Zig Zag

  "... don't know what we're going to see on this screen, friends. I don't know if what awaits us will make us happy or not, if it will teach us something new or just confirm things we already know. All I can say is that this is the most important moment of my life. And I thank you for it."

  "Reinhard, please, I know you want to say a few words, too, but wait until the end," Marini begged when the applause died down. "Colin?"

  Craig, who was tapping things into the keyboard at the back of the room, gave a thumbs-up.

  "All set to go, Padrino," he joked.

  "Can you hit the lights?"

  Elisa saw one last thing before the room turned black: Reinhard Silberg, crossing himself.

  All of a sudden, without knowing why, she wished she'd never come to New Nelson, never signed those papers, never been right in her calculations.

  More than anything, she wished she wasn't sitting there, awaiting the unknown.

  17

  "WHY?"

  "Because history is not the past. History is what happened already, but the past is still taking place. If this table had never been built by a carpenter, it wouldn't be here now. If the Greeks and Romans had never existed, you and I wouldn't be here, or at least we wouldn't be the same. And if I hadn't been born sixty-seven years ago, you wouldn't be fifteen right now or be the dazzling young lady that you are. Don't ever forget that: you are because others were."

  "But you're not the past, Grandpa."

  "Oh, yes I am. And your parents are, too. And you yourself are your own past, Elisa. What I mean is that the past is what makes up our present. It's not just 'history'; it's something that happens, something that is happening. We can't see it, or feel it, or modify it, but it's always with us, like a ghost. And it determines our life, and maybe our death. You know what I think sometimes? It's a little strange, but with all that math you do, I think you're intelligent enough to understand. People often say, 'The past isn't dead,' and that scares them. But you know what really scares me, Eli? Not that the past isn't dead, but that it could kill us..."

  THE black turned to blood. An impenetrable, blinding, almost sticky color.

  "There's no image," Blanes said.

  "But there's no evidence of diffusion," Craig pointed out from the back.

  The scream scared them all, leaving a trail of hasty words in the air.

  "My God, yes, there is an image! Can't you see it?" Jacqueline Clissot was almost out of her front-row seat. She bent at the waist, as though she wanted to climb into the screen.

  Elisa realized she was right. The red was still opaque at the center, but now it looked like it had a halo around its edges. The meaning of that didn't become clear until the camera jumped a few seconds later.

  "The sun. It's the sun! Reflected in the water!" Clissot said.

  The image kept moving. With the new angle, the glare was no longer blinding and the dark curve of a shoreline became visible on the lower half of the screen. Everything was cast in red. There were different shades and varying degrees, but it all looked red, including those long, twisted shapes. Elisa held her breath. Is that them? If so, they were the weirdest creatures she'd ever seen. They looked like giant snakes.

  But according to Clissot, they were just trees.

  "A Jurassic forest. Those are probably Equisetum, commonly known as horsetails. Or tree ferns. My God, they're so tall! And those plants floating on the lake, or whatever it is ... Maybe giant amphibian lycopodiums?"

  "The palm trees are cycads," Nadja interrupted. "But they look shorter than we thought they were."

  "Ginkgos, araucarias..." Clissot was still listing. "And those biggies over there are sequoias ... David, it's a symbol of your theory." The image skipped to another time string and kept moving along the shore. "Wait, wait... One of those branches might be ... It could be..." The paleontologist waved her arms angrily. "Colin, would you just stop the damn movie!"

  "We don't want to freeze any of the images yet," he replied calmly.

  It skipped again. And there they were.

  When they appeared, Blanes, Nadja, and Clissot stood up, forcing the rest of them to do the same if they wanted to be able to see. It was like the most exciting motion picture ever, and the crowd's emotion had reached fever-pitch.

  "Their skin," Elisa heard Valente whisper from the row behind her. He'd said it in Spanish: la piel.

  "Is that their skin?" Marini cried.

  It was really a rather remarkable sight. Their cervical and dorsal muscles looked like jewels, and so did their extremities. Huge Faberges, glimmering gems, wobbling in the sun. They reflected so much light that it was hard to look at them without being blinded. Elisa could never have imagined anything like it. Nothing had prepared her for that image. She thought they must have become extinct because nothing that beautiful could possibly survive alongside human beings.

  There were two of them, standing still, photographed from above. Seeing their enormous heads and long bodies, something very strange occurred to her: those creatures were somehow related to her; they weren't just animals but dreams she'd once had (dreams about devils, because that was what they looked like, with those huge horns). It was as if by watching them, everyone was now seeing inside her.

  The picture jumped again. One of them was now at the water's edge. She could make out its unbelievably pointy, speckled tail in the reddish glow. Jacqueline Clissot was gesturing wildly and shouting in French. She looked like a presidential candidate on the campaign trail.

  "Antennae! How could anyone have guessed? No, wait. Retractable feelers?"

  "HOW many toes did they have? Did anyone count them? They could have been megalos ... No, not with those protuberances. They were probably allosauruses. They were eating something ... Nadja, we have to see what they were eating! And those feelers, my God!" Clissot, now the center of attention, was blathering almost uncontrollably. She hadn't let up since the moment the images began. "Feathers on their tails and feelers on their heads! The allosauruses' crania show supraorbicular slits that have always been the object of debate. People said they were sexual, but no one ever thought... No one could have guessed they had some sort of retractable feelers, like snails! What would they be used for? Maybe they're olfactory organs, or a sensory organ to help them navigate the jungle ... And those feathers prove that they used much more complicated mating rituals than we'd ever suspected... How could we have guessed? I'm so nervous. I need a glass of water..."

  Mrs. Ross was already on top of it, clearing a way between Silberg and Valente. The lights were on, now, and Elisa couldn't quite believe they'd just seen those earth-shattering images in a shabby little home theater, complete with prefab walls and twelve plastic chairs.

  "How could it have been so shiny?" Marini asked.

  "What a shame we couldn't see the original colors!" Cheryl Ross lamented.

  "The red deviation was very intense," Blanes agreed. "Those time strings were located a hundred and fifty thousand light-years ago..."

  "So many things we didn't know." The paleontologist gulped down the glass of water in one go and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. "So, so many. Fossils, most of the time, just show us the bones. We knew that some of them had feathers ... In fact, dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds. But no one ever imagined that dinosaurs that big could have had feathers..."

  "Giant carnivorous chickens!" Marini said, giving a nervous laugh.

  "Oh God, David!" Clissot gave Blanes an impulsive hug, which seemed to throw him off.

  "We're all very happy," Mrs. Ross chimed in. Not everyone.

  Elisa was unable to define exactly what she felt. It seemed like some sort of traction, a force displacing her center of gravity, making her want to fall. It was like vertigo, but it didn't just affect her balance. It knocked her off her emotional balance as well, and even her moral equilibrium was threatened. She wanted to listen to Clissot's explanations, but she couldn't. She leaned against the wall, intuiting that if she allowed it to win, she'd fall i
nto an abyss, and only by standing could she save herself.

  Not everyone is affected the same.

  She'd felt it when she hugged Nadja. Rosalyn and Craig, too. Curiously, despite her enthusiasm, Clissot seemed somehow neutral. Valente, too. The Impact. This time it's our turn.

  The rest of the team was joyful, but Silberg, sweating profusely (though seemingly incapable of removing his tie) called them together in his booming voice.

  "Please ... Just a minute ... We forgot about the effects of the Impact. I'd like you all to tell me what you're feeling." Elisa would have liked to, but she couldn't. She saw Blanes watching her and fled the screening room through the side door, running for her room. When she got there, she closed herself in the bathroom. She wanted to throw up, but all she managed to do was dry heave. Elisa held onto the walls as if she were below the deck of a boat with no crew being tossed by the waves. She knew she'd fall if she remained standing, so she fell to her knees and felt an intense pain as her kneecaps slammed into the metal floor. There on all fours, her head hanging down, she felt as though she was waiting for someone to come and take pity on her. No! God, don't let anyone see me!

  And then, abruptly, it was over.

  It ended as suddenly as it had come on. She got up and splashed her face. Glanced at herself in the mirror. She was still Elisa. Nothing was wrong. What were those bizarre thoughts that had crept through her mind like spiders? She couldn't make any sense of it.

  And she didn't want to miss the next transmission for anything in the world.

  IT was a city, not that remarkable in and of itself. Big, made of stone, not very pretentious. However, just like with the dinosaurs, she found herself amazed at how beautiful it was. There was forethought and desire in those forms, in the wall that surrounded the city, in the tangle of streets and the rooftops, in the placement of the towers. And all of it was stunning to her eyes. A wild, physical perfection, so far from the world she inhabited. Did ancient things—objects, cities, animals— really used to be so beautiful? Or was it just that now everything was so ugly? It occurred to her that maybe, in part, the Impact was this: a yearning for lost beauty.

  "The temple ... We can't see Solomon's Portico..." Silberg was a cicerone in the dark. "Antonia's Fortress ... And that over there must be the Praetorium, Rosalyn ... It's hard to tell because it's all so new ... That's right. New. That semicircular building is a theater. There are things hanging from the windows..."

  "Roman standards," Rosalyn Reiter said in an almost sorrowful voice.

  Elisa was holding her breath. She knew they wouldn't see him. They couldn't possibly be that lucky. That would be like finding a needle in a million and one haystacks.

  Silberg agreed. They'd have more chance of seeing him on the cross than walking through the streets. But in any case, he and Reiter had still counted the days. According to the synoptics, he died on Nisan 15; according to John, it was the fourteenth. Silberg tended to agree with John, which meant a Friday in April. Pontius Pilate had ruled from the year AD 26 to the year AD 36, which left two probable dates: April 7, AD 30, and April 21, AD 33. But there was something else to consider: Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard in Rome and a man who showed no love for the Jews, had died in AD 31, and Emperor Tiberius had been manifestly opposed to his firm-hand policy. If Sejanus was already dead, then Pontius Pilate's reluctance to condemn the Hebrew carpenter made more sense. Which made AD 33 seem the more likely year.

  Silberg and Reiter had chosen a very precise moment (a "wager," Silberg called it): the days leading up to April 21, AD 33.

  "He was just one person in a city of seventy thousand, but he made quite a splash ... Perhaps ... we might see something indirectly ... be able to decipher something based on people's comings and goings..."

  But there were no people anywhere. The city was desolate.

  "Where is everyone?" Marini asked. "The computer saw people..."

  "There are other strings open, Sergio," Craig said. "We don't know which exact time this string is from... Maybe everyone's..."

  But when the image skipped, Craig fell silent. The camera descended on a steep street and then jumped again. The silence in the room became sepulchral.

  On the left side of the screen they could make out a motionless silhouette.

  It was black as a shadow and wore what appeared to be a veil over its head. There was something white in its hands, maybe a basket. They couldn't make it out clearly, even with the zoom. In fact, the image was partially dissolved. That blurry, black shape just standing there in sharp contrast to the light all around it was terrifying. But there was no doubt about it.

  "It's a woman," Silberg pronounced.

  Elisa forced herself not to shiver. Nothing in the world could make her close her eyes right now: not red-hot pokers coming straight for her eyeballs, and certainly not any fear of the Impact. She devoured it; she treasured the image with hungry eyes, tears streaming down her face. The first human being we've seen from the past. Just standing there, on the screen. A real woman who really lived two thousand years ago. Where was she going? To the market? What was in her basket? Had she seen Christ preach? Had she seen him enter the city on a donkey and wave a palm branch?

  The image skipped to another nonconsecutive string and the figure jumped several feet, to the center of the screen. She was still motionless, draped in dark clothing, but her posture seemed to indicate that she'd been photographed from above while walking from left to right down the steep road.

  It skipped again. This time the figure stayed put. Had she stopped? The computer did an automatic zoom and focused on her upper half. Silberg, who had started speaking, instantly fell silent again.

  Then something made Elisa lose her breath.

  After another jump, the figure turned sideways, head raised, as though she was looking at the camera. As though she was looking at them.

  But that wasn't what made people scream, knocking down chairs and bumping into each other in the dark.

  It was her face.

  BLANES was the only one who remained calm, sitting still on one edge of the table. Marini, at the other end, was playing with a marker, like a magician practicing an old trick. Clissot was drumming her fingers on the table. Valente seemed more concerned with the landscape out the window, but it was easy to see that he was upset, because he changed positions constantly. Craig and Ross were finding excuses to make trips to the kitchen (taking out dishes, bringing them in). Silberg didn't need an excuse. He paced like an angry bull in a tiny corral.

  Elisa, sitting in front of Marini, looked at the room, each person in turn, taking in the details, their gestures, watching to see how each one reacted. It helped her not think.

  "It must be some sort of disease," Silberg said. "Leprosy, would be my guess. Back then it was epidemic, devastating. Jacqueline, what do you think?"

  "I'd have to watch it again, slower. It could be leprosy, but it seems odd..."

  "What does?"

  "Well, that her eyes and most of her face were missing, and yet she walked as though she could see perfectly."

  "Jacqueline, I'm sorry, but we have no idea whether or not she walked 'perfectly,'" Craig pointed out politely, standing before her. "The images were skipping. There could have been two seconds between each one, or fifteen. She may have been stumbling, for all we know."

  "That's true," she agreed, "but still, the damage was much more severe than what we associate with leprosy. Though maybe back then—"

  "Now that you mention seeing," Marini interrupted. "How could she have been... looking at us? Didn't she give you that impression?"

  "She had no eyes," Valente chirped, smiling hideously.

  "What I mean is, it was as though she knew we were there, as though she had some sort of presentiment..."

  "That's a two-thousand-year 'pre-.' Don't you think that's a pretty long 'pre-'?"

  "She didn't have any presentiment, Sergio. That's what it looked like to us, but it's totally impossible," Silberg in
tervened.

  "I know, all I mean is that—"

  "The thing is," Silberg cut him off, "we saw what we wanted to see. Don't forget about the Impact. It makes us more apprehensive."

  A shadow crossed Elisa's line of vision. It was Rosalyn. Poor Rosalyn. How are you taking it? Both Nadja and Rosalyn had gone to lie down after the Jerusalem images produced nervous reactions in them. Nadja had started crying hysterically, and the historian had gone completely stiff. Elisa would never forget Rosalyn Reiter's appearance when the lights were flipped back on: standing, arms at her sides, she looked like a statue. Nadja looked scared, but Rosalyn looked scary.

  She still did, a little bit. Rosalyn walked into the dining room and stood before them all like a servant awaiting orders.

  "How do you feel?" Silberg asked.

  "Better." She smiled. "I feel better."

  She glanced over at Valente, who was the only one not looking at her. Then she walked into the kitchen. Through the open door, Elisa saw her adjust her shorts and smooth her hands over her face and hair, as though she was trying to decide what to do next.

  "We should figure out a way to measure the Impact's effects," Blanes suggested.

  "I'm devising a psychological test," Silberg informed them, "though it won't be as simple as responding to a few questions. We still might not know all the consequences. It might be like subliminal advertising, something that only comes out later. We don't know yet, and there's no way to tell right now."

  Mrs. Ross suddenly jumped into action.

  "I'm going to see how Nadja's doing," she said.

  Mrs. Ross's absence left them all feeling empty, as if she'd whisked their spirits away on her way out. Valente stood at the window; it started to rain heavily again.