Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (33 page)

“You
are still Manasseh Maizel.
Manasseh Maizel, cowering before
the dark, cringing at monsters though you have stood on the neck of a prince of
hell.
These things you speak of, these Great Old Ones—old they may be,
but who is greater than HaShem, whose power you have felt all the days of your
life?”

“But,” said the Rider, “what if they are older than HaShem?”

“Stop!
Now you tread on dangerous ground,” Kabede warned,
holding up one hand. “And down a path worn down by one you know well.”

“What
do you mean?”

“The
one you call Adon,” Kabede said. “You walk in his footsteps. Adon, who called
himself ‘Lord,’ but who was called ‘Acher’ once—Other One. Let me tell you of
your former master. Do you know the legend of the Four Sages who entered
Paradise?”

“Yes,”
said the Rider. It was comforting to relate his lessons to Kabede, and he did
so now, like a schoolboy. “Yes, the Four Sages.
Ben Azzai,
Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuyah and Akiba ben Joseph.
Only Akiba ben Joseph
found peace and was unharmed. Ben Azzai was destroyed by what he saw, ben Zoma
lost his mind, and ben Abuyah…,” he paused. “What are you saying to me?”

“Elisha
ben Abuyah declared that there were two powers in Heaven,” Kabede went on for
him, as the Rider felt his pulse quicken. “He severed the root of his faith and
was doomed to an immaterial limbo. Unpunished in Gehenna, but unable to enter
the World To Come, he hung in between, a raving soul trapped outside Sheol in
the Yenne Velt, yet not a ghost, for he never died. His disciple destroyed his
body with fire, and the smoke continued to rise from his grave for years after.
For nearly two thousand years…until he was reborn.”

“You’re
saying…that Adon is Elisha ben Abuyah?”

“He
told Lilith your true
name,
it is only fair that you
know his.”

“That’s
not possible,” the Rider said. “Reincarnation…”

“Not
reincarnation. Not properly.
Reconstitution.
Elisha
ben Abuyah never died. Let me tell you the truth behind the legend. The Four
Sages were merkabah riders. They navigated the seven hekhalots and came before
the Throne of Glory. Rabbi Akiva ascended with a pure heart, to bask in the
glow of HaShem. But the other Three Sages sought forbidden knowledge in his
shadow. The Mishnah speaks of Belimah—the Void, and the Olam ha-Tohu; the
universe of primordial chaos that existed prior to Creation, which is it
forbidden for man to study.

Just
as there are five gates to the divine realms and three to Gehenna, there exist
three gates to the Olam ha-Tohu. One is hidden beneath the Temple mount, and is
plugged by the Foundation Stone with which the Lord capped the waters of the
abyss, the floodwaters that destroyed the earth in Noah’s time. One lies in the
seventh hekhalot, beneath the Throne. The location of the third is unknown.
Even as Rabbi Akiba ascended, Elisha ben Abuyah led the way through the gate to
look upon Belimah. What he saw destroyed his faith, just as it killed ben Azzai
and drove ben Zoma insane.”

“Maybe
he saw…the Outer Gods.
The Great Old Ones.”

“Who can say?” Kabede said. “Even I don’t know
that. But I do know someone who holds answers.”

“One
of the blue monks?” the Rider asked. “Chaksusa told me…he told me it was one of
them who taught our Teacher of Righteousness.”

“No,”
said Kabede, somewhat darkly. “I do know of these blue monks. I encountered
them once in Arabia. Their abbot is not of this world, not of this universe.”

“What
do you mean?”

“He
and another of his kind pursued one of these creatures into our universe, ages
ago. That is what they told me. Whether or not our Teacher of Righteousness was
a student of the blue monks, I do not know. But rightly, this is not their
fight. In the past they have intervened and no good has come from it. As you
know, one of them was corrupted and set himself up as a god. They are misguided
at best, perhaps because they do not belong here. No, if there is anyone who
can tell us more of Adon’s scheme and this Hour of the Incursion, which you say
Sheardown mentioned as ‘unleashing hell’ upon the Earth, then there is but one
whom we can consult. It may be that he can call off the demons that pursue you
as well.
The Adversary.
Satan.”

The
Rider set aside his bowl.

“You
propose…that we summon Lucifer and confront him?”

“No,”
said Kabede, reaching over and taking the Rider’s bowl and stacking it in his
own. “I think we should go to see him.”

Kabede
rose and went to the pile of packsaddles against the rocks near the animals. He
produced his own bedroll.

“But not tonight.”

He
cleaned the crockery with sand, and the Rider lay looking up at the stars
listening to him work before he finally settled down to sleep.

* * * *

“What
I’m sayin’ is
,
we should all go down there and get
that uppity nigger and that Heeb and drag their asses back here,” Long George
said, spitting on his own floor in his agitation and wincing at the pain in his
shoulder, which one of the local whores had bound up with a scrap of stained
bed sheet.

He
had been saying that for a day and a half. Not content to solely work himself
into it, he was now plying the other tramps and killers of Escopeta with cheap
whiskey and bad bourbon, coaxing them into doing it for him.

There
were about twenty men in The Senate: violent, desperate types who had drifted
in from Escopeta’s surrounding hog ranches and lean-tos, drawn to the sound of
gunfire like buzzards to a death rattle. Escopeta was a place most men came to
to mind their own business, a haven to lay low and stay out of sight for a
while. But Long George’s fiery talk combined with the greasy bottles he had
produced to supplement their meager suppers of beans (scraped off the floor
from where they’d fallen earlier, Amonson suspected) was going a long way
towards convincing them that going down to the valley where smoke had been seen
and the two fugitives were most likely still camped to round them up and bring
them back here was a good idea.

Amonson
himself had a hankering to repay the black bastard who busted his teeth, but he
had seen Killer Jew Maizel’s willingness to shoot and was not keen on facing
him again. He was in the minority though, even among his partners. Ocobock and
Dorado were all for going, he supposed because neither of their injuries were
quite
so
permanent and disfiguring as his own. He
sucked at his seeping, bloody gums, running his tongue over the little nubs of
jagged enamel still remaining there. He would have to see a dentist. He hated
dentists.

The
main point of contention between the mob seemed to be whether to kill Maizel
and the nigger or take them in for the reward and if the latter, how to divide
that between twenty men. By now a couple other literate types had drifted in
and read about the five thousand dollar reward for the return of the scroll
(that bit of news had understandably soured Ocobock and Dorado against Amonson
some, a sourness that might have been more bitter if he hadn’t successfully
pleaded a vague lack of understanding of the wording of the bottom part of the
reward poster).

The
jump in the bounty pulled most of the men off the fence on the matter, but
Amonson could smell greed. It smelled like bad breath, palm sweat and dank
dollars. He knew that if the capture of the Killer Jew and his partner was
successfully carried out, some of the men here would be thinking about ways to
increase their three hundred dollar reward, and some others would never make it
to the marshal’s office to collect.

“Way
I figure it,” Long George went on, “it’s the roomful of us against one and a
half men.”

“He
didn’t hit like no half a man,” said Dorado. His wrist was soaking in a bucket
of cool well water. It was as purple as Queen Victoria’s knickers. “
That stick
busted mi muñeca pretty goddamned good.”

“I
was talkin’ about the Jew,” said Long George. “
I seen
‘em when he was in here. He looked to be half dead.”

“Still
managed to pop you, George,” Ocobock said. A sizable welt on the side of his
head bespoke his own encounter.

“Well,
but I ain’t no gunfighter.
Never claimed to be.”

“So
where’ll you be when the shootin’ starts?” Amonson whistled through his busted
teeth (and this elicited a few sideways glances and nods from the other
desperados).
“In the back with that shotgun waitin’ to clean
up?
No thanks, boys. I’m gonna take in the evening air. I’ve took all
the medicine I care to tonight.”

The
uproar of disagreeing voices renewed and Long George at his counter tried to
quell them all by banging on the counter with a revolver as Amonson shrugged
past the others and headed for the door.

Ocobock
caught his arm.

“You sure?
Five thousand dollars is
a
lotta
money,” he said.

“Too
many buzzards on this carcass,” Amonson said. “You do what you want. I’ll check
the horses,
then
I’m to bed.”

He
stepped out into the early evening dark, gingerly stroking his ruined mouth
with his fingertip, and found three pale men standing outside in a line, as if
they had been waiting for him.

“Hello
there,” said the middle one, a Dutchman, by the sound of his accent.

Amonson
paused, taking them in. They were well dressed in frocks and waistcoats, their
necks strung with a number of silvery medallions. They were covered entirely in
pale dust, having apparently ridden hard and long across the desert. They
looked as if they’d rolled in flour, and the white of the dust made their eyes
seem black in the dim light from the doorway. They were armed with pistols and
rifles, and were all three of them entirely hairless. No eyebrows even.

It
made for a somewhat disconcerting overall effect, for the men appeared uniform,
right down to the same placid expressions, the same thin, patronizing smiles.
There were subtle differences, and he knew the shocking white of them was just
the trail dust, but at a glance, they looked like a trio of identical, hairless
albinos.

“Hello
yourself,” said Amonson. He moved to walk around them, but they spread out,
denying him the street.

“What’s
the idea?” he snarled.

“We’re
looking for a man,” said the Dutchman in the middle, the tallest of the three.
“We believe he may have come this way.”

The
Dutchman reached into his coat pocket and brought out a sheet of paper which he
snapped open with a flick of his wrist. Maizel’s face, lined with creases,
stared back at him.

“Popular
fella,” Amonson said.

“Yes,”
said the Dutchman. “Have you
see
him?”

“He
went east with a nigger leadin’ a couple burros.
Probably
camped out by the Valle del Torreón.”

“The
Valle del Torreón,” the Dutchman repeated, slowly, rolling his ‘
r’s
,’ as if trying out the words. He looked at his two
partners.

“Yeah.
You can’t miss it. Better hurry though,” he said,
angling his thumb at The Senate behind him. “Most of Escopeta’s goin’ after
him.”

“He was with someone, you say?”

“Yeah, a nigger with a stick.
Sonofabitch busted my teeth
out. You’re welcome to him.” He tried to move past them again, but they closed
ranks, barring him. He glared at the two men, and they only smiled in return.

“Mister,”
he sighed, “I had a real rough day, losin’ my teeth an’ all. You boys wanna get
outta my way now?”

“How
many people live here?” the Dutchman asked, looking around dubiously at the
other hovels and buildings. He released the poster of Maizel, let the light
breeze catch it. It fluttered off into the dark like a ghost and disappeared.

“What?”

“Why
don’t you go back inside?” he said, fixing his dark eyes on Amonson again. They
seemed wholly black now, like they were filled with oil—a trick of the light.
Amonson felt a nagging twitch at the back of his skull, though. Something was
off about this bunch. They weren’t just bounty hunters. There was something
crazy about them.

“Why?”
he mumbled, backing away and turning so that the pistol on his right hip was
concealed. His hand went to it in the most surreptitious way that he could
manage.

“Because
we’re going to kill everyone here,” the Dutchman said. “And it’ll be so much
easier.”

Amonson
always hoped a woman’s breast, or a stack of gold coins, hell, even the glass
handle of a beer mug might be the last thing he ever wrapped his hand around.
No, true to how his life had gone up to that point, it was his gun.

His
fingers closed on it, and he saw something he didn’t understand. Then it all
got away from him, flushed away in his own screams, a searing, improbable pain,
and blood.