The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3)

by Anthony Caplan

  I started back along the Boulevard Youssef to my room in a former high-end mansion of one of the original planned neighborhoods that, like the tower of David itself, had never been occupied by its intended residents. The original plans were conceived as a development project to attract entrepreneurs and rich, expatriate retirees to the valley, but the builders had gone bust in the downturn of 2055, following the methane floods. And David and his followers had set up camp in the abandoned structures, rigging up their own electricity and water projects, laboring unnoticed for many years. The remnants of the Azueto police state, the oligarchs and crime bosses that still ruled Mexico as clients of the Repho, had slowly become powerless to move against them because of their sheer numbers and the extravagant claims that David was making for himself. Far from refusing his sobriquet, he seeemed to be explicitly claiming the status of a prophet in the line of Melchizedek, of posing an alternative to the criminal rule of the cartels, of ushering in an age of unlimited prosperity and bounty for the poor, the underclasses of America and the world.

  The landlady of the rooming house was watering plants along the entrance gate with a sprinkler jug she refilled from the large plastic barrels of recycled rainwater, which ran from gutters repurposed from corrugated roofing. She gave me a slight nod and carried on with her work. I walked up the stone steps and entered the building. Inside, several tenants sat on the couches and conversed in soft whispers in the cool shade of the late afternoon. Open windows carried in noises of traffic from the street over the remaining hedges. Many of the tenants had wandered in from the pools of Creatives still active in the Repho and the CUA. There was an esprit de corps along with a less evident cynicism, a weary traveler’s air of running low on funds and having soon to return to the world of the Repho nanny state, jobs and compromises with reality.

  My first feeling was awkwardness, because I was old for the people staying there, but I suppose my balding head gave me an air of distance and neutrality. As we sat in the lounge and pretended to busy ourselves with evening plans, several young volunteers approached and passed me a printed pamphlet. It had the logo of St. George and the Dragon and a schedule of meeting times, along with an address: an apartment of Piso 48, one of the upper floors of the tower.

  “Habemus gladii duo,” said one of them, with a laugh.

  “Thank you,” I said, flattered to receive any information that could fill my time between boiling water and setting down at the table with my bowl of noodles.

  “I see you’ve been approached,” said a man to me. I was sittting at the table and eating. I looked at the pamphlet again, studying its crude depiction of the expressionless knight and the convulsing dragon, trying to decipher what sort of group it was and whether it might be worth my time to go that night to the scheduled commune.

  His name was Hank Loew and he was an American, like me, an older man with a large bulbous nose with enlarged pores. He was standing there somewhat dimly with a plate of food he’d just processed at the counter of microwave ovens, induction skillets and several beat up old-fashioned electric kettles.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a little bit ridiculous, of course. The Latin. The secrecy.”

  “Nothing is ridiculous about it,” he said, sitting across the table. “Perhaps pretentious, but the best intended have always been pretentious. Do you mind if I sit?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Hank had been in the Valle de Uapar since the beginning. An engineer, he’d worked for Vaillancourt, the firm out of Hartford, in New Albion, to install intelligent walkways and interpersonal feedback knolls in the resort city. When they abandoned the project, instead of going home, Loew had been attracted by the band of squatters that immediately had come in, including Shavelson, then a bookseller, a man of the creative class who had specialized in obscure works of esoteric mystical impact that had enjoyed a brief moment of popularity among the intelligentsia, like Gigi Pirelli’s tryptic Unquenchable Logic. The squatters had plans of their own for socially relevant projects aimed at improving the lives of the disenfranchised. Just at that time in his life when his augment had started to clog, and feeling abandoned by the stream of information, Loew had the removal carried out by Catalunian doctors that had joined the Shavelson project. It had taken, he said, several years of rehabilitative work before he felt he was functioning at full steam, and he still had trouble walking.

  “Do you know Everett Riggs?” I asked him.

  “Yes, Everett is an old friend.”

  “I’m working for him in the hydroponic wing,” I said.

  “That’s a good start, and now the St. George. Impressive.”

  “Everett is a former colleague of mine,” I bragged.

  “His academic past has been a hindrance. David hates academia. He had a traumatic experience in college. He felt rejected by one of the professors who claimed he lacked originality in his thesis.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s why Everett is stuck in the hydroponic wing.”

  “And you?”

  “I am doing what I have discovered as my life work, perfecting a program for instantaneous translation from any language into the archetypal.”

  “Print?”

  “No. Primarily audio.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yes, I’m working on the program code. Soon I will be ready to present at the technical forum.”

  I finished my noodles and, before I picked up my bowl to go wash up, I invited Loew to come with me that night to the St. George club meeting. I told him about my true intention, besides finding Corrag.

  “I’m looking for my father’s book. It’s called Aviation and the Long Night. Do you know it?”

  “It rings a bell.”

  “I believe Shavelson must have information about it. I would love to have a copy and finally read it.”

  “Your faith in the Saint has got to be a point in your favor, Ricky.”

  That night we went together to the tower once the sun had set. There were hundreds of people milling in the street and the plaza. Musicians tuned their instruments and storytellers held sway with grotesque puppets and fire eating apprentices. Inside the atrium, the gently coiling escalator began to move after the evening break. Loew said goodbye to me.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Only you’ve been invited. I don’t dare go.”

  I stepped on the wide metal rungs and began my climb, circling higher and higher. I glanced below at the shrinking people on the ground floor and back at my companions as we rose together up the slanting lever. Large groups stepped off on the tenth and 12th floors. I asked Loew later and he told me these were the training institutes for humanists and technical experts. Then, on the 23rd floor, secretive, silent men and women got off. These were the chambers of the consultative committees that prepared legislation and democratic access. There was hardly anyone left by the time we wound up to the 48th floor. Along with me were a couple of girls with wispy blond hair, sisters.

  There were no doors, but the walls of the hall were decorated with striking, singular murals in colors that leapt off the surface and disguised the corners. I spun around where I was and looked at a purple hummingbird, a white deer with a chain around its neck, three golden lions, a multi-limbed indigo goddess in her dancing pose, a cross on a crown of thorns and a mounted knight in battle. Below these murals milled the crowd of people. The sisters had disappeared. I wandered around, lost, and smiled amiably at everyone I came across. There was no clear focus or agenda. Finally, I asked someone hesitantly if there was some sort of plan for this evening's event. The man, with intricate facial scars and a wild, defiant light in his brown eyes, looked Maori or Hawaiian. He smiled at my naivete.

  “The fighting St. Georges, brother. We don’t have any specific plan. Just know that you’re here for a reason. Get used to the flow.”

  “What is the flow?”

  “Raising the faith.”

  “What faith exactly is that?”

  “The
evolving faith. The project, man. That’s the exercise. We work to build it and then defend it. Take ownership back into the world. It’s going to be great tonight. Glad to have you here.”

  He smiled at me.

  “How do you know David?” asked the man.

  “Never met him.” I said.

  “Well, brother. Bless you for your good fortune. Who are you?”

  “Who am I? You mean…?”

  “Yes, everything. Tell me everything.” He smiled again, as if daring me to go on about my journey, where it started, what formed me, how did I want it to end. He held a little black contraption and waved it in my direction, as if activating it.

  I told him a little about myself. I mentioned my search for my father’s book and my daughter Corrag, the twin purposes that had brought me this far. He listened intently and smiled when I was done.

  “That was excellent. Very good. Now look around. What do you see?”

  I was flattered by his appraisal, but thought to myself with a failing heart that I had somehow managed to hoodwink him by giving an incomplete account of my flawed assumptions and insincerely hiding my lack of faith in any enterprise as utopian and idealistic as the Saint’s city of progress and enlightenment.

  “People talking,” I said. Winding the beautiful fables that had inspired the guillotines of Robespierre, the black blocs of Seattle and the ill-fated incursions of the Korazan resisters.

  “Telling each other their stories, right. That’s the basis of our work. We go out and we listen and collect the stories. See, I have your story right here. And you can keep adding to it. It’s never done. We have them all, David’s library, man. The largest collection of stories. Infinito. Just keeps growing. Do you want to hear?”

  He held up the thin black box, a recording device.

  “No, not really.”

  “That’s a common reaction. Anytime you want, once you have one of these, you can hear your own or anybody else’s. Here’s a new three-dimensional output as well. I’ll upload yours now to the library. Give me a second. Just. One. Second. There.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Easy, man. Do you have a sponsor?”

  “A sponsor? No. I was just handed this.”

  I took out the pamphlet from my pocket, unfolded it and showed it to him.

  “You need a sponsor. I’ll be happy to recommend you,” he said. He still hadn’t told me his name. Neither had I told him mine. It didn’t matter. He had my story and soon I would have a black box and could begin collecting stories myself.

  “That’s great. Thank you,” I said.

  I couldn’t help getting caught up in the enthusiasm that spread like a mysterious disease in the eyes of everyone I exchanged glances with. At some point in the night I had practically lost sense of the passage of time. Silence fell over the room as a man, surrounded by a retinue of sleekly dressed bodyguards, came onto the floor. He was tall, bearded and dressed in a plain olive green suit of some workmanlike material that hung loosely on him, in stark contrast to his team of technocratic bodyguards. There seemed to be a glow emanating from his body, and the bodyguards cleared a space for him in the middle of the hall. Luckily, where I was I could see his face as he began to speak.

  “Brothers and sisters. It’s such a privilege to see you again. Happiness and good faith in everything you do. That is the mark of the Society of St. George. I'm so happy now when I'm with you. This is family."

  He spoke in a strong, baritone voice with just a hint of the gangster accents of the New York streets.

  “You know, all things in time come to a point, and we are in the time of great events leading to that point. They are hard times. It's written in all past accounts. For no story is a new story, brothers and sisters. We are living again in the movement of the life force, the ancestral energy. And we're climbing. Make no mistake. Climbing out of the traps of nature to the glories of the future times. We are full of a new power. Can you feel it? It's our movement. It's solid as a rock. We are strong, with our limitless and unstoppable spiritual evolution. As this painful time ends, the new human emerges from the womb of the common story to take her place in the sun of the everlasting heaven, people.”

  “But we are under siege, my brothers and sisters, and our enemies continue to seek new ways to subvert us and strangle the glory that we seek. Every day which we can continue our work, it becomes harder for them to survive. This is the Manichaean struggle. We fight with what we have. Light of light, truth from truth, the real Spirit that has spoken through the books. That is enough. But we cannot predict the day or the time of the battle. Have no doubt. They will seek to enslave us. That is always the way of the enemy of mankind, to seek destruction and vengeance for our love. Our love that is the cry of the scrapheap of the old man, the augmented man that seeks escape from the prison of mortality. We have built a tower, a tower that stands as a rebuke to the powerful, and we must remain strong and resolute, as I know you understand.”

  “But what about you, Saint?” cried a voice from the crowd, interrupting the spell of his speech.

  “I am unimportant,” said Shavelson. “Nobody is indispensable. This is bigger than all of us, now. Have no fear. You have each other. If you have two swords, that is enough.”

  I could see that the Saint’s appearance had had a profound effect on the gathered people, and that he was about to make an exit. Impulsively I approached him, taking that first step into the open space between us. The bodyguards turned to me immediately, sensing something out of the ordinary, but I persisted until I faced the man.

  “Mr. Shavelson,” I said. “I have an important request.” His eyes were the color of honey, and they seemed to me then to gleam with experience and wisdom beyond most human understanding. He looked at me carefully, judging the sort of man I was. As he was silent, letting me gather my words, I continued.

  “I've been looking for a book. It was my father’s work, his life work, and I believe it could hold important information, important enough to save us from the worst, the meteor cloud. The book enjoyed a limited print run back in the early years of the 21st century, but it disappeared quickly as collectors bought up the few copies that were available. I believe if it is anywhere, it is here in your library.”

  “What sort of information does it hold?” asked Shavelson.

  “All his life my father believed in science as a tool for spiritual growth. I was too young to understand his words. He spoke of circumventing the inevitable collapse, and he also held a secret about time once known to the ancient Maya. He never told me what that was, but I believe it can be found in this book.”

  “Well, if that is true it would be an advance in our understanding. Perhaps adding to our concepts of the basic physics of the universe. You should find this book. You can seek in our library. Use the resources we have available. You have my personal imprimatur.”

  There was an audible gasp from the people in the immediate vicinity who could hear what Shavelson had just said. It was an unprecedented sort of approval. I stepped back again, and the Saint turned to leave. My friend and would be sponsor stood at my shoulder.

  “Brilliantly done. I can see you have the sort of experience that needs no kind of help,” he said.

  I said nothing, full of myself for having succeeded so quickly to reach the doors of the great Shavelson library, with unlimited access no less. But I had a confession yet to make. It was an important one. When it came time for the new inductees to receive their black boxes, the so-called confessionals, I again broke precedent. After taking mine, I held up the line. Facing me was the woman who was handing out the confessionals, a black woman with the hardened face of a true devotee and little sympathy perhaps for what I had to say, but I chanced it anyway.

  “Excuse me. But I have a multisensor in me. The information is being fed to the offices of General Maldetodo in the Harvey Sonora of Chilpamingo.”

  “What? You have some nerve telling us this now after the Saint got you his personal imprima
tur and all.”

  She took me by the shoulder and pulled me beside her. I stayed there until the last person was through the line. Then she marched me over to the wall under the figure of the dancing goddess of destruction and began to lecture me on the fate that befell traitors and spies. Several others of the leadership of the society came over then and listened to me tell of the events leading up to the installation of the multisensor.

  “He’s basically not a spy,” said one man.

  “I don’t see how not,” said another.

  They had it out, arguing back and forth.

  I spoke up.

  “Look, the reason I confessed is because I don’t want this in me. I’m not happy. It was, was… was installed practically against my will.”

  “We can have it removed,” said someone.

  “That would be the best thing,” I agreed. “Before I can start my work. It’s important. The Saint gave me full access to the library.”

  “That’s true. We heard him,” said someone.

  “I couldn’t in good conscience…” I said.

  “No you couldn’t,” said the woman. She was still eyeing me warily.

  The operation was done in the medical laboratory of the Institute for Scientific Advancement on the 12th floor. The gleaming, antiseptic white tiles were the work of the ceramics factory in Castenango at the far end of the valley, the male orderly who brought me into the operating room pointed out. The committee of doctors there to receive me were grey-haired, respectable looking members of the medical profession, and I was surprised that there were so many, at least six of them, around the nanoscreen at the head of the gurney, discussing the results of some of the initial blood probes that had been made with nuclear materials.