The 13th Tribe

by Robert Liparulo

  Gehazi spasmed and fell to the ground. He writhed in the dirt, choking. As afraid as she was, Arella could not watch without trying to help. She pushed between two people to reach him, but before she could, he flipped onto his stomach and lifted onto his hands and knees, head hanging as if he were an old mule. After a few seconds he rose like a victorious warrior, spine straight, shoulders like planks, chin raised.

  His face swiveled toward her, his gleaming eyes taking her in, caressing her like hands. He smiled, and she felt light-headed. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. How had she not noticed before?

  She blushed and turned away. When she looked back, he was pushing his way to the front of the crowd. He stooped out of sight, stood again, and hurled a stone. Arella’s eyes followed it to Hur’s head.

  Hur staggered back, grabbing at a bloody wound. Before he could gain his balance another stone struck, then another and another. All around Arella, men, women, and even children were picking up stones.

  Yes! Because they would obey the gods, not old men.

  She found a rock and hefted it. It felt good, doing something besides waiting. Her stone hit Hur’s shoulder, and she quickly looked for another. Under a rainfall of rocks, he tumbled, and still the stones pummeled him. Finally the people backed away, and Arella witnessed the broken, bloody mess.

  Gehazi moved in with a few other men and lifted Hur. The rabble flowed like the sea to Aaron, at whose feet they tossed Hur’s corpse. Aaron covered his mouth, leaving his eyes to show the horror he felt. He raised his arms and begged for patience, for everyone to remember God’s kindness to them.

  “What kindness?” a man beside him yelled, and Arella realized it was Gehazi. “Confusion in the desert? Left with no leader, no home, and no way to make one? Their god has done nothing for us. He led us away from Remphan, Sin, Apis, and now we have no gods!”

  The crowd screamed their displeasure. Arella forced her way to the front, wanting only to be closer to Gehazi, to be noticed by him and participate in his rebellion. But it was Aaron who caught her attention, the fear on his face, the shame. For a moment doubt seized her: what were they doing?

  Then Gehazi picked up a stone and held it high, encouraging the crowd to do the same. And Arella felt the doubt shatter; she found a rock and shook it at the old man on a ledge of stone in front of her.

  Aaron patted the air for calm. He lowered his head, and when it came up again, she saw resolve on his face. He gestured toward Hur’s body and said, “Your sin is great”—blaspheming Naram-Sin’s name by using it to mean a transgression against his “One True God,” just the way Moses was wont to do.

  The crowd screamed, calling for Aaron’s stoning.

  He said, “God will never forgive you, but let me take your transgression upon myself, that you may live. Give me your jewelry, all the gold on yourselves, your wives, and your children. I will give you the idol you deserve.”

  Disagreement rippled through the crowd. Their jewelry? Their gold? It was all they possessed of value. But then some started saying, “Give the gold, our gods will reward us tenfold.” The women took off their bracelets and rings and earrings, stripped them from the ears of their children; the men too, and Arella followed, tugging each piece off like bits of her flesh.

  A pile as high as Aaron rose before him, and the men went off to build a fire, a kiln. Aaron worked that whole day and night, and when Arella woke, she found that he had fashioned Apis, a god himself and servant to the greater god Naram-Sin. The calf had upturned horns, forming a crescent moon—the symbol of Naram-Sin.

  People began to bow and sing before the golden god, but Aaron stopped them, saying he had to build an altar on which the godly calf would rest; anything less would be irreverent. The entire time he stacked the stones and shaped them, she saw him looking up at the mountain and sensed that he hoped Moses would return before he finished.

  Another night passed, and in the morning the altar was complete with the Apis bull perched on it, awaiting worship. Gehazi stood in front of it and yelled to the crowd that the god demanded sacrifice, and Arella watched men slaughter cows at the base of the altar. Then around her a whispering started, and like the breeze that precedes a gale, it grew into shouting: Naram-Sin wanted human blood. Her skin chilled and her stomach and heart tightened like fists, but everyone around her was so sure: it had to be.

  Somewhere a baby cried, a mother screamed, and men raised their voices. They’d found a child and wrenched it from its mother’s arms, passing it from man to man until it reached the altar. Other men pushed through the crowd to stop what was happening, and Arella gasped when they too fell by the blade.

  The deed was done, and she wanted to run, to fall on her knees before the mountain and cry out for repentance. Then the people started singing and dancing, kissing each other . . . and more. Someone grabbed one of her hands and someone else the other, and they danced, skipping in great spiraling circles around the golden god. A group of musicians picked up their instruments and played loud and fast, pounding drums, blowing horns.

  People broke away to touch their fingers to the blood, then to their lips, and finally to the hooves of the calf. Arella found herself in front of the slaughter. A man beside her tasted the blood, touched the calf. A woman on the other side did the same, then a child . . . everyone. The throng shoved her and she fell, her palm landing in gore. Then she touched her bloody hand to her lips and reached high to caress the hoof.

  God help me, she thought. Gods help me—what am I doing?

  She saw Gehazi leaning against the altar. He smiled at her and nodded his approval. She spun off, thinking only of honoring her god, this god before her, who had brought joy back into the camp. She sang and danced and saw what the others were doing, the men and women. She found a man and joined them.

  The clouds above swirled darkly, filling the valley with shadows. A voice rumbled like thunder over the masses of people playing and dancing. Silence came over them, a sudden calm that after so much merriment was as disturbing as the chaos. Heads turned toward the mountain, and there in the foothills on an outcropping was Moses. His beard and garments fluttered in a breeze, and his face was as dark as the storm clouds overhead. He raised two stone tablets, big slabs that appeared too heavy for the old man—any man—to lift. From them glowed a radiance that grew so bright it blotted out the hands holding them . . . the arms . . . the man himself. It was as though the sun had come down to expose what they had done. Arella shielded her eyes, but the light shone right through them, piercing her head.

  The sun hung there on the mountain, then it flew toward them, brighter, hotter . . .

  She woke up sprawled over the legs of a child. A woman in turn was draped over Arella’s hips. This woman woke as well, then the boy. All of them waking at once, groaning, cupping their heads. Everything was blurry, but Arella could make out the people around her, stirring, rising. Some rubbed their eyes, and she realized they too were not seeing clearly. But other than their waking moans, no one spoke. They were ashamed, and whatever happened to them next, they would take their punishment in silence. Arella realized the calf and altar were gone.

  She rolled off the boy and stood. Her clothes were ripped and half gone. She was filthy from hair to heels, mud and sweat and blood covering her. Her body reflected her soul, and she sensed that neither would ever be clean again. The boy, as dirty as she, flashed scared eyes all around, and then they settled on her. He started to cry, a quiet sobbing too mournful for a child so young. She helped him to his feet, and he clung to her. There were other children—all ages, in fact: boys and girls, women and men, dark-skinned and light, as though chosen as representatives of the whole encampment, the twelve tribes.

  Taking the boy with her, Arella stumbled away, joining others who were trying to put distance between themselves and the site of their horrific deeds. The boy looked, but could not find his father.

  A commotion drew their attention. A man was screaming, the worst obscenities, threats ag
ainst everyone. Arella realized it was Gehazi, his handsome features twisted by hate. Soldiers held his arms and legs as he thrashed and shook his head back and forth. He paused a mere heartbeat of stillness, and he was gazing at her, the briefest smile bending his lips. His head snapped away, and his limbs tugged violently against his human restraints. He flailed and bucked as the men carried him into a crowd that closed after them, leaving only his screams as evidence of his insanity.

  Arella and the boy continued until they came to a tight, undulating mass of people. They were being blocked from leaving the area. Whispers reached her: while they’d slept, Moses had called for repentance. Those who failed to bow had been put to death, 3000 of them. The people parted, and she saw it: bodies piled high, more being dragged toward the mound from all directions.

  She took the boy away from the sight, from the nauseating stench of the blood, and they huddled beside a boulder. Before long, Moses came and walked among them. Levite priests accompanied him, whispering and wailing prayers, their arms raised and their faces turned toward the sky. Moses passed around a chalice, which he continually dipped into a vat carried behind him. She and the boy drank, too shamed to protest, too glad to be alive. Flecks of gold swirled in the water, pieces of the ground-up calf. The jewelry they had worn outside their bodies was now in them, the cow they had worshipped consumed.

  The boy tugged on Arella’s arm and whispered, “Are we to die too?” And she wondered if the drink was a prelude to death. She didn’t care; it was what she deserved, what they all deserved.

  After they all drank, the wall of guards dissolved, and they were free to return to their tribes. No one spoke of the calf or their transgressions, though Moses said that they would never see the Promised Land. God had instructed him to make them wander in the desert for forty years, until most of those who had been led out of Pharaoh’s rule had died. Only their children would receive God’s blessing of a land they could call home.

  X I I I

  In her dream Nevaeh wept, and could not stop weeping.

  She woke with a start and stared down the long, dark corridor in front of her, its far end completely lost in the shadows. She wiped a tear off her cheek and thought about how the tunnel resembled her life: seemingly endless, only a few bright spots to mark the times she’d found something close to contentment, filled with the bones and ghosts of people who had, for a brief time, shared it with her and then died.

  So much darkness.

  It stood in utter contrast to the last time she’d seen God, that sun-bright radiance flying at her from the tablets. It had knocked her out and changed her—changed all of them, those who would eventually become the Tribe. They had stopped aging, stopped dying . . . destined to forever walk the earth without ever being with him in heaven.

  [ 9 ]

  Jagger had watched Addison hike to the upper hole and descend into it. He thought of the Greek myths in which a hero traveled into Hades to rescue a maiden or recover a stolen treasure. That was Ollie and Addison: descending into a pit, hoping to return with an armful of loot, maybe even a maiden, or at least the bones of one.

  He stood outside the tent for a while, taking in the workers, scanning the ragged outcroppings on the mountain rising beyond the dig. Gradually his heartbeat slowed to normal, and he frowned at the thought that such a minor altercation had got him so worked up. If he stayed at the monastery for much longer he’d have to find a hobby that fed his need for adventure. Rock climbing, maybe. Or camel racing. The world here turned a little too slowly for his taste.

  He looked down at the contraption that had taken the place of his left hand. He thought of it as RoboHand, but his son, Tyler, had described it perfectly: “Terminator G.I. Joe hand.” Two metal hooks—one acting as fingers, the other a thumb—formed a circle similar to the action figure’s hands, preshaped to hold weapons. The tips flared into a T, providing more gripping surface. Jagger flexed his arm, forcing the hooks apart, then relaxed, closing them again. He was getting adept at manipulating the device—called a prehensor—but mishaps still happened more often than he liked: clamping a plastic bottle tight enough to make the soda geyser out, bruising Tyler’s head going for a clumsy embrace. Not that long ago he’d brushed away a fly and given himself a bloody nose. Twenty-nine years of flesh, one year of metal: it was a wonder he hadn’t put an eye out.

  Or crushed the thief’s throat beyond repair. The prehensor had the strength to do it; only Jagger’s conscious restraint kept the grip from its full potential. And in situations like the one with Addison’s assailant—in fighting mode with high emotions—he trusted neither his mental capacity for restraint nor his skills at manipulating the hooks with precision.

  But it wasn’t that he was a physical man with a physically demanding job, suddenly disabled, that drove the despair Jagger had felt after the accident, not really. That was just a kick in the face when he was down. The real wound was everything else that had been lost in the crash: the Bransfords, four people he had loved as deeply as he did his own wife and child. Four powerhouses of compassion and potential, snuffed out like paper matches.

  Move on, he’d told himself. Don’t dwell on it. Not now.

  He was getting better at tempering the perfect storm of self-pity, grief, and anger that swirled inside him . . . but as with RoboHand, mishaps still happened.

  He remained self-conscious enough about his missing limb to wear his sleeves long, hiding the artificial forearm that slipped over a stub just below his elbow. Cables allowed his biceps, back, and chest muscles to open and close the hooks.

  “Jag!” someone called. “Jagger!”

  He looked between the tents and saw Hanif at the corner of the monastery walls. Jagger waved.

  “Closing time!” Hanif yelled and tapped his wrist. As if on cue, a group of tourists appeared, streaming past him.

  Jagger raised his thumb.

  The monastery closed at noon, releasing scores of visitors to flow not to the parking lot but past the excavation on their way up Mt. Sinai to see the peak. The best time for the trek was at night, when the temperature was less oppressive and the reward was watching the sunrise on the God-trodden Mountain, as the locals called Sinai. The midday sojourners, however, hadn’t heard that sightseeing tip, or had arrived too late to heed it.

  Jagger headed for his closing-time position at the end of the split-rail fence, where his presence would discourage lookie-loos from lookie-looing too close to the excavation or becoming more than lookie-loos. It was at times like this—babysitting fat tourists like a museum guard—that he most missed being an Army Ranger or a bodyguard for foreign dignitaries and celebrities. At least then there’d been some action, even if only a false bomb threat or an overzealous autograph hound.

  He gazed at the two big excavation trenches. Maybe digging around in a dirt hole ten hours a day wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  [ 10 ]

  With posters of the latest muscles-and-mayhem movies and sexy women leaning on sexier cars, a lead guitar propped against an amp by an unmade bed, and dirty clothes scattered everywhere, Toby’s room looked like a typical teenage boy’s—except for the 9mm handgun on the nightstand, the bare bulbs under wire cages tacked to a stone ceiling, and the twin sixty-inch plasma TVs mounted to one wall.

  The plasmas were displaying different images of the same video game: views of a city from what could have been birds swooping between buildings, diving to take in streets packed with cars or sailing up over rooftops. Could have been birds, but weren’t. With a flick of Toby’s finger on a control pad, a missile shot out as if from the bottom of the screen, sailed through the bubbling tip of a fountain of water spraying up from a pond, and streaked under a crowded portico right into a hotel lobby. An explosion sent glass and bricks, cars and people flying away on currents of fire and smoke.

  “Yeah!” Toby said from a black leather chair.

  “Pull up,” Sebastian said, standing behind Toby with his hands on the back of the chair. “Pull up!” />
  Toby did, and the screen showed the hotel façade drawing closer, sweeping down as the camera angled up. Sky came into view, but the camera zoomed toward windows on the top floor.

  “Pull up!”

  “I am!”

  The camera crashed through windows, and the monitor went black.

  “I told you,” Sebastian said, giving the back of the chair a fierce shake.

  “I did pull up!” The boy twisted around to glare at Sebastian.

  “You waited too long. You wanted to see the missile hit. You can’t do that. I told you, release the missile and get away. Shoot and scoot.”

  “Like this,” Phin said from a matching chair beside Toby’s. On the plasma in front of him, a missile shot out from the bottom of the screen, heading for a building with a big sign mounted above the doors: POLICE. The camera banked away, climbing. He laughed, a pronounced Ha-ha-ha! The camera continued to turn and climb, and a building slid onto the screen from the right, panning across it like a swipe-away transition between movie scenes. It filled the screen, and Phin’s monitor went black.