He flailed and bucked as the men carried him into a crowd that closed after them, leaving only his screams as evidence of his insanity.
Arella and the boy continued until they came to a tight, undulating mass of people. They were being blocked from leaving the area. Whispers reached her: while they’d slept, Moses had called for repentance. Those who failed to bow had been put to death, 3000 of them. The people parted, and she saw it: bodies piled high, more being dragged toward the mound from all directions.
She took the boy away from the sight, from the nauseating stench of the blood, and they huddled beside a boulder. Before long, Moses came and walked among them. Levite priests accompanied him, whispering and wailing prayers, their arms raised and their faces turned toward the sky. Moses passed around a chalice, which he continually dipped into a vat carried behind him. She and the boy drank, too shamed to protest, too glad to be alive. Flecks of gold swirled in the water, pieces of the ground-up calf. The jewelry they had worn outside their bodies was now in them, the cow they had worshipped consumed.
The boy tugged on Arella’s arm and whispered, “Are we to die too?” And she wondered if the drink was a prelude to death. She didn’t care; it was what she deserved, what they all deserved.
After they all drank, the wall of guards dissolved, and they were free to return to their tribes. No one spoke of the calf or their transgressions, though Moses said that they would never see the Promised Land. God had instructed him to make them wander in the desert for forty years, until most of those who had been led out of Pharaoh’s rule had died. Only their children would receive God’s blessing of a land they could call home.
In her dream Nevaeh wept, and could not stop weeping.
She woke with a start and stared down the long, dark corridor in front of her, its far end completely lost in the shadows. She wiped a tear off her cheek and thought about how the tunnel resembled her life: seemingly endless, only a few bright spots to mark the times she’d found something close to contentment, filled with the bones and ghosts of people who had, for a brief time, shared it with her and then died.
So much darkness.
It stood in utter contrast to the last time she’d seen God, that sun-bright radiance flying at her from the tablets. It had knocked her out and changed her-changed all of them, those who would eventually become the Tribe. They had stopped aging, stopped dying… destined to forever walk the earth without ever being with him in heaven.
[9]
Jagger had watched Addison hike to the upper hole and descend into it. He thought of the Greek myths in which a hero traveled into Hades to rescue a maiden or recover a stolen treasure. That was Ollie and Addison: descending into a pit, hoping to return with an armful of loot, maybe even a maiden, or at least the bones of one.
He stood outside the tent for a while, taking in the workers, scanning the ragged outcroppings on the mountain rising beyond the dig. Gradually his heartbeat slowed to normal, and he frowned at the thought that such a minor altercation had got him so worked up. If he stayed at the monastery for much longer he’d have to find a hobby that fed his need for adventure. Rock climbing, maybe. Or camel racing. The world here turned a little too slowly for his taste.
He looked down at the contraption that had taken the place of his left hand. He thought of it as RoboHand, but his son, Tyler, had described it perfectly: “Terminator G.I. Joe hand.” Two metal hooks-one acting as fingers, the other a thumb-formed a circle similar to the action figure’s hands, preshaped to hold weapons. The tips flared into a T, providing more gripping surface. Jagger flexed his arm, forcing the hooks apart, then relaxed, closing them again. He was getting adept at manipulating the device-called a prehensor — but mishaps still happened more often than he liked: clamping a plastic bottle tight enough to make the soda geyser out, bruising Tyler’s head going for a clumsy embrace. Not that long ago he’d brushed away a fly and given himself a bloody nose. Twenty-nine years of flesh, one year of metal: it was a wonder he hadn’t put an eye out.
Or crushed the thief’s throat beyond repair. The prehensor had the strength to do it; only Jagger’s conscious restraint kept the grip from its full potential. And in situations like the one with Addison’s assailant-in fighting mode with high emotions-he trusted neither his mental capacity for restraint nor his skills at manipulating the hooks with precision.
But it wasn’t that he was a physical man with a physically demanding job, suddenly disabled, that drove the despair Jagger had felt after the accident, not really. That was just a kick in the face when he was down. The real wound was everything else that had been lost in the crash: the Bransfords, four people he had loved as deeply as he did his own wife and child. Four powerhouses of compassion and potential, snuffed out like paper matches.
Move on, he’d told himself. Don’t dwell on it. Not now.
He was getting better at tempering the perfect storm of self-pity, grief, and anger that swirled inside him… but as with RoboHand, mishaps still happened.
He remained self-conscious enough about his missing limb to wear his sleeves long, hiding the artificial forearm that slipped over a stub just below his elbow. Cables allowed his biceps, back, and chest muscles to open and close the hooks.
“Jag!” someone called. “Jagger!”
He looked between the tents and saw Hanif at the corner of the monastery walls. Jagger waved.
“Closing time!” Hanif yelled and tapped his wrist. As if on cue, a group of tourists appeared, streaming past him.
Jagger raised his thumb.
The monastery closed at noon, releasing scores of visitors to flow not to the parking lot but past the excavation on their way up Mt. Sinai to see the peak. The best time for the trek was at night, when the temperature was less oppressive and the reward was watching the sunrise on the God-trodden Mountain, as the locals called Sinai. The midday sojourners, however, hadn’t heard that sightseeing tip, or had arrived too late to heed it.
Jagger headed for his closing-time position at the end of the split-rail fence, where his presence would discourage lookie-loos from lookie-looing too close to the excavation or becoming more than lookie-loos. It was at times like this-babysitting fat tourists like a museum guard-that he most missed being an Army Ranger or a bodyguard for foreign dignitaries and celebrities. At least then there’d been some action, even if only a false bomb threat or an overzealous autograph hound.
He gazed at the two big excavation trenches. Maybe digging around in a dirt hole ten hours a day wouldn’t be so bad after all.
[10]
With posters of the latest muscles-and-mayhem movies and sexy women leaning on sexier cars, a lead guitar propped against an amp by an unmade bed, and dirty clothes scattered everywhere, Toby’s room looked like a typical teenage boy’s-except for the 9mm handgun on the nightstand, the bare bulbs under wire cages tacked to a stone ceiling, and the twin sixty-inch plasma TVs mounted to one wall.
The plasmas were displaying different images of the same video game: views of a city from what could have been birds swooping between buildings, diving to take in streets packed with cars or sailing up over rooftops. Could have been birds, but weren’t. With a flick of Toby’s finger on a control pad, a missile shot out as if from the bottom of the screen, sailed through the bubbling tip of a fountain of water spraying up from a pond, and streaked under a crowded portico right into a hotel lobby. An explosion sent glass and bricks, cars and people flying away on currents of fire and smoke.
“Yeah!” Toby said from a black leather chair.
“Pull up,” Sebastian said, standing behind Toby with his hands on the back of the chair. “Pull up!”
Toby did, and the screen showed the hotel facade drawing closer, sweeping down as the camera angled up.
