A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World

by Rachel Cantor

  I tell you, they were evil. With their heresies and strange questions.

  A problem with translation, I’m sure.

  They were walking straight past Leonard and Sally but in the darkness did not see them.

  Are we going the right way?

  Absolutely, the man said.

  That eel was not quite fresh, the Frankish woman said.

  We can change hostelleries tomorrow, the man said.

  It’s awfully quiet, dearest. They said St. Peter’s was busy and loud, with all the dirty pilgrims sleeping there.

  It is but minutes away. Cross the bridge and left at the fortress. I am told we cannot miss it.

  You have no idea where we are.

  You can smell the censers from here, my love.

  Their voices faded. Sally pinched Leonard’s thigh.

  Did you hear that? she whispered.

  I was trying not to, Leonard whispered back, opening his eyes and shifting out of his pretzel, to the great relief of his knees.

  It was a sign! Sally said. Bridge, river, crowded place where pilgrims sleep: they told us where to go!

  Excellent! Leonard said, though he wasn’t sure of that, he wasn’t sure at all.

  The torches of a thousand pilgrims

  They gathered their few belongings and began walking down the lane, looking for a bridge to a fortress. The darkness was absolute, as there was no street lighting, no Hello! lamps on Everything’s-Okay poles anywhere.

  Do you have your personal beta-version collapsible beacon?

  You mean, the hat I designed based on Baconian optics?

  You designed that?

  Of course!

  Yes, I mean that collapsible beacon.

  Gone, Sally said. Maybe I left it at the hostellery.

  Leonard smiled: it wasn’t only he who had left things behind.

  That’s alright, he said. He would have taken her hand had the road been wide enough.

  Look! he said, and pointed—at more stars than either had ever seen in a sky.

  Nice, Sally said, without enthusiasm.

  There’s the Neetsa Pizza logo. See? The triangle with the pepperoni? Next to the Heraclitan flame?

  Sally nodded.

  Ironic, considering how the Heraclitans hate us—Oh! he said, lifting his nose into the air. Can you smell that?

  I smell compost—and in fact, they’d passed a vacant lot teeming with mounds of it.

  No, it’s something else.

  What? Sally asked.

  Smell with your left nostril. It’s the river, it has to be! Over there!

  They turned a corner onto a larger road and there it was! Leonard had to restrain himself from running to the bridge, which they could see dimly a half a verst ahead.

  The Franks were right, because as Leonard and Sally approached the bridge they could see not just the fortress but, across the river and to the left, a magnificent basilica, lit bright—by the torches of a thousand pilgrims.

  The river

  They were no longer alone: Romans and pilgrims streamed by, converging in groups of two, three, or more from various roads and lanes. Some were ill and barely balanced themselves on wooden crutches, which got caught between the cobbles; others were pulled along in wheelbarrows. A few sang fervently but with little regard to Pythagorean tuning, their eyes fixed on the basilica. A Swedish woman with white hair fell to her knees and cried out to Saint Eric.

  I’ve never seen a river before, have you? Leonard asked.

  Sally shook her head.

  Do you want to look?

  Not particularly, Sally said.

  Please?

  They stepped away from the road and walked about ten cubits to the riverbank. To the right, they could see the white stone bridge with its five great arches. To the left another twenty cubits, strange floating structures, the purpose of which Leonard could not discern.

  It’s awfully muddy down here, Sally said.

  Leonard nodded, straining now to see what might have been an island connected to the banks by bridges on either side.

  I wonder where they find the fish, he said, as he saw no fish catchers.

  When Sally didn’t reply, Leonard said, It’s interesting here, don’t you think? Don’t you find yourself wondering about this place, its Custom and Commerce, for example? How do the people earn their lucre? What do they eat?

  We know what they eat and it’s disgusting—and no, I’m not interested to know more. I want to find Felix and get out of here.

  Leonard suddenly felt very, very tired.

  Don’t worry, Sally said. He’ll be fine. You trust Isaac, right? He won’t let anything happen to him.

  No, Leonard said, stepping out of the way of a man and donkey pulling a creaking wooden cart, its bed filled with sloping sacks of something heavy. They made their way back to the bridge, walking around the four nuns who toddled arm in arm and a blind man who was led by a clubfooted boy. Small groups of pilgrims continued to enter the bridge from every direction, separated by nationality; collectively they surged toward the basilica—funereal Hungarians, Egyptians singing in a low tone. Like a disorganized version of one of the Leader’s Birthday Happiness processionals: every group represented, united by hope and joy. All along the bridge, Romans hawked beaded wristlets, tin pilgrims’ badges, and disturbing miniature crutches, shackles, and limbs. Instinctively, Leonard and Sally attached themselves to the largest group—ten Portuguese wearing brown pilgrims’ gear that more or less resembled theirs—and followed them across the river, where they had their choice of streets to the basilica and chose the busiest.

  This must be the Business District, Sally whispered, for indeed, the buildings lining the road were crammed with workshops, stands, and booths, some sheltered by vaulted brick arcades, some jutting into and obstructing the road. They sold many wonders; some even sold lucre—but for what purpose? What manner of strange place this was! In addition to the badges and miniature shackles they’d seen earlier, they now saw books for sale, and straw, and tiny vials of oil—too small for ritual wedding-night anointing (at which thought Leonard blushed)—as well as the more familiar fruit, vegetables, spices, and fish.

  Should we talk with the fisherpeople? Sally asked, looking back over her shoulder at a smiling seller of eel.

  I think we should wait till morning, Leonard said—and they arrived at a small irregular square, behind which was the basilica, the largest building Leonard had ever seen, larger even than the University Library, though really it seemed a random agglomeration of connected buildings, towers, and outbuildings. Leonard couldn’t help but approve of the five flights of seven stairs at the end of the square leading to the main building, five being the quintessence, Pythagoras’s marriage number, the indivisible combination of masculine three and feminine two, seven being the virgin prime number, indivisible, with no product within the decad.

  As they crossed the square toward the stairs, old men pulled at Leonard’s tunic, offering to set broken bones or extract teeth or mend torn-up shoes. Others hawked miniature body parts, blocking their way and pushing wax noses and wooden elbows into their faces. One happy Frisian nearly knocked Sally to the ground after purchasing a model of an ox. Unwashed people, many of them infirm, threw themselves immoderately at their feet, seeming to want coins in exchange for no service whatsoever. Young men swarmed about them, each claiming to be an official guide. Trade jewelry? Trade coins? I get you maximum indulgence! What you speak? German? Frank? Castilian?

  Sally and Leonard moved quickly up the steps and elbowed their way through a three-arched structure into a rectangular courtyard surrounded by arcades—it had to be almost a third of a furlong in each direction. Around the sides of the courtyard, ten paintings of large, serene-looking people—the heads of Rome’s fast-food joints, perhaps, though Leonard hadn’t seen anything like a restaurant yet, apart from Bobolo’s hostellery. Through the throng, Leonard could discern—which is to say, he could hear and, eventually, see—two fountains of e
xquisite beauty. Fantastic birds and sea creatures spouted water into the first from a bronze dome, held aloft by eight red columns (eight, no doubt, because every odd number after one yields a multiple of 8+1 when squared). The second fountain featured a marble bath adorned with lambs, and mysterious symbols ingeniously fashioned out of broken bits of colored stone. Leonard had seen nothing like them, and wished to push away, or at least reprimand, the insolent unwashed who used them to bathe their hands and feet.

  Across the courtyard, past the second fountain, was the basilica itself, finally. Hundreds of pilgrims streamed in and out of its five doors, each entryway apparently reserved for some subset of visitor, though there were no pictographs to guide them. Leonard and Sally had nearly walked through a door reserved for Romans, before being pushed away by an angry old man, then one reserved for pilgrims accompanied by their guides. When they finally crammed their way through the correct door, the middle door, which seemed to be made entirely of silver, they felt they had escaped something.

  A dark corner where you can think

  Once inside, they retreated to a dark corner where they could think. Not that any corner of that brilliantly lit basilica was dark, or quiet enough for thinking. But in the corner at least they ran less risk of being trampled by pilgrims rushing from one extremity of the building to another.

  Is this what you expected? Sally asked.

  WHAT? Leonard asked.

  IS THIS WHAT YOU EXPECTED? Sally asked.

  Leonard hadn’t expected anything, and certainly not this. Double aisles flanked each side of an enormous central hall, each aisle marked by columns as tall as any building in the Business District back home. And the length of it—at least one-tenth of a verst! The ceiling was timbered and painted, and along each wall were placed innumerable alcoves, each lit by lamps and decorated with golden objects and paintings of yet more enormous men and women, all, it seemed, wearing what appeared to be gowns. Each of the alcoves was mobbed by pilgrims who clustered and clamored, each trying to touch or kiss the golden objects, or crying out and swooning to the ground. Others held torches and scurried from alcove to alcove. There was no order to their frantic peregrinations as they zigzagged across the aisles, circumventing or, more often, bumping into clumps of pilgrims who picnicked on fish and vegetables or sang songs, accompanied by stringed instruments. This chaos disturbed Leonard perhaps even more than the church’s awesome scale and strangeness.

  Sally moved closer so they might converse without shouting—so close, in fact, that their tunics touched. Leonard remembered the day before, more than seven hundred years in the future, when Sally’s orange-skin gown, in contact with his leg, shimmered like electricity.

  He scooched that final inch closer; she didn’t seem to mind.

  How many people do you think are here? Sally asked, pulling out the last of their provisions: two bridies and two dried ham stix.

  A lakh?

  Half a lakh, anyway, Sally said, munching on a bridie. The crowd seemed to make her smaller.

  I love you, Leonard reminded her, dividing his dried ham stix into five pieces so it might last longer.

  I don’t like it here, she said in a small voice.

  It’s not so bad, he said, passing Sally one of the pieces of his dried ham stix. It’s like an adventure. Shall we walk around?

  I don’t want to, Sally said.

  We need to know what’s here, for security’s sake, Leonard said.

  Sally couldn’t argue with that, though she probably knew that Leonard was merely curious—about those alcoves over there, and what those people were doing over there and there.

  I’ll come with you, she said. If I don’t, you’ll lose me and never find me again.

  They walked down the aisle that separated the main hall from the outer aisle, thus observing but not participating in the chaos around the alcoves, where the infirm, crippled, and aged discovered new vitality, pushing and shoving and maneuvering with sharp elbows, as did relatives holding stretchers. Others sang boisterously in huddled candlelit circles or read loudly from little books; a few twitched and jerked as if possessed. On the floor and on the walls by the alcoves, Leonard saw the small objects they’d earlier seen for sale—a horse, a chain, a ship—as well as tiny paintings of little pilgrims, their palms pressed together in front of their faces—forgotten, probably, by pilgrims exhausted by their quest.

  Crammed between the alcoves were stone figures sleeping on stone boxes—tombs, he heard a guide explain to six red-haired Swabians, and the alcoves were shrines, and the glittering pictures made from colored bits were mosaics. The stone figures were enthusiastically embraced by pilgrims; an old man lay outstretched on one, snoring.

  What is that tall lady doing? Sally whispered.

  She seems to be sweeping dust from a tomb into a travel pocket.

  Can’t be.

  Leonard had to agree: it couldn’t.

  Between the shrines and tombs, the walls were covered by richly brocaded throw-cloths, and multicolored orbs tinkled mysteriously against one another; they appeared suspended in air, though in fact they hung from candleholders by tendrils of nearly invisible metal threading.

  Why do you like this? Sally asked. I thought you liked your White Room. This is nothing like a White Room.

  I did, Leonard said. Maybe because I didn’t know places like this existed. Look! he said, and pointed at a brazen figure of a seated man holding a key. Pilgrims were queuing to talk to this figure and to kiss its shiny toe.

  Milione was right, he said. The world is full of wonders. You have only to look and pay attention.

  Milione?

  Another long story.

  I’m tired of your long stories.

  I’ll tell you everything when I can, Leonard said.

  I’m tired of everything, Sally said. I didn’t nap this afternoon like you did, you know.

  We’ll rest soon.

  Do you think we’re safe? Sally asked.

  I’m sure of it.

  Will you look for signs and wonders, just to be sure?

  Leonard put his arm around Sally’s shoulder but was tsk-tsked by a nun in a sweeping gray habit.

  The strangeness and wonder of the world

  And so they circled the great hall, which was actually transected at the far end by a shorter hall, Sally looking over her shoulder all the while for the man with the loud boots or the Frankish woman who thought they were evil, while Leonard marveled at the gilded candle-holding devices that hung ingeniously from the ceiling.

  Leonard counted one hundred columns: eighty-eight in four rows separating the central hall from the four outer aisles, plus an additional twelve around the area where the two halls intersected. Again, he approved the decision, one hundred being ten squared, ten being the tetractys, or sum of the only numbers needed to geometrically define known objects (which is to say 1 + 2 + 3 + 4), but he found perplexing the variety of columns, which were not of uniform size or shape: the two in the front were black, for example, which anyone should know was a mistake.

  When they finally returned to their corner, Sally said, Keep looking for signs and wonders, then fell promptly asleep on his shoulder.

  Leonard closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and then another, then maybe twenty more, and felt the strangeness and wonder of the world breathing through him in one great circular breath. He remembered Mill’s words—you have only to pay attention, to give yourself over to wonder—then opened his eyes and saw, with exquisite precision, clear at the other end of the hall, on a triumphal arch, a mosaic—a mosaic of the building itself, being offered to a scruffy man on a throne, and inside that building, a mosaic of the mosaic within the building, being offered to a man on a throne, and in that mosaic of the building, a mosaic of the building, and so on. All possible mosaics of the building locked into place, and Leonard saw them as if they were one cubit before him, their infinite edges sharp and clear. He looked away and saw the bloody bandage around a pilgrim’s head across the basi
lica; he smelled the man’s fear. He closed his eyes and smelled a hundred smells, each of them distinct: incense coiling from every shrine, the smell of the unwashed, every pilgrim with his or her particular scent, the odor of fish dinners, a dozen species of fish cooked according to the customs of a dozen lands. He heard a cacophony of languages; the shriekings and cryings, in all their echoing discord and variety, were as stirring and majestic as the NP theme song. He felt the innumerable gradations of cool marble against his back, and the pressure of Sally’s head against his shoulder: sweet Sally!

  The world, he murmured, is so beautiful.

  Soon it will be no more, a voice said.

  Leonard opened his eyes, slowly. A freakishly tall man, bearded and not wholly substantial, hovered before him, his slippered feet not quite touching the ground. He had a pronounced gap between his smiling teeth and was juggling Hebrew letters in the air.

  Okay, bye!

  How’s Felix? Leonard asked. He may have been speaking out loud, it was hard to know.

  You understand much, the floating man said. Meditation, extratemporal transportation, fasting …

  We don’t have much food, Leonard admitted. Are you Isaac or Abulafia? he asked.

  The man looked hurt.

  I am Abulafia, the Messiah. Moshiach? he added when Leonard’s face remained blank. The anointed one? Descendant of David? Messenger of peace?

  Oh, Leonard said. He wanted to wake Sally—she should see this!—but he no longer felt the weight of her head upon his shoulder—he no longer felt even his shoulder, or his hand, or the marble wall against his back. He wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

  You’re talking kinda normally, he said. Doesn’t Isaac translate for you?

  Feh! Abulafia said, offended anew. He continued to juggle: an improbable number of letters swirled above his head in complex loops and folderols.

  Is Felix okay?

  His name is Asher now, and he is fine. I am helping him, he is helping me. You can go home now. Bye! and the man and his swirling letters started to fade away.