Transgression Read online

  Dov stood at the door to the lab, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door. “Shalom, my friend!” he shouted.

  “Who goes there?” The voice did not belong to Binyamin.

  Dov’s heart sagged. He would have turned back if he could, but that would look suspicious. He would have to bluff his way through. Ari and Rivka depended on him.

  “Binyamin, is that you? I have brought you a cup of coffee.”

  “Binyamin fell sick with food poisoning,” said the guard. “I replaced him at midnight.”

  Dov walked toward the back of the lab.

  The Chinese physicist stood at the controls to the wormhole, dozing on his feet, his hands ready to correct anything amiss.

  Dov decided he would ask the prime minister to give the physicist a medal when this all ended. “Hallo, Dr. Hsiu!”

  The physicist nodded at him. And winked. He was ready to play his role in this terrible game.

  Dov strode toward the man on guard. “Shalom, I am called Dov. Dov Lifshutz.”

  “I know who you are, Lifshutz,” said the guard. “You and Kazan are responsible for all this trouble.” He wore an untrimmed beard. Ritual fringes hung down below his army shirt.

  Sweat ran down Dov’s back until it reached the hard metal gun wedged in the small of his back inside his belt. “It is no doubt we are to blame,” Dov said, forcing himself to smile. “We failed to keep watch on that wicked goy, the American Professor West.”

  “West only did what Kazan gave him the knowledge to do.”

  “Oy!” Dov said, trying frantically to think what a Haredi would say. “All is in the hands of HaShem, yes?”

  The guard looked taken aback.

  “And what is your name?” Dov asked.

  “Mordecai.”

  “Shalom aleicha, Mordecai. You are not Binyamin, but would you care for his coffee?”

  “Is it kosher?”

  “Yes.” A lie, but for the good of the world. Dov extended his gift. Now, Dr. Hsiu, please now.

  Mordecai reached out to take the Styrofoam cup.

  A blast of sparks shot out from the power supply.

  Dov dropped the cup. Both he and Mordecai dove for cover. Thank you, Dr. Hsiu. Dov covered his head while sparks flew. By coincidence, he found himself wedged up against the door leading to the wormhole. His hand reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the sheet of paper, and eased it under the door.

  “Hey! Lifshutz! Away from that door!”

  He looked up.

  Mordecai stood with his M-16 leveled at Dov’s head.

  Dov put on his most innocent face. “The power supply is a terrifying thing, yes? I do not know how you can stand to remain here for many hours through the night.” Slowly, he stood up and gestured apologetically at the mess on the floor. “I am sorry about dropping your coffee, my friend.”

  “Step away from that door and come around this side. Now!”

  “Tov me’od,” Dov said in his most calming voice. Very good.

  “Quickly, quickly!”

  Dov stepped forward. Too fast. His foot skidded on the wet floor and he staggered forward, then slipped and fell. The hot coffee scalded his palms. He rolled away and beat his hands frantically on his jacket to cool them.

  Had Binyamin been there, he would have gone to get some rags to mop up the mess. And Dov would have opened the door and tossed his pistol into the wormhole.

  “Up!” Mordecai said. He gestured with his rifle.

  Dov stood as quickly as he could and backed away toward Dr. Hsiu.

  “Lifshutz, I believe you have a mess to clean up. Be quick about it, and then leave.”

  Dov blew on his burned hands. They hurt, but not very badly. There would be no serious damage.

  Except to the plan. That lay in ruins.

  * * *

  Ari

  Ari lay on his belly next to Rivka in the very heart of the wormhole, his ear pressed up to the door, listening. A thin crack of light leaked under the door, allowing him to see a little.

  Tears ran down Rivka’s face.

  Ari wanted to cry, too.

  Dov had failed.

  Ari gestured with his head. “Back!” he whispered.

  Rivka nodded. Together, they crawled backward until they were safely in the past. Here it was pitch-black, the radiation-diffusing properties of the wormhole eliminating the light from the door crack.

  Ari clutched the folded sheet of paper. For now, this was all they had. He pulled his flashlight out of his backpack and shined it on the paper.

  It didn’t make much sense to Ari.

  “Let’s go outside,” Rivka said. “I want to get as far away from that wormhole as possible.”

  They went outside but found it too dark to see without Ari’s flashlight. At four in the morning, the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour or so. And today being the ninth day of the lunar month, the moon had gone down a few hours ago.

  They sat on the ground and shined the light on the paper. “What do you think?” Ari asked.

  “Column B is obviously a set of dates,” Rivka said. “May 27 to June 7.”

  “Agreed,” Ari said. “You Americans put the month first, contrary to all reason.”

  “And column D looks like times,” Rivka said. “It’s very strange. 21:17—that would be 9:17 P.M. They go all the way up to one minute past midnight. What does that mean?”

  Ari shrugged. Something nagged at his brain, but he could not quite place it.

  “Then column A has to be a set of numbered days, starting with Friday, then Saturday, Sunday.” Rivka did some silent counting on her fingers. “Yes, they correlate all the way down the line.”

  “Then perhaps column C is the set of corresponding dates in the Jewish calendar,” Ari said. “5 Sivan, 6 Sivan, down to 16 Sivan.”

  “Is that possible, that Dr. West calculated the Jewish calendar for this year?” Rivka said. “Why would he do that? What’s special about these dates?”

  “Anything is possible,” Ari said and then hastily corrected himself. “Except for those things which are impossible.”

  “What a genius!” Rivka said, a smile in her voice. “Is that what they gave you the Ph.D. for?”

  Ari laughed out loud. “Touché, my friend. I was thinking of the saying in physics that everything not forbidden is required. I believe Gell-Mann said it first.”

  “Weird idea,” said Rivka. “I don’t care who said it.”

  “Very well, we must yet explain column E,” Ari said. “It makes no sense to me.”

  They both stared at the paper for several minutes.

  “Oh! I see it!” Rivka said.

  “What do you see?”

  “Those numbers in column D,” Rivka said. “Those aren’t times. They’re verse numbers.”

  “Verses?” Ari said. “Like in the Bible?”

  “The New Testament,” Rivka said. “The Book of Acts. Look at column E and read down. ‘P. 2 Jer.’ That means Paul to Jerusalem.”

  “And the next one? ‘P. 2 Ja.’ What does that mean?”

  “Paul to James. Paul met with a man named James the day after arriving in town. I would guess that was Saturday night.”

  “Brother Yaakov,” Ari said. “He gave Renegade Saul an ultimatum after Shabbat ended.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Brother Baruch told me.”

  “Yaakov is James in Hebrew. That confirms it then. And look at the rest of these. I can read them all. ‘P. 2 T. 1.’ That’s the next day, Paul’s first visit to the Temple. Then two days later, ‘P. 2 T. 2 *.’ That’s his second visit to the Temple.”

  “What does the asterisk mean?”

  “I don’t know. But the next day, ‘P. @ S.*,’ means Paul at the Sanhedrin.”

  “And another asterisk,” Ari said. “We still don’t know what that means.”

  “Then the next day, Paul exits Jerusalem—with an asterisk. The next day, Paul to Caesarea, no asterisk. Then four days later, Paul at Felix.”


  “Asterisk.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Rivka said, grabbing the spreadsheet.

  “What, Rivka?”

  “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!”

  “What is it?”

  “Every one of those asterisks marks an incident in which Paul’s location is known precisely.”

  Ari stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  “He’s going to kill Paul.” The spreadsheet in her hands began to shake. “That’s why he brought a gun.”

  Ari closed his eyes. His pulse hammered in his skull. What if Damien really succeeded in shooting Paul? What would that mean for the subsequent history of Christianity? Without Paul, could there have been Augustine? Luther?

  Hitler?

  All of which was useless speculation. You could not change the past. It was mathematically impossible. As a physicist, Ari felt dead certain that Damien must fail.

  But as a Jew, Ari wished him all the luck in the world.

  * * *

  Damien

  Damien locked the door of his rented house and strode down the street. Here I come, Paul, ready or not!

  Today was Tuesday, May 31, in the year-of-somebody-else’s-Lord 57. Today, Damien was going to throw a giant monkey wrench into the gears of history. The past would never be the same again.

  Damien grinned. He enjoyed making bad puns about time.

  He wondered what would happen to the future world to which Ari and Rivka had returned. He guessed it would be like in that movie Back to the Future. The future would simply…never happen. More correctly, the future would turn out different from the one he remembered.

  The death of Paul several years early would have a ripple effect. If a butterfly sneezing in Beijing could cause a tornado in Kansas, then a bullet in the brain of Paul would derail the whole history of the church. He wouldn’t live to write all those books that screwed up people’s heads. He wouldn’t convert anybody in Rome, so you could kiss the papacy good-bye. As the years passed, the new future would diverge more and more from the old one.

  Luther, Bacon, Newton—they would be different men, uncontaminated by the evil effects of Christianity. There would be no Western rationalism, no rise of science, no industrial revolution. No physicists. Not even a Dr. Damien West. Wasn’t that a pretty little paradox?

  Not really, Damien decided. He had already ceased to exist within the old future. Therefore, his existence didn’t require that future. He was here, and it made no difference how he got here. You could tie yourself in knots worrying about philosophical nitwittery. What mattered was what you could touch, see, measure.

  Such as the kinetic energy of a hollow-point +P loaded nine millimeter bullet. That was reality. Philosophy was a crock. 11

  A few minutes later, he arrived at the southern entrance of the Temple Mount. He went in through the giant gates and climbed the many dozen steps ascending through the belly of the Temple Mount. Finally he emerged into the bright morning sunlight in the outer court of the Temple.

  Rivka had been good enough to show him the exact spot where Paul would address the crowd sometime today. The place was at the north end of the huge court. Damien took his time walking there. He had plenty of time. It would be hours before Paul got himself arrested.

  Then things would happen quickly. Damien wanted to spend the time scouting the killing ground. Preparation was the key.

  If you anticipated everything, you would be ready for anything.

  * * *

  Ari

  Ari felt a cold knot tightening in his stomach. “Rivka, this is crazy. We don’t even know Damien’s going to be there today.”

  She quickened her stride. “I’ll bet you anything that Paul’s going to be there,” she said. “And if Dr. West doesn’t show, he’s a fool. It’s his first chance.”

  “Rivka, this is useless. Damien has a gun. What good can we do?”

  “We can do more good there than we can sitting in Baruch’s house,” Rivka said. “Besides, I thought your orders were to prevent Dr. West from messing anything up.”

  “Yes, correct.” But since it is logically impossible for Damien to change the future, why should I do anything? Ari cleared his throat. “Very well, then, what exactly do you plan to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Rivka said. “I know Paul will be arrested in the inner Temple, and I know Dr. West won’t try anything there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he’s a goy, and he looks like one,” Rivka said. “If he tried to get into the inner Temple, he’d be stoned on the spot. Oddly enough, that’s the charge Paul will be facing—that he’s trying to take a goy in with him.”

  “Is he really going to try that?” Ari asked.

  “No, of course not,” Rivka said. “He wouldn’t get ten feet beyond the barrier with a goy. If he tried, the Levite guards would kill them both on the spot. The goy would provide all the evidence you would need that Paul was guilty. The fact is that Paul will be held for two years, and then he’ll be released for lack of evidence.”

  “That’s crazy,” Ari said. “They can’t do that.”

  “Political prisoners were held much longer in the twentieth century,” Rivka said.

  “Will be held,” Ari said. “None of that has happened yet.”

  “Whatever.” Rivka stopped suddenly.

  “What’s up?” Ari asked. They were standing at the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. It looked far more impressive than he remembered it from modern Jerusalem. At this corner, the glistening white limestone towered above them at a height equal to a fifteen-story building. Amazing.

  “We have a choice of several entrances,” Rivka said. She pointed toward the largest one: the Huldah Gates on the south side. “I definitely don’t want to take that one.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s the one I took Dr. West through the other day, when we went on our little tour of the Temple Mount. Odds are he’ll go that way, since it’s familiar to him. I really don’t want to run into him just yet.”

  “You gave him a tour?”

  She winced. “I was stupid enough to show him the exact spot where Paul is going to stand when he addresses the people.”

  “When Paul does what?” Ari asked. “You’ll forgive me for my ignorance, but I don’t quite understand the sequence of events.”

  “It’s simple,” Rivka said. “A riot starts in the inner Temple around Paul. The mob carries him out and down the steps into the outer court, presumably on the north side.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Rivka said. “But it’s a good guess. The Romans are standing watch over the Temple Mount on the north side, which adjoins their Fortress Antonia. They see the riot and intervene, arresting Paul. They take him north to the Antonia, and then Paul gets permission to speak to the crowd. It’s quite a long speech—five or ten minutes at least.”

  “Standing still the whole time?” Ari asked.

  “Yes, at the top of some stairs.”

  “Totally exposed to anyone with a gun.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what happens?” Ari asked.

  “The crowd riots again, and Paul gets hauled into the Antonia. For the next few days, he’s in Roman custody. He comes out briefly for one quick trip to the Sanhedrin, but mostly he’s locked up out of sight.”

  “I thought you said he would be in prison for two years,” Ari said.

  “Yes, but not here in Jerusalem,” Rivka said. “Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow, he goes before the Sanhedrin. Thursday night, the Romans sneak him out of town.”

  “How did you pin down the dates?”

  “I didn’t,” Rivka said. “Dr. West did, or rather he made some good guesses which are turning out to be correct. He got the year right, and that pretty much determines the dates of the whole sequence, even though Acts doesn’t give any explicit dates. I went over every verse in my head and made a little table of possibilities. With some reasonable
assumptions, it turns out that you can narrow down the day of the arrest to one day. Today.”

  “What kind of assumptions?”

  “Well, we have a record of a number of events happening over about two weeks’ time. Some of those events can’t happen on Shabbat, because Jews wouldn’t be doing such things on Shabbat. There’s a funny gap in the middle, but you can bridge it because you know the whole episode runs twelve days, start to finish.”

  “And you’re sure today’s the day?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure,” Rivka said. “But Dr. West is, and that makes me nervous. If he’s right, he’ll have Paul lined up in his sights before the sun goes down tonight.”

  “He will fail,” Ari said.

  “Darn right, he’ll fail!” Rivka said. “I’m going to make him fail, if I have to take a bullet to stop him.”

  Ari felt a cold stab of fear in his soul. If anything happened to her he would go crazy.

  He was already going crazy, seeing her so close, knowing she was so far from him. He had chased her through time to get a second chance, but as far as she was concerned, he had never even had a first chance. Not that she disliked him. So far as he could tell, she rather enjoyed his company. It was nothing personal—just religion. Because she was a Christian. Because he was not. Because she would never change, and neither would he.

  Suddenly Rivka grabbed Ari’s arm. “Don’t move.”

  Ari would not have moved if all the hornets in Jerusalem had been after him.

  “You won’t believe this,” Rivka said, releasing him, breathing again. “Dr. West just passed by, maybe sixty yards behind you. He’s heading toward the gates of the Temple Mount.”

  “Did he have a gun?” Ari asked.

  “I didn’t see one,” Rivka said. “But I know he has it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Did he see us?” Ari asked.

  “If he had, we’d be in deep trouble right now.”

  “We are already in deep trouble,” Ari said. “How are you going to stop a man with a gun, Rivka? Seriously.”