Isn’t that how ‘geniuses’ are supposed to look?
Even though he was currently drooling strings of spit on to his collar, she found herself looking at him with a renewed respect. There was a brilliant mind somewhere in there. When they finally found out where Waldstein was squirrelled away, finally came face to face with him, she suspected that she was going to need Rashim to make sense of whatever indecipherable jargon the eccentric old man might share with them.
Three hours later, the transport gyro’s prop-thrusters clunked and whined as they reoriented to a vertical position. Everyone jerked in their seats. Rashim woke up, gripping his armrests with white-knuckled hands and squawking like a startled turkey. With a deafening roar, overhead storage racks rattling with the vibration, the shuttle began its descent.
Maddy turned to look out of one of the small round portholes beside her. She stared out at the sulphur-coloured sky, lemon and sickly. The sun was a pale ghost staring mournfully back at her through a chemical mist. Below them, she could see a thick carpet of low-hanging cloud from which several snow-tipped mountain peaks emerged on the horizon.
She strained against her harness and craned her neck to look down more obliquely. Directly below them, the tops of dozens of structures poked through the dense cloud like the clawing fingertips of a man drowning in quicksand. The pointed peaks of skyscrapers, topped with hairbrush tufts of aerials and dishes, solar panels, turbines and winking navigation lights.
As the shuttle began to descend into the carpet of cloud, it bumped and rucked through varying density pockets. It became dim inside the hold as the weak sunlight was suddenly obscured from view. Finally, they emerged from the higher-level chemical cloud cover into a lighter, thinner stratum of pollution. She got her very first glimpse of the eternal twilight of Denver: a forest of glowing steel-and-glass skyscrapers. Green navigation lights, surrounded by smog auras, blinked down the sides of each building. She watched other sky vehicles buzz slowly between the towers, headlights creating piercing beams before them. This twilight world was alive with light and movement as greasy spits of moisture began to dash at the window.
Heywood was grinning at her across the narrow aisle. ‘Guddamn made it! Finally made it!’
She could see the ground approaching them. An open expanse of rain-slicked tarmac and guide lights glowing like baubles on a Christmas tree. The thrusters suddenly roared violently, engulfing the shuttle in a cloud of propellant. With a heavy jarring thud, it set down.
The view outside the window began to clear, and through the rain-spattered plexiglas she saw ground crew on the wet tarmac outside, men in glistening overalls wearing face masks, getting ready to refuel the gyrocopter.
‘For your information, the local conditions today are not great,’ the pilot announced over the intercom. ‘We have level-five air quality and high-acid precipitation. Masks and coveralls are recommended outside.’
She caught Rashim’s eye. ‘Jeez … is it normally this bad?’
He shrugged. ‘Welcome to Denver.’
CHAPTER 22
First century, Jerusalem
‘Is that him?’ muttered Liam. They were standing outside the north-east gate a few dozen yards back from the dirt road leading into the city. Already there were hundreds of people gathered out here, spilling out from the entrance and obstructing the progress of those merchants and pilgrims still attempting to make their way in.
Liam craned his neck to get a better view. The road wound up the side of a gentle slope lined with rows of stunted olive trees. That hill, Liam now knew, was called the Mount of Olives. Up there, somewhere among those trees, was where they’d opened their portal.
On the brow of the hill, he could see some sort of activity: a group of young men, acting as minders, pushing people back to make way for someone behind. He caught just a brief glimpse of a figure leading a donkey. A figure dressed in a loose white jellaba.
Is that him? Is that Jesus?
The knot of people slowly began to descend the hill along the track heading towards them. Jesus – if that pale robed figure really was him – was, for the moment, lost from sight.
‘My God, Bob … I think I actually just clapped eyes on him!’ He turned to Bob and struggled not to grin like an idiot. ‘This is incredible!’
Bob seemed somewhat less impressed. ‘He is a historical figure. That is all. You have seen other famous figures from history.’
‘But this is Jesus!’
Liam caught snatches of Aramaic being shouted out around him. It was hard to hear clearly above the rising babble of excitement, hard to translate what they were saying from their thick accents.
‘… Is it that one? The one in the white? The speaker? …’
‘… The priests will not let him enter the temple …’
‘… heard that he can perform miracles …’
The energy all around them was sharp-edged with anticipation. Excitement. Exhilaration.
Not the mood of everyone, though. A few yards away two men were arguing furiously with each other. One with a long dark beard and richly coloured robes. Liam recognized the rich purple colour and the gold tassels as a shawl worn by the priests in the temple. The other man looked like most of the others gathered here: poor, a common labourer. Both men snarled at each other, their faces only inches apart, slapping their chests angrily for emphasis.
‘This Nazarene is a troublemaker! A blasphemer!’
‘He is one of us. He speaks for us!’
Their exchange was lost behind the cacophony of voices increasing with growing excitement as the knot of people coming down the hillside track drew closer. Over the shoulder of the man in front of him, Liam could see hands being raised: open palms and pumping fists. The atmosphere reminded him of the charged energy they’d experienced back in that Mayan city. Those people believing that finally their long wait was over, their gods had returned. An energy of shared rapture and joy that could so easily change in a heartbeat to something threatening and violent.
The heated argument to Liam’s right was growing more unpleasant and now others were joining the poorer man, berating the bearded priest in his expensive robes. The exchange was beginning to turn ugly. Someone reached out and grabbed the priest’s robe. The cleric twisted angrily, slapping at the hand. Others joined in and soon the expensive material was wrenched from his shoulders. The expression of snarling derision on the priest’s face changed to a look of panic. He decided to beat a hasty retreat from those gathered round him; he backed away into the crowd and quickly disappeared. The long flowing purple robe was held aloft and swung around like a victory flag, like a taken scalp.
The roaring of voices surrounding the pale-robed figure leading the donkey was drawing very close now. Liam turned from looking at the robe being tossed around to see if Jesus and his disciples were any nearer. He could see, above the heads and shoulders and the raised hands punching the air, a vanguard of minders clearing a space ahead. And there, much closer now, he saw the figure: a painfully thin, dark-skinned man, with matted coils of long black hair and the scruffy beginnings of a scrappy beard.
My God … this is Jesus. He was staring at the most important, the most influential, figure of the last two thousand years. Just a few dozen yards away from him.
‘That’s him, Bob. That’s definitely Jesus!’
The support unit turned to him, an eyeball-rolling goat under each arm. ‘Information: the biblical account differs from this, Liam. The account describes him riding the donkey, not leading it.’
‘What?! C’mon, that’s just a small detail. That’s him all right!’ He turned to look up at Bob. ‘Can’t you feel it? Like … like an energy coming from him? Like –’
Bob shook his head. ‘I am not detecting any energy source.’
Liam could feel something. Perhaps not anything that a machine-mind or some man-made sensing device might pick up, but there was something powerful about that frail-looking figure; not just an ordinary Judaean peasant but some
thing altogether other. Something so much more than mere flesh and blood swathed in modest linen. Agreed, he was – as Bob pointed out – leading the animal on foot, not sitting astride it as the Bible specifically mentioned.
Yes. This was slightly different. The prophet was leading the beast. So what? He was still leading the beast. The gesture, the symbolism, was still important. It was a very deliberate act of humility; the king of kings, the prophet who all these people hoped was about to lead an uprising to kick out the Romans and their puppet king, Herod Antipas, was arriving to take his throne, not on the back of a tall horse, as a conquering general might, but leading a humble beast of burden. I am as you. I speak for you. The meek, the poor.
Liam put the discrepancy down to a simple translation error. Or one of the subtle shifts, exaggerations, a story acquires in the telling and retelling over generations.
Jesus was close now; the dirt track – built up with gravel and clay – was a little higher than the parched grass sloping down on either side of it, and trudging wearily along this track he was head and shoulders above the surging crowd. Voices around them were now sharing a phrase, chanting it in unison.
Hoshi’ ah-na! Hoshi’ ah-na!
Liam recognized that as a Hebrew word. A word that would eventually become bastardized to hosanna.
As the prophet led the donkey slowly past him, he saw a part of the purple robe that had been torn from the bearded priest being tossed up into the air and into the path of the beast. Someone else followed suit. And so did others. Liam recalled another passage from the Bible he’d been reading.
… And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way … And the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ …
Twenty feet from him, no more than that, just twenty feet away … and Liam was sure he could actually feel the charisma of the man, pulsing, crackling like the power of a hydrogen reactor, the presence, the energy, the life force, all contained in that slight, frail, swaying figure hunched before the plodding donkey.
Jesus passed by and into the shadow cast by the tall east wall. The crowd surged after him, bottlenecking as they pressed through the large gate and into the small market square beyond.
The crowd of people began to disperse, most of them jostling around the entrance to follow their prophet inside.
A minute later, Liam and Bob were standing more or less alone outside. Liam was struck dumb, rooted to the spot and pondering what he’d just witnessed. ‘I was twenty feet away from … Jesus …’ he uttered.
Bob lowered the struggling goats to the ground. They kicked dust up as they scarpered away until their tethers thrummed taut and they choked out an unhappy bleat. ‘I detected nothing unusual about him.’
Liam shook his head, exasperated. ‘Not even in the part of your head that isn’t silicon? Didn’t you feel anything?’
Bob shook his head.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it … you know … if there is a God. I don’t think I’ve ever believed in that … but …’ Liam looked through the entrance at the backs of people still struggling to cram themselves inside. ‘You know, for a moment there, I –’
‘You were affected by collective hysteria, Liam. You may be a genetic product like me, but, unlike me, you are a hundred per cent organic.’ Bob shrugged. ‘Your mind works as a human mind should. Thus it is susceptible to such things.’
‘You’re saying, what? I imagined that … that power he was giving off?’
‘Affirmative. There is no logic filter for a moment like this.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘This is how humans can make irrational decisions. This is how humans are able to convince themselves to believe the impossible.’
‘There was something there … Bob. I felt something coming from him!’
‘You were merely affected by the crowd dynamic, Liam. This is understandable.’
Liam felt a stab of anger. For a moment there he wanted to tell the support unit to shut up, go away … leave him alone to replay what he’d just experienced. But then Bob suddenly cocked his head. ‘Information …’
‘What?’
‘According to my data, right now Jesus will be heading up to the temple grounds where he will shortly be causing a disturbance.’
‘Data? You mean the Bible? You downloaded a copy of that in your head?’
‘Of course. It is source material that might be useful. Liam, we may have a good opportunity to enter the temple.’
Liam nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right.’ He recalled reading something yesterday about Jesus becoming angry at the traders and money-changers inside the walled compound. Kicking over some tables and starting some kind of altercation. Bob was right; it might prove enough of a distraction for them to make their way into the temple without being watched too closely.
CHAPTER 23
2070, Denver
59 days to Kosong-ni
They were issued ID tags and assigned quarters in a holding centre, with the exception of Rashim who was allowed to go about his business. According to their records, he was already supposed to be an FSA citizen and resident in Denver. Which was technically true; a younger version of him was out there somewhere. Not in Denver, but south of the city in a bunker beneath Cheyenne Mountain working on Project Exodus; working hard on preparing for T-Day – the day they were going to transport 300 carefully vetted candidates back in time.
Maddy and the others were given bunks in a dormitory. Just like the immigration hall, it was a large, bare-walled prefabricated building, bolted together in segments to create a cavernous, carbo-steel interior that was filled with three-storey bunk beds in a number of penitentiary rows. The uniform-grey blankets of most of the beds had been pegged across the frames by the ‘inmates’, creating an improvised labyrinth of private personal spaces. Laundered clothes hung like fairground bunting from the frame tops, suspended across the crowded gaps between the rows of beds that had become accepted as communal walkways. The dormitory hall constantly reverberated with a thousand voices echoing off the flat ceiling. Even at night, when the clinical-blue fluorescent strip lights that glared down on them eighteen hours a day had been switched off, there was enough murmuring, crying, snoring, farting and the occasional irritatingly persistent barking cough to keep her awake.
Maddy had been expecting that they’d kick their heels here for two or three days while Rashim got in touch with someone important and vouched for them. That was what she’d expected. She could cope with a few boring days, sleepless nights and gloopy, tasteless protein paste served from a clattering, noisy canteen three times a day.
But two weeks had passed by so far, and not a word from Rashim.
‘Man over there said to me … he been held here three months,’ said Heywood.
‘Three months? You’ve got to be kidding me!’
Maddy was hunched up on the middle bunk. Becks and Charley were sharing the bottom one. The bunk above her creaked with Heywood’s weight as he leaned over the lip of the frame to talk to her.
‘S’pose it’s just what they gotta do. Hold us until they know what the hell they gonna do with us. They got people gettin’ into the FSA all the time. Up from Mexico, down from Canada, from the east coast, from the west coast –’
Maddy shook her head. ‘But we’re wasting critical time.’
Heywood nodded. ‘How long until that virus of yours hits?’
‘I don’t have a precise date. It’s a best guess. Weeks, days. Not long. A while after the invasion of North Korea, but I’m not sure …’
‘So what you gonna do? Try an’ bust out?’
The idea was tempting. Becks could quite easily deal with the wardens inside who supervised the containment camp. After all, they were just a bunch of bored swing-keys armed with nightsticks and tasers. But, outside, the building was walled in and patrolled by soldiers and circled constantly by airborne security drones. There was only so much Becks could do. A taser dart would drop her just as eas
ily as anyone else.
‘No. We’re just going to have to sit tight for now, I guess.’
‘You sure …’ Heywood started speaking, then stopped himself.
‘Am I sure, what?’
‘Well, that your Really Important Friend, Rashim, that he’s … you know, not just sort of abandoned us to rot in here?’
‘Of course he hasn’t!’ She glared at him. ‘I completely trust him! We’ve been colleagues for a long time …’
Not that long … not really. And do you really completely trust him, Maddy? She grimaced at the pernicious whine of that distrusting voice in her head. Wanted to shut it up.
Why did he agree with you so readily, Maddy? Why was he so keen to get back to 2070? Hmm? Ask yourself that, stupid.
She balled her fists, as if that was going to help. Rashim could have dumped them at the Median Line. He could have just told the officials he was on his own if getting back here was his game plan all along.
‘Look,’ she said eventually. ‘He got us into Denver. I’m sure he’ll get us out. I’m sure he’s working on something right now.’
Heywood made a sceptical you’re-the-boss face and sucked a whistle through his gap teeth. ‘Well, I guess you know him best.’
‘Yeah, I do.’ She leaned back on the hard mattress. Or maybe he’s finally back home now and having a whale of a time, catching up with old friends, girlfriends, having a party until time runs out for everyone.
Heywood settled back on his mattress. She heard him belch. ‘Meantime, three square meals a day, a shower room with hot runnin’ water, and a bed … I guess I can wait.’
She looked past the bunk frame up to the dormitory ceiling. Several large holo-screens were projected from wall-mounted light-beams. Canteen sitting times and washroom-turn notifications were displayed up there, as well as a constant roll of ticker-tape news.