Zig Zag (36 page)

"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 intervened.

"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.

"Now,
I know this is absurd, so please don't laugh," Clissot began,
"but... thinking about Sergio's idea, I'm wondering... Isn't it
possible that there is somehow some form of communication between
past and present? What I mean is ... Well, why couldn't that woman
have somehow sensed our presence?" Elisa was horrified at the
possibility. "I know you've explained it several times already,
but I still don't understand the exact physics behind opening time
strings. If what you're doing is making a hole to be able to see back
in time, why couldn't the people from back then see forward through
it, too?"

Silence.
Blanes and Marini exchanged a quick glance, as if deciding who should
tackle the question. Or
how
to
tackle it.

"Anything
is possible, Jacqueline," Blanes said, finally. "The 'exact
physics behind opening time strings,' to use your expression, is a
mystery to us all. We're moving in such a tiny field that the laws
governing it are, to a large degree, unknown. In quantum physics,
there's a phenomenon known as entanglement, by which two particles,
even if they're billions of kilometers apart, have a mysterious
connection, and what happens to one of them affects the other
immediately.
That's
known as nonlocal behavior. And in the case of time strings, we think
that without the temporal distance there would be a higher chance of
quantum entanglement. That's why we don't want to do any experiments
on the recent past."

"Guess
I skipped physics class that day," Clissot said, smiling.

Blanes
made as if to stand up, but Marini beat him to it.

"I've
got the dry-erase, maestro." He strode to the whiteboard on the
wall and drew a horizontal line with his left hand—Marini was
quite elegant for a southpaw. "Imagine that this is a time line,
Jacqueline. The right end represents the present, and the left one is
an event that occurred, say, a thousand years ago. When we open their
time strings, we create a sort of passageway called a 'wormhole,'
which is a tunnel of particles that connects the past to the present,
at least for the instant that the opening takes place. The same thing
would happen if we opened strings from five hundred years ago,
although in this case the bridge would be much shorter. See?"