Ring of Fire III (7 page)

“Right there.” Tina pointed at one of the entries.

Julie looked at both Tina and Jacqueline then carefully took the book.

“Sabbatai Sebi?” Julie asked finally, looking up.

“Keep reading,” Tina prodded.

“Sabbatai Sebi, born 1626, died 1676. That makes him forty years old when he died?” Julie asked. “Born in Turkey. So there’s a kid in Turkey...”

“Fifty,” Jacqueline whispered, correcting Julie.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Julie frowned then continued reading. “Jewish mystic, whose Messianic claims produced an unparalleled sensation throughout the world, was born in Smyrna.”

“That’s in Turkey,” Jacqueline whispered helpfully, looking at a nearby atlas, open on the table. That was Jackie, Julie thought, thorough to a fault. “I think I translated the word Messiah wrong. I looked it up. Oh, Julie...I translated it into ‘son of God.’ How could I?”

“It says he thought he was Jesus Christ,” Tina whispered. “And people believed him. He was an ‘unparalleled sensation.’ ”

“He was trying to translate this entry into Greek. I helped him. I’m sorry,” Jacqueline added, close to tears.

Julie closed her eyes, hiding her face behind the open volume. “He’s eight years old. Was he eating in the library, pulling loaves and fishes out of thin air? Making wine flow from the reference shelves? Was he talking to God too loudly?”

Had another “historical” child come to Grantville?

“Julie!” Tina snapped. “It isn’t funny! Did you read the rest of it?”

“The boy would be, what, eight years old, Tina! It doesn’t matter what the rest says. He is not the man this book says he is. He is an eight-year-old boy.”

“And I told him he was the son of God.” Jacqueline looked prepared to be led to the gallows right this moment.

“Simple mistake. Could happen to anyone. Okay, where’s the kid? I’ll talk to him, then to Rabbi Yaakov, though I am certain Rabbi Yaakov and even Rabbi Fonseca know they got a Messiah running around somewhere. If people just communicate, so many problems just disappear. I should have been in the loop.”

“He said today was his birthday,” Jacqueline added. “I should have been careful. When I translated the word Messiah...he ran. I wasn’t thinking. I remember when Blaise found his name in that encyclopedia. I should have been more careful. Blaise ran away, too.”

“Yeah, and he came back, didn’t he? Why do you think it’s this Sabbatai Sebi?” Julie asked. “Maybe the kid was doing research on False Messiahs for a school project?”

“He told me his name,” Jacqueline said. “Why would he lie about that?”

Julie closed the book she held and set it down on the table. “Jesus Christ has the right to live in Grantville. Tina, let go of that cross before you bend it or cut yourself. Jacqueline, please go call Madam Delfault and tell her I am taking you out to Deborah to help me find the boy. I don’t think we’ll be disturbing their Sabbath Celebration if we go now. Sundown isn’t for a few hours yet. Sundown is like around 7:30 and it’s about 2:30 so...what? Five hours? And, Tina? I would appreciate it if you didn’t start a rumor that the Messiah has come to Grantville until at least I confirm that this boy is, in fact, the boy mentioned in this book. Okay?”

“I wouldn’t dare.” Tina looked like she wouldn’t.

“I am serious,” Julie added. “Jackie? Phone?”

Jacqueline ran off.

“I didn’t know?” Tina whispered.

“What? About false messiahs?” Julie asked, pulling her radio out of her purse, “The Jews believe Jesus was a false messiah. That’s one of the reasons they’ve been massacred all over Europe.”

“I thought it was about having the Sabbath on Saturday or something. I don’t know. I guess I never thought much about it. There weren’t many Jews in Grantville. I just didn’t think about it.”

“Somebody should go through the entire encyclopedia, twice, and make a list of the famous people who might show up so at least I can prepare. I’ve read up on Blaise. Seems there’s someone named Fermat who might walk into the library looking for a certain pain in the ass, but at least Fermat’s an adult now. He’s beyond my pay grade, thank God. Just a second, Tina. Central? This is Officer Drahuta, over.”

“Go, Julie,” came the answer over the radio.

“I’m heading up to Deborah with Jacqueline Pascal so she can help me ID someone. You heard anything about a missing boy, Mimi?”

“Not a word, Julie,” Mimi Rowland, the dispatcher on duty answered. “I know Blaise has been with Steve behind the fire station in his disaster containment shed all afternoon. This isn’t about that boy, is it? Do you need some backup?”

“No, Mimi, not
that
boy. Tell me if you hear anything about a missing child, okay? Over.”

“Gotcha, over.”

“What if it is, you know, Him?” Tina asked.

“Well, I will tell ‘Him’ to come back here and put away his books.” Julie shrugged. “My quiet weekend destroyed by an act of God.”

Somewhere in Grantville, 24th of Av, 5394

(T minus 5 hours 14 minutes)

“Hey! You! Come here!” A boy waved at Shabbethai. He was a good-looking boy with a welcoming smile, the sort of smile that did not suggest violence or cruelty.

Shabbethai had learned early to recognize that smiles were not merely smiles. Smiles required understanding as the word of God did. They were complicated and to misunderstand one could be deadly or worse.

Shabbethai approached with caution.

“You wanna play with us?” The boy who spoke now was smaller. Shabbethai could tell there was little in the way of cruelty in this younger boy.

The game seemed to involve a stick and a ball. That was comforting. Games with only sticks involved hitting and when hitting was involved, Jews got hit if they were available.

“He’s too little,” another, older boy said. This boy looked different from the one who had called him over. Shabbethai thought he would not like it if this boy smiled.

“He makes the teams even. So, you wanna play with us?” The first boy smiled and that settled it.

Shabbethai couldn’t quite understand the words. He understood “you” meant him and “us” meant them. It didn’t look like they meant to kill him. Besides, there were three girls watching. Boys rarely, in his wide experience of eight years, were cruel around girls.

So Shabbethai nodded his head and hoped for the best. Already the thoughts of being the son of God and curiosity and books being translated from English to Greek by some girl who had looked at him with wide eyes were receding.

“I don’t think he understands English,” one of the children said.

Shabbethai understood “English” and the head shaking meant “no.”

“No English good.” Shabbethai smiled hopefully, stringing some English words together.

“That’s okay,” the boy with the welcoming smile said. “My name is Joseph Drahuta. Call me Joe, okay? Joe.” The boy pointed at himself and said “Joe” again.

“Shabbethai Zebi,” Shabbethai pointed at himself.

“
Sprecken she dutch?
” the boy named Joe asked in very bad German. Even his German was not that bad, Shabbethai thought, very much to himself. It would never do for a Jewish boy, lost in a non-Jewish part of town, to laugh at a non-Jew or criticize them, no matter how deserved it was.

“Your German is funny.” One of the younger girls laughed and clapped. Shabbethai understood the “your” and “German” part. The word “funny” was not one his father had taught him.

“He doesn’t look German,” stated the other boy; the one with the smile Shabbethai knew he didn’t want to see. “No German would wear hair like that.”

“What does it matter what he looks like, Gabriel,” one of the girls, the older one, snapped, her hands upon her hips. Shabbethai pretended he didn’t see her hips or even know what “hips” were. You had to be careful how you looked at girls, especially ones who weren’t Jewish.

“No Ger-man,” Shabbethai tried in English.

“Easy game,” Joseph said slowly, smiling at him. “Watch. I show you.”

Shabbethai watched very carefully, completely involved in the game.

The boy with the smile Shabbethai liked held a stick and looked determined to hit something or someone with it. Shabbethai was determined to make sure he was not that something or someone to be hit.

Deborah, 24th of Av, 5394

(T minus 4 hours 15 minutes)

“He’s the one who called me a boy when I asked him to teach me Hebrew. Rabbi Yaakov, him.” Jacqueline pointed, indicating the elderly man who was pretending not to see Julie’s car.

The fact that the good rabbi was doing a very thorough job of pretending that a car had not just appeared a few hours before the Sabbath with Officer Julie Drahuta inside told her a great deal. Maybe she would not need Jackie to identify the boy.

“Julie, where the hell are you?” the radio blared.

“Chief.” Julie sighed. “I’ve got Jacqueline in the car and I’m about to talk to Rabbi Yaakov. You might want to modulate your vocabulary, Chief.”

There was a long, tense pause in which Rabbi Yaakov finally looked over at Julie.

“What, Officer Drahuta, in the name of God, is your present location, if I might enquire?”

“Deborah, Chief. I’ll leave the mike open. You’ll probably want to hear this as it happens.” Julie set the microphone on the dash and looked out of the windshield. Rabbi Yaakov looked back at her with a large smile on his kind face.

The old rabbi shared at least one common trait with her; they both tended to smile while under stress.

“I believe, Jackie, that the word he used was
goy
. It’s Yiddish and it means a ‘non-Jew,’ ” Julie said. “I guess their language hasn’t changed as much as English has. Anyway, how you ask is as important as the question. Maybe if you talk to Chana first and show up at one of their Sunday schools, which are on Saturday, you might have better luck than just marching up to someone and telling them to teach you Hebrew.”

“Chana just glares at me,” Jackie said. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“Your recitations of Barbara Cartland are rather graphic, Jackie. Chana wants to make sure you are serious. Hebrew is an important language to Jews. It was still being spoken four hundred years from now. The language has survived a lot. Ask her respectfully, Jackie. Now stay in the car.”

“Wow! I am told Jesus spoke in Hebrew. How many languages do Jews know, you think?” Jackie muttered. “The boy spoke Greek. I’ve never seen a Jew speak Greek.”

Julie shrugged, opened the door and climbed out of her patrol car. “Good Shabbos, Rabbi Yaakov.”

“Good Shabbos, Officer Drahuta.” The man bowed slightly. Rabbis didn’t bow easily to non-Jewish women in this century or in one almost four hundred years from now. This was looking more and more serious to her.

“Is there something special about this Sabbath, Rebbe?” Julie asked, smiling.

“All are special, Officer Drahuta.” Rabbi Yaakov smiled back.

Shit
, Julie thought. His smile was as good as a red flag. “So special that you have groups of children hunting down by the stream and looking along the road? You haven’t lost something, have you?”

Rabbi Yaakov looked away from Julie for a moment.

“Or someone?” Julie continued. “Are you missing a Messiah, perhaps?”

Fire blazed for a brief moment in the elderly rabbi’s eyes. “Julie, this is time for joke?”

“Purim is over, Rabbi Yaakov, so I am not joking. I don’t smile when I am joking.”

“Officer Drahuta...this is a difficult problem.”

“Why didn’t you come to me? Have we not worked well together? Have we not solved problems together? Have I not introduced you to the other men of God in Grantville? Have there been problems with the consecration of the new place of worship in Grantville? Have the Sephardim not been accepted? Non-Jews gathered money and helped Rabbi Fonseca to move here. Why do I have to learn of your problems from an eight-year-old girl?”

“Yes, and I thank you, Julie, but this is difficult. Yes, you have been very helpful. We have tried to be helpful in turn. For your help we have thanked God, Julie Drahuta.”

“You wouldn’t teach me Hebrew,” Jacqueline interrupted. Like her brother, Jackie saw rules as something less “rule-like.” The girl was, in this case, standing on the edge of the doorframe of the patrol car so, technically, she was still “in” the car.

“Jackie! Zip it!” Julie turned back to Rabbi Yaakov. She noted a loose ring of Jewish residents of Deborah standing just within earshot. “Jacqueline here had a little conversation with a young boy. I can have her describe him to you. She speaks Greek quite well. She and the boy had a short little talk. The boy seems to think he is Sabbatai Sebi and that name appears in a book or two in the public library.”

Rabbi Yaakov closed his eyes for a moment.

“He’s from Smyrna. That’s in Turkey...or, well, Ottoman Turkey...or whatever. Doesn’t that make him Sephardic? Am I missing something here? Are the boy’s parents here or in Grantville? Your place of worship is Ashkenazi, I think, correct? Why would the boy be living here? You are looking for him, right?”

“Shabbethai Sebi’s father and Rabbi Fonseca did not come to agreement on what was to be done about the boy. The father and elder brother are looking for him now,” Rabbi Yaakov stated. “The boy was told not to go to Grantville, so the father and older brother look for the boy here.”

“Ah. So the boy Jackie saw wasn’t this Sabbatai person. Good, I will be going...”

“Julie Drahuta, please. This is a difficult matter,” the man almost whispered. “God does not have a son. We must, first, be clear on this.”

“So, while the adults argue, an eight-year-old boy wanders into Grantville and finds out he’s the son of God all by himself?” Julie asked quietly, aware of the audience.

“God can not have a son! That is...” Rabbi Yaakov calmed himself. “...that is...that is not right, Julie Drahuta. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Rabbi Yaakov.” Julie smiled. “I understand that Jews do not believe God may have children. Christians may not be so quick to deny God’s paternity though. If I had known of our guest from Smyrna, I could have at least smoothed over any problems. Now he’s running around in Grantville and you are spending time here in Deborah looking for him instead of thinking about the Sabbath because you told the son of God that he may not go to Grantville. I see.”