Corrupting Dr. Nice (7 page)

SEVEN: A
NIGHT AT THE HIPPODROME

In the evening three trumpet calls from the heralds at the Temple summoned the faithful to prayer, while the magic light of sunset turned the narrow streets soft gold. Serge Halam could understand how, to the Jews, Jerusalem seemed the center of God's universe. It was little wonder that they hated the futurians who so casually told them this was only a backwater moment in an incomprehensible universe.

He walked down the white stone street of the lower market, through crowds of pilgrims, priests, traders, thieves, anchorites. Jews, Greeks, Romans. A line of chanting Levites in white robes filed upward to the Temple. The smoke of the evening offering would soon rise. He passed a tailor, a worker in brass and copper, a shoemaker's shop. The shoemaker knelt before a low table in the shade of his wooden awning, pounding a piece of leather, a brass mortar in his deft hands. A letter writer with a reed pen stuck behind his ear crouched over an old-fashioned portable computer. Behind him a boy, no doubt his son, practiced writing Hebrew characters with a second reed pen.

Outside the entrance to the Hippodrome a couple of Greek touts were taking bets on that night's baseball game between Jerusalem and Capernaum. Halam paid five asses for a ticket and headed through the turnstile. The Jerusalem squad was pathetic, the Capernaum team not much better. The players were all captives taken in war, slaves, or criminals, with a couple of impoverished freemen, coached by a retired major leaguer hired by the Saltimbanque Corporation's Cultural Improvement Office. The historicals were miserably awkward batters. The concept of the curve ball was beyond them. The heat vibrating off the artificial turf turned day games into an oven, and quite regularly somebody had to be hauled off the outfield in a dead faint. Now that the lights had been installed most games were played in the evenings. Since devout Jews would not go near such sports, let alone bet, the crowds were mostly Romans, Greeks and Syrians, but that didn't keep the Pharisees from protesting the corruption it was causing.

It was probably a bad idea to try to introduce a modern sport into ancient Judaea, the brainchild of some PR flack with a newly minted social engineering degree who didn't bother to learn about the people he was trying to persuade. Or maybe the company wanted to cause friction, as an excuse to continue military rule.

Halam bought a basket of fried locusts from a vendor and found his seat. His contact had not arrived, so he sat watching as the ground crew laid down the chalk around the batter's box. Behind the home team's dugout, just opposite first base, Pilate and his son were settling into their reserved box. The Roman Prefect had taken to baseball and was a regular at most home games. His son wore an absurdly large Jerusalem Scholars cap, under which his ears stuck out like two open doors on a cab.

The game started and right away the Scholars fell behind. The pitcher walked the first two batters. The next hitter skidded a single into right center which the center fielder kicked to the wall; in the ensuing Marx Brothers routine between him and the right fielder both runners scored. The batter ended up on third. The crowd did not seem to mind, cheering every mishap wildly.

In the top of the third, score 6-2 Capernaum, a man sat down next to Halam.

"When we drive you invaders away we will have this place torn down."

"It's just a game, Simon," Halam said. "Save your indignation for something that matters."

Above the walls of the stadium, up on Herod's magnificent platform, the wall of the temple gleamed gold beneath a purple sky. "When I was a boy," Simon said, "I dreamed of escaping Galilee for Jerusalem. I longed to become a Levite, have my lot chosen to be the one, once in my life, to make the offering of incense. To walk before the great temple, to be vouchsafed a single glimpse of the Holy of Holies. That was before I saw the palaces the Sadducees built for themselves with the money collected from the poor."

"Money draws corruption. You shouldn't expect otherwise. That's the way the world works."

"Judaism is about purity."

"You're not going to get rid of your conquerors by being pure."

Simon spat onto the stone bench. "I don't know why I speak with you."

"You speak with me because I get you assault rifles."

"Once all you invaders are gone we'll destroy those rifles, and fling the pieces into the desert."

Halam laughed.

"Why do you laugh?"

"You remind me of something the inventor of these weapons said. He was an immigrant to a country in the future, a place called the United States."

"What do I care about this mythical country?"

"It was an important place. It lasted a couple hundred years."

"Israel has lasted a thousand. It will be here long after you have been driven away."

"Perhaps. Anyway, this inventor said his family emigrated 'so they could worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience, and prevent others from doing the same.'" Halam finished the last of his locusts. "Better hold onto those rifles, Simon" he said. "You'll need them."

A chant arose from the crowd as the Scholars mounted a rally. The Capernaum pitcher, a lanky Syrian who advertised his freeborn status with an impressive black beard, had already worn himself out and was lobbing gopherballs. The Jerusalem batter took a furious cut at a pitch, popping a high fly into foul territory outside first. The first baseman, a look of terror on his face, circled under it for what seemed like a full minute, then muffed the catch. The crowd cheered. Halam set down the empty paper dish and leaned forward. “Don’t overswing!” he shouted.

"There's nothing in the Torah against virtual reality," he said to Simon. "Or about microwaves, or radio , or electricity. These things are just machines. They don't have any moral content."

"You are worse than the Romans. You force your blasphemous images into everything."

"We call it advertising."

"'Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.' Yet your women talk openly in public, and wear scandalous clothing, and fornicate. They should be stoned."

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Simon clenched his fists and glared at the ball field. "Yes, he said that. But he left us. You stole him away."

"Save your money, take a tour to an unburned M-U. He's still there. Or visit the future. We've got several versions."

"Yeshu is everywhere but here, where he's needed the most."

"Why do you think he went? If he had stayed here he would be dead."

"His death would have been our victory. In his name we would have ripped Herod from his throne, stuck Pilate's head on a pike, and swept the Romans into the sea."

"My understanding is that he did not advocate violence. Perhaps you disagreed with him on this?"

Simon said nothing. He was acting as hysterical as Jephthah.

"Has something gone wrong?" Halam asked.

The zealot looked up at the Temple again before answering. "My superiors at the hotel have been treating me as if I'm the only employee there. The sent me up to a room today where one of your tourists had some kind of demonic lizard."

"You sure it wasn't a VR setup?"

"I could smell it."

"It was probably an iguana. Is that all that's bothering you?"

Simon looked him in the eye. "I don't know where my son is."

Halam sighed. This was more personal information than any one of the revolutionaries had ever trusted him with, and he didn't much like it. "You want my help?"

"What I want is for you all to leave." There was more weariness than rage in Simon's voice.

"Understand this," Halam said. "Your supporters in the future hired me because I like Jerusalem, but I think they're as deluded as you are. Even if you throw the corporations out, the time travelers will be here. I can give you self rule, but not keep them away forever."

"What good is self rule if you tear us apart? Your drugs and your music and your games?"

"Simon, your faith is immortal. But you can't stop change."

A foul ball screamed off the bat, curling right at them. Simon, oblivious, would have been beaned had not Halam surged up and snagged it. Simon looked befuddled. Halam sat back down, tossed the ball up and caught it. "Hey, how about that! I've never caught one before in my whole life! All right now, straighten it out!" he yelled.

"When can we attack?" Simon said.

"Calm down." Halam saw that Simon was not going to be reasonable. Maybe the zealots could scour the effects of the time travelers out of Jerusalem, but then they'd only be back in the Roman world. But there was no point in his trying to explain it all again.

The Jerusalem batter laced the next pitch into the left field corner. The man on second came around to score. The left fielder chased down the ball and came up throwing, a mile over the cut-off man and halfway up the first base line. The batter, arms flailing, rounded second and steamed toward third. The Capernaum first baseman kept the throw from going into the dugout, thought about throwing to third but held up. The batter ran through the stop sign at third and steamed toward the plate. The sparse crowd was up and screaming, Halam with them. As the catcher blocked the plate, the first baseman threw home. The ball and the base runner got there simultaneously. There was a huge collision.

When the dust settled the umpire, leaning over, yelled “You’re out!”

The crowd hurled curses down on him. The Jerusalem manager rushed out of the dugout and jawed with the ump, throwing his arms about like a madman. The ump turned purple and told him to shut up. The catcher and the base runner lay on the ground groaning. The Capernaum manager barged in to hurl in a few choice epithets. The pitcher raised his arms to the heavens, then rent the neck of his uniform shirt, which looked to have been torn and re-sewn a dozen times already. The crowd hurled refuse onto the field. They began to chant, “Prefect! Prefect! Prefect!” Finally the umpire threw up his hands and turned to the Roman's box.

Pilate stood from his seat, pulled his fine blue robe around him. He held out his hand, thumb parallel to the ground, and let the moment draw out. The crowd hushed. Then, with a little grin, he turned thumbs up. Safe.

The crowd cheered, the Jerusalem manager helped up his player, the ump wiped his brow and the Capernaum skipper, muttering, stalked back to the dugout. The pitcher hung his head and kicked dirt from the mound.

Halam checked his watch. “I’ve seen enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Night was coming on and the streets lay in shadow. Simon led him down a narrow street to the river, then turned south down an even narrower street. Where it passed below the old wall of the City of David, near the Pool of Siloam, they loitered in the shadows. Halam lit a cigarette; Simon turned away in alarm, and Halam smoked quietly. Eventually a very handsome man in a brown cloak approached them.

"Hello, Jephthah," Halam said. "Howya doing?"

Jephthah stared at Halam's hand as if it were a dead fish; Simon grimaced, shifting from foot to foot. The instant the younger man had appeared Simon got even stiffer than before. Apparently it wasn't just the Saltimbanque staff that was bossing Simon around.

"Okay, let's get down to cases," Halam said. "You've distributed those Model 25s?"

"Model 25s?" Jephthah said, watching for passersby.

"The Czech submachine guns."

"We haven't been able to fire them near the city. The noise draws attention. But our men in Salim are getting some experience with these weapons right now."

"What do you mean?"

Jephthah looked suspicious. Simon broke in, "They're taking over the garrison there tonight."

Halam shook his head. "That’s foolish, you know. You should keep quiet until the time comes. This way you’re only going to waste ammunition and get everyone jumpy."

Jephthah protested, “You said we should create a diversion.”

“Not until just before you move on the hotel.”

“I cannot see that it is a disadvantage if the time travelers send their Roman hirelings to Salim.”

Maybe he was right. The zealots were quite resourceful when they put their minds to it. They would have been a success at terrorism in any century. “Fine,” Halam said. You need any more ammunition?”

"We have husbanded our cartridges," Jephthah said. "What we need from you is a time when we can attack."

"I've got a worm program working on the time travel system's finder. So far they assume the problem's only with they hotel time travel stage. In order to fix their momentum compensator they're going to have to calibrate it against the main travel stage at the Antonia fortress. My worm will infect the Saltimbanque computer. When they power up the system again, it will trigger the worm and in twenty minutes both time travel stages will go out. They'll be helpless for at least an hour, maybe two."

"What about the hotel's security system?"

"A separate subroutine in the AI will knock out all the camera midges; meanwhile we'll feed recorded footage into the security system. To anybody checking the monitors it will look like everything's normal. The staff you'll have to take care of yourself."

"We will grind them into the dust."

"Just be ready. Some time after ten in the morning the travel stages will crash, and at ten thirty the midges go blind."

Simon and Jephthah wanted to discuss the details of the raid. Halam didn't want to know about it; it really wasn't his responsibility. They would have to control the hotel before reinforcements could be brought in from uptime, and at the same time keep the Roman garrison in the city from coming to the futurians' aid. Timing would be everything.

Jephthah prepared to leave. "Deliver me from workers of iniquity," he said to Simon.

"And save me from bloodthirsty men," Simon replied.

With that Jephthah slipped off into the darkness. As Simon started to do likewise, Halam said, "If I should hear anything about your son I'll let you know."

Simon stopped. "You know something?"

"Nothing for certain."

Simon left, and Halam went back into the Second Quarter, to a club called Adam's Garden. He paid the cover and entered the back of the smoky room, lit only by oil lamps on iron stands and the glow of the charcoal fire from the pit in its center. A few of the patrons were tourists--two Germans in safari jackets, some prosperous Vietnamese in brand new first century garb--but mostly this was a hangout for historicals into cultural mixing and revolutionary politics. On a low stage in what once had been the atrium of the private residence, Simon's son Samuel, locks greased into a pompadour, wearing a lavender polyester jumpsuit stenciled with the words "Buy Darwin Moles," played the blues on one of Halam's harmonicas. Behind him was a band on electrified lute, pipe, and bass.