He, She and It (36 page)

He enjoys being recognized by men he was drinking with. The drayman is off transporting the furniture of a family moving from one side of the river to the other. He already hired a helper for the day, but the barflies are so impressed with Joseph’s strength, if Joseph will just stick around till the drayman is back, they are sure he will hire Joseph for tomorrow.

He hears the story of poor Maria, who was raped by Stefan and locked in a cellar to die of hunger and cold, but the priest Thaddeus heard and told her family. A cousin came and broke down the door and saved her. Charges of rape and abduction have been brought against Stefan, but it will likely just turn out to cost him in the pocket, money which they can try to collect, because he owes his very soul to the dirty Jew moneylenders.

Joseph expresses great admiration for Thaddeus and learns that some of the young men who hang around the fringes of his ministry frequent an inn about two thirds of the way up the steep hill to the castle. Making his excuses, Joseph climbs. How lucky, he thinks, that he was made impervious to alcohol, because all his detective work seems to run lubricated by vats of beer. The Maharal will worry that he is spending too much on low encounters and profligate pleasures, but he can truthfully assure the rabbi that beer is no more pleasant to him than water. He will not say that except for the remarks about Jews, he has enjoyed the company of the men in the tavern. Among them he does not feel stupid or cast out. They admire his
strength. Half of them cannot read or write. He is an intellectual, a scholar by comparison, and he is comfortable with their jostling and joking.

He follows their directions: under the Black and White. That’s what locals call the fine palace of the Volkzrozmbewkas, all covered with the latest in decoration, sgraffito, every block of stone drawn upon in black and white to make it appear to jut out. At the intersection of two streets where the Black and White Palace appears high in the air, he looks to the left. On the ground floor of a tall narrow house is a small tavern called At the Golden Bear. This tavern feels different: cleaner, better appointed. The most striking difference is how the men look him over carefully when he comes in, how he has the sense of having stepped across some well-guarded border on sufferance. This looks public, but it is turf. He is permitted in under the surveillance of at least ten sets of eyes. He can imagine many retreating under that scrutiny, but his nerves are tuned low. He possesses the confidence of his brawn and his great strength. He orders a beer, drinks it and gazes around in a leisurely survey designed to show off his calm, his slight amusement.

If Joseph were our contemporary, he would see himself as a hero from a stimmie, perhaps a gunslinger, a fantasy based on a highly stylized version of a few western towns during a short period. Then again, he might see himself as a spacer entering a watering hole on some far planet. But the game is the same, whether we are talking about a male primate approaching an established group on their own territory or a dog meeting other dogs in the alley. Much posturing. Alpha Male, Alpha Male, says the newcomer, throwing back his shoulders, raising his muzzle and trying to look big and tough. I am dominant, you will submit. Cower before me. See how I snarl. Does not the style of my snarling and posturing make you want to show me your belly of submission and to offer your throat in a ritual display of humility?

Joseph is slightly shocked to realize he is enjoying himself. At home he is always more or less under the Maharal’s judgmental gaze. Here he is on orders but off premises, free to interpret those orders as the occasion, his survival and his whim dictate. It is a ritual dance. One at a time they approach, insult or question, retreat. He is as big as the biggest of them and far stronger, as he pleasantly knows. His strength is two-edged. His strength makes him a freak. His strength makes him fear hurting Chava if he should dare even to caress her hand with his. But here his strength crowns him king of the dung heap. He
cannot take them all on at once, he supposes, but he could hurt, maim, kill more of them than they would believe possible. He is not impervious to their weapons, but he does not truly know if he can be killed. He can be wounded, but his wounds heal quickly. He does not give a moment’s damn whether they like him or not. He wants to seize them as a terrier seizes a rat and shakes it to death; he wants to shake their knowledge, their plans, out of them.

Jews and women are the targets of their jokes, their stories, their plots. They profess the desire to fuck women and kill Jews, but their tone of voice is indistinguishable. “We’re going to put it to them Friday,” the one who must be the leader says finally to the room at large, while watching Joseph carefully for his reaction. Joseph just nods and slaps his thigh. Karel is not the biggest, not the toughest. But he has presence, a medium-tall man in his middle twenties with two fingers of the left hand missing. Karel has a strong jutting jaw. If he were to lay his jaw against a piece of paper, any child could draw a straight line as easily as with a ruler. His features are all a little bigger than life-size. He has a naturally loud and carrying voice.

There are two groups of young men associated with Thaddeus. One is a group of knights and wealthy men of the town, who believe he is a good influence over the populace, who believe they would be richer if Jews did not exist, if Jews could be pushed out and Jewish buildings and businesses taken over. Prague seethes with discontent. The guilds feel their power eroding. The merchants want more respect. Many knights are land rich and money poor. They see themselves losing ground. Some want a war to fight. All seek an enemy. They are cut into sharp jagged factions, religious, economic, political, that bang against each other seeking a flaw. There are Roman Catholics, Hussites, Utraquists and lately some Lutherans, all enemies.

The other group are Thaddeus’s street soldiers, and it is this group that Joseph has found up on the hill near the castle wall. Friday there will be a riot. “The Jews are afraid of us anyhow. They don’t know how to fight. They’ll wail and weep and fall down on their knees to be cut up like sheep. Baaaa!”

“We’ll have fun, Joseph,” another of the toughs says, slapping his back. “Whatever we want, we can take.”

He reports to the Maharal, who sits at his desk lacing his fingers in his long white beard, frowning, swaying. The Maharal looks exhausted. Joseph thinks what a very old man he is. “So they come again. With swords and torches, they come to kill us. I smelled it on the wind. I knew it.”

He wishes the Maharal would touch his shoulder and tell him he has done a good job. He wishes the Maharal would for once acknowledge that he has carried out his task well. “Rabbi, I can fight them. I can fight like ten, like twenty. But there will be a whole crowd with them.”

“When we fight, it’s for survival. We’re always a few in a sea of the many.”

“They’re bullies. They’re men who rise by walking over the weak. They believe we won’t fight.”

The Maharal rests his head on his crooked arms, bowing over his desk. An old scroll lies there, along with many sheets of foolscap, some in the Maharal’s crabbed Hebrew script, some in Chava’s bold hand. Finally he raises his head. “Wait in the next room.”

Crouched against the wall, Joseph hears the Maharal chanting, praying. Half an hour passes, an hour. Then the Maharal summons him, frowning in preoccupation. He is coiled on himself, charged with intensity. So he must have looked the evening he went to create Joseph. “Rabbi, I was thinking,” Joseph begins. “I could start training the young men today.”

“An army in three days? Armed with sharpened matzoh? We have no weapons.” The Maharal puts on his heavy cloak. “I’m going to see Mordecai Maisl. You go get David.”

“Father, how will David Gans help? He is no soldier.”

“There’s more than one way to fight, Joseph. Get David.”

“A rich man and a scientist. Will they buy the moon for us so we can hide there till this is over?”

“We’re short on time. Go!”

TWENTY-FIVE

Where the Elite Meet

Looking around the lab, Shira felt this meeting was in the way of a family council. After the reconstruction of the Base defenses, when Malkah had passed at least eighteen hours a day with Avram and Yod, Avram’s prohibitions about her grandmother’s contact with Yod seemed to have been forgotten. Malkah now had the right to be present, the same as Shira,
Avram and Yod himself. Gadi had also taken on that privilege, from the wedge of bringing in meals.

Avram had started out making a few announcements from room center, but as the argument progressed, he had backed himself toward the far wall. “Yod is not ready to leave the lab for such extended periods.”

“I leave it every day, to perform my duties. I’ve assumed a security role, regular guard duty, to familiarize myself with the systems. Tomorrow I go to Cybernaut with Shira.”

“You leave, but you also return. I can check out your functions.”

“How often have you done so in the last ten days? Once.”

Shira interjected, “People are always asking Yod where he lives. It sounds weird to say he sleeps in the lab. Everybody in town has quarters. We aren’t short on space.”

“After all, everybody leaves home eventually. Even Shira left for a while.” Gadi sprawled on a worktable in a graceful Z, cheek propped on braced hand. “Though we all come yo-yoing back.”

“If I’m to be accepted as human, I must fit into the life of the town,” Yod said. He was standing very still in the center of the room, at complete rest except when his head swung to look at whoever spoke.

Shira was astonished at how he had taken over his own defense. Malkah and she had been prepared to carry the argument while Yod hoped, but his desperation made him bold and articulate.

She sensed that Avram was going to give in, because they were united against him, because they were right; but his reluctance surprised her. He was afraid of losing control of Yod, she realized. Keeping him in the lab was the best way to monitor Yod’s activities, perhaps not quite as thoroughly as Avram imagined, but invasively enough. Yod was Avram’s finest creation; Avram could not view lightly any weakening of possession or control. Shira felt a chill of alarm. In her most recent onslaught on Avram’s log, she had discovered that every cyborg since Dalet had had an abort mechanism built in: they could be deactivated by one code; destroyed by another; a further capacity, to cause a much larger explosion, was built in. Avram indeed retained the power of life and death over Yod. The codes were not given in the notes. “Gog and Magog” would not be Yod’s code.

“All right. We’ll put Yod in Gadi’s old room,” Avram said with a sigh.

“No,” Yod said. “I don’t think that’s right.”

The struggle between Avram and Yod tickled Gadi’s sardonic humor. “Quite correct. You can’t give my room away. Considering what’s happening to my career, I may need it.”

“Yod can have the guest room in our house,” Malkah said. “As soon as my sister leaves.”

“No,” Shira and Avram said almost in chorus.

“Yod isn’t your creation. Don’t try to take him over,” Avram said.

Shira considered Malkah’s suggestion unfair. That was not something she would agree to without thinking it over a long, long time. Living with Yod seemed ridiculous.

Gadi said, “There’s acres of space upstairs. Yod can help himself to any one of a number of little rooms I haven’t touched and don’t intend to.”

Yod said, “I am supposed to be an adult. I have to live like one. I must appear to be on my own. In the basement, near where I exercise with Gimel, there’s a small apartment no one is using. Gradually I’ve been cleaning it out and improving it. I could move in at once.”

Shira smiled in relief. The basement was accessible from outside without going through the old hotel. Since they were twenty feet above the water table in this part of town, the basement did not flood. She met Yod’s gaze with a grateful smile. Then she noticed Gadi observing. He had caught something.

Indeed at lunchtime he reappeared. He had taken to catering for the lab at the same time that he fed his crew. They were just finishing upstairs, although it was also becoming clear that the upstairs would never be finished. Most helpers were drifting away, but those completely hooked would stay while Gadi used the limited local resources he bitched about to create new virons. “Everybody’s so happy about the Base going on line,” Gadi said. “Was this whole town into the old-fashioned work ethic when we were growing up?”

“People know that staying free depends on the integrity of the Base. No Base, no work, no credit, no town,” Shira said. She cast a glance over her shoulder to see if she could summon Malkah or Yod to dilute Gadi’s presence. She still preferred not to be one-on-one with him. Silver eyes, silver hair, silver nails, silver bracelets around his strong sinewy arms, bared to the shoulder. Under the dark skin, every muscle showed precisely as a diagram from an anatomy book: such was the current high style.

“I may give them a festival to celebrate. Why not? I’m bored, and I love to show off.… Everybody thinks you’re rubbing it with the Thing. I tell them it won’t scan, but that’s popular wisdom.”