Year Zero (36 page)

“Is that how you saw yourself? A rabbi?”

“No. I was the student. They were my masters.”

“Were you there to save them?” he pressed.

“Some asked the same thing.”

“Then why did you torment them?”

“Why do you torment us?” But Ben’s tone was not hostile. Only clever.

He knows what we are,
thought Nathan Lee.
He’s been out among us.
“To learn,” he said.

Ben smiled, a gruesome contortion. “You see, we are the same. We search for the common thread, the thing that connects kings and thieves and infants and dying men.”

Ben swam his stick back and forth through the flames as if tracing distant words.

“Didn’t the soldiers drive you away?” asked Nathan Lee.

“Sometimes. Mostly they were glad to have me there. It could be lonely for them, too. They were far from home. Also, for some, they had no one else to see their cruelty at work. Or their kindness. Oh yes, the soldiers could be compassionate. For a price, they would mix gall with the water and give the poison on a sponge on a stick. Some did it for free. Or they broke the men’s legs before the suffering went on too long. Or cut their knees with a knife.” He made a slicing gesture with his stick across the front tendon on Nathan Lee’s knee.

“After that, they could not stand. The end might take another hour. But they would be spared the days and nights.”

“Did you bring those kinds of mercy to dying men?” Nathan Lee asked. “Gall. And the knife.” Was that that what this was, a confession? Had he been a killer angel?

In the firelight, the scars seemed to crawl across Ben’s face. “No. I was afraid. The soldiers would have put me on the cross in their place. Those bodies were the property of the emperor.”

“Did you help bury them, then?”

“Not that, either. They were left hanging. Or were pulled down and thrown into the quarries. Food for the birds and flies and animals. Even their names were eaten.”

“But some of the bodies were buried.”

“Few. I remember one. His family bribed the soldiers. The body was taken down that night. They had to work quickly. A slave’s body was dug up and tied in his place, otherwise the soldiers would have been crucified themselves. I was new to Golgotha, then. It shocked me. It seemed unjust. Even dead, the poor have no place in this world.”

Izzy spoke. “Did you know a man they called the
m-shee-haa?”
Nathan Lee was surprised by the abrupt question, by his solemnity. Then he realized Izzy was setting the man up.

“Yes.” Ben answered.

“You saw him?”

“There were many messiahs.”

Izzy laughed with relief. Ben did not look offended. To the contrary, he seemed amused by Izzy’s amusement.

“At the end of your year at Golgotha, what happened to you?” asked Nathan Lee.

“I left.”

“But you returned.”

“Not for ten years more.”

“Why? Why ever go back to that place again?”

“Yes, why?” said Ben. He ran his fingers through the flames.

Nathan Lee glanced at Izzy, and he looked suspicious, even cynical. He didn’t believe in messiah claptrap. Ben didn’t speak for a full minute. Nathan Lee didn’t prod him. He was willing to let the story go at that. He didn’t believe either.

Then Ben resumed. “I went off through the land. I thought I would never have to go back to Jerusalem again. But the land shrank. My path circled. I don’t know how it happened. My eyes were wide open. I had command of my feet. But one day I found myself there again. And this time they gave me my own tree.”

He finished matter of factly, and stood up. He moved around the fire to go inside.

“Was it the way you thought it would be?” Nathan Lee asked him. Clarity. Peace. God.

“No. None of it,” Ben said. “I looked out from up there, and the world is so beautiful.” He looked at Nathan Lee through the flames. “I never wanted to leave.”

O
CTOBER

A
n afternoon squall rose up from the valley and lashed the mesa, a storm made for lovers. The rain drove the birds to roost, and people fled the streets. Lightning snaked, thunder rolled. Hail rattled against her bedroom window.

Nathan Lee and Miranda barely noticed. They hardly surfaced from her house anymore, so it seemed. Alpha Lab was mostly just as an interlude, a place to catch their breath. Then they would find themselves here all over again.

Riding him, she seemed to be looking down from a great height. He kept reaching for her. She ground at him. She pinned him in place. He raised her high.

The storm kept pace with them. They finished together, the rain and them. Soon the low sun came out and cast colors across the far range.

Night took its time. They rested in each other’s arms and watched out her window, softly talking, as much to breathe their scents as trade thoughts. On the sea, he had discovered, sunset was like a light switch, on then off. But here in the mountains the light tarried. The colors seeped like cold honey.

Beneath the quilt, their hands traveled from here to there with no urgency or end, memorizing the landmarks on their own, the shape of a hip, the places with hair, the grooves and mounds. Their fingers traced miles along their spines. They had run off with each other. The forbidden country was theirs to own.

Neither had time for this. They had talked about it. They had higher priorities. They were ten years apart in age. He was too old for her by a lifetime. She was barely twenty, practically jailbait. Each was a loner. It was a temporary arrangement, they assured each other.
I will leave you,
they warned. For now it seemed they could go on forever.

Finally it was dark, night proper. Stars came out. They ebbed into sleep, warm against each other.

Her phone woke them. Miranda reached for it. “Yes,” she said. “Yeah, he’s here, too.” Still listening, she mouthed, “The Captain.”

“He did what?” she finally asked. “But that’s crazy. Don’t we feed them enough?”

Them, thought Nathan Lee. Something had happened to the clones. He recalled their escape talk. One of them must have gone for the wall. Which one would it be, Ben again?

Miranda glanced at her clock. “That’s that, then,” she said to the Captain. “We knew it would happen eventually. What’s to say, so what? No one will take it seriously.” The Captain went on. She sat up and bent over the phone, her long back bare. “Is this some kind of joke?” she said. “How could that happen?”

The Captain’s voice went on.

“Never mind,” Miranda snapped, “we’re on our way.”

She hung up. “You’ll love this,” she said, standing to dress. “One of our lost boys decided he’s the savior.” She threw Nathan Lee his shirt. “The word’s out. We’ve got Jesus Christ in a cage in our basement.”

“H
ERE WE GO
,” Nathan Lee said as he and Miranda approached Alpha Lab.

A small crowd was gathered in front of the building. In itself that wasn’t foreboding. Since the outset, wags in Los Alamos had been laying bets on how long it would take for someone to equate the Year Zero bones with the King of Kings. The city had its share of what Izzy called “queer fish,” crackpots, rebels, and the superstitious. Just because they were devoted to rational science didn’t guarantee against an irrational twitch now and then. Especially in these terrible times, a hysterical outburst was to be expected. But there was nothing hysterical about the crowd.

It was very early morning, black and cold. The sun wouldn’t come up for hours. People wore parkas and sweaters. There were a few East European matrons in scarves, the sort one might expect for a Jesus sighting. One toted a smoky Russian icon over her chest, which was almost too pat. Otherwise the crowd was mostly lab workers and night owls, and that was sobering.

“Hey, Miranda, Nathan Lee,” a young man called to them. He was a microbiologist from the office next door. He liked to play frisbee at lunch.

“What are you doing here?” Miranda asked him. It was a question for all of them.

“We heard the news.” The man was excited.

“You should be in bed,” she told them. “Or working.”

“When do we get to see him?”

Miranda gaped at him. “Are you crazy?” she said.

His face fell. He backed into the crowd.

Nathan Lee took her arm and continued inside. “Did you hear that?” she complained. “Look at them. Don’t they know it’s a hoax?”

“One thing at a time,” he said. “Let’s find out what happened. There’s an explanation, I’m sure.”

The Captain was waiting for them in his office. It overlooked the front lot where the crowd was gathering. Two of his guards were sitting side by side, a big Tejano and a slight man, Ross. Nathan Lee knew them both. He’d never seen Ross so pale.

“Tell them,” said the Captain. He was not pleased. A black Bible sat on his desk with a yellow pencil for a bookmark.

“We were sitting in the monitor room,” Ross started. He glanced at his partner, who clearly wanted nothing to do with this. “I heard one of the inmates call out. The incident occured at 0225 hours.”

“What incident?” said Miranda.

“He said
El-ee, El-ee….”
Ross paused and looked at Nathan Lee self-consciously. “And I can’t pronounce the rest. I may not speak the lingo, but I do know my Bible. It’s right there. I looked it up. He spoke it just like it’s written.”

“What are you talking about?” Miranda said.

“Laa-ma sabok-tamee,”
quoted Nathan Lee.

“That’s it,” said Ross. “Just like that.”

Nathan Lee picked up the Bible and flipped it open to the pencil, and there was the passage. He handed it to Miranda. “Christ’s question from the cross,” he said. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Miranda glanced at the book. “So?” she said.

“He spoke it,” said Ross. “He spoke the words.”

“That’s convenient,” she said, flipping through another few pages. “It’s the one part I see that’s in Aramaic.” She lowered the book. “You read it to him.”

Ross looked horrified. “No, Dr. Abbot, I swear.” He leaned forward to put his hand on the open book.

“Sit back,” growled the Captain.

Ross pointed at his partner. “Ask Joe. He heard it, too.”

Joe looked off at the corner. But he didn’t deny it.

“Again,” she said, “so what?”

“Well,” said Ross, “how’d he know those words?”

“Because he heard them,” she said.

“Not from us, he didn’t.”

“Then from the other clones,” said Miranda. “They’re out there in the yard, day in, day out, polluting each other with ideas. Praying and sacrificing and preaching to each other. One of them quoted from the Bible, that’s all.”

“But the Bible wasn’t written yet,” said Ross. “Not back then.”

“It was being written,” said Nathan Lee. “There are all kinds of sects in the yard. Christians, pagans, Jews. The story was being shaped.”

Ross’s eyes went to the Bible. “He spoke the words. At 0225 hours.”

Nathan Lee glanced at the Captain, who seemed painfully aware of Ross’s limitations.

“Which one of the clones was it?” Nathan Lee asked. He already knew. It would be Ben. The crucifix had spooked them them all, bringing out their ghosts. And Izzy had all but invited Ben to declare himself the messiah when they were talking at the fire.

“He’s one of them that didn’t have a name.”

“Not Ben?”

“Not him.”

Miranda cut in. “But now he has a name.”

“Yes, ma’am. He told me. Jesus Christ. He said it to my face.”

“To your face? You spoke to him?”

Ross didn’t answer. Beside him, Joe gave a bull snort. “I couldn’t stop him in time. Little
pendejo.”

“You went in his cell?” Miranda demanded.

Ross’s eyes dodged away.

Joe said, “That’s what he did.”

They sat for a minute. Nathan Lee looked out the window. The crowd was swelling down there.

“So you went into the man’s cell,” Miranda said to Ross. “What did you say?”

“I asked him if his name is Jesus.”

“You asked him?” Miranda closed the book. “And what does that tell you?”

Ross’s jaw set. “That he’s Jesus Christ.”

“Ipso facto,”
Miranda expelled.

Nathan Lee watched the fancy Latin close Ross down, and out. His awe was still there, but it excluded them.

“You know that’s not possible,” Miranda said after a minute.

“But it’s written,” Ross replied.

Nathan Lee felt a tightening in his gut. He’d figured this was a midnight prank, but Ross was in earnest, and the crowd was multiplying beneath the parking lot lights.

Miranda patted the Bible. “For a minute, let’s forget what’s written, okay? Think about it. These clones come from a Roman landfill. Even if Jesus ever existed, do you know the odds against us finding his remains?”

Now was Ross’s turn to pity their limitations. “He existed all right. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be the Word. And your odds don’t matter, not if He wanted us to find him. This is how He chose to come to us. And I was there.”

Miranda said, “Then let’s talk about the remains. If Christ rose into heaven, he wouldn’t have left any remains. And he did rise, right? It’s written in the Word.”

Years ago, Nathan Lee had listened to Ochs use this very argument to disarm detractors of the Year Zero project. The problem now was that Ross was not a detractor. “He didn’t leave bones,” Ross said. “Just blood. Smeared all over. It’s right there. Written fact.”

Miranda flipped the Bible back and forth, as if looking for a hole in one side or the other. “I’ve only read it once,” she said, “but I don’t recall that version.”

“Not in there,” said Ross. He pointed at the Captain’s desktop. “There.”

Nathan Lee had seen the manila folder when he entered. It was his own handiwork, one of the bios he’d amassed on each clone. He reached for the folder with that rock in his gut. Ross was easy to dismiss as a gullible cracker. But he hadn’t neglected to challenge his belief. And to buttress it. Obviously he’d gone straight to the Necro Archives and rooted for some further proof. Nathan Lee flipped the folder open, and it was there in black and white.

Clone 2YZ-87 had been born thirteen months ago, the second in a batch of nine identical others. His DNA had been processed from the 87th Year Zero specimen, a sliver of wood impregnated with blood. A blood relic, not one of the Golgotha bones. His genetic archaeology report was unexceptional. There were two methods for dating genetic samples. The most reliable method used mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, which was passed down only through the maternal line. According to that, the clone’s mother had been born fifteen to thirty years before the first millenium. That placed his birth, logically, around the year zero. His blood phenotype was classic Levantine. He had a predisposition to Tay-Sachs and other genetic diseases that afflicted Semitic populations. None of his nine brothers had survived the labs of South Sector.

“Miranda,” said Nathan Lee. He handed her the folder. She barely glanced at it.

“That doesn’t prove your claim,” Nathan Lee said to Ross. Unfortunately, it didn’t disprove it either, which left Ross more latitude than them. “We’ve got a man who was born in the first century, just like three dozen other clones sitting down in the basement. And none of the others is saying he’s the son of God.”

“That’s exactly right,” said Ross.

Izzy arrived just then, bleary eyed, hair spiky. “Sorry. Got here fast as I could. Looks like a rock concert out there. What’s up?”

When they told him, Izzy said, “Oh, that’s rich.”

Ross’s jaw grew another inch.

Nathan Lee hitched up a chair and got down at eye level with Ross. The man was a little stubborn, that was all. “Let’s walk through this again,” he said. All they needed was to have Ross impeach himself, and it would be over. It would be embarrassing for the guard, but he’d brought it on himself. “You asked the man if his name is Jesus Christ.”

“No,” Ross was specific.

“But you just told us you did.”

“I asked him, I said, Jesus? That’s all.”

“And what did he say?”

“Jesus
Christ.”

“Christ?” asked Izzy from the side. “You’re sure about that?”

“That’s what he said,” said Ross.

“Anything else?”

“A whole string of stuff. I didn’t understand a word of it.”

“There it is then,” Izzy announced. “Stone soup.” He looked around at them triumphantly.

“Stone soup,” Miranda slowly repeated.

“You know the old story. A penniless soldier goes into a village. He promises everybody a feast with his magic stone. Puts a rock in a kettle and gets every house to add some vegetables and meat and spices. Before long, he’s got a feast!”

They stared at him, waiting.