City of Ruins (20 page)

“We haff since taken care of the newspapers,”
Rolf answers. “They were too stupid to see
I
was the only
one with the nerve to do what needed to be done with Project Split
Second. None of the others had it. Not even your mother.” He
grins.

“What about my mother?” Eli steps toward him.
The people around us are getting nervous again, more nervous than
they already were.

“
Please
,” Naftali says, whimpering.
And I find that my own fear is slowly being replaced by anger.
Anger at bullies who think history belongs only to them.

“Let’s talk about your hat,” Rolf says to
Eli. “If I had known about your Danger Boy project sooner, perhaps
I could have prevented your stupidly crossing my path in San
Francisco during the war, then crossing it again in England.”

“Let him go, if it’s me you want,” Eli tells
him.

In reply, Rolf fires his gun in the air.

Naftali screams, and jerks against Rolf’s
arms, but Rolf holds on to him. “Babylonian,” Naftali whispers to
me.

I try to keep Naftali’s eyes trained on mine,
so he can keep his own terror at bay.

Eli is still uncertain what to do.

“Your hat,” Rolf repeats. “I could care less
about you. It is your hat I want. We shall end your stupid
blundering through time right now.”

Tears roll from Naftali’s eyes, then he shuts
them hard, hoping, I think, to make all this go away. “You
promised,” he squeaks out in another whisper.

My friend Eli unclips his soft hat from his
belt and holds it in his hands. “Don’t hurt him,” he says. “Don’t
hurt any of them because of me.”

“Just give me that, so I can leave this
landscape of broken Jews.”

Rolf is speaking English. Only a few of us
understand what is going on.

“Release the boy.” Someone else understands
the situation, though: Jeremiah.

I have not been out of my pox dream state
long, but I believe, like Huldah, he is regarded as something of a
prophet, too. Perhaps he is looked upon as Mother was in Alexandria
— someone who says things out loud that make others
uncomfortable.

“Be quiet!” a woman in the crowd shouts. “You
have nothing more to say in Jerusalem! We told you to go plant your
seeds!”

“Even your own people are against you. Out of
the way, old fool,” Rolf says in the Hebrew tongue. Jeremiah’s eyes
widen. “Oh yes,” Rolf adds. “We learned the language of the dead.
For academic reasons. A few permitted traces of your race, which we
were going to eliminate.”

“Even the Babylonians didn’t succeed in
that,” Jeremiah says. “We are not dead yet.”

Rolf appears surprised by this response.
Perhaps he was expecting something more fearful.

“You are a ridiculous old man,” Rolf says at
last. “You should have left when you had the chance.” And with
that, he moves to strike Jeremiah in the head, with his gun.

But Jeremiah swings back with his walking
staff.

“No!” Naftali bites Rolf’s arm. And before I
can reach Naftali and pull him away, Rolf strikes him in the head
with the gun. I see a trickle of blood in his hair.

“Stop that, you bully!” James reaches Rolf
ahead of me, and kicks him in the legs. Rolf is about to swing back
and hit him when Eli charges Rolf and knocks him down.

The gun bounces away.

“He’s getting the Babylonian!” Naftali tells
me, then looks at the blood on his fingers.

“You’ll be all right,” I tell him, and pull
him close. I tear a piece of my clothing off — I am still wearing
the robe-like garment I was given when Eli and I were imprisoned by
his own government — and begin wrapping it around his head.

The loose gun is picked up by another of the
time travelers, the one named Rocket.

“Shoot him!” Rolf yells. “Shoot all of
them!”

Rocket looks at Rolf and Eli struggling on
the ground, then puts the gun in his pocket.

“What are you doing!?” Rolf screams. “You saw
what they did to me!”

“I saw,” Rocket said. “It’s what I had always
wanted to do to you, every time you beat me!”

Rolf’s eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t dare —” He
can’t finish, because Eli tries to pin him to the dirt.

Rocket watches his grandfather fight with my
friend. The people of Yerushalayim watch, too, still from a
distance, willing to let all of us hurt each other.

Rocket paces over to Rolf, yelling at him,
but does nothing to help Eli. “I did everything you asked! Did
more
than you asked—took care of the genetic experiments
from all your secret programs for you and rounded them up whenever
they escaped!” he says, pointing at K’lion.

“ ‘Genetic experiment?’ ” K’lion repeats.
“No, I am merely a wandering
tkkkt!
Saurian.”

For the trouble of speaking up, K’lion
elicits more cries of “Goat-demon!”

But Rocket isn’t done with his grandfather
yet. “And did you ever thank me? I took all your failed lab
projects with me into the streets and kept your Odd-Lots Carnival,
your freak show, out of sight, so nobody would ask too many
questions.”

“I am not some freak-show experiment!” the
Bearded Boy says, pointing at K’lion.

“Neither
pttt!
am I!” K’lion repeats.
“I am an outlaw!”

Eli now has Rolf pinned under him.

“There was a time,” Rolf hisses at Rocket,
“when you wouldn’t be allowed to do this to me.”

“We aren’t in that time anymore” Rocket says
to him.

“No matter what time we’re in,” and even with
all the dirt on Rolf’s face, I can see that he’s wearing a grin,
“little Danger Boy here will be interested to know I was the last
person to see his mother alive.”

“What!?” It’s just enough to distract Eli,
and Rolf flips him over, and now has my friend pinned under
him.

“Not bad for an old man, eh?” Rolf yells.
“The
Drachenjungen
never grow old and never forget!”

“Stop it, Grandfather! Stop it now.” Rocket
has taken the gun back out of his pocket and aims it at Rolf’s
head. “Let him go. It’s my turn to be pointing the gun now.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Rolf tells him, “no
matter what time we’re in.”

It is unclear whether Rocket will actually
fire the gun, but K’lion has seen enough and leaps over, knocking
Rocket down to the ground. “No! No more mammals dancing with
guns!”

And then, with his tail, he knocks Rolf off
of Eli.

I consider these both good and fine actions,
but the people around us do not. K’lion’s sudden movement and
yelling — the actions of a “goat-demon” — ’cause everything that
has been pent up to come exploding out in a fury.

They rush toward us; they even jump on one
another, everyone hitting and throwing things.

“You cry for peace!” Jeremiah yells. “But
there is no peace! Stop this! Stop!”

But no one is listening to him. They are too
busy fighting. Someone has K’lion’s tail, and Eli and Rocket crouch
with their backs to each other to keep from being overwhelmed.

I grab Naftali and James and try to move them
out of harm’s way.

K’lion now hops around, getting pelted with
even more rocks. A.J. tries to protect him, and I pull Naftali and
James under an overhang.

But in the confusion, Rolf has crawled over
to where Eli’s soft helmet landed earlier and now clutches it in
his hand.

“No!” Eli yells.

He puts it on his head, and nothing
happens.

Eli sees what’s going on and tries to get
over to him, but the crowd blocks his way.

“Let me through!”

“Let him pass!” I yell in Hebrew, but no one
is listening to anyone.

Rolf takes the cap on and off, but still
nothing happens. There is an artificial covering on it, which Eli
calls Thickskin, that prevents immediate contact with the
material.

Rolf must know this, too, as he starts
scratching at the covering.

Naftali and James hold on to me.

“Gehenna-marked!” It is the woman who has
been accusing us all along, and now she grabs at me from above,
reaching into the overhang, pulling me away from the boys.

“I knew it!” she screams. “Bringing us
nothing but misery!”

Eli has fought his way to within arm’s reach
of Rolf, who puts the hat back on his head one more time…

…and vanishes.

And with it, perhaps, our only chance of
getting back to Eli’s time.

Eli groans and slumps to his knees. I think
he’s hurt, but Rolf’s seeming display of magic increases the
crowd’s rage against us to a lethal level. Naftali and James are
both crying, terrified, and before I can even move to help anyone,
the woman who is attacking me drops down in front of me, then steps
toward me, holding a club in her hand…

…when something behind me catches her eye,
and she stops and points over my shoulder.

“Look,” she says, to no one in particular.
“Look!” she shouts now, pointing, and though I don’t think anyone
can hear her, other people in the rioting crowd see the same thing
she does, and more and more of them stop and point and say “Look,”
until finally, you can hear each of their voices again.

“Look. It’s her.”

“It’s her!”

Huldah.

Huldah has come up, out of her cave.

Back up here, to the surface, to the world.
To the ruins of her city.

And behind her are several of the slow pox
victims, the Gehanna-marked, the people with Seraphic plague, or
whatever name it goes by, other survivors, coming up out of the
darkness with her.

But I don’t know if they’ll listen to Huldah,
since they haven’t really listened to Jeremiah.

“Jeremiah is right,” Huldah says. “You will
never have what you seek if you keep tearing each other to
shreds.”

“We don’t want any more strangers around us,”
the Gehenna-woman tells her, still brandishing her club.

I seek out the faces of my friends in the
crowd, and see K’lion — who, of course, looks the most strangerlike
of all — and then Eli. And then I look at Eli’s shirt.

There is English on it, which I am surprised
I can read. I am growing increasingly familiar with his native
tongue.

All of which gives me an idea.

Chapter
Eighteen

Eli: Gimel,
Gimel

583 B.C.E.

It was my jersey that finally calmed everyone
down and kept them from throwing rocks at us or doing something
worse.

My jersey, that is, and the way Andrew
Jackson Williams celebrates the Jewish New Year.

First, it was Thea’s idea to translate and
let everyone know what my shirt said: House of David. Though in
Hebrew it sounded like “B’eight Dah-veed.”

“House of David. See?” Thea explained. “He’s
with the House of David, too.” A.J. confirmed the translation; no
one tried to explain what baseball was, but the idea that I was
with “House of David” could also mean I was related to King
David.

We didn’t bother to correct anyone.

Of course, that made some of them madder —
they thought I was claiming to be some kind of anointed or chosen
one who was supposed to be descended from David himself.

So it still might not have worked, except
that Huldah came over to have a closer look herself. She couldn’t
read English, but she looked at the garment, ran her fingers over
it, and noticed the two mysterious letters sewn on the inside.

“
Gimel! Gimel!
” she said, reading
them. So they
were
Hebrew.

“He has two gimels on this garment.” Huldah
turned and explained to the survivors. She unbuttoned my shirt
enough so she could lift the flap and point out the letters to
everyone else. It was a little embarrassing. “The two gimels refer
to reward and punishment — the sign of consequence for every
action.”

“What?” I whispered to Thea.

“In Hebrew, each letter equals a number.
Gimel
equals the number three,” she whispered back, speaking
fast. “And each letter, each number, has special cosmic meaning.
The gimel refers to balance and to choice — each choice bringing
its outcome, for good or bad.”

“Like history itself?”

“Yes. Like everything. In balance between
light and dark. Mother would sometimes study the hidden meanings of
holy texts, including Hebrew letters, in the library, especially
with visiting scholars who were always trying to unlock ancient
mysteries.”

“What hidden meanings?” I asked.

“It is what your father does with his
science. Tries to make more sense of things.”

“So then, this is like the Hebrew version of
my uniform number? Number thirty-three? It’s part of the replica?
Or does that mean it’s a real jersey?”

“You are asking me a baseball question?” Thea
wondered.

“I guess not.”

So gimel gimel was Green Basset’s uniform
number: two threes next to each other, for number 33. And each
three had special significance in Hebrew. Someone in the House of
David must have known that. Did they know it just might have saved
the life of me and my friends?

There really is a lot of stuff that we can’t
see, going on in the world.

“The stranger’s garment,” Huldah was saying,
“reminds us of what Jeremiah told us, when he said, ‘O, House of
David, bring justice in the morning.’ He also asked for deliverance
from the oppressor for those who have been robbed or scorned, for
us to escape the consequence of someone else’s thoughtless, cruel
actions, and to make choices that are wise, and that allow us to
walk in God’s way.

“It is morning,” she said, gesturing to the
sun and the remaining traces of melting frost, “and everyone in
this place, even these strangers, are part of the House of David
now.” She lifted her hand, sweeping past the wreckage-strewn
horizon. “And this is that house. This ruined place. It is up to us
to decide what kind of house — what kind of home — will rise up
this time.”