The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (56 page)

“Select this one,” John suggested. “Appears
to be an index of hospital departments.”

Spud and Dr. Malamud pored over the list.
“No, let’s try ‘zatvor’ . Corrections,” she said.

John squinted at the uploading display. “It
looks like at least half of this hospital was a prison. Wouldn’t
shock me if they did medical experiments…” He waved a hand in the
direction of the surgical suites.

“The list of prisoners includes adherents of
Ishtar, Aten, and,” Dr. Malamud’s voice caught on the last word,
“Yahweh!” Her hand covered her lips.

“Zardosht, Zoroaster,” she continued after a
trembling breath, “preached the philosophy of
asa
, truth,
and free will. How could his followers have chosen to abuse
others?”

“No such thing as free will in purgatory,”
John snorted, “We are all prisoners of our creators’ whims.”

“Disciples of a sect have not always adhered
to its founding tenets,” interjected Spud. “We do not have enough
information to answer your question,” he added to the Professor.
“Perhaps the disciples of Zarathustra were the liberators and not
the imprisoners here. Isis may have tended the embers of peace, but
Horus, Osiris, and Dionysus are not out of place in the violent
pantheon of Jupiter and Mars, God of War.”

Was this
really
the time to be
debating religious doctrines? I had to step in. I pointed to a
section of the diagram across from our location. “You think that
wing there could be where they’ve stored our Ergals--among other
things?”

“You’re right, Shiloh,” John nodded.
“Translates as pharmacy. Those
are
usually locked.”

“Locked or unlocked, we’ll have to figure out
a way to make it past our former cells and those guards and
possibly ‘the cavalry’, which I expect is approaching
post
haste
,” Spud agreed, “judging by this horrid unceasing
alarm.”

“If only we had an Ergal,” John sighed.

“Ha,” was the only response I could
muster.

Chapter 22

Life is a Carousel

Three catascopes and a sharp stowaway
brainstormed a salad bowl of strategies for our next steps.

I suggested we return to the surgical suites
and build an armory of makeshift targeted mini-firebombs that we
could use as a distraction, or, even better, for an aggressive
frontal assault on our captors. John was in favor of a more
delicate approach. There must be a stash of anesthetics in the
operating rooms, he insisted. Spud weighed in with my brother,
suggesting we disperse some “ether” into the ventilation ducts,
knock out our enemies, stride into the vault and retrieve our
belongings. By the time they’d wake up, we’d have long departed via
for the ether of space-time.

Dr. Malamud advocated for us to try to
negotiate. Spud and I patiently explained that she was fortunate to
have grown up in a civilized modern society that was relatively
free of deceit, villainy, and war. In
this
world, it was
much more likely that we’d be handed our—ahem--assets on a platter.
We had to be sure these “savages” didn’t find us. It sounded as if
our oasis would soon be breached.

Spud headed back towards the suite’s door,
opening it a crack to listen for the approaching soldiers. “I’d
estimate they are three to five minutes away,” he whispered to me
as I peeked into the still-deserted hall. “They are doing a
room-to-room reconnoiter.”

“Then we should grab the computer and get
moving,” I said. “John, Professor, we have to go.”

What the heck? I looked around the room.
Where was John? And the Professor? Spud and I were alone.

“Your brother seems to have also taken the
computer,” Spud observed, scanning the room for another opening or
door.

“Where?” I shook my head. “There’s only the
one door.” Beyond which the sound of shouting and banging by our
captors was clearly getting closer and louder.

“Over here,” a voice behind us spoke.

We turned to see a smiling Aliyah with her
arms around a grinning John standing on the other side of the
conference table, both dressed in pristine, pressed togas. John’s
extended right hand was holding—

“Our Ergals!” I gasped. “How did you do
that?”

John doled out our prized rings. “Wish I
could take the credit, but it was our buddy, Les, who saved the
day.”

Spud’s eyebrow rose to his hairline. “Lester
Samuel Moore?” No sign of the alienist here. “How?”

“You kids weren’t paying attention,” John
chided. “Les didn’t give us that merry-go-round lecture for
nothing. He was trying to tell us we could leap from our universe’s
‘carousel’ to an adjacent universe’s ‘carousel’. Then, all we had
to do was wait til the time we wanted to travel to rotated by us
again and then leap into it—presto, you’re back in the past.”

“Mr. Moore’s exact words said that such
travel requires ‘means and method’,” Spud said with clear
irritation.

“Means,” John opened his toga to reveal the
Somalderis covering his hips. “And the method was that computer you
were so kind to power up. Wasn’t quite as good as an Ergal, but,
with a few simple calculations from my Maryland days, we--“

CRASH! Apparently the armed guards had made
it as far our wing and broken into a nearby hallway. The walls
shook as what sounded like an army of footsteps and shouts headed
our way. John put his arm around Aliyah’s waist, and waived us
closer. “I’ll explain later—we gotta fly.”

The door to the conference room slammed open
and a cadre of helmeted soldiers sporting automatic weapons stormed
into the room, guns ablaze. But they were seconds too late as our
Ergals had just whisked us away. Holding hands and hoping for rain,
the Babylon Four had left the building.

* * *

Golgotha—two thousand years ago. We
hoped.

We M-fanned in a glade near a nest of juniper
bushes behind a low hill. While Spud and John confirmed our
location on their Ergals, I Ergaled me and Spud some
era-appropriate clothing: long flowing robes. And demure
headscarves for me and Aliyah. I wasn’t a fan of togs that wouldn’t
let me fight or run, but figured that our stowaway might not be
able to deal with me anamorphing into a different gender before her
eyes, as I was prone to do in less progressive countries. On the
other hand, she’d impressed me as being pretty adaptable, after
all.

Unfortunately, being in a rush to flee, we’d
overcompensated just a hair on our makeshift Ergals. Yes, we had
arrived back in Yeshua’s day, but quite a few hours earlier than
we’d planned. At sunrise. In daylight, we’d have to be careful
scoping out our territory. Best if we quickly found a discreet
location to set up a base camp.

“We are in the general area of Golgotha,”
Spud whispered. He nodded at the hill. “There is a clearing beyond
where we first should turn our attention.”

John was already creeping up the back of the
hill. He peeked over the top, nodded, and waved for us to
approach.

“Got three of them hung out to dry. Is your
Yeshua the one in the middle?”

Knitting his brow, Spud took a quick look at
the scene below. “The man we seek,” he said, his tone admonishing,
“yes, he is amidst the other two.”

Aliyah peeked over my shoulder. I felt her
muscles tense behind me as her eyes took in the heart-rending
picture before us.

Three large wooden crosses filled the
clearing. In the center, I could barely recognize Yeshua. Not that
many hours had passed from his perspective since I’d hit him up for
the Somalderis loan. But the Yeshua drooping on the cross before us
was dressed in a purple robe, open to reveal that his chest and
trunk had been flayed without mercy, with rills of blood trickling
down sun-dried tracks to his feet. Oh, my God. Was this tragedy
partly my fault?

Roman soldiers ambled among the
victims—several stopped to poke and spit at Yeshua, growling words
that we unable to hear. I’d never experienced the queasiness, the
revulsion, at the evidence of such brutal physical and mental
torture. Zygfed was an aggressive kingdom in its own way, but
technology had made the need for such torture obsolete. Death by
stun gun or fusion torpedos, like the Omega Archon’s flames of
Hell, was sterile, efficient, and clean.

“Quite a crowd of onlookers.” Dr. Malamud’s
voice was hoarse. “Our history records had described the barbarity
of some of our ancestral cultures, but to see a whole village of
persecutors and gawkers…I really did think humanity was better than
that.”

Some of the onlookers spat at the wiry
criminal sagging on the cross nearest to us, shouting “Thief! “Cut
off his hands!”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “steal a loaf of bread to
feed your family and get flogged and nailed onto a cross until you
bleed to death.” I didn’t bother to hide my bitterness. “The milk
of human kindness has always been curdled, girlfriend.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be.
The lessons we learned after the imperialist crusades, the ones we
ourselves just escaped, reshaped the very core of our values and
the structure of our civilizations. Inclusion, respect, tolerance,
intellectual curiosity, empathy, civic engagement, and altruism.
Humanitarianism has kept our provinces and countries free of wars
for hundreds of years.”

John was listening, his expression admiring.
Clearly they had bonded even closer after their ride together on
Lester Moore’s ‘carousels’. “Then you have created heaven on Earth,
Aliyah. And they said it couldn’t be done.” His smile spoke the
feelings he didn’t need to further articulate. Please.

“To everything there is a season,” Spud
injected, saving me from diabetes. I scanned the crucifixion site
below from over his shoulder.

“Those women over there have been next to
Yeshua the whole time,” I said. “ID?” I pointed to a group of robed
women gathered around Yeshua’s feet.

Spud checked his Zygan Ergal for data from
our old timeline. “Historical records vary, but Panaghia and Mary
Magdalene are at the top of the list of candidates. If so, they are
unlikely to leave their posts.”

I sighed, and motioned to the others to
follow me back down the hill. How was I going to be able to get the
Somalderis to Yeshua if he continued to be surrounded by onlookers?
Aliyah was the last to leave the hilltop, giving me a few minutes
to confer with Spud and my brother.

“The only way we’ll get past these crowds to
Yeshua is to invisiblize.” I whispered.

John agreed, “I was about to make the same
suggestion.” Seeing Spud frown, he grumbled, “And these Ergals
don’t invisiblize—unless?

“I tried, just in case, a few minutes ago.
Perhaps you should try yours, but I don’t believe Lester Moore’s
intent was to mislead us.”

None of us were able to make either ourselves
or the Somalderis disappear. “What about our Zygan Ergals?” I
ventured. “Yeshua is still alive now, so the timeline actually
hasn’t changed yet. Can’t we tap into Zygfed and activate
them?”

Who wants to bet we were successful? I found
Spud’s theory that the timeline officially changed when I borrowed
the Somalderis…annoying.

“Okay, so what’s Plan B?” I challenged my
brother and Spud.

“Records vary as to how long Yeshua will
continue to survive on the cross,” Spud said, sifting through the
Zygan history banks again. “Seven to nine hours at most.”

“Rules out nightfall,” said John. “Sun just
came off the horizon.”

“If that,” Aliyah added quietly, walking up
to us. “I am quite fluent in Latin. Perhaps I can try to keep the
guards occupied while you attempt your rescue.”

John, Spud, and I looked at each other,
distressed. What had Aliyah overheard, and what was she expecting
us to do?

I let John field this one. He dropped to his
knees pretending to search for something in the reedy grass.

When I saw Spud follow, instinct kicked in
and I pulled the Professor down, too. Between Spud’s crouching
knees, I could see the cadre of Roman soldiers jogging in step
towards the crowds. Catching their attention wouldn’t be a good
idea, so we sidled over to a gully that led to a small inlet. And,
behind a large boulder, barely visible through the tall grass, we
spotted a five foot opening that led to a modest room-sized
cave.

Not a bad place for us to hide until we could
figure out our next moves. Judging from the scattered rags, cracked
animal bones, dried fruit pits, and dust-etched amphorae that were
strewn along its perimeter, we were not the first to make use of
this hideout. Hoping our predecessors wouldn’t return, we carried
ourselves and our ideas into the cave.

Chapter 23

Light From Heaven

In the Cave of Ideas—two thousand years
ago

As senior catascope, John took the lead,
delegating assignments to each of us. Spud would continue scanning
records of the period on his Zygan Ergal to help us determine a
strategy. I was in charge of building a fire to light torches and
to counter the dampness of the cave’s dark interior. And John and
Aliyah would use two torches to explore a few of the paths that
seemed to branch off from the back of the cave. If we were lucky,
we might even be able to reach Yeshua’s location through an
underground passage.

I built the fire in five minutes. No, I
didn’t rub two sticks together. Among the items John had reclaimed
from the Crusaders was Spud’s lighter—he never goes anywhere
without it. John had also grabbed the two remaining cigars he and
Spud had been saving for the right occasion. Breathing that smoke
in these cramped quarters isn’t the right occasion, John.

“You are going to tell us how you got back
all our stuff, aren’t you?” I prodded, as I took a seat next couple
by the pit.