Mission (33 page)

‘Popular legend has you tied into the place,' I said. ‘Joseph of Arimathea is believed to have taken the chalice you used at the Last Supper to Glastonbury where he and his party were taken under the protection of a Welsh king, Arviragus. Other mystical traditions link you with King Arthur, the search for the Holy Grail, St George and the Dragon. There's even a hymn which poses the question, “
And did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon England's mountains green?”.
'

‘They did,' he replied. ‘But much as I admire your scholarship, we're getting off the point. As I said, the plan was to set up a power transmission but, in order to reduce interference to a minimum, we had to try and draw off 'Brax's forces from the point in time where it was going to happen.'

‘I'm beginning to get the picture,' I said. ‘
You
were the decoy.'

‘That's right,' he nodded. ‘As I was the only one who could upset their plans, ‘Brax had designated me as the prime target for surveillance. If I moved, they were bound to follow.'

It finally dawned on me. ‘So it's not tag you're playing, but hide-and-seek. When you turned up at Sleepy Hollow with that stunned
look on your face, you were lying to me. The lost time-traveller bit was just an act.'

I could tell from his face that I'd said the wrong thing.

His eyes seemed to catch fire. ‘I've never lied to you, Leo. When I made those first two trips through the time-tracks, the Empire's plans for this part of the mission had not been revealed to me.'

‘So, the time-travelling was set up to look like an accident,' I concluded.

The Man's face softened. ‘The crews of the rescue fleet still think it is. And because ‘Brax is monitoring all communications between our ships and the Empire, their genuine confusion is helping to cover my tracks.'

It was too much. ‘No wonder this war has been going on for two hundred million years …' I sat back and tried to slot this new piece of information into the cosmic jigsaw then mentally tossed it aside. ‘Let me ask you something. You're into your second war, up to your armpits in trouble, wherever you look you've got problems – I just don't understand why you guys have to put up with it. If The Presence made ‘Brax and the rest of the mob that got the boot from the Empire, why doesn't he just
un
-make them?'

He digested my question. ‘It's not quite that simple. To do it, you'd have to undo everything.'

I refilled my glass. ‘You mean – the Apocalypse?'

‘You'd need to destroy more than the Earth,' he said.

‘The – universe?' I ventured.

‘It wouldn't even end there,' he replied.

It was a marvellously surreal situation. Out on the streets, people were worrying away at their lives as they made their way into town for a good time, or tried to get back to their brick or clapboard burrows and here I was, sitting in a fourth floor apartment on 75th Street with The Man, casually discussing the disposal of the cosmos.

‘How d'you mean – “it wouldn't end there”?'

He spread his hands. ‘Because when this universe dies, the whole cycle starts all over again.'

I raised my glass to him. ‘In that case, next time round, just count me out.'

‘I'll see what I can do,' he said, returning my toast. ‘Let me quote you a few words from some unpublished material. Drawn from the elusive New Testament source material that Biblical scholars have labelled “Q”.'

From the German word
Quelle;
meaning ‘source'.

His voice took on a new resonance and it was several seconds before I realised that he was speaking to me in Ancient Hebrew which, once again, I understood perfectly. But there was more to it than that. I knew, with absolute certainty that this was the voice of Elijah, Moses and Abraham. The voice that had entered into them in the high places; whose vibrant echo had travelled down a three-thousand-year long corridor of time and now filled my mind.

‘
Fear not, Wayfarer, but listen and be of good cheer for in Your Beginning, You were beyond Time and Space and neither shall hold you in thrall. For both came into being with the sundering of the Eye of The Presence, the Primal Fire which gave birth to the World Below. From that moment Recorded Time began and will continue until the far-flung realms of the Star-Kings and all that lies within and without returns to the point whence All Began, fusing into a single, incandescent mass of unimaginable density and brilliance. Yet None shall be crushed, and None shall be blinded for All shall be as Light and that Light shall shine forth from the Face of The Presence and all of Time Past shall be as a single heart-beat of Created Man. Then shall All begin again, and so it shall continue until The Work is as perfect as Its Maker. Only then shall the Bonds of Space and Time be broken. The World Below shall be as One with the World Above and All shall come to Glory.
'

The Man's words recalled the currently fashionable theory of the expanding universe that would, in time, collapse in upon itself, terminating its life in a gigantic thermo-nuclear holocaust. Were these the legendary hell-fires to which unredeemed matter would be consigned while the Elect, freed from ‘Brax's grip, rose clear of the ashes?

I tried to grasp the concept but it was too overwhelming. How many universes had been trashed before this one, which we had barely begun to comprehend? How many more would explode into life before the required degree of perfection had been achieved? All this was a far cry from the naïve, devotional simplicity with which his life had been presented for popular consumption. The basic ‘
Blessed are the pure in heart
' bit still came through but, when one started to think about the supra-cosmic scale of the operation that The Man had outlined, the Christian claim that God, or whoever, had sent his one and only Son to help pull us up by the bootstraps suddenly became inconceivable – and ludicrously impractical.

Were we the only breed in need of salvation? What about the
mysterious Mannish that were out there somewhere? Amongst the numberless life-bearing planets circling the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies that lay beyond our own. If The Man came, as he claimed, from beyond Time and Space; from what had been termed the
Ungrund,
he could only be one of an infinite number of manifestations of the transcendent power of God. What we Jews termed the
Shekinah
and The Man referred to as The Presence. In saying this, I was not trying to destroy the widely-held belief that he sat on the right hand of God. There just had to be more to it than that. He had already hinted at a hierarchical relationship in which Michael and Gabriel were of lower rank. And if one was to believe his story about the fleet now on station in the heavens above first-century Jerusalem, then he was clearly a top gun. Someone that the Empire had gone to a great deal of trouble to rescue, and who ‘Brax took very seriously indeed.

All well and good. But this new explanation still left me with several worrying loose ends. ‘Tell me,' I said. ‘If the idea is to give ‘Brax the slip, why take the risk of coming back here again? Especially since they knew you were here last week.'

‘It's not so much where I move to, but when,' he replied. ‘They're bound to catch up with me eventually. The trick is to keep them guessing.'

‘But why keep homing in on me?' I insisted.

‘Leo,' he said, ‘has it occurred to you that you might have homed in on me? Don't you find it strange that when I landed in that alleyway on the East Side, none of the policemen who handled my body, or people at the hospital like Wallis, reacted to my presence. Yet you knew who I was.'

‘Not true,' I replied. ‘It was Miriam who put the idea into my head.'

He nodded. ‘And you rejected it. ‘Braxian logic told you that it was impossible. But another part of your mind accepted the possibility of my existence, and my presence in your world. And when I turned up at Sleepy Hollow, you recognised me.'

My training as a lawyer got the better of me. ‘I admit I accepted that you were actually there, and that I wasn't going crazy.'

He chuckled. ‘That's the bit I always find hard to understand. Why should believing in me be regarded as a sign of insanity?'

‘Aww, jeez, what a question,' I groaned. ‘Listen, you're just passing through. I have to live in that big wide world out there. From where I'm standing, God is, at best, an agreeable notion. And if he
really
does
exist then he's got a lot of explaining to do. Like, for instance, why he left you out on a limb two thousand years ago.'

He flagged me down. ‘There was a reason for all that. It was part of the mission.'

‘Okay, maybe it was,' I said. ‘In which case I look forward to hearing about it. And perhaps you can also explain why it is that whenever people get themselves organised into a church with any kind of power structure, they always end up by giving religion a bad name. That goes for the guys selling awareness too. It's all a contrick. The hustlers at the top cream off a fortune in cash and realestate, and the dummies at the bottom end up with empty pockets and a begging bowl.'

‘That's true,' said The Man. ‘But you have to remember that ‘Brax is doing his damnedest to turn people away from me. Let me give you the word on religion. There have been, and there will be, a lot of people who claim to have been given the power to preach The Word. Don't believe them. When you meet someone who is filled with the Power of The Presence, you'll know it without them having to say anything. James, John and Peter knew it when I came to them by the Sea of Galilee. You knew it up at Sleepy Hollow. The world is full of liars trying to sell you the soft option. Telling you that it's okay to go on hustling your way though life providing you go to church on Sunday. What you might call the “Screw-you-Buster” brand of Christianity. The scenic route to God.' He smiled and shook his head. ‘It's a dead end. There is only one True Path, and The Way is hard. Even so, you must beware of other false messiahs who will tell you that you have to renounce all material possessions in order to be saved. I can't argue with that. Too many people are crushed by the excess baggage they're carrying. By all means make an effort to shed the things of this world, but before you hand over your life savings, check the preacher's bank account. If he's richer, or lives in better style than the poorest member of his congregation, keep a tight hold on your wallet and run.'

I nodded approvingly. ‘It's a pity you can't appear and say all this when one of these con-artists is filling the Yankee Stadium with their faithful subscribers.'

The Man smiled again. ‘That's not my style. I never went in for preaching to big crowds.'

I must say that surprised me. ‘What about the five thousand you fed with seven loaves and five fishes – or was it four thousand, five
loaves and only two fishes? I keep getting them mixed up.'

‘You're not the only one,' he said. ‘The short answer is, it didn't happen. The original story concerned seven loaves, five fishes and four thousand people. But it was a code message for what you might call ‘initiates'. The seven loaves and five fishes refer to the disciples. Five of whom were fishermen. You've probably already guessed that the twelve disciples were meant to symbolise the twelve trapped Ain-folk. The breaking up of the loaves and fishes into fragments to nourish the four thousand represented the fragmenting of the Ain-folk and their absorption into their multiple human hosts. As food enables the body to live, so their spirit-entities gave life to the soul.'

‘What about the fragments that were left over?' I asked. Remembering the words in John's gospel.

‘Another code message,' he said. ‘But this time, it referred to the rescue of the Ain-folk. The final liberation.' He closed his eyes as he recalled the relevant passage. ‘“
He said to his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets
…”' He opened his eyes. ‘And if I can paraphrase the next verse, “
This is the truth that I was sent to bring into the world”.
It's all there, Leo. You just have to look for it.'

I nodded. ‘I'll have to read through it again. So, the twelve filled baskets represent the reassembled Ain-folk. But why all the double-talk? Why keep it a secret? Surely the whole idea was to get the message through to as many people as possible.'

‘Of course it was. But you must understand two things. First, we were working on a much longer time-scale than you appear to envisage. What the church calls my Ministry and Crucifixion took place not quite two thousand years ago. If you set that in the context of a war that has already lasted two hundred million years …'

‘Yeah …' I said. ‘I see what you mean.'

‘And second, what I had to say was not appropriate for mass audiences. In those days, there were no megaphones or public address systems. But even if I could have made myself heard, there is always someone on the edge of the crowd who gets it wrong. In any case, I couldn't talk to the ‘
amme ha-'aretz
as I'm talking to you. I had to keep it simple to prevent the message being garbled in transmission. So I adopted the story-telling forms that our people have used since they sat around the camp-fires of Abraham. Many of those parables found their way into the Book. But there were many things I
said more directly to the disciples in private.'

‘Did you pick them because they had a higher level of awareness?' I asked.

He rolled his bottom lip. ‘I recruited them for several reasons. I suppose you could say they were receptive but they all needed help.'

‘Was it difficult?'

He eyed me, remembering. ‘It wasn't supposed to be. After all, I hadn't come to say anything that you didn't know already.'