Mission (15 page)

I managed to find my tongue. ‘I'm glad something does.'

‘You struck out, Resnick,' she said. Her eyes flared, willing me into silence. She turned to The Man. ‘The Book says that after you'd been baptised, you met up with what they call the “devil”, spelt with a small “d”. Was that ‘Brax?'

The Man nodded. ‘He turned up eventually. His people had shadowed us from the moment of touchdown. And he was also waiting in the wings, so to speak, when Michael and Gabriel landed to set up what is known as the Resurrection. The transfer of Joshua's body and my meta-psyche to the longship.'

I glanced briefly over my shoulder to see if anyone behind was eavesdropping on our conversation. I needn't have worried. Nobody was paying the slightest attention. The quartet nearest The Man was discussing the plot of the latest Woody Allen movie. And let's face it, the way we were talking, we could have been discussing another, by Mel Brooks.

‘So that means he must have known about your disappearance too,' said Miriam.

‘He certainly knew things hadn't gone as planned,' replied The Man. ‘And that caused a certain amount of confusion on both sides. My people should have waited a while. After all, the first time around, I was back in Jerusalem in under two hours.'

‘But they didn't,' I interjected, with a feeling that I knew what was coming.

‘No,' he said. ‘They panicked and immediately launched a massive search operation. Every available vessel was despatched through the time-tracks in both directions. Back into the distant past, and forward to the twentieth century and beyond.'

‘And ‘Brax sent his main force after them,' I said.

The Man nodded. ‘He must have. When I transferred from the tomb to the longship after coming back from the Manhattan General, the massive forces ‘Brax had gathered had disappeared from the post-Crucifixion time-frames. When my resurrected form had been fully restored, Michael and Gabriel revealed that the search parties had already taken off and, for various reasons, could not be re-called without causing even more confusion. On top of which, our communication-link with the Empire had been broken. There was nothing in our mission orders to cover this situation. Nevertheless, I still had to return to Jerusalem to finish instructing the Twelve. So we mounted a major effort to pin-point the fault in the transfer process
that had caused me to side-track by a couple of thousand years.' He threw up his hands. ‘The system checked out perfectly.
I
was the faulty component. The flaw in the system. Why, is a mystery. It may be due to the trauma of the Crucifixion. But, somehow, the temporal aspect of my meta-psyche has become unstable.' He smiled at us both. ‘In practical terms and plain English it means that this form I have assumed – this
body
I'm in – is no longer firmly anchored in linear time. As yours are.
That's
why I keep disappearing.'

Miriam was the first to break the ensuing silence. ‘I don't know whether Leo has mentioned this but I'm a very down-to-earth person. I'm sure all this is terrifically relevant but the honest-to-God truth is I have about as much interest in cosmic events as Leo has in the workings of the lower intestine.'

‘She doesn't mean that,' I interjected. ‘She's a very intelligent girl.'

‘Of course I am,' said Miriam. ‘You don't have to tell
him
that. And you don't have to apologise for me either. The fact is, when you work in the boiler room of a cosmic
Titanic,
it's hard to get emotionally involved with what's happening up on the bridge.'

‘It's a nice image,' I said. ‘But I think you picked the wrong ship. At least I hope you did. If we have to be aboard anything, I'd rather it was something like the USS
Nimitz
with its flight deck packed with warring angels.'

The Man eyed me indulgently then took Miriam's hand. ‘I know how you feel. I spent thirty-four years in the boiler room myself. What is it you were going to ask me?'

‘It may be something I missed,' she said, ‘but at this point in time, whatever that means, are your people still looking for you?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘In the end, we decided it was better to let the search continue just in case I got into a jam somewhere along the line and needed help. There was always the chance that one of our ships might pass through my time-frame.'

‘And ‘Brax and his baddies are on their heels,' she concluded.

‘Yes. And in some cases, ahead of them.'

I began to put the pieces together inside my head. It was incredible. While the foursome behind us continued their review of W. Allen's unique brand of movie magic, and a fat-fingered man on my right reacted with monosyllabic compassion to a tale of woe from a redheaded dancer whose show had just bombed on Broadway, The Man had casually revealed that he was the subject of the biggest man-hunt ever.

As the sky beyond the Hudson River began the slow mix through from evening into night, and the windows of the black paper cut-out city began to glitter like boxed constellations of cut-rate stars, opposing fleets of metaphysical spaceships fashioned by powers in universes beyond our own were playing a cosmic game of tag through the woven strands of Time. Travelling through the unnumbered centuries towards the beginning and the end of the world in search of The Man who sat beside us cradling a glass of Seagrams.

‘Tell me,' said Miriam. ‘Does this mean that all those flying saucers people claim to have seen are
real?
Are they – ' Her hesitation was understandable. ‘Are they looking for you?'

‘Yes,' he said, and now there was no hint of a smile. ‘They're not really full of little green men, or shaped like trash can lids but, as in the case of angels, people see what they want to see.'

‘Now it begins to make sense,' I said, warming to one of my favourite subjects. ‘Why the sightings are so brief, and the descriptions so varied. Why there aren't any good pictures, no real attempt to communicate with us, or meet us face-to-face. We are of no interest. They're just passing through.'

It all seemed to fit neatly into the pattern of saucer sightings I'd read about, and the theories that UFOs came from another dimension. Another plane of existence. Or from the depths of human consciousness. Didn't they often appear quite suddenly, hover briefly over an area, a vehicle, or plane, then accelerate to speeds of thousands of miles an hour, and vanish into thin air?

If ‘Brax's ships had followed in the wake of the Star of Bethlehem boys, or maybe moved ahead of them, it would explain the steady increase in reported UFO sightings in the last half of this century while at the same time disposing of most of the aerial mysteries recorded by the scribes of Sumer, King Tut, and from there on up. The Man had now made three trips up the line, and two back down. And had doubtless appeared to people on the way. If either side had picked up his trail, it was obvious that they would eventually narrow their search down to the right century, then the right decade, then gradually zero in on the right year until they had his exact location spotted.

Right here in Manhattan, within an arm's length of L. Resnick.

I finished the last of my bourbon. ‘I've understood everything so far,' I began. ‘But something puzzles me. I can grasp the concept of temporal instability and your return to related time-frames of first-century
Jerusalem. Because, in a sense that's where your temporal roots are. But if you are not in total control of your movements, why is it you keep coming back
here?'

My question made Miriam snort in disgust. I don't know why. The answer concerned her just as much as it did me. As we both discovered later.

‘Leo,' he said, ‘at the moment, I can't tell you. But when I find out, you'll be the first to know.'

For some reason that sounded more like a threat than a promise. And it led me to consider the ever-present threat of the Apocalypse which was the scriptural corollary of the Second Coming and the gloomy prediction I've mentioned before, that the final holocaust would begin in the hills of Hebron. As it certainly would if The Man ever went back there as an official guest of the Israeli government. And it struck me that maybe I was wrong. Maybe ‘Brax might arrange to have Manhattan taken out after all. With
détente
a dead duck, the world in turmoil and Pentagon re-writing its nuclear war strategy, it could happen. The bad news in Revelations could begin with a pre-emptive strike by ‘Brax to take out The Man to whom I had unwittingly become host. He had assured me that his coming here was an accident. But suppose he wasn't levelling with me? Suppose this was it – with a capital I-T? The good guys might win in the end but what good would it do us to be on the side of the angels?

I took my eyes off the bottom of my glass and gave him a sideways glance. He broke off his conversation with Miriam and looked at me with disarming directness. He pointed at my glass and pulled one of my five dollar bills out of his hip pocket.

‘You look as if you could do with another drink. Let me get you one.' He flagged the waiter as if he'd been doing it all his life. ‘Miriam …?'

‘Not for me,' she said. ‘I'm going to have to get back to the hospital.' She checked her watch. ‘Maybe I can catch up with you later.'

‘Sure,' I said. ‘I'll call you and let you know what's happening.'

She waved us back into our seats as she got to her feet. ‘Take good care of him,' she said.

I nodded obediently. She gave me a smile that spelt forgiveness but her eyes told me I was still on probation. As she moved past The Man she briefly took hold of his raised hand. ‘You must come to the hospital some time.'

‘Yes,' he said.

We watched her walk away across the room. She turned and gave a quick wave as she reached the line of people waiting for seats. Then she was gone.

‘Nice girl …' He drained his glass as the waiter arrived.

‘Very,' I said, quietly appalled at the prospect of what the New York press would make of the miracles he might perform in Emergency. I put my glass on the tray and looked up at the waiter. ‘Make mine a triple …'

We sipped our way leisurely through the second round and I pointed out some of the more interesting items that formed part of the cityscape below us. The bar faces west, with a shorter window on the north side, so to see the Empire State, the Chrysler Building and the other high-risers of Lower Manhattan you have to eat in the restaurant that occupies the other half of the forty-fourth floor. Even so, The Man was still knocked out by the sheer volume of the city; the densely packed piles of masonry we'd managed to cram on to an island that had been purchased for a row of beads. As well he might be. First-century Imperial Rome might be a jaw-dropper to your average Visi-Goth but nothing short of the Celestial City itself could have prepared him for the glittering spectacle of night-time New York.

When we'd finished, we left the Gulf and Western building, cut through to Broadway and down to Times Square. As usual, it was littered with folks in search of a good time. Shoals of eager minnows with darting eyes; their faces rainbow-tinted by the razzle-dazzle from the acres of neon graffitti that hung in the night sky without visible means of support. The fluorescent icons of the good life. And in their wake, came the night people with walled-up eyes. The hustlers, pimps and pushers, moving coolly through the minnows like razor-toothed pike. Waiting for a chance to score.

We plunged into the crowds that spilled off the sidewalk, pausing every now and then to look at the displays in the jam-packed entrances to the pleasure palaces, the fast-food joints and record stores, then we stood for a while on a street corner and watched the world go by.

It is, perhaps, a banal remark, but it really
is
fascinating to watch the behaviour of individuals in a crowd. Some move purposefully, others aimlessly. Letting the waves of people carry them back and forth along the sidewalk; like uprooted seaweed caught in the ebb and flow of an incoming tide. Longing for a chance encounter to leaven the emptiness of their lives but not daring to reach out to one another. Just wandering; hands in pockets, or folded out of sight under their arms. Like multiple amputees; crippled by the fear of rejection. Their days and nights spent on the fringe of life, waiting for something to happen. Watching the takers. The minnows, jostling for a share of whatever was up for grabs. Sex, thrills, laughter; or drugs to deaden the need for all three.

Traffic flowed past. A rumbling glass and metal river of reflections. Pushers moved upstream against the press of the crowd; muttering the menu of the Paradise Café: Coke, Hash, Speed, Smack, Poppers, Acid …

I watched one of them until he disappeared in a sea of featureless faces; drained of colour by the canopies of white neon that reached out over the sidewalk, like bleached grains of sand on a distant shore and I was conscious of a degree of detachment that I had never felt before. As if he was making me watch the world through
his
eyes but with the knowledge of my own past pursuits of pleasure. And it bothered me more than a little to think that he might know exactly how I had behaved on those occasions. Even though he had never offered a word of criticism, the thought of any form of censure suddenly made me feel rebellious. After all, I had never pretended to be perfect.

I conjured up what I hoped was an air of aggressive unrepentance. ‘Do you want to move on – or have you seen enough?'

‘No,' he said. ‘Give me the full ten-dollar tour.'

‘Okay,' I replied. ‘But don't hold me responsible.'

I steered him across Broadway and down towards 42nd Street and made sure he kept close behind me as we eased our way through the log-jam on the corner. The street itself was teeming with people of every race and colour. United by a single creed; the exploitation and gratification of human desire. Maybe I'm neurotic but, when I walk down either side of that block between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, I always experience a certain
frisson.
Maybe it's because of the higher-than-average number of blacks and Puerto-Ricans gathered in rap-squads along the curb – as if in readiness to repel
boarders. Maybe it's because, by some miracle, I'd never yet been mugged but at the back of my mind I knew that sooner or later it had to happen. Preferably sooner; while one still has the sense not to resist and the strength to get up. It isn't a problem now, but the one thing I dreaded was the prospect of
shlepping
my bones around for seventy crime-free years only to fall prey to a twelve-year old vandal and his kid sister.