Saul's shovel clanged against something hard. Kneeling in the arid soil, he pried loose another rock and rolled it onto the pile with the others. Pain gnawed his shoulders, and he shivered beneath his heavy wool shirt, now damp with sweat.
He had brought Jason Dayan to a sheltered ledge overlooking Wildhorse Lake, just below the summit of Steens Mountain. But now he was unsure of the spot. Decades had passed since the old woman asked him to hide her "white man's artifact," bury it somewhere safe. She had died shortly thereafter.
"Keep digging," said Dayan, looking up from the scope of his rifle. It was more like a cannon, fifty caliber at least, heavy enough to need its own bipod. He had propped the weapon up on a boulder so he could shoot anyone or anything approaching along the road.
A light snow had begun to fall, dry little flakes blowing in the wind.
"Are you expecting someone?" asked Saul with a furtive glance at the ridge. Demi had gone hunting that morning high on the mountain where the big bucks lingered through October.
"This place is crawling with government agents."
"Why are they here?"
Dayan nodded toward the shallow pit Saul had managed to dig. "They want the artifact."
"Then let's give it to them. If what I buried could help stop this virus, we have to give it to them. By God, Jason, we have to."
"No," said Dayan, the steam of is breath swirling with the snowflakes. "It doesn't belong to them. They were never meant to see it."
Another shiver racked Saul's body, and he resumed his digging. He managed a few more inches, a few more rocks, before his aching shoulders forced him to stop again. He leaned on the long handle of his shovel. "People are doing the Ghost Dance again."
Dayan nodded. "Maybe they know something. Maybe they can feel this mountain's gravity, this knot in the universe."
Saul paused, recalling Dr. Brisling's accusations. "Did you know the virus came from the seeds the scientists found in the Old One's stomach?"
"Yes. Where I was born, we call the weed nura, 'fire' in ancient Aramaic. But the children all call it lagrimas for the little white tears it sheds. I saw the nura weed growing on your windowsill."
"Yes. And what I want to know is why the hell you didn't warn me before I planted it."
"Because it was already too late. When the scientists handed over the Old One's body with only four seeds, not five, I knew they had stolen one."
"You could have warned them."
"We did warn them. We asked them not to desecrate the Old One's body. We asked them to respect the tribe's wishes and customs, your granddaughter's tribe. Instead, they cut him open and found the nura seeds."
"But you put them there."
Dayan shook his head. "No. It may be hard for you to believe, but I didn't make the virus, and I certainly didn't put the seeds in the Old One's stomach. There were there already. He swallowed them before he died, ten thousand years ago."
Saul's head began to swim. "Either way, you knew they contained the virus!"
"I did."
Then it occurred to Saul. "It was a test. The Old One was a test."
"The last of many."
Saul resumed his digging, and soon his shovel struck something firm but hollow. Kneeling, he brushed the dirt from a square of matte black plastic, vinyl, twenty inches to a side. It was the lid of the container he had buried years ago. Saul glanced up, panting. "You've known this pandemic was coming all along, haven't you?"
Dayan set his rifle against the boulder and approached, kneeling beside Saul. "Yes. I've been preparing Jewish and Native people all along, pushing tribal energy independence, educating our youth in science and technology, the tools we'll need."
"My wind turbines. The solar panels."
Dayan nodded. "When this world begins to crumble, we'll gather in all the places I've prepared for us, the homesteads and reservations powered by the sun and the wind. And when the vultures and coyotes have eaten their fill, we'll rebuild civilization in our own image."
They worked together at the edge of the pit, clearing the dirt from around the container. Snowflakes alighted on their bare heads, glittering like melting gems. All the while, Saul kept stealing glances at the ridge, silently admonishing himself for hoping to see Demi's lanky silhouette against the clouds, rifle slung across her broad shoulders.
Dayan lifted the container from the pit and set it aside, grimacing in pain. He stood, and for the first time, Saul noticed that the front of his black overcoat was riddled with holes, each clearly visible over the brilliant blue garment he wore beneath. "How do you know what's in that container? I buried it before I even met you."
Dayan paused and nodded to himself. "This will be difficult for you to understand. But you of all people deserve to hear it."
Saul got to his feet and brushed off his hands.
"I wasn't born in Brooklyn to an Orthodox family," Dayan said.
"I was beginning to suspect that."
"I was born in a village on the west coast of what you call Mexico, two thousand five hundred years from now. I had a family, a sister and twin nieces I loved like daughters. And I had a pet, a lion of Syria." He closed his eyes, taking in the air of memory. And when he opened them again, they seemed darker, like storm clouds. "They are centuries from me now. And I know I will never see them again. But I am still there, with them in that future." He tapped the side of his head with his index finger. "I know, because I remember."
"I don't know what to say, Jason. I don't."
"I know what this looks like, and it's occurred to me many times that I may be clinically insane, that my memories are nothing more than an elaborate delusion. But there's proof, Saul, physical proof."
"What proof?"
Dayan laughed. "In all the years we've known each other, did you ever once stop and wonder how an uneducated Orthodox boy just wandered off the shtetl and ended up building the world's most powerful biotech company?"
"A heimish boy can be successful, can't he?"
Dayan laughed. "Not as successful as I've been. Nobody could be." Again, he tapped the side of his head, his expression intent. "I know things this civilization hasn't discovered yet. I've seen things you can't even imagine, Saul. A hundred sunsets in a day. The shining towers of Nueva Coyolapan. I've heard the Symphony of Nebulas." He opened the front of his overcoat to reveal the shimmering blue garment beneath.
Saul gasped. "That's what the Old One was wearing when they buried him! You dug him up!"
"Do you really think I would do that, after all we went through to help the tribe?" He caressed the blue fabric, and his fingers left a rippling wake. "No, this may look like the Old One's tunic, but I assure you it's still with him in the earth."
A wave of dizziness came over Saul, and he sat down at the edge of the pit.
"Time travel is like dying, or what I imagine dying will be like. Bang! You catch a glimpse of everything all at once. Then it's gone. Maybe that's what people mean when they see the light, when they see their whole life flash before them. Maybe that's what Wovoka saw when he died and came back to life."
Delbert thought he heard something way down on the ridge. But the road was clear, blank with snow.
"Time travel is unpredictable. Once they snip the strings, you're no longer anchored to the fabric of space-time. You might wash up anywhere, or at any time. You might even end up in more than one place at more than one time. I actually ended up in three different places in three different times. And so, there's three us, three of me, three versions of the same person. There's the version you see standing here. There's the Old One, the version we buried. And then there's Seth, the son of Adam and Eve."
Delbert heard it again, a fleeting, high-pitched hum on the wind.
"The Old One washed up closed to this mountain, pulled in by its gravity. It pulled me here too, eventually. But Seth landed far away and so long ago. But still the mountain pulled him, pulled him westward, always westward." Dayan eyed the black container on the ground. "And in a way, he made it."
Delbert looked up at the man now towering above him. "Do you really expect me to believe any of this?"
"No. Not without the proof I mentioned. And for that, you would need to dig up the Old One, or find the bones of Seth."
Dayan reached inside his blue garment and pulled out a small leather pouch that hung around his neck. As Saul got to his feet, Dayan carefully emptied the pouch's contents into his cupped palm: five tiny round seeds that settled into the creases of his big hand. "These are the five nura seeds I carry, the same seeds the Old One and Seth carried. Our task was to plant them in the past in order to ensure the existence of our future."
He returned the seeds to their pouch and slipped it back under his garment. "In my future, we teach our children that long ago the world grew wicked and corrupt. One day, Hashem, the Great Spirit, sent a messenger to warn the righteous and prepare them for a great plague only they would survive. And when that plague came and passed, the survivors rebuilt civilization in their own image. They were led by a girl, brilliant and fierce. And she was called Ha-Yesod, the Foundation."
Saul shivered. In his many years, he had encountered a small handful of individuals with koach, mystical power, buhah as Demi would say, men and women who could heal with a song or read the clouds. But Jason Dayan's koach was something completely different, cold and alien, terrifying.
"I am that messenger, sent by Hashem to prepare the righteous. I was conceived specially for the task. In one hand, I carry the plague, and in the other, I carry the blueprints for our future world, technical information our young scientists will need in order to rebuild civilization. But that information is hidden in place, and must remain hidden until the plague has run its course, or else it might be used to stop it, changing the future, obliterating my future. That beautiful world I left behind."
Saul glanced at the container. "Is that what I buried, the blueprints?"
"Not the blueprints themselves, I think, but a clue to their location." Dayan returned to the boulder and leaned back against it. Saul shivered near the pit, the container lying on the snow-dusted ground between them.
Dayan spoke to the air. "I am Seth, son of Adam and Eve. I am the Old One. We are identical in body but separated in space and time. And from the moment of our separation, our minds became three, three separate wills, each free to carry out his task, or not, depending on where and when we found ourselves. The Old One found himself among an Ice Age people too primitive even to recognize the blueprints, let alone use them, so he swallowed his nura seeds instead of planting them, and he let his blueprints die with him."
Dayan frowned, the two halves of his split eyebrow nearly joining. "Seth also chose not to plant his nura seeds. And he gave the blueprints to his children, so that later generations might benefit from them. And if I'm right, the artifact you buried says exactly where to find them."
Saul eyed the ridge again, no longer hoping to see Demi. If the mountain was crawling with government agents like Dayan said, then maybe they were on their way to the summit right now. Maybe all he had to do was buy some time. "But Seth wanted the world to have them."
"In our ancient Jewish traditions, Seth has always represented a new hope for humanity, a second chance. But it wasn't Seth who wanted to share the blueprints with everyone, but his descendant, the Rab Mag, Lord of the Magi. He inherited Seth's blueprints, and his blue robe and his nura seeds."
"Lord of the Magi, as in the Magi from the New Testament?"
"That part of their Bible is true, my friend. Except the Magi weren't following a star in the sky. They were following the Rab Mag, who knew precisely when and where Jesus of Nazareth would be born. And the Rab Mag stayed with Jesus for many years, teaching the child as he grew, shaping his thoughts and philosophies."
Saul was speechless.
The wind had let up, and the snow seemed to hang in midair, listening. "I often daydream about the conversations they had, the secrets they shared." He inhaled the brittle air, held it for a moment, then let it out. "But in the end, the student swayed the master. Jesus convinced the Rab Mag to defer judgment, to withhold the plague and preserve his blueprints so that someday, all people might benefit from them."
Now, Delbert could hear a vehicle creeping up the ridge, it's engine a faint but persistent drone.
Dayan approached the black box and stood with one boot on top of it. "Seeds of Salvation. Semina sinapis. That's what Jesus called the blueprints. He saw in them a means to bring about his kingdom on earth for all people, free of want and strife. That's what he was talking about in his parable of the Mustard Seed. Not a kingdom of heaven and miracles, but an earthly kingdom, transformed by science and technology."
Dayan lowered his boot and stood tall, godlike. "But I tell you, Saul, this world will burn before that kingdom comes. This I know in my heart and in my mind."
Saul picked up the shovel and gripped its long handle with both hands, his shoulders on fire. He had one good swing left in him, maybe two, more than Jason Dayan's head could withstand, god or not. Demi would be proud.
Now they both heard it, floating up from the ridge: the high-pitched rev of a car's engine.
Dayan ripped the shovel from Saul's hands and tossed it over the precipice. Then grabbing his rifle, he propped it up on the boulder. "Pick up that box and get ready to move!" Then he took aim.
______________
Author's note:
Thank you for reading Chapter 42!
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
-Frode
Image: Pilgrimage of the Magi by Gustave Doré