Mission (6 page)

He nodded, and drank some more wine.

‘Did she know who you really were?'

‘Yes, from the very beginning,' he said. ‘But sometimes she, uhh –' There was a slight break in his voice. ‘ – she found it hard to cope.' He turned away and stared out of the window.

I didn't say anything. We just sat there and let the silence settle round us. The late afternoon sunlight angled in through the windows and highlighted his profile. He certainly wasn't any Robert Redford. A real writer would be able to give you a couple of pages of deathless prose describing him from head to foot but I'll keep it short and sweet. He looked like a cross between Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro. The dark, heavy-browed look combined with de Niro's coiled-spring leanness.

I thought back over what he had told me so far, and what had happened since that fateful Saturday at the Manhattan General and it occurred to me that he still had not positively identified himself – and indeed never did. He didn't need to. The instinctive knowledge of who he was had welled up from somewhere deep inside me while at the same time, another part of me was trying to stop me from accepting it. Trying to bury the feeling of certainty under layers of doubt. Looking for a way to avoid getting involved.

Intellectually, it was an intriguing idea to be sharing a bottle of wine with The Man while Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin had search parties out looking for him. It didn't require a rational explanation. Our minds had been conditioned by several decades of science fiction and fantasy literature and the concept of time-travel had been with us, on paper at least, since about 1840. But no one in their right minds would believe that it could actually happen. Especially the scientific community who, faced with the latest findings on the Turin Shroud, had withdrawn into a baffled silence. I found it hard to imagine The Man agreeing to submit to tests under
laboratory conditions in the way Uri Geller had. But even if he did, how could he prove that he had journeyed from the first century to the twentieth and back again? Wouldn't we turn out to be just one more generation of vipers looking for an empirically provable sign?

The Man came out of his reverie. ‘Tell me, Leo. Is everybody like you nowadays?'

‘How do you mean?' I said.

‘Well, in the way you've just accepted me being here and the things I've told you.'

‘I accept that you're here,' I said. ‘And that you were also at the hospital. But it's still giving me a few problems. As for the rest, I'm not too sure just how typical I am. I like to think I'm open-minded and I suppose, because of that, I don't have any preconceived ideas about you. It's the same with those endless arguments over the existence, or non-existence of God. It's an interesting idea but I have to tell you that religion is not something I have a lot of time for. That goes for a lot of other people too. But there are millions of others of various persuasions who take it very seriously indeed. And the irony is, you could be in big trouble with both groups if you went about telling people who you are.'

‘Tell me something new,' he replied.

‘No, really, it's a lot harder now,' I said. ‘Since you died, there have been quite a few freaks who claimed they were the Messiah, uhh – not that I'm trying to suggest that – '

‘Sure,' he said, ‘I know that.'

‘You see,' I continued, ‘Miriam and I
know
what happened. We don't need convincing. We saw it with our own eyes. But if you decided to make your presence known to a wider audience, we could encounter a serious credibility problem. Take the Jews for instance. If my people didn't believe you were you then, what's going to make them believe you are you now?'

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean …'

‘It's the same with the Christians,' I said. ‘There are plenty of them around but they can't even agree amongst themselves as to who you were, what you did, what you said, or whether you meant it. I think I'd better tell you that while you've been away they've been rewriting the script. The Ten Commandments are out, and faggots are in. People still believe in you but they might not be too happy if they knew you'd come back. I have a feeling that most of them would prefer the myth to the real thing.'

His eyes fastened on mine. ‘But in spite of what you've said,
you
believe me.'

I wriggled uncomfortably under his gaze. ‘Look, uh, I already told you. Religion's never been a big thing with me. Especially my own.'

‘Religion is not what it's about, Leo,' he said. ‘That's something you people dreamed up. What I'm concerned with is awareness.'

I grimaced. ‘You may have trouble in putting that across. I hate to tell you this but, in the last twenty years, “awareness” has become one of the world's great clichés. It's been exploited by all the wrong kinds of people.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘The other side has been busy.'

‘The other side?' I ventured cautiously.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Didn't you know there was a war going on?'

I hesitated, unwilling to respond to his question, but I couldn't think of a way out. ‘You mean all those stories about a ceaseless conflict between the Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness are true?'

‘Yes,' he said.

My brain began to back-pedal. ‘Sounds interesting,' I said flatly. ‘But I'm not clear on where I fit into any of this. I mean, this is big league stuff. What can I do?'

‘That's something we still have to work out,' he said.

My face must have been a picture.

‘Leo,' he said. ‘This is one fight where you can't stand on the sidelines. All of us are involved whether we like it or not. So you might as well get used to the idea.'

Okay, I thought. But don't expect me to volunteer for hazardous duty. I'm strictly a rear-echelon man.

If he picked up my cowardly thoughts, he did not reveal it. The one thing I did not need was news of an imminent Armageddon. I decided to steer the conversation back to something more innocuous. ‘I imagine your people must be wondering where you are.'

‘Yes,' he mused. ‘I wish there was some way I could make contact.'

I must tell you, I found it odd that he couldn't. I mean, from the way he'd been built up by the Roman Church, you'd have expected him to have a direct line. But I didn't press the point. ‘Where were you when you made this last time-jump?'

‘In a village a few miles from Jerusalem,' he said. ‘A place called Bethany. I was talking to my brother James and some of the Twelve – '

‘The disciples?' I asked.

‘Yes,' he nodded. ‘My mother was there too. I walked out of the house expecting to be beamed up to the longship and – ' He snapped his fingers. ‘ – there I was, outside this place.'

I nodded sympathetically but tried to hold back on the concern. ‘The Book does mention your sudden disappearances in that period after the Resurrection, but the writers are a little hazy about your movements. Which is understandable. They weren't there when it happened.'

‘Have you read the New Testament?' he asked.

‘Not from cover to cover,' I admitted. ‘But I know the general outline. And I can tell you one thing for sure. Nobody mentioned you had a sense of humour.'

He smiled. ‘There were times when that was the only thing that kept me going.'

‘Well, the laughs aren't in the Book,' I said. ‘But it's still sold a lot of copies. From what you've already told me it's clear they didn't get anything like the whole story. But let's face it, they're only human. Now that you're here, why don't we use what time you've got to set the record straight? Let's get as much down as we can, then you decide what you want to do with it.'

‘Okay,' he nodded. ‘Good idea …'

It had to be. I'd been watching the bottle of wine. I'd had two glasses. He'd had six. And it was still full …

I left The Man in charge of the magic bottle and went and made myself a cup of coffee. At the back of my mind was a hazy memory of him doing something like this before, but I couldn't remember whether it was with a cask of wine, a pitcher of water or a jar of oil. I phoned Miriam from the kitchen and asked her to bring me a copy of the O & NT. She told me she'd managed to talk her way off the Saturday night detail and would drive up in a borrowed car. She thought she would probably reach Sleepy Hollow around eleven and asked me what I was doing about food.

I told her that I'd brought enough for the two of us and that I had the impression that our guest wasn't too concerned about his calorie intake. It was, of course, the wrong thing to say.

‘He drinks, doesn't he?' she said severely. ‘What makes you think he doesn't eat?'

‘Okay,' I said. ‘If you want to play the Jewish mother, bring up a bag of bagels.'

There was a withering silence at the other end of the line.

‘Hullo,' I said. ‘You still there?'

‘I'll see you later,' she said. And hung up on me.

I carried my coffee back into the living-room and resumed my recorded conversation with The Man. ‘You mentioned coming from another universe. I know that's one of our word-concepts but, according to the dictionary, “universe” means “the totality of things which exist” – “another universe” is a contradiction in terms. So what exactly are we talking about?'

‘A universe which lies beyond the boundaries of external reality – which you use as a yardstick to prove the “existence” of
everything within it.' He paused as he saw me frown. ‘Think of it this way – you're familiar with the one you can see – '

‘You mean the one which falls within the spectrum of visible light?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘The optical universe. And your radio-astronomers are busy mapping others composed of X-ray and other high-energy sources that give you, for instance, a very different picture of the sun. It's no longer just a yellow disc broken by the occasional solar flare. You accept this invisible aspect of the sun because scientific instruments have confirmed its existence. So it should be easy for you to accept the idea of a parallel universe which “exists” alongside your own but which you cannot see because it is on a different wavelength. Now, just as a host of short, medium and long wave radio programmes can pass through this room simultaneously, my world is superimposed upon the space-time continuum that you perceive as the physical universe. It inter-penetrates yours completely, and it is able to do this because, like the radio programmes, it does not take up any space. Even so, it is as “real” as your own yet your mind does not admit of its existence. Why? Because your brain – which is like a radio set capable of receiving broadcasts from all over the world – has become permanently tuned to one channel. The local station you know as external reality. The finite world. And the received data is fed into your brain through the five physical senses. But many more worlds lie beyond this one and – ' He looked at me with just the hint of a smile. ‘ – something tells me that you are aware of this possibility.'

‘Well, I'm not a complete dummy,' I replied. ‘I've read a couple of books by Carlos Castaneda and dipped into a third. I believe we have a sixth sense and like to think that we actually
do
possess that legendary third eye. I can accept the idea of alternative realities just as I can accept the idea that we once knew more than we do now. My problem is that I find it impossible to envisage what form those alternative realities might take, or how I could exist within them or – and which is more to the point – what relevance they have to the one I'm part of.'

The Man smiled again. ‘Take it from me, Leo, you don't belong exclusively to this world. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.'

I headed for shallower water. ‘Let's go back to when you first arrived here. Before you entered Joshua's body. Did you come in a starship, longship, or whatever, like the one that I presume is still hovering somewhere above first-century Jerusalem?'

‘No, something smaller.'

I waited expectantly but he did not elaborate. ‘Okay,' I said. ‘I won't ask to see the blueprints, but can you tell me who builds these things?'

‘Nobody.' He smiled as he saw my frown. ‘They're brought into being by The Power of The Presence. Just think of them as thought–projections.'

‘You mean like the castles and landscapes that were conjured up by the power rings worn by the characters in Michael Moorcock's trilogy,
Dancers at the End of Time?'

He shrugged. ‘Yes, something like that. I'm not trying to evade your questions. There are no words to describe the workings of our world or how it came to be. Just accept that it is so.'

I nodded. ‘Okay, I understand. But it's still very frustrating. Never mind. Let's move on. You said that there were three of you on board.'

‘Yes. Two Envoys and myself.'

‘And I assume that you were mission commander.'

‘Yes. In Earth-terms the Envoys were subordinate to me but they were both time-wise. I had never been through the Time Gate before.'

‘How did it feel?' I asked.

He chewed over his answer. ‘It was quite an experience … It's only fair to tell you that a lot of our people become ‘star-struck' on their first trip through the Gate. And some of them never recover.'

Who were they? I wondered. And what happened to them? Did they become wandering spirits on the run from God's army? Or did they go over to the enemy? I pressed on with my original line of questioning. ‘Okay, so there are three of you inside this spacecraft, or whatever. What do you look like?'

I could see that was another one of the hard ones. He rubbed his chin and gave me a long look. ‘What are you asking me to describe – my temporal, or non-temporal aspect?'