Eetoo

by Robby Charters

  'Oi-yoi-yoi!' gasped Reb Shim'on. There were exclamations from some of the others from Alexandria.

  Baruch haba bashem Adonai. That's what they were saying the first day they arrived in Yerushalayim, remembered Tsaphar.

  16

  darkness, with just a hint of dawn

  the two young adventurers heed the instructions of the King

  Here's the hole. I look for the pinnacle. I can barely see it with no moon. We'll just remember what side of the hole the rope is on, and go towards it.

  Tsaphar's been carrying the rope. I tie it to the big rock that looks heavy enough to hold us.

  'Let's shine the torch down and see what's down there first,' say Tsaphar.

  Good idea.

  I take the torch.

  'Better not turn it on up here,' she says. 'People will think we're angels or something.'

  'That's right.'

  I look down the hole, put my hand down with the torch, and turn it on. We both look.

  We see the ground, and a little bit of water way down there. The rope's long enough though.

  It's a good thing Tsaphar's so good at climbing. I don't think most girls could get down a rope.

  I go first. I put the torch back into my pouch and start down.

  There are a lot of little noises down here, like water dripping, and echoes. It's pitch black.

  I'm finally at the bottom. I turn on the torch again so Tsaphar won't freak out on her way down.

  There's only one passage going both ways. We go the way Reb Yeshua said.

  I start counting as we go.

  'One -- two...' there's quite an echo down here. I lower my voice: '...three -- four -- ...' we have to step over lots of things, '...six -- seven -- eight -- nine -- ten -- eleven....' here's a deep crevice. We'd better be careful. '...twenty-two -- twenty-three -- twenty ...'

  'Someone said there's snakes down here,' says Tsaphar.

  'Just look carefully. Twenty... -- where was I?'

  'Twenty-four.'

  'Okay. Twenty-four -- twenty-five -- twenty-six ... fourty-nine -- fifty. Here's where we turn left.'

  It's a wider area here. I shine the torch around. We see a passage off to the left.

  The light is going dim. I've got one extra power cell in the bag. I change it. It's shining as brightly as ever.

  'Twenty-seven paces, right?'

  'Yes.'

  'Okay. One -- two -- three...' etc.

  We arrive. This looks like ...

  'He said we have to stand on a rock and shine the light upward,' says Tsaphar.

  There's the rock -- just like the one in the pyramid of Nephtesh -- just like in my dream!

  I go and stand on it, and shine it straight up just like I did in the pyramid. The passage is narrower here.

  Just like the first time, we see something shining in the ceiling. It's sending a shaft of light on to part of the wall.

  I shine the light on the spot it showed. It's different from the rest of the wall. Instead of rock, it's like covered with dry mud. It's high up, but there's a rock there we can stand on.

  'Let's dig here,' I say.

  We start digging with our hands. It crumbles easily.

  There's something in there. We pull it out. It's heavy! It's the tablets!

  Wow! This time it's just like in the dream!

  We can only pull one out at a time, they're so heavy. We bring them down and lean them each against the wall.

  'He said to record them in our box, didn't he?' says Tsaphar.

  I get the computer out of our bag.

  'How did he know we had one of these?' I say.

  'Or a light bright enough to make a beam inside a dark cave?'

  'You better write. You're a faster writer than me.'

  We look at the writing. It's in Akkadi pictographs done with the wedged shaped indentations, with a few words in phonetic symbols. The phonetically spelled words look like an even older form of Akkadi than we're used to.

  'It's going to take forever to write all this down,' I say. 'You'd better do it.'

  She feels the letters with her fingers.

  'I know!'

  She takes a cloth out of our bag and begins cleaning one of the plates. Then, she takes the computer, puts in some commands, and lays the flat pin bed against the gold plate, so that the plates force the pins in -- except where the letters are.

  'This is how you copy clay tablets using a computer,' she says.

  She shows me how to do it, and I start in.

  I have to do this about twenty times for the whole length of one tablet. After each impression, I have to check to make sure it copied. Sometimes it doesn't because I didn't hold it straight, so I have to do it again. Sometimes, lines at the beginning of each section get entered twice, or get missed, so I have to go back and correct it. While I'm doing that, she's reading away at the other ones.

  The first one, I can see, is the song of the seven ages, and the story of Red Earth, the same as in our tablets. Then I come to the second one, which is the story of the two sons, how one killed the other. The third is of someone named Hanoch. It's a long story that we don't have in our tablets, but this one's missing The Book of Metushalech, the oldest man. The Torah doesn't have that story either. The fourth is about Noach.

  Tsaphar's reading the fifth tablet, called The Book of Shem. That has a lot of interesting stuff. Our set at home only has the Book of Ham, which this one doesn't.

  Suddenly, she says, 'Listen to this!' She starts reading:

  The years allotted to humanity shall be as one week, but a day is as a thousand years. These shall be as six days in which a man works and the seventh, in which he rests. However, to live out the whole extent of the six days and enter the seventh, humanity must redeem itself three times. During the first two days, the world will be destroyed by water, and humanity will cease to exist unless there comes a redeemer, who will, by obedience, save a remnant and replenish the earth after the waters subside (this has happened already, and the redeemer was the father of Shem). Thus, humanity will survive the first 2000 years without the Torah.

  After this, a son of Shem will make a covenant with the most High, and thus will begin the third day. But the world will be destroyed by fire before that day is half through, unless his descendants ratify the covenant with the most High, and receive the Torah from the Almighty. Thus, humanity will survive another 2000 years with the Torah, during which, a dynasty will arise from among the descendent of the covenant maker, which is destined to bring light to humanity.

  After this, the world will surely be destroyed by fire, unless the Anointed King of that dynasty again redeems humanity. Then, the Anointed King will usher in the fifth day. Thus, humanity will survive another 2000 years with rule of the Anointed King. Then, will dawn the seventh day, the day of rest.

  That does answer a lot of questions.

  Even with the quicker way of copying, it's still taking a long time.

  We're hungry. We didn't have our breakfast, and I'm sure it's almost noon. We eat the matzo bread we brought along, and go back to work. Matzo is all they eat these days, since it's getting to be Passover.

  I'm back to copying, and Tsaphar is reading away.

  'Wow! This is talking about you!' She reads:

  The son of Ham shall journey from the lands beyond the stars to read the golden book of Shem. The sign of his coming is this: a star shall descend from the heavens and rest on the apex of the great monument. Then, the one who opens shall open the gate, and the son of Ham shall come. When he has read this book, he shall receive a gift from the anointed King to take to the lands beyond the stars.

  I finally finish with the copying. Tsaphar tests the copy on the computer to make sure they copied okay.

  There's a bit on the third plate that didn't make it. We enter that again. I read bits of it on the computer, especially the bits Tsaphar read out loud. The ends of the pins light up so we can read it in the dark.

  It's all there. But the computer i
s running out of power. We don't have any more power cells except the one in the metzig torch. That's starting to go a bit dim too now. The one in the computer will recharge if we set it on the roof in the sun, but not these others.

  'He told us to put them back the way we found them, didn't he?' she says.

  'They were covered with mud.'

  'Is that a hole over there? It looks like wet mud.'

  We lift the plates back up one by one. It takes two of us to lift each one.

  They're all in. We go to the hole. The mud is just the right consistency. We pick up hands full of it and slop it over the mouth of the hole with the golden plates.

  It's finally all covered. When it's dry, it should look the same as when we found it.

  We wash our hands in the tiny stream that runs along the passage. It's much bigger now than when we came.

  We're ready to go. But the light is going out fast.

  'We'd better hurry. How do we get out of here?' I say.

  'He said, go straight on until we get to a junction. Then, follow a light.'

  We start walking. The light's getting dimmer and dimmer.

  We walk faster and faster.

  Tsaphar trips and lands on my back, knocking me forward.

  'We'd better slow down,' she says.

  'But this light will go out. We'll be in the dark!'

  'But there's too many holes and rocks to go too fast!'

  'Let's just go then.'

  We go on.

  The light's gone out. It's pitch black. Since there was just a little bit left in the other power cell, I look for that in the bag and put that in in place of this one. We go some more. Soon that's completely out too.

  We can't see a thing, even our own hands when we stick them in front of our face.

  17

  Heptosh realised that they had done all they could. The rest of the population of the grey planet were either unwilling to move, were unreachable, or would be a detriment to the new society if they did move.

  At least the population on the ground level of Thevsos was significantly reduced so there would be space to grow more things and make life more bearable for those who stayed.

  One group of newcomers were people who used to administrate such things as spaceports and infrastructure maintenance, and other essential planetary services until even their job got taken over by robots and computers. They were offered land on comfortable planets as a severance benefit, but that came at a price, that of a bio-media upload. The ones who refused found that their compensation was no more than a small plot of land under the brownish grey mist of Thevsos. They were glad to come, and Heptosh readily saw that they would be useful in all the planets. However not all the populations wanted them, so he sent them to ones that did. A few went about with Heptosh to help administrate the exodus. Thus, the job became easier and easier for him as time went on.

  In all, they had set up three gates in different parts of the planet. One gate wasn't doing it fast enough. Heptosh and Rov the Tinker, along with some of their new help, had found two sets of giant sized tele-gates that would get people through much more quickly. Representatives of the ethnic communities that had already arrived suggested the locations. Neuryzh borrowed a ship big enough to transport them, and they set them up.

  Just as the two began operation, the authorities of Thevsos discovered the first tele-gate. The first sign that things weren't as they should be, was the stampede.

  Tsim was doing his shift of duty at the time. People who managed to get in, informed him that imperial storm troopers had landed and were cordoning off the area surrounding the gate.

  Then, apparently, the stampede in Thevsos pushed the gate so that it toppled over on its back, and those left on that planet were jumping in on every side, as though the relocator beam were a pool of water. As soon as they became subject to the gravity of Nephtesh, they fell on the heads of those still squeezing in the bottom end, causing a few injuries. People on the Nephtesh side began pulling people out of the way. Some had to be treated for broken necks. A couple of children were crushed to death.

  As soon as the newcomers stopped literally pouring in and all were pulled to safety, Tsim began working away at the switch. It had become corroded over the centuries.

  The first uniformed man bounded in carrying a distance weapon. Tsim got the switch down as the legs of two more began to appear. Two pairs of legs from the waist down landed on Nephteshi soil, along with a pair of shod feet and a hand, leaving their top halves back in Thevsos.

  Before the first man could make use of his weapon, Tsim administered a swift kick to the back of his neck, which sent him and his weapon flying. Another man conveniently caught the weapon, and handed it to Tsim, who wisely set it aside while the others took control of the trooper.

  Tsim supervised the clean-up. That was the end of that gate.

  By now, people had begun pouring in through the other two gates, which were each on different planets. Heptosh returned to Nephtesh via the network of tele-gates they had set up for that purpose. Once the planets were comfortably populated, they would dismantle the network and let each planet govern itself independently.

  Another useful discovery Heptosh and Shan had made were a group of bionics with in depth knowledge of relocation technology, who could repair relocator motors. Already, Rov the Tinker, along with his apprentices were learning the art. A school was in the making. This was important in a way Heptosh appreciated. It would break the monopoly of the Heknosh clan, thereby giving Amanhep less of an edge in expanding his empire.

  Though his fellow Tokis tried to persuade him, and the prospect tempted him, Neuryzh had warned him against reviving the original Nephteshi empire. Some thought that it would be a good counterbalance to Amanhep's, but Neuryzh believed that something of an opposite nature would be more effective. Heptosh readily saw the wisdom of that, and made it clear that each planet would be on its own to use their resources as best they could. He had done his best to direct the people so that only groups that were compatible with one another would share a planet. A loose alliance of independent human planets, such as would result from this operation, would come to one another's aid if any of their planets were attacked.

  Things were doing well, and now it looked as though their job was almost complete.

  18

  in pitch blackness, beneath the Holy City

  the adventurers feel about

  I put the metzig torch away.

  'What do we do now?' Tsaphar says.

  'Let's just walk slowly. I'll shuffle my feet in case there's a hole. You hold on to my shoulders.'

  We're walking very slowly. I'm feeling the rock wall next to me.

  'What about scorpions and snakes?' Tsaphar says.

  I just keep quiet and keep walking. I don't want to think about that.

  Then, I remember. 'He said nothing will hurt us while we're down here if we come when he said to.'

  'And we did.'

  'So nothing will hurt us.'

  I feel better. I can tell by the way she's holding onto me she feels better too.

  This is taking a long, long time.

  I'm hungry again. We still have another couple of pieces of matzo in our bag.

  'Want to stop and eat?' I say.

  'Yeah.'

  'I think there's a rock here. We can sit down.'

  We sit down. I feel about in the bag for the bread.

  We're eating.

  'Is that a light over there?' Tsaphar says.

  I look.

  Sure enough. There's a very dim reddish light. It's so dim, we wouldn't have seen it had we still had our torch on -- not even a fire light.

  We quickly finish our bread.

  We start off again. This time, I see the wall's not on my right any more. We must be in that place he said there were several ways to go.

  We follow the dim red light. It gets bigger and bigger. It's also getting much brighter.

  Now, I see where the light is coming from. It's
just below us. We have to climb down.

  Finally we're through. We're blinded by the light of the setting sun.

  This looks like a place where water should be flowing into the pool below us.

  We climb down. It's a large square pool.

  He had said that usually, this passage would have water in it. It probably feeds the pool.

  'We're on the West side of the city,' I say. 'We have to get over to the East side.'

  'We've walked a long way then,' says Tsaphar.

  'Let's go.'

  We go through a gate not far from us.

  The houses here look a lot nicer than where we've been before. That, over there, is one of the most beautiful palaces I've ever seen since arriving on this planet -- besides the temple. It's almost up to some of the ones in Teknesh. The other houses here are beautiful too, but got high walls around them.

  The farther we go, the closer to the street they are.

  We can tell, as we pass some of the houses, people are having their Passover Seder.

  We're going down-hill. I see a wall further down there, but there's more of the city on the other side. We can see the Temple far off on top of the next hill.

  There's a large street crossing the one we're on, and it looks like this one dead-ends into the wall. We turn and go down the other street until we find a way through.

  Tsaphar says, 'I'm amazed when I think about it.'

  'What?'

  'Reb Yeshua said we'd have just enough light. We did, then it went out. If it had still been on, we wouldn't have seen the sunlight coming through the passage.'

  'And that was the sun shining straight through that hole,' I add.

  Finally, we find a gate. On the other side, the road starts going up-hill again. I think this is the Lower City now, the part of town we're used to, with the crowded markets and all. No one's selling anything though. I looks a lot different at night.

  Lots of people are camped along the street. Some are having their Seder. A few are finished.

  We've been through parts of this before, but we still don't totally know our way about.