The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (53 page)

“Ugh. Am I stepping on someone?” I jumped
back over to the path.

Spud sighed. “Note the drawer on the back of
the throne where Serapis sits.” He pointed to a latch which he
pulled open with a hesitant finger.

John and I peeked, and saw the drawer open a
chute leading down into the darkness. “The ashes could be poured
into this cavity during the funeral ceremonies. Our blended god
here is probably perched on top of a vault holding thousands of the
dearly departed.”

“A cemetery.” I made a face. “Somehow
appropriate.”

“’And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth
make the fault the worse by the excuse’,” Spud mumbled, confusing
me.

“Well, I don’t see anything here that
resembles an ancient grave,” John interjected. “All these names and
dates seem pretty recent, only a couple of hundred years. And
nothing’s in Hebrew or Aramaic. If we’re going to de-hat a rabbit,
maybe we’re going to have to go back to ‘the
time
of the
crime’.”

I knew I would regret using that idiom.
Though John did have a point. This grassy knoll might be
safekeeping the resting souls of millions of modern Philaians. But
I doubted it’d tell us where to find one specific Judean who’d lost
his life two millennia before. “At least we’re already wearing
togas, so we’ll fit right in,” I said, “but didn’t Les Moore tell
us that going back could put us—you—in danger?”

John’s voice was steady. “Moore thinks he can
write the future, but he’s really only a reporter of what’s already
past. I write my own life scripts, Sis. And I say we go back.” He
turned to Spud. “Escott? Are you in the game?”

Spud continued to study the statue and avoid
our eyes. Finally, he spoke. “A fool’s errand, I fear, but I shall
join you. Else I remain here to be someday flushed through Serapis’
bowels into that watercloset of souls below.”

Thanks, Spud. Glad you’re coming with us.
Though, I’m not grateful for that mental image. You could’ve just
said ‘yes’.

* * *

We set our black market Ergals for a trip
back almost two thousand years, struggling to figure out the best
strategy to return our timeline to its previous course. Lester
Moore was right—we couldn’t give Yeshua a second Somalderis prior
to his arrest without introducing yet another change factor that
could have even worse consequences for the timeline. Nor could I
catch my earlier self and dissuade her from her quest—that would
mean John’s rescue would be voided and my brother would return to
his solitary prison—to die. We’d have to try and see if we could
get to Yeshua after his arrest, and return the Somalderis before
his death, so he could anastasize himself or use it to transmit a
holo from Level 3 to his followers. Or?

“Yeshua was sentenced to death by
crucifixion, a common means of execution in the era,” Spud
reported. “Death would creep in slowly, in some cases over days,
and observers would be less likely to stand watch for the duration.
Yeshua would be relatively isolated—it would be an opportune time
to make contact.”

“We could appear to give him the Somalderis
as an offering,” John suggested. “Escott and I could create a
distraction and you could sneak up close with the gift.”

“Roman guards are not easily distracted,”
Spud said, sounding unenthusiastic. “But I see few other
alternatives. Making a move at the Sanhendrin or when he is
surrounded by the high priests and elders would be even more
challenging. And I do not wish to make the personal acquaintance of
the Roman Prefect of Judea or the maddening crowds demanding
iniquitous justice at the Governor’s feet. We should endeavor to
return at night, two days after your theft.”

“Loan,” I defended. “But you’re probably
right. Let’s get moving.”

“Uh, wait,” said John.

We looked at him, waiting.

“I really should thank Aliyah. Before we go.
For her help.”

Cue eye roll.

“Another couple of hours here won’t matter.
We’ll still set our contract metrics at the correct time in the
past,” John pleaded. “It’s only polite.”

Cue sigh.

Spud finally stepped in. “I appreciate your
efforts to feign courtesy, but there could be unintended
consequences, the longer we stay where we do not belong. It is
critical that we leave now.” His hand crept towards the makeshift
Ergal on his ring finger.

Spud’s urgency seemed out of place in this
peaceful lea. I scanned the well-tended grounds, marveling once
again at the intricate and statues that dotted the grass, watching
us like a rapt marble audience.

John, leaning against Serapis, waved a hand,
brushing off Spud’s anxiety. “Honestly, Escott, you’re such a
buzzkill.” He stood up straight and stretched. “Fine, whatever.
But, after we’re done, I’m letting you know, I may take a little
vacation in the Middle East.
This
Middle East.”

After entering the correct contact metrics in
each of Lester Moore’s “Ergals”, we reached for each other’s hands
and stood together in a tight circle, rubbing our clasped fingers
over the rings. A millisecond before we X-fanned from the
graveyard, I caught a ghostly blur in my peripheral vision behind
John. A pair of arms clutching at his chest.

* * *

Golgotha? Time unknown.

The missile exploded less than a hundred feet
from where we’d M-fanned. The blast knocked us back onto the
parched ground, hard. Eyes to the sky, we saw the shiny, sleek
aircraft circling around for a second shot at an aluminum-sided
warehouse not far from where we lay.

We jumped up and ran for a concrete building
a few yards away, its windows shattered, its walls crumbling.
Better than being targets out here in the open.

All four of us.

“Aliyah!”

Those arms. They’d belonged to Professor
Malamud, who must have leaped onto John’s back at our critical last
second in Alsharif, and had been transported to the past along with
us. Was that a look of fear on her face—or regret?

John’s features broadcast a mix of concern
and joy. Spud was wearing his “I told you so” expression, peppered
with his, “We are so screwed” one.

When we’d hidden inside the shell of the
concrete structure, John turned to Dr. Malamud with a broad grin.
“Awesome. How did you get here?”

“The same way we did, Rush,” Spud intoned. “I
thought I had heard a rustle behind Serapis. I should have arranged
our departure with greater haste.”

“You have excellent ears. I slipped on a
branch,” Aliyah admitted. “I could barely hear what you were saying
and I had to tiptoe in closer.”

As another blast shook our shelter, John
slipped an arm over Dr. Malamud’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re here
with us, wherever this is. We could use your help. I just hope we
don’t get--”

A third blast, closer to our building.

“We’d better move,” I warned. “We can talk
later.”

Nods all around. We ran through the remains
of the concrete building and out a large hole in its wall onto a
deserted street, its pavement filled with bomb craters, its
sidewalks lined with burned-out houses and scorched trees.

“Where the hell are we?” John said, once we’d
clambered into a damp cellar next to one of the destroyed homes.
“This ain’t ancient Judea.”

Spud was fiddling with his Zygan Ergal, so
Aliyah spoke first, in a comprehensible mix of Latin and Arabic.
“Though I have no credible explanation for how it happened, it
seems as if have landed in the middle of the Canonical Crusades.
About eleven hundred years ago.”

Confused looks from me and John.

Spud looked up from his research. “That makes
sense. Adding an unexpected fourth person to the transport diffused
the Ergals’ energy. They couldn’t take us back as far as we had
intended.” His glare was aimed at John.

John was smiling at the Professor.
“Oops.”

Her tone was not apologetic. “How could I act
otherwise? Aside from your clumsy dress, and your even clumsier
Anglish, you three were clearly not typical moderns.”

So much for Lester Moore’s Ergals.

“Yeshua Bar Maryam has long been forgotten in
our day,” the Professor continued, “But, like Yeshua, my own
ancestors had a covenant with the god Yahweh. There are few
historical documents to be found, but those I have researched
suggest Yeshua was condemned under a charge of blasphemy for his
contention that he was kin to Yahweh. Like most contemporary
scholars, I could learn little more.”

She reached out both hands, palms up. “And
now three
xenoi
arrive with urgent questions about this lost
martyr, seeking to locate his grave. What is their purpose for this
quest? Have they information or revelations that could change our
understanding of our past? I am a historian and a scientist,
clearly should I not investigate your origins and mission? If only
to understand mine?”

“And so here we are.” Apparently, she did
comprehend some English. Or Anglish. “Now, it is my turn to ask a
few more questions about you.” She paused, her eyes on our Ergal
rings, waiting.

I looked up at John, who seemed to have the
best connection with our new “friend”, and shrugged.

He stepped up to the plate. “Well, you’re
right, Aliyah. We aren’t exactly, uh, your kind of ‘moderns’. But,
we’re just like you in every other way. I mean, human. We, uh, do
have some technology here that, uh, you all, haven’t invented yet,
that allows us to travel, uh, you know, back. But unless you’re an
engineer, too, I don’t think you’ll understand my, uh,
technobabble. Um, just think of us as having solved the riddle of
cold fusion for time.” At last, John exhaled.

Oh, well. A punt.

Spud came up briskly to bat. “You are
correct, we are
xenoi
, from an impassable part of Earth, I
fear, and, in our own way, also students of science and history.
But, I am afraid, Professor, that we shall have to accompany you
back to Alsharif, thank you for your assistance, and bid you
‘adieu’. Our apologies for this unauthorized excursion, and our
best wishes as regards to your academic pursuits.” No hesitation
there.

Dr. Malamud raised her hand. “Wait. I’d like
to stay with—“

The roar of the jets drowned out the rest of
her sentence. Another blast vibrated our underground shelter. “Um,
Earth history was never my strong subject, Professor, but weren’t
jet fighters discovered less than a hundred years ago?” I asked as
the building shook from the force of the bomb.

Dr. Malamud raised an eyebrow, “I’m not
familiar with the term ‘jet’, but Heron, Hypatia, and so many other
ancients had developed models such as the aeroripile that could be
used for rapid flight. Why would it take more than two thousand
years to implement them?”

Spud whispered, “They had no Dark Ages.
Our
Renaissance was delayed a thousand years.”

Oh. “But, she didn’t she say Crusades?” I
countered.

“Dr. Malamud, who would the combatants in
this epic battle be?” Spud asked.

“Why the Order of Isis and Osiris and the
acolytes of Zarathustra, of course.”

Of course. Without Yeshua’s resurrection as
their inspiration, the numbers of Yeshua’s followers would never
have reached the critical mass needed to unseat the competing
religions of the era.

And Yeshua could never have completed his own
mission, to return and inspire those folowers, without the
Somalderis. Which he didn’t have, thanks to me.

Doomed.

Chapter 20

Nothing New Under the Sun

Golgotha—alternate eleven hundred
years ago

We heard the whine of the jet’s engines fade
into the distance before we dared venture out onto the barren
street, which was occupied only by rusted motor vehicles and
mangled cycles.

The rolling hills on the horizon indicated we
were still in the environs of Judea, but the land was dry, dusty,
and barren. “Where is everybody?”

“Probably evacuated to avoid the war,” John
said.

Professor Malamud agreed. “At its peak, the
Zarathustran empire extended east to the Hindi peninsula and north
to the Varangian kingdom. The Cult of Isis expanded to the
Anglo-Saxon Isles and the Arctic States, absorbing mythical
elements of those cultures such as the honoring of the fantasy
creatures, the Valkyries.”

I jumped in without thinking. “Valkyries
aren’t fantasy—I met—“ Seeing the looks on John and Spud’s faces, I
did a 180, adding, “many people who believe in them.”

The Professor nodded, “Despite tens of
thousands of years of evolution, the drive for spirituality has in
fact, grown. Many people feel a need to believe in something beyond
the material, beyond the limits of our human senses and cognition,
even if it doesn’t exist.”

“Indeed,” echoed Spud, casting a quick glance
at John.

“Life has no meaning without faith in
something,” said John, smiling again at the Professor. “Something
beyond ourselves.”

“Life is its own purpose.” She returned the
smile.. “And how wonderful that we have the opportunity to relish
it fully every day.”

“None of us will be relishing life for long
if we don’t transport out of here,” warned Spud. “Dr. Malamud, I
acknowledge your thirst for scientific discovery and your astute
skills at observation. But we remain at growing risk of discovery
here with every passing minute. We must return to Alsharif
post-haste.”

The Professor hugged John again, shaking her
head. “I told you. I’m not going back yet. I’m afraid you’re stuck
with me,” she said to Spud.

John hugged her back and grinned. “Love that
glue.”

Really, John? I gifted my brother with my
biggest eye roll. I expected Spud to emit an angry comment, too,
but all I heard in response was a loud buzz and the smell of
burning flesh. I turned to see a couple of uniformed men behind us,
armed with a type of taser, felt searing pain throughout my entire
body, and blacked out.