The Didymus Contingency (24 page)

Feigning his injuries as more severe than they actually were, Tom began to beg, “Please, no more. I don’t want to die. I’ll help you! I’ll do whatever you want.”

This seemed to give pause to the Pharisees and their ever-tightening circle of bodies stopped. Tom didn’t wait another second. While still on the ground, Tom kicked back quickly and caught Silas in the knee. Even before Silas fell to the ground, Tom was up and charging Gamaliel. Tom rammed Gamaliel to the ground and before he could turn around, was stuck by a flurry of blows coming from every direction. But they were inexperienced and caused little damage. Tom smiled. This was like fighting a bunch of junior high girls. And while Tom was surrounded, Caiaphas wouldn’t be able to get in a shot with that awful whip.

Tom caught a fist and parried with a blow of his own. He couldn’t see who he was striking, or what happened to them after. All he knew was that after only six swings of his own, the space around him was clear of bodies. He could have sworn he heard one of them yell, “Stay away from him! He’s possessed!”

Tom turned toward Caiaphas, who had already raised his whip into the air. A moment of indecision on Tom’s part—to run or charge—was all it took for Caiaphas to bring down the whip and cut open Tom’s arm. Before Tom could scream, he was hit from behind with a plank that had broken off the shattered door.

Tom fell forward, but kept on moving. He crawled as quickly as he could away from the group of men and felt one last sting of the whip across his thigh as he got to his feet and started running.

The voices of his pursuers faded after ten solid minutes of running. Tom was bleeding and beaten, but was still in better shape than the Pharisees, who spent most days in lazy debate. Tom slowed as his energy and blood drained from his body.

He had made a mistake. Those men couldn’t help him and right now only one man could. Tom had to find David before it was too late. Tom would make up for betraying his friends. Bible or no bible, history was wrong. Tom was going to save Jesus. Just as soon as David saved Tom.

—BIRTH—

—SEVENTEEN—

Acceptance

6:07 P.M.

30 A.D.

Bethany, Israel

An old fig tree provided David with a much-needed rest as he leaned against it, gazing out over the green landscape. He had left Jerusalem and retreated to a hillside just north of Bethany where he and Tom would come to talk and sometimes return to the future for a Cherry Pepsi, rack of ribs or whatever else they missed of their own time. But the scenic view had yet to calm David’s nerves. A typhoon of troubling thoughts churned in David’s mind. Tom had betrayed them. Tom had become the enemy. David wished it weren’t true, but he saw Tom with the Pharisees, telling them exactly what they wanted to hear. He had defected and in doing so had proven the Bible to be inaccurate.
Damn him.

The urge to pray crept up on David. While David had never been one to consistently pray on a daily basis, it’s what he normally did when life got callous, desperate or merciless. But now...now he wasn’t sure if it would do any good. But David was stubborn and not ready to give up his faith yet. Only he and Tom had witnessed Tom’s betrayal. How could it be recorded in the Bible if no one saw it?

“Lord Jesus,” David said aloud, “I know you are here on earth with me now and I could just as easily talk to you in person, but I also know you can hear my prayers... If Tom is working against you, please make it clear to me what you would have me do? Is this the way things happened? Is this your will? More than that... Please bring Tom back to me. Please turn him away from the men who seek to kill you. Please keep him—”

“David,” Tom’s voice interrupted.

David jumped. He hadn’t heard Tom approach.

“Are you talking to yourself?” Tom asked.

David looked back briefly and saw Tom’s silhouette standing in the dark shadow of the tree. “Go away.” David demanded.

“I need your help,” Tom said.

David was too upset to hear the light rasp in Tom’s voice. As David flew to his feet, his head swelled with anger, so much that his eyes burnt. “Would you have me betray Jesus too?” David yelled as he grabbed Tom and shoved him against the tree.

“ARGH!” Tom screamed in agony.

David gasped as Tom’s face became visible in the fading sunlight. Dry blood was caked around the open gash created by Caiaphas’s whip.

David let go of Tom and took a step back. He could see by Tom’s stance, how he was holding his stomach, how he was leaning forward and breathing shallow, that he had been beaten, close to death. “What happened to you?”

“You should see the other guy, or should I say, ‘other guys,’” joked Tom with a laugh that made him flinch with pain. “Wasn’t exactly a fair fight.”

Tom leaned his weight against the tree and slid down to the ground, careful not to catch the open wound on his back on a shard of bark. David stood above him. “I saw you, Tom. They’re going to kill him, and you’re helping them.”

Tom looked up at David. “No… I’m not helping them.”

“Don’t lie to me,” David said, growing angry despite Tom’s wounds. “I saw you with them. I followed you to Jerusalem.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I told them I wouldn’t help them kill Jesus. I told them I just wanted to prove he was a fraud, that he was my friend and I wouldn’t have anything to do with killing him...”

This was news to David. “You did?”

“Next time you spy, try staying for the entire conversation.” Tom smiled. “Oh, and I told them that their religious laws were silly.”

David put his hand over his mouth.

“That didn’t go over too well,” Tom said.

“You said that to Pharisees?” David asked.

Tom nodded.

“Be glad they let you live,” David said with a nervous laugh.

“I don’t think they intended to,” Tom said. “David, we have to stop them.”

David kneeled down in front of Tom. “We can’t stop them.”

“Why not?”

“Remember when Jesus called you to be a disciple? And I went back to the future?” David asked.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“I never told you what I discovered.”

Tom sat up a little straighter, waiting for the news.

“Tom...the past can’t be changed.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Tom was near laughing, but held it in for fear of the pain it would cause.

“Did you stop to think about how Thomas the disciple could be in the Bible, before we came back in time? Time can’t be altered. Everything we’re doing now is already history.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You’ve been beaten up so I’ll forgive your mental incompetence.”

“Hey,” Tom said, as he sat up as though to converse better.

“No one ever goes back in time to kill Hitler. I know this for a fact because if they had, it would already be history and there would have been no holocaust. The assassination of JFK is never foiled, the World Trade Center still falls, and Jesus will die on the cross. These things can’t be changed. The past is already the past, Tom. The changes we make are already recorded in history.”

“You’re telling me that Jesus is going to be murdered and there’s nothing we can do about it?” Tom said.

“It’s already history.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Warn him if it will ease your mind, but I’m positive he already knows.” David stood to his feet and offered Tom his hand. “But right now we need to go see Mary and get you cleaned up.”

With a strong yank, David pulled Tom to his feet and helped support his weight. As the pair began the walk toward the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, David smiled. Tom hadn’t betrayed his friends. The Bible was accurate. David realized he should have never doubted. But his grin swiftly faded as he discerned what that fully meant. The next few weeks would be the best and worst of his and Tom’s lives. They would experience the wonder of God and the pure evil of men. He felt secure with how things would turn out for Tom, but he had no idea what his own fate would be. And that’s what scared him most.

*   *   *   *   *

Five days passed before Tom felt well enough to leave his bed. His wounds healed well under Mary’s tender care. Tom would have stayed longer, enjoying the attention, but David insisted they rejoin Jesus and the disciples. It would soon be Passover and Jesus would be entering Jerusalem, the city that loved and hated him.

Tom remembered celebrating Passover with his family when he was a child and the story of Passover fascinated him. God freed his people when he smote their Egyptian masters by killing every first-born son in the land of Egypt, but sparing the Hebrews, who had marked their homes with the blood of the paschal lamb. The story continued with pillars of fire, Egyptian armies and the parting of the Reed Sea. And he could recall his Father complaining about Jews who said Moses parted the Red Sea. “Don’t they know their own heritage?” he would shout. “Any good Jew knows it was Yam Suph, the Reed Sea!” But what Tom remembered most about the story was how he tormented his older brother, telling him that their house was unmarked as the Passover came and went every year. He would watch at night as every breeze made his nervous brother twitch for fear that God might return for the firstborn again. A month after Tom’s tenth birthday, his parents separated, the Passover celebration was forgotten and Tom’s interest in Biblical things was replaced by mathematics and girls.

That was a lifetime ago and two thousand years from now. Tom rubbed the memories out of his eyes as he stared down at Jerusalem, glowing in the bright afternoon sun. Tom couldn’t believe what they were doing. Jerusalem was full of people, gathered for the Passover feast, many of whom wanted to kill Jesus. Yet here they were, on a hill overlooking the city, about to enter through the front door. Tom had warned Jesus and found David was right. Jesus knew of the threat to his life. Not only that, he fully expected to be killed.

That conversation ended abruptly as Tom didn’t want to frighten Mary with an angry outburst after she had tended his wounds so gently. And as for Mary, Tom wasn’t sure what to do about her. He hadn’t felt this way about a woman since Megan...but after Jesus was dead...and didn’t rise from the grave...Tom knew he and David would be returning to the future, without Mary. He thought it best to slow things down so that when he and David disappeared, it wouldn’t hurt her too badly. When she had closed her eyes for a kiss goodbye, all she felt was the breeze from Tom’s body as he turned and left without a word.

It was one of the hardest things Tom had ever done in his life, but what they were about to do was even worse. Tom, David and the disciples stood behind Jesus, looking down at Jerusalem. It was a surreal sight. Word of Jesus’s coming had reached the city and hordes of believers had prepared a welcome. Thousands of people stood in front of the city gates waving palm branches and shouting “Hosannah! Hosannah in the highest!” The sound could be heard from Bethany even before they set out that morning.

Tom stood next to Jesus. “You sure about this?”

Jesus nodded.

“Let’s get it over with then,” Tom said.

Jesus turned to Tom. “Wait,” he said, very seriously. “I’m not ready.”

Tom sighed with relief. Maybe Jesus didn’t have a death wish after all? Was Jesus coming to his senses? Maybe they would leave and Jesus wouldn’t be killed and—

Jesus ran behind a tree. Tom glanced at the other disciples, questioning them with his eyes. Most shrugged. They didn’t know what was happening either.

Then the answer came in the sound of trickling water. Smiles stretched across the faces of everyone present. “It seems even the Son of God has to relieve himself from time to time!” Matthew said with a hearty laugh.

Jesus reappeared from behind the tree, adjusting his robe with a smile. “Okay, now I’m ready.”

“Don’t forget your handsome steed,” Matthew said.

“How could I?” Jesus asked. “Bring him to me.”

Peter led a donkey to Jesus, who mounted its back. Tom smiled at how ridiculous this must look. The people at the bottom of the hill were expecting a king, a deliverer from the dark times they had been living, a mighty warrior to slay their enemies and free their nation from the Romans. Instead, they were going to get Jesus, a thick carpenter riding a donkey.
No wonder they killed him
, Tom thought.

The group headed for the city. Tom noticed that everyone looked nervous and unsure, except for David and Jesus. Tom wished he knew what they knew. The turning in his stomach was almost unbearable.

Tarsus and Caiaphas stood on the city’s outer wall, looking down at the people, who were waving palm branches at Jesus, foul Jesus, riding into their city like a king on an ass. The sheer nerve of the man infuriated them. Tarsus’s lip twitched. “If we don’t do something soon, the people will not be swayed against him.”

Caiaphas squinted in thought as he watched the palm branches sway up and down over Jesus. Caiaphas saw Tom walking with the other disciples and sneered. He had hoped Tom would have died from his wounds. Caiaphas scanned the rest of the disciples’ faces and as he looked at Judas, their eyes met. A thought slammed into Caiaphas’s mind as though it was not his own. As though someone had whispered it clearly into his ear.

“If we take him now we will be stoned, but perhaps there is another way,” Caiaphas said.

“You have something in mind?” Tarsus asked.

“You see there,” Caiaphas said as he pointed Tom out, walking behind Jesus with David and the other disciples.

“Yes, the one who escaped,” Tarsus said. “I don’t think he’ll be of any more use to us.”

“Indeed, but if one disciple fails to believe in Jesus so much that he wants to prove the man a fraud, perhaps another will believe Jesus to be so wrong, so evil, that he might want Jesus to die as much as us?”

“If only that were true,” Tarsus said.

“Perhaps it already is… Look there,” Caiaphas said, as he shook his finger at Judas. “The small one. Judas. I think his name is Judas. Yes,
we know it is
.”

Tarsus looked out and saw Judas, who was now looking at the ground. “Yes, he does seem a bit frail, doesn’t he? He should be easy to influence.”