by Greg Chivers
From somewhere ahead, beyond the crumbling cistern, a soft murmur echoes and dies, trapped in the Old City’s maze of streets. A faint nimbus of orange light briefly illuminates the end of the alley and three human shadows pass before it fades away, offering no clue to its origin.
The alley ends in an open space, but still no starlight reaches the cobbles. Looking up, I realize I stand in the domed shadows of the sacred patchwork they call the Holy Sepulchre. The orange glow spills around the edge of one of the building’s corners. I can hear the noise of bodies moving and hushed speech, a chorus of whispers. Instinct pushes the sharp tips of my antennae through skin into air. An act of will retracts them. The act of observing through the spectra carries a risk of being observed by anyone with technology more sophisticated than the locals possess; I must rely on human senses here. This body was optimized in its construction – visually, aurally – to beyond human norms, but still it feels a dull tool with which to confront the unknown. It trembles with the treachery of adrenaline. In my previous existence I would have sneered at this.
I should walk away. Investigation presents a needless risk, but I have fled for so long to reach this city. I cannot flee the unknown forever. My back stirs centuries of dust from the walls as I edge around the corner and then light dazzles me, forcing my eyes shut.
It must be a thousand candles held aloft on outstretched arms. The light they cast dims in just a few metres but together they are a blinding forest of stars, so bright it obscures the bearers beneath. There is something strange about this crowd, their stillness, their hush, the way the light gleams from shoulders or heads, as if they were clad in mirrors. As my eyes adjust, I become aware I am not the only watcher. Three impressively bearded priests stare down from the church’s steps, radiating disapproval but saying nothing. Closer to me, dark figures watch from the doorways.
‘They’re taking a risk coming here.’ One of the shapes leans into the light as it turns to face me, a short man with a faint scar marking his top lip. His voice is low but quavers with adrenaline. He leans forward, weight on his toes, fists clenching and unclenching.
‘Who?’ A single syllable betrays me as an outsider.
He looks at me now, face half lit in the orange candle glow. He shrugs. ‘The Cult of the Machine. The metal arms, the shiny heads – who else they going to be?’ He nods at the crowd. They seem unconcerned by the watchers, all facing an object at the centre of their gathering, an almost man-sized sculpture borne on the metal shoulders of four of the faithful. Slabs of pitted iron form the stylized shape of two mechanical gears, overlapping one another like a Venn diagram. An unblinking eye fills the intersection.
‘The Machine?’ The urge to run is overwhelming. My limbs tremble with the strain of suppressed movement. This must be close to a thousand people marked with a symbol I have spent a year fleeing from.
‘They think your body is what drags you to hell, so they’re trying to leave theirs behind.’
A sickening realization hits me. This is worship. These people have gathered here to show their faith in gods I know to be false. The Machines were men once, born as creatures of flesh, but these people are destroying their bodies in crude imitation of something they cannot understand. Somehow, even in a land hostile to their kind, the Machines have found a way to exert their will.
As I turn away, one thought eclipses everything.
They’re here.
Not the Machines, at least – not yet – but their disciples: primitive, ignorant, but still dangerous.
I am not safe.
I kill the urge to run as soon as I’m out of sight of the church. Instead, I subject myself to the calculated agony of a slow, serpentine route, stopping intermittently to check for tails. It takes more than an hour to get to Yusuf’s. He’s closing up, but the door’s still open. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘Is Levi around?’
Yusuf usually watches me the way men do, but when I walk into the light he tilts his neck strangely, like he’s trying to see around me, as if my encounter with the Cultists has left me marked in some way. He blinks and shakes his head. ‘Nah. He left more than an hour ago. He doesn’t live here, you know … officially. This is more like his office.’
‘I need to talk to him.’ I can see on Yusuf’s face that I’m not the first person to come in here asking for Levi, and I can see the stock answer is ‘No, fuck you for asking’, but Yusuf and I share secrets now: maybe not that many, but enough for him to give me an address.
It’s not far. A doorless stairwell is almost invisible next to the neon glare of a twenty-four-hour laundromat. The dim light within outlines a skinny figure watching three of the machines spin. It’s not Levi – no jacket. His door is on the first floor, directly above the laundromat. I knock, but there’s no answer. Perhaps I should call, but it feels dangerous when I could be under observation. Those Machine people are close. I don’t know what they can do.
I knock again. Nothing. I fumble in my pocket for offcuts from the lengths of wire I bought earlier. They’re not perfect, but they’ll do. I twist two together to make a tool and slide it into the lock in the metal door handle, feeling for the movement of tumblers. It’s better made than I expected; it takes me forty seconds before the final cylinder clicks into place and the door falls open, only to stop abruptly when a metal chain pulls taut. I slide a hand around to unclip it, but suddenly the black emptiness of a gun barrel fills my vision.
‘Tell me why I shouldn’t dust you now, motherfucker.’
‘Levi, it’s me.’
‘Fuck! You! I could have shot you in the brain.’ His face appears in the crack in the door, a little flushed but otherwise normal. He’s right; he could have shot me. I was sloppy, too preoccupied with the threat outside. ‘I guess you better come in before someone else shoots you. Remind me to save a bullet for Yusuf.’
The short hallway is dark except for yellow light spilling through a door halfway along on the left, and there’s a flickery blue glow of screen at the end. The floor hums with the vibration of the machines in the laundromat below.
‘I was taking a shit. You didn’t have to break in.’
‘I’m sorry. The door’s OK.’
He gestures to a cluttered sofa, dented in the middle by single occupancy. He waits for me to sit, then sits too close. ‘Don’t worry about the door. What’s so urgent that you need to come see Levi in the middle of the night?’
He leans forward to retrieve an abandoned cigarette from the low glass table in front of us. The side of his leg moves against mine. His slightly crooked smile makes me feel sick. I don’t need this. I slide back into the clutter of takeaway containers to create space between us.
‘Please … I didn’t come here for company. We work together. That’s it, OK?’
He shrugs. The pain of rejection does not keep Levi Peres awake at night. ‘Sure. You’ll forgive me if I get a little confused if you just show up at my apartment like I made a booty call.’
‘Let’s just forget about it, shall we?’
‘All right. So what’s up?’
‘I need somewhere to stay for a few days – ’til the job’s done.’
‘You just turned down my hospitality.’
‘No, I just refused to fuck you. Look, can’t we just forget about that?’
‘This ain’t a hotel.’ He holds his arms out in a gesture that en-compasses the whole room. A white-tiled kitchen area near the window strobes pink and blue with the light from the laundromat sign outside. A pile of drinking vessels fills the sink, but the kit-chen’s otherwise empty, a forbidden zone to the clutter that infests the rest of the room. Two big bales of what must be tobacco fill one corner of the room like furniture. The smell of them overpowers everything else, but that’s probably a blessing. Brown carpet crunches softly beneath my feet, even though I can only take tiny steps. Piles of shiny objects cover every available surface and spill onto the floor. I recognize a few as holy symbols.
‘Wh
at is all this stuff?’
‘It’s my business. Everything’s got a buyer.’
‘Levi, how did you sneak up on me at the door? Most people can’t do that.’
His eyes glow with satisfaction. ‘I got some skills. Maybe you thought you were dealing with some schmuck?’
‘If I did, I was wrong.’
‘Like I said, this place is my business. I’m careful. There’s plenty of people who want to know what Levi Peres is bringing in and out, so they can maybe get a piece of it, or all of it. I can’t have that, y’know? Some people, they spend millions to protect their privacy. Not me, man. I got the laundromat.’
‘The laundromat?’
‘Those machines are on 24/7, and they are noisy motherfuckers.’ The rumble beneath my feet bears testament to the truth of his words. I’m used to the noise after a few minutes of standing here, but it’s still there, enough to fox any sound detector. He keeps talking, but from this single clue the rest fits itself together. Those washers and dryers rotate constantly, at slightly different, unpredictable speeds. Metal rotating within metal – it’s like the Earth’s core, a battery of machines generating electromagnetic waves at fluctuating frequencies. To anyone attempting sonic or microwave surveillance it’s like trying to pick out a tune when someone’s shouting in your ear, and they can’t even filter it out because the shouting changes all the time.
‘That’s … incredible. You worked this out on your own?’
‘And the rest of it. That sign outside …’ He gestures to the pink and blue at the window. ‘Anyone trying a visual scan through my window is gonna have contrast issues. It’s like we’re standing behind the sun … OK, maybe not the sun, but you get the idea.’
I crouch and clear a space in the neon-lit clutter beneath the window frame. ‘I’m sleeping here.’
He shrugs, palms up. The only way I’m leaving is if he kicks me out, and right now I’m too valuable an asset for him to take that risk. No bedroll, no covers, but for me, as long as my partner in crime can cope with a housemate, this might just be the safest place in Jerusalem.
14.
Silas
Spears of faint light, like promises of revelation, strobe through the gaps in the wall of high-rise towers crowding the freeway as the limousine glides past. The air-con is a numbing whisper in my ear. Outside, the sun is barely visible behind layers of low cloud clinging to the shoulders of the hills around the city, but already the morning air shivers with the promise of heat. This strange Indian summer has lasted days now. It is vaguely unsettling, but perhaps fitting for the day’s events.
From the fold-down seat opposite me, Sybil spews a susurrus of briefing information. The plan is intricate, and multiple pieces must fall into place for it to work. As Minister of Antiquities, I am guest of honour at the opening of a new building: ‘The Centre for Interfaith Dialogue’. It was scheduled for a couple of months’ time, but in light of recent events, I have pushed for the grand opening to be brought forward. It is the kind of nod towards action that people expect in times of crisis. That is how the city works – fighting fires with gestures to make people feel good about themselves. There will be expensive wine from the Lebanon and speeches about mutual understanding, and when the party is over, my guests will look at the flames, puzzling over why they still burn.
The new building shines, even in the dull early morning light. It is a dome (what else) formed of triangles of glass, linked by brackets of mirror-bright steel. As the car pulls in, you can see the shimmering hemisphere is actually a vast shell for a much smaller construction of white marble, built in the classical style as an affectionate pastiche of the city’s Hellenic past. The Greeks gave Jerusalem the only religion we ever managed to shake off, but the upside of theological failure is a politically neutral design aesthetic, perfect for gesture architecture.
A tall, exquisitely mustachioed man in a Sikh turban greets the car. He introduces himself as the centre manager, and guides me through a brief tour of the building, hurrying through areas where wires and pipes still show. Mostly the place seems to be a profusion of meeting rooms unlikely ever to be used to their full capacity.
The tour ends in a garden area out the back. Stones of light and dark rock half buried in concentric circles form something that feels like an arena. A quartered ring of sparse newly planted greenery creates the outermost boundary, and a manufactured flow of air defies the enclosure of glass and steel above to simulate a gentle breeze. The combined effect is rather lovely, but it’s not at all obvious why this modest marbled meeting centre and its grounds fill just a tiny fraction of the glass dome’s vast footprint. The design would be perplexing if you weren’t aware of the other purpose it serves, one known only to myself and Sybil.
The usual suspects are all here, and the absences are entirely predictable. The Haredim never come to these things; sharing the real estate is anathema to them, even at a place like this, outside the ring road that forms the arbitrary boundary of Jerusalem proper. The Arabs capitalize on their rivals’ absence, two groomed imams affecting the air of patient martyrdom that the Jews once patented, a mute, relentless reminder that everyone else here is an intruder on their land. The bearded, dark-robed priests of the Greek, Armenian, and Syriac Orthodox Churches wear solemn expressions in keeping with their self-appointed role as guardians of the Christian holy sites. The whole tableau could be from any moment in the last two thousand years, but for the discreet glitter of implants behind their ears, a necessary concession to modernity for anyone involved in the cut and thrust of city politics.
The only noteworthy presences are the newcomers. The clanking bodies of the Machine Cult delegates are a vulgar intrusion of the modern world. Their aspiration to a horrifying apotheosis – a transformation into one of the West’s living Machines – renders them unpalatable to the other faiths, but in truth it is no stranger than many of the ancient rituals. As a child, I found the shine and incongruity of their half-human bodies endlessly fascinating. Looking at them with adult eyes, seeing the spider-trace of veins in pale, sickly skin, it is hard not to wonder what emotional scars drive them to such self-degradation.
Of course, no gathering of the city’s faithful would be complete without the delegation from the Mission. The ‘prophet’ Cephas is immediately recognizable from his appearances in court. His artfully grime-stained presence is a perfectly judged contrast to the immaculate clergy of the other faiths – pure theatre. He eschews small talk, choosing instead to tilt his chin upwards and smile blissfully at the rapture of communion with the Almighty. His companions are a mismatched pair of women in coarse woollen robes. One is tall, pale, elegant, if a little hook-nosed – more interesting than the entirely generic sexuality of the PAs who hover at the shoulders of the fatter dignitaries, status symbols who serve only to broadcast their owners’ inadequacies. The other woman is short, round-shouldered, a shock of red hair and green eyes just visible beneath the hood. She wears an expression that might be terror, or wonder at her surroundings, or possibly a mix of both. Sybil breaks the silence.
‘Allow me to introduce Sister Ludmila Baryshnikova and Reverend Mother Hilda Frink of the Mission.’ The tall one nods politely; the short pink one acknowledges me with a furtive glance. In recent years, Europeans have become a sufficiently common sight on the streets that one or two will not draw attention, but there is something striking about this mismatched trio. Perhaps it’s the context? They blend more easily in the squalor of the Old City.
‘A Sister and a Mother? Does the Mission have brothers too? Or only prophets?’
The gentle jibe elicits a sharp look from the short one, but Sister Ludmila laughs.
‘Is the ministry this welcoming to all of the city’s religious representatives?’
‘The city government does not discriminate between the faiths. I’m universally unpleasant to all of them.’
‘Even to the Jews, Minister Mizrachi?’ The emphasis on my last name is unmistakeable. It carries an accusation tha
t has been levelled at me since before I started the job, that I am a despoiler of history who bothers only to preserve artefacts of Jewish heritage while leaving the rest to rot or disappear.
‘I’d tell you to ask the Haredim for their view on whether I favour the Jews, but of course they’re not here: probably too busy enjoying the fruits of my favour.’
She gives a low chuckle in acknowledgement of my parry; it is a matter of public record that the Haredim are my most vocal critics. The short one, Hilda, just watches me in silence, her stare strangely intense.
The sound of applause interrupts the conversation. I follow the gazes of the crowd to where they’re looking at a new arrival. Glassberg holds court at the centre of a circle of guests thrilled at the ‘surprise’ appearance of the city’s premier official. Theoretically, ministerial movements are kept secret for security reasons, but the recent troubles make Glassberg’s showing as predictable as clockwork. Between banalities he finds time to catch my eye more than once, no doubt thinking of our recent meeting, perhaps imagining this day will afford a chance to collaborate on solutions to the violence. Alas, I have other plans.
The interfaith centre is 30 per cent funded by my ministry. Apart from providing a useful veneer of respectability, it grants me a stage. Two white-gloved curators bear a box of dark wood with battered brass bindings at its corners. This is my cue. They wait in the cleared space at the centre of the stone circle while I detach myself from conversation. The female curator gives a little nod and hands me the inevitable gloves. The other one opens the box in a slow, formalized movement, and takes out an object which he passes over like a sacrament.