Transgression

by R. S. Ingermanson

  “Wait.” Hana took the squarish piece of cloth left over from making Rivka’s tunic and folded it into a triangle. “Cover your hair with this. Have you no decency?”

  “I’m sorry.” Rivka fumbled with it helplessly.

  Finally, Hana rolled up Rivka’s French braid, folded it into the cloth, and knotted it.

  Rivka stepped out into the street.

  Hana followed her. “You are a very strange person, Rivka. I do not think I understand you at all.” She locked the door behind them and secreted the key in the cloth belt around her waist.

  “I don’t understand you, either,” Rivka said. “But I like you.”

  “You are an honest person,” Hana said, as she began walking briskly along the small street. “This evening you must explain to me why an honest person tells so many lies.”

  * * *

  Rivka

  Rivka stood as near to the front of the Court of Women as she could get. She faced west toward the sanctuary. Immediately in front of her, fifteen semicircular steps led up to an enormous bronze gate. On the steps stood dozens of Levite musicians, garbed in white. Some had wooden harp-like instruments. One held a bronze pair of cymbals. A priest clutched a silver trumpet. The rest were singers. All of them waited in perfect silence, facing the worshipers in the court below, watching the director of music.

  Rivka could see beyond them, through the great gate, into the Court of Priests. Several priests led in a ram for the afternoon sacrifices. The animal, smelling blood, struggled. His ferocity shocked Rivka. Rams were stronger than she had thought. The priests fought to drag it up to the slaughtering point—a wooden post with a metal ring. They tugged the ram’s horns up through the ring, forcing his head into relative immobility. Two of them gripped the animal’s horns and pulled backward hard. The ram bleated in anger.

  Or fear.

  Another priest came forward with a sharp knife and a large silver pitcher. Rivka guessed it held at least a gallon.

  The priest laid the knife across the ram’s throat and sliced horizontally. Blood spurted out into the pitcher.

  Rivka gasped. Her hands flew up to her mouth.

  Hana reached up and put a hand on her shoulder.

  The ram kicked backward with his hind legs, but the priests stood beside him, not behind. As his blood filled the pitcher, he weakened. Then his knees buckled.

  The priests released his horns and lowered him most of the way to the stone pavement. In a few minutes, he stopped kicking. The priests each grabbed a leg and hoisted him onto a slaughtering table, out of Rivka’s line of sight, which suited her just fine. She didn’t want to see any more.

  “Are you going to faint?” Hana asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” Rivka said. “It’s just…I never saw anything like that before.”

  “But if the people of your country are wealthy, then they must eat meat often,” Hana said.

  “Yes…” Rivka wiped her forehead. “But my people don’t slaughter their own animals.”

  Hana merely shook her head in disbelief.

  Within a few minutes, the priests stepped back from the table. Had they finished cutting up the ram already? One of them reached forward, grabbed something off the table, and walked across Rivka’s field of vision toward the altar on the left-hand side of the gate. In his right hand, he carried a leg of the ram.

  Rivka sensed a collective intake of breath around her. Something was about to happen—something anticipated, something important.

  She saw the priest step up to the base of the altar. It was huge, something like twenty feet high and wider than that at the base. The priest swung his arm far back, then slung it upward rapidly, underhand. The ram’s leg rotated twice as it sailed up onto the altar, landing with a thud.

  The crowd began breathing again. The priest turned and headed back toward the slaughtering table. He made several trips. The legs he flung up. The side pieces, shoulders, and head he had to carry up the steps to the top of the altar. Finally, it ended. Another priest appeared with a pitcher containing wine, a drink offering to the living God. Again, Rivka sensed an anticipation in the crowd around her. The priest paused briefly at the base of the altar. Then he poured out the drink offering on the steps leading up to the top of the altar.

  Claaaaaaang! The Levite with the cymbals clashed them together.

  Rivka jumped.

  An instant later, the musicians burst into song.

  The Lord reigns,

  He is robed in majesty;

  The Lord is robed in majesty,

  And armed with strength.

  Indeed the world is established,

  Firm and secure.

  Your throne was established long ago;

  You are from all eternity.

  For the first time in a long time, Rivka felt awe well up in her heart. People all around her fell on their faces on the stone pavement. Rivka did, too. She let the music wash over her in a great wave. She recognized the words as the ninety-third psalm, the song always sung on the sixth day of the week in the Temple. The words of the psalm struck her with new force now. You are from all eternity.

  Taken literally, that implied God presided above time. He didn’t need a wormhole to get from the past to the present to the future and back again. He just was. Time limited man. But not the great I AM.

  Rivka had always believed this—more or less. She just hadn’t grasped it. Probably she still didn’t, but today’s visit to the past had made it all seem a bit more real. She had once read a book about how the kingdom of God was “already, but not yet.” At the time, she had dismissed it as a poetic bit of theology-speak. Now it seemed possible, even logical.

  Rivka lay there for some time, immersed in tranquility. Was it her imagination, or did a Presence permeate this place? She wanted to stay here forever, enjoying—

  “Come, Rivka. It is time to go,” Hana said.

  Rivka opened her eyes and saw that the Court of Women had begun to empty. She looked at her watch. After four o’clock. Did that mean anything? Her watch also informed her that today was Sunday, and that was certainly wrong. But the position of the sun in the sky told her that her watch was not far off.

  She stood up and stretched. “I should be going home now.”

  “You will not travel far before Shabbat arrives,” Hana said. “If you truly live in a far country, then you cannot walk there before the sun goes down. Will you not stay with me this evening?”

  Rivka didn’t know what to say to that. She wanted to go back soon. Dov and Jessica would worry about her. And she had to tell them about this place! They would insist on coming back with her tomorrow to visit—this time with cameras. Shabbat in the Temple! What more could anybody want?

  Hana studied her face. “You are far away in your thoughts, my friend.”

  Rivka patted her arm. “Let’s go.” They began walking toward the exit. She felt anxious to get back to the wormhole soon.

  They went through the south gate of the inner Temple and down the steps toward the outer courts of the Temple Mount. At the foot of the stairs stood a waist-high barrier enclosing the inner Temple. Jews considered everything inside this barrier too pure for Gentiles to enter. On the way in, Rivka had seen signs in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek warning goyim to go no further, on pain of death.

  “Rivka Meyers!” An American accent, a familiar voice.

  Rivka’s head spun toward the source.

  There, just outside the barrier, stood a large man in an outlandish modern Arab costume, waving his arms exuberantly. Dr. Damien West. He looked delighted to see her.

  What in the...world? Rivka felt pretty sure Dr. West had something to do with her coming here. So why had he come looking for her? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he had come to take her back. Probably right now. She felt a twinge of regret, like she had as a kid when recess ended and she wanted to stay out another five minutes.

  “Who is that?” Hana asked.

  Rivka strode out through the gap in the barrier and up
to Dr. West.

  “Thank goodness I found you,” he said.

  “Um, Dr. West…if you don’t mind, I have a few questions for you. For starters, how did I get here?”

  Dr. West smiled broadly. “First, I have to apologize for allowing Ari to do this to you. Are you all right? You’ve had no trouble, have you? I’ve been terribly worried about you, Miss Meyers.”

  “I’m fine,” Rivka said. “What do you mean about Ari? What did he do?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Dr. West said. “I’ve had him arrested, and a jury will determine what he did. I’m so very sorry, Miss Meyers. While you were playing the Avatar game, I stepped out to go to the restroom. Apparently, Ari came in while I was out. He locked me out of the lab and turned on the wormhole, creating a time portal. I don’t know how he got you through it, but obviously he did, because you’re here.”

  “You’re telling me Ari…sent me here?” Rivka asked. That didn’t make any sense at all. Nothing made sense.

  “The best I can determine, yes, he did,” Dr. West said. “When I finally got inside the lab, he was trying to—” Dr. West paused, and a troubled look crossed his face. “I don’t know how to say this, Miss Meyers, but he was trying to shut down the wormhole.”

  Rivka’s knees suddenly felt like Jell-O. “But…he told me last week that you can only make a wormhole once. How would I have gotten back?”

  Dr. West cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Miss Meyers, truly I am. If Ari had succeeded…you would have been stranded here. For good.”

  “Oh my gosh!” she said. “That’s just...unbelievable! In fact, I don’t believe it. “That doesn’t sound like the Ari I know. Why would he do that?”

  “You told me this morning you had an argument with him last night, is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Rivka felt her fists tightening at the memory. “He accused me of…some things. I got angry and threw a glass of water in his face. And I’m afraid I made a rather rude suggestion to him. Then I walked off. I came in this morning to apologize.”

  Dr. West was shaking his head. “You don’t know Ari Kazan very well,” he said. “He has a temper, really quite remarkable. He never forgets, and he never, ever forgives. Last year, I heard that he completely destroyed the reputation of a postdoc who dared to suggest that his wormhole theory might be wrong. It got quite vicious.”

  Rivka shivered. This didn’t sound right. It didn’t square with what Dr. West had told her just this morning. And she knew Ari to be a peace-loving guy. She’d had to drag the truth out of him last night, or he would have just sat there being miserable. He was the classic conflict-avoider.

  And yet, Dr. West had come looking for her. Ari hadn’t.

  “Ari’s got a counselor that he talks to about his anger issues,” Dr. West said. “It’s been kind of a secret. Ari’s mother and stepfather are ultraorthodox, you know, and quite wealthy. They would probably disinherit him if they found out.”

  Anger issues? Now that made some sense. Ari obviously repressed a bit of hostility. He had vented some of it last night at Christians, but maybe it went deeper than that. And yet…

  Rivka had to sort this thing out. Either Ari or Dr. West had let her go through that wormhole and then left her to fend for herself in a land that didn’t treat women with bare arms and legs kindly.

  One of them had abandoned her.

  Her heart quivered with anger. One of them was a king-sized jerk. But which one?

  Until ten minutes ago, she had assumed it was Dr. West. But he had no reason to dislike her, whereas Ari...did. She had been awfully rude to Ari last night. But rude enough for him to toss her through a wormhole and throw away the key? Was that in character?

  Rivka knew she would figure it out if she could get more information. Obviously, she wouldn’t get anywhere by making weird accusations. She would keep asking questions. If Dr. West were lying, he would trip himself up eventually. Meantime, she would give him the benefit of the doubt. And Ari, too.

  “So,” she said brightly, “how did you know where to find me?”

  Dr. West smiled. “I guessed right away that you had gone through the wormhole. I used a bit of karate to disable Ari. Nothing permanent, mind you. He whacked me a good one in the eye.”

  “I see,” Rivka said. “You’re going to have a nasty shiner there.”

  “Nothing major,” Dr. West said. “Anyway, then I had to stabilize the wormhole—and that was quite a trick, let me tell you. Another two minutes, and you would have been…history.” He whiffed the air with his hands.

  She shivered.

  “So after I called the police and had Ari arrested, I went through the wormhole to see if I could find you. I found a cave of some sort, but you weren’t there. I went outside and found myself on the outskirts of ancient Jerusalem. I saw the virtual reality headset on the ground, so I knew you had been there. Then I took one look at the Temple Mount and figured you had probably taken a little sight-seeing expedition.”

  Rivka shook her head. “I’m so glad you came. This morning was a bit of an adventure. I’ll tell you about it on the way back. This is my friend Hana.” She switched to Aramaic. “Hana, this is a friend from my country. His name is called Damien.”

  “Daimon?” Hana flinched. “That is a bad name for a good man.”

  “No, not Daimon. Not an evil spirit. His name is Damien. It is a common name in my country. We speak a different language there. He will help me return to my country.”

  Hana examined Dr. West with an appraising eye and said nothing.

  Rivka wondered if she was sizing him up as a potential customer. “Well!” she said, with forced verve in her voice. “Dr. West, shall we get back to the lab? I’ve got my camera there, and I’m dying to bring Dov and Jessica back here with me tomorrow. This place is awesome—literally! You can almost feel the presence of God in the Temple.”

  Dr. West nodded. “We can go back as soon as you want to. I should warn you, though, that the wormhole is likely to collapse if anyone else goes through it. I did some calculations before I left and concluded that I could come through safely and we can both return home, but that will be the end of it. The gravitational field of our bodies is almost certain to send the wormhole into decay mode. We won’t be able to come back—and good riddance to this place, if you ask me. The natives here are a bit strange, don’t you think?”

  Rivka found that she was holding her breath. She wanted to see more of this city—to explore the place a bit and see the sights. If she couldn’t capture it on film, at least she could burn it into her memory. “How long would it be safe for us to stay here?” she asked.

  Dr. West shrugged. “In principle, decades, I suppose. As long as nobody walks through that wormhole, it should hold together indefinitely. I left some of the physicists there in charge with strict orders to let nobody else through.”

  “Did you tell them when you would be back?”

  “Well, I couldn’t be sure how long it would take to find you, so I told them to expect me in a few days. I got lucky and found you right away, but I’d guess they won’t get worried unless we’re gone more than a week.” He shrugged. “Don’t tell me you like it here? This place gives me the creeps.”

  “I do like it,” Rivka said. “In fact, I love it! It’s every archaeologist’s dream to come to a place like this. Would you mind terribly if we stayed for a day or two? This whole city is amazing. I’ve already seen things that are going to rewrite every book I’ve read on the cultural anthropology of the Herodian period. And I want to do a really thorough survey of the Temple Mount. Professor Ritmeyer will never forgive me if I come back and can’t tell him if his reconstruction is correct. And I want to see…” She threw up her hands, embarrassed. “You probably think I’m nuts.”

  Dr. West patted her arm gently. “I sort of understand. How long do you want to stay? No, don’t answer that. You probably want to stay forever. Sorry, you can’t. I want to get back to claim my half of the Nobel prize. And somebody’
s got to testify against Ari—painful as that will be. Despite his temper, Ari has been a good friend of mine—until today.”

  Hana tugged on Rivka’s sleeve. “Why is your friend dressed like that?”

  That was a good question. Rivka jabbed a finger at Dr. West’s clothes. “Where’d you come by the threads? Did you rob a Bedouin?”

  Dr. West gave a good-natured grin. “I went to the shuq yesterday to pick up some souvenirs to take back to the States. I’m afraid the guy ripped me off. I’ve never got the hang of bargaining with these people. Anyway, when I realized I had to come back through time to find you, I decided that a silly costume was better than none. It’s turned out better than I expected.”

  Rivka squinted at the clothes. “Marginally,” she said. “You really ought to get a native costume if we’re going to hang out here for a few days.” Then she remembered that she had no money and was dependent on Hana’s charity. “Um, we may have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” Dr. West asked. “I’m good at problem-solving.”

  “Money,” Rivka said bluntly. “I’m flat broke, and it takes money to eat.”

  Dr. West put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a fistful of silver coins. “I collect ancient coins,” he said. “Part of my collection was in my desk in the lab. I raided it, just in case. Guess I’m an overgrown Boy Scout—always prepared.”

  Who would keep a coin collection in a physics lab? Dr. West’s story was beginning to sound just a bit too smooth. But Rivka saw no choice but to play along.

  She gave an admiring laugh. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you? That’s amazing.” She turned to Hana. “How would you like to earn some money? My friend needs a place to stay for a few days. Can you put him up with us?”

  Hana shook her head violently. “Keep a man in my house? That would not be fitting.”

  Rivka wondered how it could be less fitting than Hana’s present line of work.

  Hana’s face flushed a deep red. “My friend, have you no shame? Why do you speak to this man in public? And why does he allow it? Is it the custom in your country to do such things?”