Alternate Americas

by Gregory Benford

  Or am I not sanctified? he thought, a man of doubt as well as of faith, just as the honored Savior himself had been. Is it this or that? Is it one thing or the other? Is that shipful of Jews headed for the Jerusalem of the spirit that we will erect or aligned in the sign of the cross, will they perish at the bottom of the seas? In Cristoforo’s hands, he thought, but fortunately I can attend to the matters of transcendence, leave the temporal in the hands of Cristoforo. “Thy will be done,” Torquemada said. They looked at him intently. He raised his hands in the gesture of submission, feeling the terrible power of the water underneath.

  In the racks Solomon said, “I did the best I could. I pleaded with him. I asked for air and light.”

  “But he said no,” the three Davids said. “He said no,” the Israelites said. “He would not have us,” Judith and Rachel said, wiping the foreheads of the children who clustered. “He refused.”

  “That is right,” Solomon said. “He refused. He said that we were steerage, garbage, at the behest of the queen but of no concern to him. I told him that we would die, and he turned away. There is nothing to be done.”

  “Cristoforo is not a man of mercy,” Judith said. “He cares nothing for any of us.”

  “That is not so,” Solomon said. “He is doing what he must, just as we are. He is in the control of larger forces. At least we are on the seas. We have been spared the Inquisition. Maybe it will be different for those of us who live. If they live. If we live. This damnable voyage…”

  “Spared the Inquisition,” Ruth said, taking Solomon’s hand, “but not the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor is always with us. He comes in the night, he follows on the seas, he screams from the bowels of Neptune. I understand that now.”

  “Nothing to be done,” Solomon said. “We are creatures of their mercy.”

  “I tell you,” Rachel said, “that there is a judgment coming that is beyond all of us. They seek a New World, but it is eternally the old.”

  The steerage, silent when Solomon had returned, cast down to silence by hope or at least curiosity, resumed, broken fragments of prayers ascending only to the thin bulkheads that made them crouch against the racks, then dispersed. “It will not be long,” Solomon said, “we cannot survive this. We are a shipful of Jews, not of mystics or explorers, and in our flight is our guilt and our culpability. Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless,” Judith said, as if she had taken his thought, pressing his hand, “nevertheless we have at least carried ourselves, carried a bit of testimony, moved to some different place through the designs of our own spirit. We are not Marins. We are not apostosaic. Our apostasy is of a different kind.”

  “All displacement is apostasy,” Solomon said, the chanting murmuring about him, the disputation with Judith—this woman, to engage not only in prayers but Talmudic disputation with women was their peculiar but necessary fate in these conditions—continuing, all of their strange and strangely confluent anguish melding as the Pinta inexorably carried them toward a fate they could not determine, in all faith, in the faith of God, the one God of Israel whose Name was One and whose Oneness was indivisible in the heart of their exile.

  Torquemada, seized by a sudden spirit of ecstasy and affirmation, struck as if by a bolt from the brow of the Holy Ghost, began to dance and heave upon the deck of the Santa María, incognizant of the stares of the felons, indifferent to the risks that this display of ecstasy might bring upon him, the steps of his dance, carrying him from one side of the ship to the next while on the bosom of the ocean the craft lurched and spilled not only its provisions but its prayers in the sullen light of this journey.

  And so, and so they came upon the New World then, the slave ship and the master’s ship and the ship between, the shipful of Jews and the ship of the Inquisitor, caught their first glimpse of the New World through the mist and fog of their combined prayers, and in that moment, as Torquemada leapt, as the Jews chanted, as a grim and compliant Cristoforo set sextant and compass and shrugged toward this newest part of his destiny, in that moment it was as if all the centuries had slipped by and this strange and mismatched concatenation of spirits and flesh, voyagers and prisoners, repelled and necessitous, were gathered by that bolt that had struck Torquemada and that swept them from the bosom of the ocean to the bowels of the ship, then expelled them to all of the crevices of the twentieth century itself, myths of purgation and collision hastening their way toward the apostasies to come. The shipful of Jews, their captain, their keeper, and their inquisitor joined at last in that voyage of transcendence. Cristoforo dreamed it, dreamed it all, dreamed that he was in the enormous grasp of Isabella herself, her capacious sex absorbing and expelling him as would all of the centuries and scholars to come and the spray of his seed upon the ocean of the queen the plume to drag him past myth and toward that first terrible awareness of his destiny. Cristoforo the Jew. Cristoforo the keeper of souls. V’ysh ka’dash. Shmeh rabbo.

  Brich hu.

  Omen.

  THE KARAMAZOV CAPER

  Gordon Eklund

  One: On the Pier

  November 1917

  A foul bleak and forlorn country, thinks Trotsky as he staggers, swaying, down the gangplank toward shore, hands gripping the ropes for balance. The entire fucking land reeks of rotting gutted fish. (Poor Trotsky dreams now constantly of vanquished Moscow nights when freedom and revolt rode the chill wintery air like a blast of Christ’s omniscient breath.) (And lovely dark women slithering naked abed.) (The images are confused, interwoven. Trotsky groans. Sixteen dreadful days on the trans-Siberian train, five more aboard ship tossing in Arctic waves will do depraved things to a man’s dreams.)

  Yet what can any of it mean in this day and age with sad, brave Lenin tortured and dying in his cell and the Jew fool Zinoviev baying for mercy on bent knees, dawn light slashing through the bars of Lubianka Prison like the blades of knives. And you alone, Trotsky, can save me. (No, wrong, fool stupid Jew bastard. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is I alone, Trotsky, who can kill you.) (And who did! And who fucking well did!)

  A dense trickily drizzle of rain oozes down upon his head and shoulders as Trotsky steps upon the wooden pier, knees buckling at the shock of solid motionless terrain underfoot. So where, he thinks, is my official welcoming delegation of police agents in black beards and stovepipe hats, all splendidly attired? Instead there is only a lone, hugely fat, cigar-puffing native red man in a vast ankle-length fur coat and a ridiculously broad-brimmed cloth hat. A jagged scar like a lion’s slash wound (Trotsky has only lately returned from an inspection tour of czarist East Africa) runs down the man’s left cheek to the cleft of his jaw.

  “Are you Trotsky, the investigator?” says the red man, approaching delicately on tiny feet, his gait like a dance. His words curl around the butt of his cigar.

  “No, I am Czar Nicholas II, ruler of all of imperial Russia, including this blasted land. And you, native idiot, who the hell might you be?” (Trotsky’s irritability remains simmering.)

  “I am called Redburn, at your service.” His smile reveals sharp yellow incisors like those of a cannibal. “I am the senior ranking police official for the township of Sealth.”

  “And what, pray tell, is this Sealth?”

  “The name we natives prefer for what you Russians term Bering’s City of the New Lands.”

  “This Sealth was the last acknowledged free chieftain of your tribe as I recall.”

  Redburn’s face remains as blank as stone, his smile frozen, his eyes bleak as winter. “You are a knowledgeable man, Trotsky.”

  “I make the attempt to find things out.”

  “Then perhaps you should also know that Chief Sealth was both a drunkard and an imbecile. He kissed the butt cheeks of you Russians and came away with shit embedded between his teeth forever. Among my people his name is a badge of shame and degradation.”

  Trotsky has heard enough of this native self-pity. There are far worse fates for a man, he believes, than shame or degradation. “Take me to my inn. I am
tired and wish to rest.”

  Redburn’s brows rise quizzically. “Before interrogating the prisoner?”

  “Yes. The fool will surely keep.”

  Redburn removes his cigar, blows smoke, shrugs. “As you wish.”

  They move along the pier. Meager waves slap the wooden seawall like gently clapping hands. There is a brackish scent in the air. Mounds of seaweed float on top of the water like clumps of discolored hair.

  “You are one of the Jew race, are you not, friend Trotsky?” asks Redburn. They turn away from the pier, mount steep wooden steps. Somewhere above, a trolley bell jangles. The light oozing drizzle has dwindled to a mist, barely damp.

  “I am. So?”

  “So some would claim that makes you and I brothers in blood.” Redburn’s smile broadens around his cigar, showing molars as broad as tree stumps, as yellow as parchment.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The belief held by some that we natives of the New Lands are one of the lost tribes of your Israel.”

  “It is not my Israel. I am an atheist.”

  Redburn chuckles within his great fur coat. “An atheist in this universe only or in all universes everywhere?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I refer to the theory held by some that there is more than one universe, that God still exists in some but has vanished from others.”

  “A peculiar theory, that.”

  Redburn shrugs. “No more peculiar than many I have heard enunciated in recent days. We live in a peculiar time, Trotsky, and this is a desperate land. The nearby forests are again rife with prophets and messiahs, some native, some Russian, some false, others not.”

  “One of whom has been charged with the crime I have been sent to investigate.”

  “A simple crime. A baby murdered, its heart removed and apparently eaten. The culprit has been apprehended.” Redburn suddenly tosses a warm arm around his companion’s gaunt shoulders. The fused odors of cigar smoke and dead animal skin overwhelm Trotsky’s senses. “Hardly something to concern an investigator of your repute.”

  “The dead baby was that of the German ambassador,” Trotsky implores, struggling to break free of the native’s smothering grasp.

  “Coincidence. Pure coincidence.” Redburn lets go of Trotsky. Together they turn toward the township of Sealth (or Bering’s City), which rises, heavenlike, upon hills to the east. Bonfires can be glimpsed flickering through the mist. It is the middle of the day but as dark as an hour before dawn.

  Two: The Prisoner Speaks

  The jail is a gray brick edifice perched upon a precipice’s edge, the cells clustered in the basement floor. Few are currently occupied. The prisoner sits, stiffly erect, on a bloodstained cot in the last cell in the row. Redburn in his long coat slouches on his left. Trotsky, across the room in a chair, keeps notes in a pad. The toilet is a hole in the floor. The air reeks of piss, shit, and vomit, of sweat and blood and fear.

  Trotsky: Your name is Mikhail Sergeiovitch Karamazov, known as Mishka.

  Prisoner (through swollen lips): That is correct, Investigator.

  Trotsky: Your family first came to the New Lands in the year 1897.

  Prisoner: That is also correct, Investigator.

  Trotsky: In Russia your father was charged with the crime of murdering his own father.

  Prisoner: That is true. But he was innocent.

  Trotsky: Have you been beaten?

  Prisoner. Yes, Investigator.

  Trotsky: To make you confess?

  Prisoner (glancing to his left): I do not know the reason.

  Trotsky: I will see that it stops.

  Prisoner: Thank you, Investigator.

  Trotsky: But now you also have been charged with murder. Of a child. A baby.

  Prisoner: I am innocent as well.

  Trotsky: Blood was found upon your clothes. Recent blood. Great thick splashes of it. There was also a knife in your possession similarly coated in blood.

  Prisoner: I may have killed a chicken that day. Or another animal. I am unsure.

  Trotsky: You took a life but have no memory of the event?

  Prisoner: I suffer at times from epileptic seizures. There are occasions when I remember nothing for days.

  Trotsky: And you claim this was one such occasion?

  Prisoner: It may have been, yes.

  Redburn (intervening with a snort): He is lying, Investigator.

  Trotsky: But if you say you remember nothing, Mishka, then you could as easily remember nothing of the murder of a baby as the killing of a chicken.

  Prisoner: Oh, no. Impossible. That I could never forget. You must believe me, Investigator. I am not a murderer. I am a foul bleak sinner who reeks miserably of the putrid shit of my flesh. But I accept and follow all God’s commandments. I seek in all manner of my life to become as one with my Lord who is Jesus Christ.

  Redburn (muttering): There is no fucking God in this universe, you dumb shit.

  Trotsky: You have some reputation as a prophet, friend Mishka.

  Prisoner: I must deny that as well. Prophecy hints at some foreknowledge of God’s master plan. I have none. I am a miserable desperate sinner. My flesh rots and mildews upon my bones as it does with all men, good and evil alike.

  Redburn (softly): What good men?

  Trotsky: But you have on occasion preached among the native tribes.

  Prisoner: I have spoken to them of the ways of Christ, yes.

  Trotsky: You have visited their villages, entered their lodgings.

  Prisoner: Primitive heathen hovels in the bleak dank forests of this forsaken land. But I have gone there, yes. For the word of God must be spoken where the body and blood of Christ shall prevail.

  Trotsky: An admirable sentiment, friend Mishka. But are you not unaware of where the body of the slain child was discovered to be lying?

  Redburn (interrupting): What the Jew means is the baby who had its heart ripped out and its carcass buried in shit in the woods.

  Prisoner: I know nothing of that, nothing.

  Trotsky: But it was within less than half a kilometer of the village of the Skokomish chieftain Meekla, where you were known to have preached two days before.

  Prisoner: And was driven away with sticks. (Twisting to reveal wounds on his back and shoulders.) Beaten and struck and made to bleed.

  Trotsky: The same day the baby of the German ambassador vanished.

  Prisoner: I know nothing of that, nothing.

  Redburn (turning as he sits and grasping the prisoner by the shirt front): You pathetic fucking liar. You were seen at the ambassador’s house that same day. You knocked on the goddamned door.

  Prisoner: To ask for a simple begging for Christ, nothing more.

  Redburn (yelling): To steal a baby. For a sacrifice. A blood sacrifice. To the village where you were driven away with sticks. A baby with its heart gouged out. While it was still alive. Still beating. Answer me, Karamazov. Did you eat the heart? (He slaps the prisoner.) Is that the kind of devil you are? A cannibal who eats the flesh of its own kind? (He slaps the prisoner again.)

  Prisoner: No, no, I—I—!

  Trotsky (rising to his feet to intervene): Redburn, let—

  Redburn (slapping the prisoner repeatedly as Trotsky grasps his arm): You devil! You evil fucking devil!

  Three: A Forest Journey

  The motorcar jerks and sways precariously as it cuts a path through the deep mud of the mountain road. In the driver’s seat Redburn sits hunched at the wheel while Trotsky beside him grips the door handle, struggling not to be thrown from his seat. It has been a journey of some two hours thus far with, according to Redburn, at least as much remaining before they reach the murder site. Twice already the car has stuck fast in the mud and Trotsky has had to climb out and push. His shoes, stockings, and trouser legs are wet and soaked. A light drizzle continues to fall, windshield wipers whipping erratically at clots of mud and rain. Trotsky cannot avoid wondering how the prisoner Karamazov could have mana
ged this same journey while carrying with him the kidnapped baby of the German ambassador. But this and other unanswered questions are why he has demanded that Redburn bring him to the actual killing ground.

  Redburn, who has remained silent throughout the journey, suddenly clears his throat. He is sucking at one of his cigars, the fumes filling the interior of the car like a cloud. “Are you familiar, friend Trotsky, with the story of Anna Petrovna?”

  Trotsky has to think for a moment. “The name sounds familiar, yes.”

  “The first white woman to set foot in the New Lands. And a true beauty to boot. Blond and blue-eyed and as lovely as a flower. Do you admire women of beauty, friend Trotsky?”

  He shrugs. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Not everyone, no. Our friend back in the jail cell, the murderer Karamazov, he doesn’t strike me as one to concern himself overly with female beauty.”

  “He doubtlessly has other things on his mind.”

  “Of course. He is a philosopher. But you and I, we are men of the world, correct? We do not resist the lures of flesh. Another cunt licked is another cunt known, right? But about Anna Petrovna. She came to these shores from New Archangel at age eighteen in the company of her young husband the navigator Bulygin aboard the brig Saint Nicholas on a trading expedition to the New Lands in the Christian year of 1808. The voyage had proceeded without incident until one October night when a sudden squall struck the moored vessel near Destruction Island, driving it on the rocks and forcing its crew and passengers to land. The survivors had not been ashore long when a group of curious natives emerged from the forest. They were Quillayutes, a usually peaceable, though primitive tribal group. Nevertheless an incident soon transpired. Perhaps one of the Quillayutes grew too curious, perhaps concerning Anna Petrovna herself. Shoves and pushes were exchanged. Someone shouted out. A rock was thrown. Then a spear. There were musket shots. It was raining. Three of the Quillayutes lay dead. The others quickly scattered to the forest.