stench assaulted him. Wilma had abandoned her carrier and defecated on the floor.

  That was not the worst: she'd eaten the potted plants down to the soil. He found her contentedly peeling away the veneer from the coffee table, having already dismantled the credenza and pulled most of the stuffing out of the sofa.

  =Cherry credenza, manufactured in Hickory, North Carolina,= Bill said. =Sofa by de Leon, wool acrylic blend. Sixteen hundred dollars damage, minimum.=

  Wilma looked up at Owen placidly, then turned her snakelike neck back, muzzled her nose among the debris on the floor, and swallowed a glass egg. He didn't know how her digestive system would handle the foam sofa stuffing, but the egg would do service as a gastrolith.

  Owen hustled in and tried to pull her away from the table. He got her front legs off the floor, but her hind legs stayed planted. She stretched her neck out farther between his arms and kept munching. He tried to pull her backwards and stepped in the dinosaur droppings, his foot skidding out from under him until he fell on his butt in the mess. Through the bedroom door he could see a half-eaten bedspread and the mattress pulled off onto the floor.

  =Make that twenty five hundred,= Bill said.

  Owen let Wilma go. It wasn't as if pulling her away was going to save the already ruined table. But he didn't like the idea of her eating finished wood. There was no telling what effect the resins would have on her. He would have to check her feces.

  =If you want to get her to move, lure her.=

  Owen picked up the end of the table and pulled it into the bedroom. Wilma, endearingly clumsy, followed him, still nibbling at the corner. Once he had her in the bedroom he changed into some clean clothes. He had not planned to be so long getting back to the future, and so had not taken a supply of dinosaur food. Back in the Cretaceous, where grasses and flowering plants had not come into being, Wilma lived on a diet of ferns, protoconifers and cycads. He called down to room service.

  "This is Owen Vannice, in room 224. Doesn't the hotel have some sort of fern bar?"

  "Well, sir, we like to think of our King David Room in more refined terms."

  "Yes. Do you suppose you could send up a supply of potted ferns for me?"

  =This ain't going to work,= Bill whispered.

  "If you find you room's accouterments unsatisfactory, sir, I'm sure we can move you to a more suitable one."

  Owen would have to hazard a change in diet. Whatever he came up with would be better than cherry veneer. "How about hay? Do you have any hay?"

  "Hay?"

  "Yes, you know. Dried grass?"

  "I don't think hay would do much for your room's decorating scheme, sir."

  "This isn't about decorating," Owen said.

  =Raw oats,= Bill whispered.

  "How about oats?" Owen asked.

  "If you will check your screen, sir, you’ll find we have oatmeal on our room service menu, with strawberries."

  "Good. Send up about twenty liters. You can skip the strawberries."

  "Twenty liters, sir?"

  "Yes."

  "We tend to measure by the bowl."

  "How much is in a bowl?"

  =She needs a wheelbarrow,= Bill said.

  "Be quiet, Bill," Owen muttered.

  "Excuse me, sir?"

  "I said, it'll be quite a bill, I'm sure. For room service, I mean. How much oatmeal is in a bowl?"

  "I don't know--maybe 250 milliliters."

  "Okay, then, send me up 100 bowls of oatmeal."

  "100 bowls."

  "Yes. And it doesn't matter if it's cooked or not."

  =Maybe you should get bananas on it,= Bill said sarcastically.

  "Do you want bananas on it?" the room service operator asked.

  "Yes. Send up a couple of bunches."

  "Bunches. Are you going to eat this yourself, sir?"

  "Oh no. It's for--"

  =Don't tell him you've got a dinosaur!= Bill hissed.

  "--uh," Owen stalled, his mind working furiously. What was it Gen had said about pretending?

  =The bathtub.=

  "--it's for bathing," Owen said. "A skin condition. You've never heard of the Connecticut Oatmeal Bath treatment--for apatosaurus dermastentoritis?"

  The operator was silent for a moment. "I guess I did see something about that--on the Disease of the Month Club?"

  "That's it," Owen said.

  "I'll see what I can do, sir." The operator rang off.

  After he hung up Owen realized he'd forgotten the dinosaur droppings. Of course he'd have to get a sample for the copraphology exam, but there was definitely more here than he needed. He punched room service again.

  "Yes sir," it was the same voice.

  "I forgot to mention, can you also send up a shovel?"

  "Is this for the oatmeal?"

  "No. It has nothing to do with the oatmeal. Well, it has a little to do with it, but not much."

  "I'll see if I can locate one, sir. Anything else? You wouldn't want a jackhammer, or perhaps a parachute?"

  "No, thank you. Just a shovel."

  Ten minutes later a small, dark man in custodial coveralls arrived pushing a cart laden with four stainless steel pans full of steaming oatmeal, three bunches of bananas, and, on the bottom shelf, a square-bladed shovel. His name badge read "Simon." Owen blocked the doorway.

  "Thank you, Simon," Owen said. "I can serve myself."

  "I'm
not here to serve," the man said. "I am here to clean." He pushed forward, and Owen relented. Simon took in the broken furniture, wrinkled his nose at the smell.

  "I had a little accident," Owen said. "I'm not feeling well at all."

  "I will prepare your bath," Simon said, wheeling the cart toward the closed bedroom door.

  =Do you want him to see Wilma?= Bill asked.

  Owen threw himself between the cart and the door. "That's okay. I can take it from here." He fumbled in his pocket for a tip, but he had left his money in the other pants.

  Simon made a face like a steam roller. "My boss insists I am helpful in every way. I was told this is for your bath."

  Owen leaned against the door. "This condition makes me very sensitive. I will take care of it myself."

  "My boss will want to know how I did."

  "I will give them the best report. I'm afraid this room's kind of a mess." Owen slapped his palm a couple of times against the door.

  From the other side came a couple of answering thumps.

  Simon's eyes narrowed. "Do you have someone in there?"

  "It's just an echo," Owen said.

  Wilma butted her head against the door again, harder this time. The door rattled in its frame. She must be up on her hind legs, forefeet against the wood.

  "Is this perhaps one of my people you are keeping captive? A woman?"

  "Certainly not. It's just my--"

  =Your dog.=

  "--my Irish setter, Cuchulain."

  Wilma trumpeted, an eerie bleat, and slammed the door so hard the latch splintered, throwing Owen forward. She shoved her head around the door's edge and, holding her face sideways, peered at Simon with her right eye.

  Simon yelped and fell backwards. He grabbed for the shovel. When Wilma advanced on the cart he scrambled out of the suite on his hands and knees.

  Wilma stretched her neck over the top of the cart and shoved her head into the top pan of oatmeal.

  =I told you oatmeal was the answer,= Bill said.

  #

  A woman in a burgundy collarless jacket stood in the hall. She radiated as much personal warmth as a spreadsheet. "Mr. Nice, I am Eustacia Toppknocker, the hotel manager."