“That utopia was to come after the end of things, after the last days, when a brand new world under a golden sun would be given to the peoples of Israel. It is a prophecy as old as time. It has nothing to do with our war in Asia, or the color of any soldier’s skin.” Chaney pointed to the door. “How cold is it out there now? This is swimming weather. And where are the plagues? Have you ever seen a dragon?”

Saltus: “And where is Armageddon?”

“The proper name is Har-Magedon. It’s a mountain in Israel, Commander, the mountain of Megiddo rising above the Plain of Esdraelon. And the prophecies are a little too late — all the prophecies. Any number of decisive battles have already happened there and vanished into history. It was a favorite locale for the old fictioneers; it had such a bloody history it was firmly fixed in the native mind, it was a good site for still another story.”

“Mister, you sure know how to throw cold water.”

“Commander, I believe in being realistic; I believe in facts, not fantasy. I believe in statistics and firmly rooted continuities, not prophecies and dreams.” Chaney stabbed the copied document with his finger. “The man who wrote this was a dreamer, and something of a plagiarist. Several passages were lifted from Daniel, and there is a hint of Micah.”

“Do you think it’s a fake?”

“No, definitely not. I had to make sure of that at the beginning. The scroll was found in the usual way: by university students searching old jars, in cave Q12. It was wrapped in the usual rotting linen of a type woven at Qumran, and that linen was submitted to the carbon-14 dating process — the tests were made at the Libby Institute in Chicago. Repeated tests established an age of nineteen hundred years, plus or minus seventy, for the linen.

“But we don’t accept that as proof that the scroll inside the linen is of the same age. There are other methods of dating a manuscript.” He bent over the copies and placed a finger on the opening line. “This text is written with square letters and contains no vowels — none at all. It reads from right to left down the page, right to left across the scroll. Square lettering came into use about the third century before Christ; before that a more flowing script was used but afterwards a square was common.

Chaney caught a movement from the corner of his eye. Major Moresby unbent, to peer closely at the copies.

“The Hebrew language used at that time had only twenty-two letters, and they were all consonants. Vowels hadn’t been invented, and wouldn’t be for another six or seven hundred years. This text contains the twenty-two standard consonants but nowhere on the scroll — above or below the lines, or within the words, or the margins — is there a sign to indicate where a consonant becomes a vowel. That was significant.” He glanced at Moresby and discovered he had the man’s close attention. “But there were other clues to work with. This scribe was familiar with the writings of Daniel, and of Micah. The text is not pure Hebrew; several Aramaic touches have slipped in — a word or a phrase having more impact than a Hebrew equivalent. The old Greek word eschatos doesn’t appear, but it should have. I was surprised to find it missing, for the scribe had a knowledge of Greek drama, or melodrama.” Chaney made a gesture. “The earliest date was about 100 B.C. It was not written before that.

“Setting a closing date isn’t nearly as difficult, because the scribe betrays the limit of his knowledge. He was not alive and writing in 70 A.D. The text contains three direct references to a Temple, a great white Temple which appears to be the center of all important activity. There were many temples in Palestine and in the surrounding lands, but only one Temple: the holiest of holy places, the Temple of Jerusalem. In this story the Temple is still standing, still in existence, and is the center of all activity. But in history that Temple stopped. The Roman armies invaded Judaea and destroyed it utterly in 70 A.D. In the course of putting down a Hebrew revolt they tore it apart to the last stone, and the Temple was no more.”

Major Moresby said: “That was foretold.”

Chaney ignored him. “So the date of composition was pinned down: not earlier than 100 B.C. and not later than 70 A.D. A satisfactory agreement with the radiocarbon tests. I’m satisfied the scroll is authentic, but the tale it tells is not — the story is pure fiction, built on symbols and myths known to the ancient Hebrews.”

Arthur Saltus eyed the copies and then the woman. “Do we have to read all this, Katrina?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has requested it.”

Chaney said: “A waste of time, Commander.”

Saltus grinned at him. “The Great White Chief has spoken, mister. I don’t want to go back to that bucket in the South China Sea.”

“Indic won’t have me back — they sold me to the Great White Chief.” Brian Chaney pushed the photo-copied papers aside and reached for the hefty Indic report. He opened a page at random and found himself reading figures pertaining to a West German election three years earlier.

He remembered that election; people in his section had followed it with interest and had tried to place bets on it, without takers. Just before the report was closed and submitted to the Bureau, the National Democratic party had captured four point three percent of the popular vote — only seven-tenths of one percent short of the minimum needed to gain entrance to the Bundestag. The party had been accused of Neo-Nazism, and Chaney wondered if it had managed to overcome the Hitler image and win the necessary five percent in the last few years. In peacetime, Israeli papers would have carried the news; he would have noticed it. Perhaps they had published subsequent election news, despite their paper shortages and their domestic troubles — perhaps he had missed it. His nose had been buried in the translations for a long time. As the noses of Saltus and Moresby were buried in Eschatos now…

Chaney had often wondered about the anonymous scribe who had concocted that story. The long work on the scroll had imparted the feeling of almost knowing the man, of almost reading his mind. He sometimes thought the man had been a novice practicing his art — a probationer not yet tamped into the mold, or perhaps he was a def rocked priest who had lost his office because of his nonconformity. The man had never hesitated to employ Aramaic vernacular, where Aramaic was more colorful than his native Hebrew, and he told his story with zest, with poetic freedom.

Eschatos:

The sky was blue, new, and clear of dragons (winged serpents) when the man who was two men (twins?) lived on (under?) the earth. The man who was two men was at peace with the sun and his children multiplied (the tribes or families about him grew in size with the passage of time). He was known and welcomed in the white Temple, and may have dwelt there. His work took him frequently to distant Har-Magedon, where he was equally well known to those who lived on the mountain and those who tilled the plain below; he mingled with these peoples and instructed (counseled, guided) them in their daily lives; he was a wise man. He had a guest room (or house) with (alongside?) a mountain family and needed only to touch the tent rope (make sign) for food and water; it was supplied him without payment. (Form of repayment for his services?)

The man who was two men labored on the mountain.

His task (performed at unknown intervals) was an onerous one, and consisted of standing on the mountain top and sweeping the skies clean of muck (impurities, debris left over from the Creation) which tended to gather there. The mountain people were required to assist him in his work, in that they furnished him with ten cor of water (nine hundred gallons) drawn from an inexhaustible well (or cistern) near the base of the mountain; and each time the job was finished in the dark and light of a single day (from one sunset to the next). This task had been put to him by the nomadic Egyptian prophet (Moses?) by more than five times the Year of Jubilee (more than two hundred and fifty years earlier); and it was a sign and a promise the prophet gave to his children, the tribes: for so long as the skies were clean the sun would remain quiet, dragons would not hover, and the bitter cold that immobilized old men would be kept in its proper place at a distance.