A phone was thrust at me. I didn’t know the person to whom I poured out my last appeal:
“It’s the Ebola virus,” I said, “a mixture of old and new strains, developed to kill in five minutes. It’s in canisters. Hurry. The gas and the virus are in Temples in cities in Asia, the Middle East, Africa. On the ships. The planes are ready to go out. The helicopters. Tell all the good Minders they must cooperate with you. Ninety-nine percent of the cult is innocent! Tell them to turn on their local leaders! Everywhere. You’ve got to surround and reach them all before it begins. These people mean to kill.”
I lost consciousness. I went on speaking, struggling, feeling pain, but I was really unconscious. The human body had broken down, and I was on the brink of death. I was so glad. But had I done enough?
I woke in the emergency room. Again people surrounded me. The Rebbe stood over me. I saw his white beard, the tears in his eyes, I saw Sarah, Nathan’s wife. I spoke in Yiddish. “Tell them I speak the truth,” I said, “that I am your grandson Gregory, and declare the dead body that of an impostor. You have to. He has arranged for this body, of Nathan, to be verified as his own. Say only that I am your good grandson if you will. It’s dark. It’s tangled. And I think I’m dying.”
Then Sarah’s face flickered before me: “Nathan?” she whispered.
I turned close and beckoned for her to come down near my lips.
“Nathan walks with God, and Nathan is no more,” I said. “I saw him go into the arms of those he loved. Don’t fear. Don’t fear at all. I’ll keep this body alive as long as I can. Help me.”
She sobbed and sobbed and her hands stroked my forehead.
I heard a voice, “We’re losing him! Everyone out! Out!”
The world went dim. All things were known to me yet dim, and I felt only the peace I’d known in the light, the memory as fresh as a fragrance. The dimness thickened and then loosened. I knew I was being moved.
I knew we were going up in an elevator. And then all went very dim, and a shadowy figure appeared near me. I wasn’t certain whether it was good or bad, and then I recognized its voice and the Greek it spoke.
“The purpose is to love and to understand, to value…” it whispered.
All was blackness. I think I was thinking, Will the Stairway come now? Will it? Can it do that for me after all I’ve done? Then nothing.
I awoke in a room in what they call Intensive Care. I was hooked to machines. Nurses surrounded me. Great men were waiting to speak to me, heads of armies and heads of state.
I realized that my pain was dulled, and my tongue thick. I was mortal, utterly helplessly mortal! And I had to stay in this body. It was the only body they would continue to listen to.
The Rebbe appeared. I saw the black clothes and white hair and beard before I recognized the face. Then I felt the nearness of his lips. This time he spoke in the ancient Aramaic for me alone:
“They’ve been stopped. DNA on file in the hospital confirms that you are Gregory. I have declared the dead man a demon who took the place of my grandson. This is, in its own way, the perfect truth. The Temples all over are being seized.
The scientists and masterminds are surrendering. Arrests are being made. In all lands the evil work is at a halt.” He gave a great sigh. “You have accomplished it.”
I tried to squeeze his hand, but I couldn’t feel my own hands, and only gradually did I realize they were taped to the sides of the bed. I sighed and closed my eyes.
“I want to die here, if I may,” I said to the Rebbe. I spoke Aramaic again. “I want to die in this, your grandson’s flesh. If God will have me. Will you bury me?”
He nodded. And then I slept—troubled, thin, mortal sleep, living sleep.
It was very late in the night when I awoke. All the nurses were beyond the glass. Only the monitors and the machines sustained and befriended me. In a nearby chair, the Rebbe slept.
With absolute shock I realized I was in my own body. I was Azriel. With all my will, I transformed myself back into Nathan. But the flesh of Nathan was dead. This was only an illusion. I could surround the flesh and make it move, but possession as such had ended.
I turned my head, I began to cry. “Where is the Stairway, My Lord? I haven’t suffered enough, have I?”
Then I was Azriel again, as easy as taking a breath, and the needles and other medical connections were not connected to me. I stood up, strong, solid, healed in my own sound body, and in my favorite Babylonian robes of blue with gold. My beard, mustache, all there. I was Azriel.
I looked at the sleeping Rebbe. I saw the figure of Sarah, asleep, her hand on a pillow, on the cold floor.
I walked out of the room. Two nurses noticed and came to me gently and told me I couldn’t be here without permission, the man in the room behind me was very sick.
I looked back. There lay his body. He was dead, as he had been since the bullets had struck him. Suddenly they heard the alarms go off. They heard the signals.
The Rebbe woke. Sarah climbed to her feet. They stared at the dead body of Nathan.
“He died at peace,” I said, and I kissed the nurse on the forehead. “You did everything you could.”
I walked out of the hospital.
25
I walked through the city of New York. When I came to the Temple, I found it surrounded by police and military men of many different kinds. Clearly the building had been taken and evacuated of all the evil ones.
Nobody noticed me much—just a crazy man in velvet robes, I suppose. There were Minders everywhere weeping and crying.
I went into the park where the Minders lay weeping on the grass and under the trees and singing hymns and declaring they didn’t believe it was all a lie. They couldn’t. The message of the Temple had been love, be kind, be good.
I stood still for a moment, and then using all my power I changed my shape into Gregory.
I found this surprisingly difficult to do, and difficult to sustain.
I walked towards them and as they stood up, I told them to be quiet.
In Gregory’s voice I told them that I was a messenger sent to tell them their leader had been deranged, but the age-old message of love still had its full truth.
There was soon a huge crowd around me. I talked on and on answering simple questions about their platitudes, love, sharing, the planet’s health, all of this, confirming that this was good. Then finally I spoke Zurvan’s words.
“To love and to learn and to be kind,” I said.
I was exhausted.
I vanished.
I drifted invisible up past the windows of the Temple of the Mind. “The Bones,” I whispered. “Take me to the Bones.”
I found myself in a room with a kiln. But it was empty and unmonitored now, for the whole system seemed to have been arrested. I opened the door of the kiln and I saw the Bones unharmed. Just the old skeleton.
I pulled the skeleton out, letting it flip and flop about on its new wires as I did so, and then I called for the strength I needed to make my hands like steel and I crushed the skull to pieces, rubbing the pieces harder and harder together till it was powder dropping from my hands, gold powder.
All this I did invisibly, and to each and every bone, grinding it between my hands until there was only dust left, a glittering tiny scattering of golden dust, I saw it swirl up into the ventilating system. I opened the window to the street, and it flew out, this dust, on a great gust of fresh air.
I stood watching until I could see no more dust, only tiny points here and there of gold, and I called down a wind to cleanse the room, to carry it all away into the world, and soon there was not one tiny pinpoint of gold remaining.
I stood thinking, studying.
Then I discovered that I was visible, whole, dressed.
I walked out of the room. But there were so many police now. There were lots of people from the Centers for Disease Control here, and members of the army. No use to parade through these panic-stricken men.
Besides, I had work to do. I felt no taste for it. But I had to do it. Too much poison was stashed in too many
