by Greg Chivers
He knows almost everything now, at least the parts of my own story I can tell, and the knowledge has changed things between us in a way I do not understand. The criminal is kind to me, even though I have made mistakes that endangered us both. In these past few days, I have learned somewhat to read the weather of emotion as it passes across Levi’s face. I’ve never before had the opportunity to spend long enough with a single human to learn an individual’s dialect of expression. It is a fascinating but imperfect language. Ultimately, I am left attempting to divine meaning, like an ancient seer searching for signs in the caprice of nature. My restless mind seeks clarity. Why am I now worthy of care? I could ask, but some inexpressible fear holds me back, as if this sudden tenderness might evaporate in the cold light of enquiry. That would be unbearable.
In the distance, tiny white figures move along rows within the green. I raise a hand to point them out, but Levi merely squints and shakes his head.
‘You might as well be pointing at the moon, Clem. Everything down there is a blur to me.’
‘You have a disability?’
‘No, that’s just the harsh reality of life without the benefits of robot ninja modification.’ His face creases into a frown. For a moment I am scared I’ve made him angry. ‘Hold on a second. Was that a joke?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Not bad for your first try. We can work on that.’ I catch the edge of his smile as he turns away to look ahead. Shuffling steps take us down the switchback paths to the valley floor. Little clouds of yellow dust trail in our wake, seeming to hang infinitely in the air. Suddenly, he pauses and turns to face me, grimacing. ‘OK, I’m a little near-sighted. It’s never really been a thing in the city, but out here …’ The words trail off as he resumes the shuffle.
‘It’s OK, I’ll keep a lookout for gangsters.’
‘Yeah, you do that.’
We’re most of the way down to the valley floor when one of the white figures stops working and points at us before turning around to shout to someone behind him. Another worker at the distant edge of the circular field runs towards what looks like a glittering oblong of light topping a low rise at the other side of the valley. My eye-filters descend without thought, polarizing the image, cutting out the blinding glare. The shiny thing is a long curved tunnel of transparent plastic. Faint glints behind are dozens more stretching into the middle distance.
The path takes us past the closest of the strange circular fields. Fifty-two white-garbed workers move between the rows of vegetation, bending and kneeling, picking, hoeing, stopping at regular intervals to administer some sort of spray which descends in a fine mist upon the leaves. They seem to ignore our intrusion into their domain, even the one who spotted us.
The only sign of a response to our arrival is a flap opening at the end of the nearest of the plastic tunnels. A small two-person buggy emerges through the opening and makes a hesitant turn down onto the dirt track towards us. The figure in the passenger seat wears a brown robe that does not entirely conceal the rounded figure beneath.
My pulse quickens at the imminent reality of facing Hilda. It’s bad enough I come here as a fugitive, bringing danger together with my partner in crime, but our parting was a wound, carelessly inflicted. I search for some clue in her expression, but at this distance even my eyes cannot see through the shadows of her cowl.
The buggy’s driver is a bearded man at the end of middle age with a hard expression. He concentrates on the treacherous track, which wars with the stability of his vehicle at every turn until it reaches the flatter ground of the valley floor where we stand. The buggy stops in a cloud of fine particles so dense they prevent speech for six quickening heartbeats while sleeves and fingers clear them from eyes and lips.
‘You came.’ Hilda speaks first, hood thrown back, revealing the same gently calculating look in her green eyes as when we first met. I was running away that time, too.
‘I said I would.’
‘You brought a friend.’
Levi shrugs, palms out in a gesture of supplication. His reaction to her words tells me there is some significance to their tone that eludes me.
‘This is Levi. He’s been looking after me.’
Hilda appears to consider something for a moment; then she shakes her head and gestures at two rear-facing seats at the back of the buggy. ‘We’ll talk inside.’
We are silent passengers while the driver grunts in concentration, wrestling the buggy through a many-pointed turn to steer it back towards the tunnels. Rocks in the track skip away from its wheels as it passes the edges of the green circles. The nearest ones are young corn, shoots still only a couple of feet high. In the next row, fat veined leaves low to the ground indicate brassicae of some kind, cabbages or cauliflower. All of it growing in defiance of the season in a way that would be impossible back home.
Suddenly, a hissing fills the air. It seems to be coming from beneath the ground, like a monstrous buried serpent. Levi jerks, his body reacting in instinctive fear, but my human senses detect no obvious danger. Hilda and the driver both look straight ahead as if nothing is happening. Just as I am starting to fear some auditory hallucination, I hear more noises – metal groaning and something moving through the green stalks of corn. The tips disappear as this disturbance approaches, then snap back into position as it passes. I watch, waiting for whatever it is to appear, but the buggy carries us around the edge of the circle and away.
As we pass the rows of tunnels, I dimly see the figures of white phantoms moving behind the translucent plastic. The buggy drives straight past the flap it emerged from, following this single narrow track up to a plateau at the top of the hills. Here, the plastic sea finally ends at a cluster of low wooden huts with a temporary feel, perhaps enough for a hundred people to live in meagre style. The track stops at a single building made of whitewashed adobe with a cross on the roof, a smaller, cleaner cousin to the Mission’s outpost in the city. A modest bell tower in the middle of the roof must be the highest point for miles around.
A patch of gravel crackles beneath the buggy’s wheels as it stops outside. An ornate door decorated in European style pierces me with a memory of France. The driver gets out first and holds it open for Hilda, as if she’s some kind of visiting dignitary, but she pointedly waits for Levi and me to go ahead of her. It never occurred to me that she was someone important. In my days at the Mission in the city, people did as she asked as a matter of course, but I never thought of her as someone who wielded power.
Levi stays fixed in his seat, chewing his lip. ‘You guys go ahead. I’ll just wait here until you’re done.’
Hilda stands silent in the doorway, peering at him as if he’s a specimen of some previously undiscovered insect species.
‘Really, I’m just not a church kind of guy.’
She smiles as if alighting on some hidden joke. ‘That is your choice, Levi Peres. The Saviour welcomes all.’
23.
Levi
‘You jus plannen on sitten there?’ The driver speaks English to me in a weird accent I never heard before, like he’s chewing on words trapped in his beard. ‘I’m gonna need mah buggy back. This is a werking farm.’
I give him my best bar mitzvah smile, but he shakes his head and looks at me as if I’m dirt, which I guess from his perspective is more or less accurate. He sits behind the steering wheel and twists to look at me.
‘Go on, git oot of it.’
‘Uh, is there anywhere I could make a call? I’m not getting any signal on my comm-plant.’
He shakes his head and smiles like I said something funny. ‘Naebody does, son.’ His teeth are a gross yellow.
‘This is really important, man. I swear it will just take one minute.’
‘It’s not up to me, son.’ He points at the church roof. ‘The city-net doesn’t reach out here. Any outgoing signal has to route through an aerial in the bell tower. Access is encrypted, and forbidden to acolytes. You’ll need the Reverend Mother’s permission.’
> ‘So I have to …’ I stand up from the buggy seat and half climb out, one foot on the ground.
‘Get oot of mah buggy, aye.’
‘She’s in there?’ I nod towards the door.
‘Unless she’s performed a miracle.’
He turns away and the buggy’s motor whines into life, leaving me hopping, trying not to drop the bag holding the loot while it speeds off. Maybe he’d be more understanding if I fell down on my knees and told him about the fucking sociopath who will find exciting ways to kill me unless I give him what’s in the bag on my shoulder. Or maybe not; he seemed kind of focused on the buggy issue. Seriously, though, I need to talk to Silas. I figure he already wasn’t sending me a Hanukkah card this year, but every hour that passes with him thinking I’ve done a runner pushes me further from the shit list to the hit list.
The corners of the metal box inside the bag dig into my ribs as I shift the strap on my shoulder. A numbness fades from the place on my back where it rested. No part of the plan involved me carrying this thing for miles while we walked cross-country. The door swings easily away from me, cheap, lightweight. Inside it smells like a low-rent furniture showroom – wood polish to make you think you’re buying something better than chips stuck together with glue. Twenty-something years living in Jerusalem and I never went inside a church. By the looks of this place I wasn’t missing much. The only thing in here I couldn’t find at my local outlet store is a lectern at the front. It’s heavy, carved from dark wood into the shape of a fierce-looking eagle. Its spread wings support a fat old book in a battered leather binding that doesn’t look like a regular bible. Behind the lectern, there’s a curved wall that separates one corner of the hall from the rest. The door in it is brown glass like a cheap pair of shades. Quiet voices murmur, then stop as I approach.
My fist hovers an inch away from the door. Why am I waiting? They obviously know I’m here. My hand comes away, brushes the dirt off my pants. Deep breath. I knock softly and the glass trembles under my knuckle.
‘Come in, Mr Peres.’
Inside, it’s like two tiny rooms joined together, a tiny office, and a tiny bedroom, with three people looking at me. I only saw two go in; one of them was Clementine. The new one must have been waiting for us. She wears the same robe as Clem’s friend but she’s tall and thin, with a slightly hooked nose. She looks at me the way a vulture looks at meat that’s not dead yet, which is not what I expected from a nun.
‘Ah, sorry to disturb. I just really need to …’
‘Sit down please.’ Clem’s friend, the fat one, is sitting at the desk on the only proper chair in the room. The tall one looms next to a fireplace, her elbow on the mantelpiece. Clementine watches me from the edge of a small, hard-looking bed. She looks scared, like a kid who’s just been told off and doesn’t know whether there’s still more to come.
‘Really, I don’t want to take up your time, I’ve just gotta make a call real quick. Could you see your way clear to—’
‘Mr Peres, if you’re asking me a favour, I must insist you do me one first. Sit down; engage in this conversation. Once we have addressed Clementine’s immediate concerns, I will consider your request.’ She gestures to a spot on the bed next to Clementine. I sit. ‘Clementine has told us of your predicament.’ Clem looks at me out of the corner of her eye, like she doesn’t want to face me. I guess some people would be angry about a situation like this, but from where I’m sitting, I don’t see she had a lot of options if she wanted their help. ‘We cannot condone the actions that have led you to this point, but neither can we allow harm to come to those in our care. We have to know what we’re dealing with. Show us what you have taken.’
‘Hold on a second.’ A little curiosity is understandable, but I’m sensing a level of interest that is unhealthy. ‘I mean no disrespect, and I know Clem thinks you guys are great, but I don’t know you. You’re all sweet in your brown PJs, talking to God, but what’s that supposed to mean to me? I’m supposed to trust you? Thanks, but no thanks.’
‘Where are you going to go?’
‘We’ll work something out. Come on, Clementine.’ I stand up.
She sits on the bed, not moving. Her smile is a broken heart. Suddenly my chest feels empty. The door handle is a cold bar of metal in my hand.
‘She needs you, Levi Peres.’ The words are salt on a fresh cut.
‘Damn right she needs me, that’s why …’ I see Clem’s face. She’s looking at me like I’m already gone, tears shining on those catwalk cheekbones. For some reason, I didn’t think she’d be able to cry. My hand slips off the door handle. This is messed up. ‘OK, maybe we should take a minute to think things through.’
The fat one gives me that same weird, bland smile she did outside. ‘Have a seat.’
I put the bag down on the floor and sit on the bed next to Clem. ‘It’s OK, champ, I’m not going anywhere, not yet. We got a job to finish, right?’ She nods and wipes an eye, and as I look at her I’m thinking: How can everyone not see the child? But I know the answer. She’s invisible behind that perfect exterior. No, not invisible, it just makes us all blind. I prod the bag with my foot and wave at Vulture-lady. ‘You open it.’
She sinks to the floor and slides the black metal box out of the bag. It’s facing the wrong way for her to open, so she twists it around and thumbs the catches on the front in a single smooth movement, more like a street trader than a nun. The lid comes up but her brown-robed back blocks me from seeing inside. All I hear is a gasp. ‘Hilda, come look at this! They’ve stolen the Antikythera Mechanism.’
Hilda’s mouth makes a shape like she’s about to swear, but stays closed while she kneels to look. Without getting up, she picks the box up and holds it out towards us so we can see. Her knuckles are white from gripping the box too hard and there’s a tremble in her wrists. Clem and I both lean forward at the same time, like we’re in sync. Clem’s fingertip touches it and her eyes open wide, like it’s the most exciting thing she ever saw.
It’s a rock. It’s not even pretty. There’s a few shiny spots of blue-green stuff – I don’t know what it is – and some circles and crosses in the stone, but that’s it. Technically, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a toy dinosaur in that box – Silas is paying me to steal it, so he gets whatever, assuming we resolve our differences, but a part of me wants to die. A goddamned rock! Clem’s face shows she’s thinking the same thing – we’ve been through hell for some shitty old paving slab.
The weird thing is, the holy sisters are still looking at us like we just gave them God in a box. ‘Do you know what we have here?’
I shake my head. The ‘we’ does not escape my attention, but I can’t deal with that right now.
‘This is the oldest thinking machine in existence. It was ancient, even before the wars.’
‘What does it do? Count rocks?’ At least we can get a laugh out of this. I look over to see Clementine smile but her eyes are closed. She’s not moving, just locked in position as if she froze when she leaned forward to look into the box. One outstretched finger rests on the green stone, lightly touching it. Hilda and Vulture-lady see it too: total stillness, not like a living thing. The older nun levers herself up off the floor and hovers next to Clementine, puts a finger underneath her nose to check if she’s breathing. When she nods, I suddenly notice I was holding my breath.
We all look at each other. Part of me takes a certain satisfaction that they obviously have no clue what is happening, but a bigger part just wants them to be able to fix it. Vulture-lady stands up, closing the box. Silence hangs in the air, broken only by plastic clicks as she takes a green-boxed first-aid kit off the wall and searches vainly for something that might help.
Suddenly, from beside me, a child’s voice starts to speak.
‘I can feel it.’
The words are coming from Clementine, but in a weird, high sing-song voice that might belong to a real six-year-old.
Hilda speaks first. ‘What can you feel, Clementine?’
‘The mind inside.’
‘What do you mean, Clem? What kind of mind?’
‘It’s been sleeping for a long time, but it’s starting to wake. It knows me.’
24.
Silas
Sun streams through the glass at the centre of the museum’s roof and falls as dappled light to the marble floor. Yesterday’s rain must have left streaks in the grime up there. The chatter of the delegates from the Timbuktu Madrasah is a buzz in my left ear. The blue-robed youngsters titter at the thousand-year-old triptych depicting Mohammed’s ascent to heaven like schoolboys looking at porn, while the elders glide past, pretending this idolatry from Islam’s Golden Age doesn’t exist. There is more than a touch of the comic in the images of a fat man flying a winged donkey with a human face, but it’s no worse than some of the nonsense in the Christian section. Two of the teachers drift towards me like baggy balloons of blue fabric with questions on their faces. My eyes dart in search of the curator who’s supposed to be escorting the group, but I seem to be alone with them. Unfortunate.
The larger of the two greets me with the plastic, tolerant smile of the fanatic. ‘Why do you show what is haram? Did you bring us here to insult us?’
This is exactly why I avoid the museum. No one would bother with these bores if they didn’t hold the keys to the African interior and the wealth its raw materials bring. Some of them are clever enough in their own way, but they all have the same desert blindness to inconvenient truths, even when they leave the sand behind. Of course, the outrage is as much a negotiating tactic as anything. The Timbuktu delegations always come with an impossible shopping list of European exotica which I do my best to fulfil.
‘Not at all, Abdi, not at all. The displays are merely part of the historical record. It’s all in the hands of the curators. You know how it is – I only run the place. Perhaps we should talk business?’
A sly look acknowledges the presence of the youngsters, pampered scions of West Africa’s super-rich, slumming it for a few days so they can go back and tell their friends about the forbidden marvels of the Holy City. ‘Later, Mizrachi. I hope you have something good this time.’