In the Beginning: Mars Origin "I" Series Book I (12 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

“C’mon Michael,” Greg said. “Let’s get
this stuff packed up and ready to travel. Where is the stuff we brought?” He
started looking through the duffle bags for the protective coverings for the
manuscripts that I made sure we purchased before coming out to the caves. At
the time it seemed like smart thinking, but now I don’t think they could get
anymore damaged.

We got everything together and headed back
to the hotel. I didn’t say a word the entire trip back. Everyone, including
Greg tried to be extra nice to me. But nothing helped. We all went to me and
Claire’s room.

Greg started unpacking the worn documents.
“Here, Justin, take a look at this.” He brought it over to me and I took it and
sat down on the bed.

“Can you make anything out of it?” Michael
came over and stood next to me.

“Show me the part Dr. Margulies saw,”
Claire said.

“Claire,” I said. “Dr. Margulies didn’t
see it. He told me that after reading the journal entry. The Latin words ‘
Deus
adiuva nos’
were in the entry. Don’t you remember?” I guess my irritation
was showing through because Greg interjected.

“Why don’t you go and find ‘Aazi and talk
to him?” Greg purposely tried to annoy Claire by mispronouncing Ghazi’s name.
“He’s probably lurking around in the hallway somewhere.”

Even in my disgust I had to swallow a
laugh. I remembered Ghazi hanging in the hallways the first time I met him. I
never told Greg. Were Ghazi’s idiosyncrasies that obvious? Claire didn’t find it
funny.

“His name is Ghazi,” Claire emphasized the
guttural sound made when saying the “Gh.”

 “Claire, go take a bath or something,”
Michael tried a different approach.

“Go ahead, Justin. See what you can figure
out.” Greg folded his arms and cut his eyes at Claire as a warning to keep out
of it.

I looked down at the fragments. The other
languages looked familiar, some sort of dialect of Aramaic and Hebrew. Greg
started taking other pieces out and was trying to fit them together on the bed
like it was a jigsaw puzzle.

“So, what order does this stuff go in?”
Greg glanced up at me.

What a stupid question.
I didn’t know
what they said and they were in pieces. How in the world was I supposed to know
what order they went in? He was turning into Claire.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Sooo, don’t they have to go in some kind
of order for you to know what they say?”

I looked at him. “Really, Greg?”

“Well, how do you think you’ll get
anything out of this? You
do
have a plan, right?”

“Yeah, well. No. I mean, there are different
techniques to figure out which order they go. Things like matching up the pages
by electronic means. But, I don’t have anything like that here. And this is so
badly worn.” I looked over at him. “No, I don’t have a plan and actually, I
don’t even think I can get anything from them.”

Greg shook his head. “We did not come all
this way for you to just give up,” he said. “So stop looking pitiful and acting
unglued and figure something out.” Greg gently picked up the pieces and
returned them to their plastic covering.

The phone saved me from more chiding. It
was Mase. It was so good to hear his voice. Even long distance he could rescue
me from Greg. Of course he wanted to know all of the day’s events. I told him
we found the journals but not much else. I kind of made it sound like we got
them as easy as if we checked them out of the library. If Mase knew I was over
here pretending to be Indiana Jones, searching for hidden manuscripts, climbing
into caves in the desert and running around acting like a schizophrenic, he
would probably have me committed, and Greg, I’m sure, would help.

When I hung up from Mase, a mischievous
grin crossed Greg’s face. “What exactly did you tell your husband about this
little trip?”

“I don’t lie to my husband if that’s what
you’re insinuating.” I looked him in the eye, feigning innocence, but chastened
by the smidgen of guilt I felt. “I told him we were coming to hear Claire speak
and to take another look at the journals.”

Greg laughed. “Keeping secrets are we?”

“Shut up, Greg.”

I could tell Mase anything. And he knew
the real reason I came back, even if I didn’t actually say it. I decided I
would tell him everything as soon as we got back home.

We ended up staying about a week and a half.
I really had planned to stay only a few days, until Claire’s seminar was over, and
then I figured we could all fly home together. But Greg and Michael wanted to
stay and make a vacation of it.

While Claire spent a lot of time trying to
help me, Greg and Michael went sightseeing. I guess they figured their job was
done. Greg made a ritual of finding me several times a day, though, pointing
his finger at me and telling me to, “Get it figured out.” That’s all the
interest they showed in the manuscripts. Sometimes I made Claire go with Greg
and Michael, no need of her frustrating herself along with me. I didn’t leave
the room. I just sat and brooded over the manuscripts.

Most of the fragmented manuscripts looked
as if the black ink had gone right through the papyrus and spread, and the
paper had rotted. There was no way I could even read what was written on them.
And something I hadn’t mentioned to anyone, they weren’t written in Hebrew and
Aramaic, but a dialect of the two. It was something that I had seen before but
not something I could just read. So, what it boiled down to was that most of
the intact manuscripts I couldn’t make out because they were smeared. And the
parts I could make out I probably wouldn’t ever be able to figure out thanks to
the mix of languages used to encode them. And the Latin was going to kill me.
Dr. Margulies was the only person I knew who could read it but I couldn’t very
well ask him for help.

Thinking I could translate this thing was
a joke. It would be next to impossible. Good thing I was going crazy, because
no sane person would’ve ever attempted to figure them out.

I took notes on the manuscripts and went
to the library and found some information on the dialects. This thing was
maddening. Forget about Dr. Yeoman trying to hide the manuscripts. Whoever
wrote it didn’t want anyone to be able to read it. And, whoever wrote this was
quite the linguist. But who could have written it? The Essenes seemed to have
been their keeper, but who was the author?

It was getting close to the time to go
home and I was starting to get nervous. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know
whether to return the manuscripts to the caves and just forget about them (was
that even possible?), give them to the Dead Sea Scrolls Committee, or take them
home with me. That, I decided would be criminal but probably not get me into as
much trouble as turning them into the Committee. No telling what they would do
to me.

How would I explain me having them? But if
they had them, they could at least take care of them and translate them, I reasoned.
I sure wasn’t having any luck. Certainly, they had better resources and tools
to do it than I did. Then I thought,
bad idea
. If my conspiracy theory
was right, they already knew about them and were keeping them hidden like Dr.
Yeoman had. And what about that translator that died? I didn’t know what length
anyone would go to keep these documents hidden. They might just kill me, too.

I shook off the thought.

I decided I would put the documents back
in the cave. I would try to translate them from what I had in the notes that I
had taken, even though I really didn’t need the notes because I remembered each
and every word that I’d seen.

We were leaving early Saturday morning to
go back home. We left Jerusalem and went to Tel Aviv on Thursday. Greg wanted to
get to the casinos and enjoy the night life in Tel Aviv. It was closer to the
airport anyway and I didn’t care what we did. Michael and Greg put the
manuscripts back in the cave for me on Wednesday. But this time I made sure
that they wouldn’t deteriorate any further. I stored them properly. I took the
clay pot that someone had donated to the university.
How fitting
, I
thought. Back in the same vessel it had spent the last two thousand years in. I
had Ghazi help me get it and I didn’t tell Greg. He thought I got it from the
University store. Yeah, so maybe a little illegal, but I figured it couldn’t be
as bad as what Dr. Yeoman did. I made sure that they would survive until the
next millennium. I brought Dr. Yeoman’s journal and letter home with me. Greg didn’t
know about that either.

We got into Tel-Aviv late and rented a
suite. Me and Claire shared one of the bedrooms and Greg and Michael the other.
Before we could settle in, the boys were ready to go out. They talked about
what to wear, sampled each other’s cologne, showered and primped for over an
hour.

“They act just like girls getting ready to
go out,” Claire said.

“I know, Claire. Maybe we should see if
they want to borrow a pair of earrings to match their outfits.”

“Yeah, right. I’m not asking them, you ask
them.”

“Hey, what are you two in there giggling
about?” Greg came our way. We ran in the bathroom and locked the door.

Claire and I let the boys enjoy
themselves, by themselves. I had never been interested in night clubs and I
definitely didn’t want to go with them. They hung out all night, and then came
in making all kinds of ruckus. They were laughing, coming in our room, climbing
all over the beds, waking us up and trying to tell me and Claire about the
dazzling casinos, regretting that it was the thrill of the gamble that lured
them in and not the beautiful women who they wished had. Claire chased them
around trying to quiet them. I propped myself up on one elbow and watched them.
Silly boys. They just pulled Claire right in. They hadn’t changed one bit from
when we were little. And they call me childish.

Claire chased them out the room, calling
for me to come and help. “They’re going to throw us out of this hotel if you
guys don’t stop making all that noise,” was the last I heard. I covered my head
up with the pillow and went back to sleep. I guess at some point Claire rustled
them down because when I got up in the morning, both of them were sleep in the
living room, Greg on the couch, Michael in the chair, fully clothed and snoring
loud enough to wake the dead.

Me and Claire tiptoed around and slipped
out early in the morning. We didn’t leave a note, probably a bad idea, but one
that was quickly forgotten once we went through the hotel doors and were met
with the bright, clear, warm day that wrapped around us and tugged at us to
come out and play.

My hand holding Claire’s arm, the sun
laughed with us as we walked the path down to the beach, taking off our shoes
and letting the sand squeeze in between our toes. Hellos and smiles followed us
all day. We were drawn in by the sweet aroma of fresh brewed coffee at a small
café on Dizengoff Street where we sat and talked for hours. Walking down Jordan
Street, we stopped at a few art galleries.

But lingering, in a not so small crevice
of my mind, were those haunting, fragmented words of the manuscripts that even
the beauty of Monet and Chagall couldn’t exorcise.

The next day we left to head home. After
settling in on the plane, Greg in First Class and me sitting in Coach between
Claire and Michael, I took out the notes I’d made.

“So what did you finally figure out?”
Michael leaned over trying to read my notes.

I sucked my tongue. “‘God help us.’ I
couldn’t figure anything else out.”

“Well, that’s not much. Dr. Margulies had
already figured that out.”

“I know.”

“So, what does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sounds like a plea to me.”

“You think?” He nodded.

“So, what else?” Claire asked. “You spent
a lot of time in the library, you must have gotten something else.”

“I don’t know. ‘One people, new earth or
world,’ can’t really tell. ‘Third earth, red earth, life, God.” I recalled the
vague terms that I gleaned from the manuscripts.

“Well, what does it mean?” Claire asked.

“Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Not a thing.”

Los
Angeles, California

May
16, 1972

At exactly one o’clock on a Tuesday
afternoon, there was a knock at the door of the small, modest bungalow located
at 2812 Leeward Ave.

London plane trees lined the street. A
warm breeze circulated the sounds of spring. Children’s voices could be heard
as they played outside with their rubber balls and rode their bicycles. Lawn
mowers cluttered the air with noise and the smell of fresh cut grass. It was a
beautiful spring day.

“They’re here,” Marianne sang out to her
mother.

“Well get the door, and I’ll get your
father.”

Marianne found two men, in suits, smiling
pleasantly on the other side of the screen door. One carried a rather large and
cumbersome tape recorder and a portfolio of some kind under his arm. The other
man carried a camera.

“Good afternoon,” the man with the tape
recorder spoke. “I’m David Chandler with
Life Magazine
and this is my
photographer, Rudy Gurman. We’re here to interview Dr. Samuel Yeoman.”

“Yes, I know,” she smiled warmly. “We’ve
been expecting you. I’m his daughter, Marianne.”

She pushed the screen door open, “Please,
won’t you come in? My father’s upstairs, he’ll be down in just a few minutes.
He doesn’t move so fast these days.”

She led them into the living room, a
small, cheery room with light salmon colored walls and moss green carpeting.

“Please, have a seat,” she said, gesturing
toward two green velvet upholstered Queen Anne chairs that sat opposite a flowered-patterned
couch, each covered in plastic.

As they sat, an old man, half the size he
had been twenty years ago came slowly but steadily down the stairs. His pale,
nearly translucent, bald head, speckled with brown age spots and tiny green
vessels, bobbed up and down as he walked. Bent over from age, his wife held one
hand, while the other, somewhat shaky and unsure, slid down the black, wrought
iron banister.

The reporter watched the old man descend
the stairs. “He gets around well for a seventy-nine year old man.”

“Yes he does, and,” she announced proudly,
“he’ll be eighty next week.”

“Wow. This will be a nice birthday present
for him,” the reporter commented. “An article in
Life Magazine
.”

“Yes it will,” she said. “Here, Mother,
let me help you.” Marianne met her parents at the bottom of the steps and held
onto her father’s arm, leading him to the couch. Before he sat down, she made
the introductions.

“This is my father, Samuel Yeoman. Father,
this is David Chandler and his photographer, uhm -”

“Rudy,” the photographer offered.

“Oh yes, Rudy. I’m sorry. Rudy Gurman,
right?” He nodded. “And, this is my mother, Miriam Yeoman.”

Both men stood to greet Dr. and Mrs.
Yeoman. “This is truly an honor sir, ma’am,” the reporter replied shaking Dr.
Yeoman’s hand and nodding to Mrs. Yeoman.

Dr. Yeoman lifted up his head slightly and
looked at the reporter. He smiled to himself. He had been planning for this
interview all week.

Now to set the plan in motion.

“Please sit down. Make yourself
comfortable,” he said.

“Thank you.” They took their seats as Dr.
Yeoman sat down patting a place on the couch for his wife to join him.

“Dr. Yeoman,” David Chandler spoke, “To
meet with you and have this opportunity to interview you is truly an honor.”

“No,” Dr. Yeoman smiled pleasantly, “This
is an honor for me. I have had so much attention lately I’m forgetting how to
act.”

Having control was like an aphrodisiac to
him. He breathed it all in. Yes, he could still do this. He liked to think of
himself as a majestic hawk, circling, wings spread, a beautiful creature
soaring through the sky with all eyes on him, in awe, until he sweeps down for
the . . .

“And your daughter tells me you have a
pretty special birthday coming up. Your eightieth?”

He let out a breath, clearing his mind.
“That’s right I’ll be eighty on the 24 of May,” he chuckled ever so slightly.
His
age would work to his advantage. People didn’t expect such keen abilities from
a man his age.

“Well, congratulations.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” Dr. Yeoman
replied.

“So, how does it feel to be
Times Man
of the Year?

“It feels wonderful, but an honor not
deserved by me.”

Show humility. One of the important first
steps to his plan
.

“Oh, he is so humble,” his wife remarked.
“He has worked hard all his life. He is a good man who cares about God and His
people.”

“My wife is my biggest fan,” he said.
Miriam Yeoman blushed as her husband smiled at her and patted her hand.

“Would you like something to eat or
drink?” Miriam asked her guests.

“Something to drink would be nice, thank
you,” the interviewer answered.

“How about a nice, cool glass of iced
tea?” she asked.

“Yes, that would be fine.”

“Good. Rudy, would you like something?”

“Iced tea is fine for me, too. Thank you.”

“And are you sure the two of you wouldn’t
like a little something to eat?”

“No, no, thank you,” they said, almost in
unison. She smiled warmly, and beckoned to her daughter, “Marianne, will you
give me a hand?” They excused themselves and headed out to the kitchen.

“She’s tries to feed everyone that comes
her way. Even though you said no, she’ll probably come out of that kitchen with
a full course meal,” Dr. Yeoman said.

Step two, make the interviewer feel
comfortable.

“It’s nice to be in such good company,”
the reporter remarked. “So, Dr. Yeoman, I would like to ask you a few
questions. Will that be all right?”

“Well, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
He chuckled. “But, I must first ask you a favor.”

“Certainly, what is it?”

“You must call me Samuel.”

Step three, putting him at ease
.

“Ok, Samuel, and you can call me David.”

As Dr. Yeoman watched David Chandler
prepare to start the interview, he sat up as straight as he could, and closed
his eyes for a quick moment. Inhaling, he opened his eyes confident that this
interview would come out just as he planned.

“I would like to tape record our
conversation today so that I may be able to quote you accurately. Are you
comfortable with that?”

“Yes, that will be fine.”

“Good. You may also see me taking notes
while we talk just to record my personal observations. And Rudy may take a
picture or two during our conversation. Now, if you’re all right with all of
that we’ll get started.” Dr. Yeoman nodded his head. The reporter placed the
tape recorder on the coffee table that sat between them and turned it on. He
adjusted the microphone, took a pen out of his inside jacket pocket, crossed
his legs and opened his portfolio.

“Right. First question,” he looked up at
Dr. Yeoman. “Two months from now will mark the twenty-fifty anniversary of the
discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is that correct?”

 
Now
, Dr. Yeoman thought,
it’s
time for the show
.

Dr. Yeoman nodded, “That is correct. The
first scrolls were found in July 1947, but more were found up through about
1956.”

“And, initially, there was a lot of
controversy surrounding the pace of the translation and rendering of the
Scrolls to the public. Would you say that was correct?”

He nodded again, “That is correct.”

“Now, you were the Editor-in-Chief?”

“I was.”

“That made you in charge of the
translation process and the release of the information to the public. Please
comment on the delay and the surrounding controversy. And, with that, comment
also on the continued delay as they have yet been made public.”

Before he could speak, his wife and
daughter returned with a tray of tall glasses filled with ice, and a glass
pitcher of tea. Mrs. Yeoman passed out the glasses and Marianne followed her
filling each glass with tea.

“I brought sandwiches and cake, just in
case you got hungry. Talking uses up more energy that you may think.”

Dr. Yeoman winked at the interviewer. “I
told you she wouldn’t be able to get out of that kitchen without bringing food.”
The interviewer laughed.

“Now, where were we?” As his wife and
daughter left the room Dr. Yeoman returned his focus to the interview. “Ah,
yes, the controversy surrounding the release of the Scrolls to the public. I’ll
be happy to comment on that.” He cleared his throat and took a sip of iced tea.
He then placed his glass on the coaster Mrs. Yeoman had placed on the coffee
table and took his shaky, but sure hand and rubbed his chin. He began to speak
in an authoritative voice.

“First, I cannot answer for the present
Editor-in-Chief and his decisions. As for my role in the publication of the
Scrolls, I found being circumspect the first priority. At first we needed to be
careful with sharing the Scrolls, not because of any secret revelations, as has
been rumored. I would really like to take this time to clear that up and have
it on record. There was nothing in the Scrolls to topple Judaism or
Christianity or any other tenet that we hold dear to our hearts,” he spoke
emphatically.

“The delay,” he continued, “can be attributed
to a number of things. If you remember, someone tried to put the Scrolls up for
sale,” he chuckled. “It was my job, I felt, to ensure the sanctity of our
endeavors. To keep the manuscripts safe from those kinds of people. Those who
wanted to make a name for themselves, or money.”

“But mostly, and you may be aware of this,
the Scrolls were written on animal skins and papyrus, and one was even written
on copper. Unusual media that proved difficult to work with, even for the
well-educated 1940s scholar. You must remember these documents were more than
two thousand years old when they were found. They were fragile and had to be
handled with care. They had to be prepared to withstand the scrutiny they would
be put up against. We could not just take them from caves and read them as if
they were the day’s newspaper.”

“On top of that, the Scrolls were written
using no punctuation and only an occasional indentation for paragraphs. And, in
fact, in some cases, there were not even spaces between the words. So, translating
proved to be a daunting task that took a lot of time.”

“Additionally, in 1948, just after the
Scrolls were found, Israel became a nation again. You were probably just a
young boy at that time.” He smiled at the reporter.

“We were at the gateway of two historical
events and we didn’t want the one to diminish the importance of the other, if
you understand what I mean.” The reporter nodded.

“Many of the interpreters were Jewish, and
while the translations were important, we needed to support our countrymen in
their endeavors as well.”

“That’s understandable. So, to back up a
little, you say there were not any new revelations found?”

“No,” he chuckled. “It would have been
nice to find the secrets of the universe in those clay pots, perhaps why the
dinosaur became extinct or who built the pyramids, don’t you think? But, it was
not to be.” Just then, the camera flashed, memorializing Dr. Yeoman at the
moment he proclaimed there were no revelations in the find. He smiled and took
another sip of iced tea.

“Yes, I guess it would have been a good
thing to find - a secret in the caves near Qumran that would change man’s way
of thinking for good.” The interviewer paused, considering such a revelation,
and maybe even a Pulitzer for himself. “So, nothing like that, huh?”

“No, there was nothing that wasn’t already
known
.
” Dr. Yeoman smiled.

“Now, as I understand it,” David said,
“there are some manuscripts left still to be translated. Do you think anything
significant will be found in them?”

“Please, don’t misunderstand me, David.
The information contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls was and is very significant.”

“Perhaps I said it wrong. Let me rephrase
that question. Do you think the remaining scrolls and or fragmented manuscripts
have any great revelations in them?”

“No.” His answer was firm. “Even though
they are not translated, I have looked over every remaining manuscript myself.
I can say with confidence, that there weren’t any ‘revelations’ to be found in
the remaining manuscripts.” Dr. Yeoman looked straight into his eyes, and knew
he had convinced him.

“Well, coming from you, I’m sure there
will be no more questions in anyone’s mind about that.” He scribbled on his
notepad, ‘No new revelations.’

Case closed,
Dr. Yeoman
thought.
That would be the end of it. Thanks to him, and him alone
.