As he was leaving the house Jacob’s cell phone rang. It was his mother. “Come to Sabbath dinner at our place, with the kids. Sheina and Wolf and their children will be here as well.”
“Okay. I’ll check with Esther. Unless she has a night shift at the hospital we will be there.”
“Good. Avram and I will be happy to see you. It’s our anniversary. But no presents, please.”
His mother had married Avram Soloveichik in 1947. Jacob remembered him from Vilna, where he was a furniture merchant and customer of Jacob’s father. A nice, gentle man, widowed in 1941. The newlyweds lived in Jacob’s old house, which he left to his mother after he married Esther.
Wolf and Sheina also lived in Refidim. Wolf had gotten a loan from Ze’ev to cover his first year of tuition and expenses at the Technion but decided it was best to stay near Sheina’s family instead of moving to Haifa. Wolf enrolled in the new Refidim branch of Ben Gurion University, majoring in electrical engineering, and Sheina started working at her brother’s computer company.
For a while Wolf took a part-time job as a teacher at a local high school to pay for school, but he didn’t like teaching. During his third year at the university he accepted Jacob’s job offer to refine a design for a new motherboard using a chipset just announced by Intel. Now they lived, with their three children, in a nice house not far from Jacob and Esther.
***
The Prime Minister took the time to shake hands with every Cabinet member. Yoram Keinan was new to this job, elected only a week ago. Amos Nir had decided not to run for reelection. He claimed that he needed a rest and didn’t deny that he might run again. The right-wing ruling party was still firmly in the saddle and the coalition was stable.
Yoram Keinan invited everyone to sit. “Since this is our first formal meeting, I would like to stick to the agenda. First, we have a presentation by the new head of the Mossad and new head of the Security Services.”
The Security Services man stood. “Not much to report. Our local Arab population is content. There have been a few subversive activities on the far left and on the far right, but nothing serious.
“After the Knesset allowed the death penalty for certain offenses we saw a significant drop in espionage attempts. Since the incident four years ago with the Secretary of the German embassy we have had no more such cases. There are, of course, the normal attempts of industrial espionage and also attempts to steal military technology. As far as we know none have been successful.”
The head of the Mossad began her presentation. “The situation is slightly more complicated outside our borders. We noticed that there was less interest in advanced arms and more interest in quantum mechanics and, of all things, magic. This doesn’t mean that arms are not high on the list, only that something else is higher.
“Apparently, some information about our ability to open gates to other universes has leaked so a number of countries are trying getting into the game. We know that the U.S., Britain, Russia, Germany, and France are all investing resources in quantum research. Of course it’s not easy to accomplish what we did without the necessary background. They will likely get there eventually, maybe sixty or seventy years. Then there are institutions investing in the research of magic. Maybe they will also come up with something interesting. In the meantime we seem to be secure and we know of no plots against us. Unlike the timeline we left, this one is friendly to us. Mostly it’s the absence of a forum like the old UN that gave a voice to the various united anti-Semites.”
The Foreign Minister raised his hand. “Our embassies in several countries have been approached, discreetly, with questions about alternate universes. We follow the script we devised a while ago: ask whether the inquirer was referring to a science fiction story. This usually terminates the inquiry. They either decide that the whole thing was a misunderstanding of a science fiction fable, or that we’re not welcoming these questions. A Secretary at our embassy in Japan mentioned an occult reference. Maybe they believed him.”
After the two spymasters left, the Prime Minister asked the Foreign Minister for an update.
“As we expected, Abdullah’s son isn’t fit to rule, so his father is the regent for Syria. He’s not a bad ruler and, somewhat to our surprise, instituted a relatively liberal constitutional monarchy. His rule seems to be stable and both Jordan and Syria are prospering, with some help from us.
“Egypt is a different story. King Faruq is weak and corrupt, as is his bureaucracy. We anticipate a revolt sooner or later, as happened in our original timeline. We tried all we could think of to correct the situation but neither the king nor his British supporters see a problem.
“Speaking of the British: their empire is starting to unravel. India is restless and their Southeast Asian possessions are making independence noises as well. Singapore and Malaya in particular are demanding autonomy. The Brits read our history books and are introducing reforms. How successful they’ll be is uncertain.
“China is still fighting a civil war, although it seems that a coalition led by the Nationalists – with American support - is slowly winning. They are cleaning up their government and gradually gaining more popular support. It might take decades before we see a stable government in China.”
The meeting went on for a while. There were no Earth-shattering revelations or dangers that had to be urgently acted upon.
The End
Beyond the Shield Page 39
