David Epperson - The Third Day

“I’m not too proud to get down on my knees and beg if I must.”

Lavon sat in silence for another minute or so. Finally, he sighed. “There’s no need to beg,” he said.

“Just think of the knowledge you’ll gain from just a short visit.”

“I said I’d do it,” he snapped.

***

The rest of us heard the words, but like so much of what we had seen over the last few days, their meaning failed to register immediately.

“You’re serious about this?” Markowitz finally asked. “Someone else can really go back?”

“Yes,” said Bryson. “It will involve an element of danger, but the odds of success are high enough to justify the risk.”

Markowitz pondered this for another moment; then his face lit up.

“ Fantastic! ” he said. “I want to go, too.”

Lavon shook his head, as did Bryson. This was a bad idea.

“Ray, I’ve never heard you express any interest in the Biblical era,” I said.

“No.” he admitted. “But what an adventure this could be.”

“This will be incredibly hazardous,” said Lavon. “I don’t think you have the slightest comprehension of the dangers we’re likely to encounter.”

“I can handle it,” said Markowitz. “Climbing K2, that was hazardous. Diving the Andrea Doria — people die doing that every year, too. We have to have confidence in ourselves. If we listened to the naysayers, we’d be afraid to walk out the front door.”

“Ray, that may be true,” I said, “but this enterprise has already lost one man. You’ve seen the photos of the skeleton. You saw Dr. Bryson’s finger sitting right here on this table, in a jar.”

“Yes, I did. And we’re going to get him. Actually, we have a golden opportunity not only to save Dr. Bryson, but also to complete his original plan. While you were gone, Juliet told us why he was there; the question he sought to answer.”

I was afraid of that.

“No, we are not going anywhere,” said Lavon. I am going to retrieve Dr. Bryson and come straight back. The risk is too high to attempt anything else.”

“You exaggerate,” said Markowitz. “I’m sure he just ran into a freak infection or something. Don’t those stories about the Black Death all say that the victims died within the hour?”

Lavon sighed.

“Ray, tell me: would you go to Iraq today, as a tourist? It would be a fascinating trip. Some of the greatest archaeological treasures on the planet are there: Babylon, Nineveh, the seats of ancient empires, most never completely explored.”

“No,” said Markowitz. “I’d probably get blown up.”

“And why is that?”

“Religious fanatics — nut-jobs who think killing an American is God’s will.”

“I’m going to give it to you straight,” replied Lavon. “By the time of Christ, ancient Judea had suffered through nearly two centuries of very similar religious and political strife. Two hundred years of constant low level guerilla violence — not to mention the regular depredations of ordinary thieves and highway robbers.”

Markowitz paused for a moment, but then his expression grew firm. “It’s not like we’re planning to stay long. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.

He glanced over to Juliet. “My family’s money made your initial work possible. I don’t mean to be obstinate, but either I go or I’ll shut this place down.”

Bryson didn’t speak, but she finally nodded her assent. After all, he had the ability to do just that.

“Then I’m going, too,” said Sharon. “I’ve studied the Bible my entire life. There’s simply no way I can pass up the opportunity to see what it describes for real.”

“No!” said Lavon.

Though his forcefulness surprised me, I agreed with Lavon’s thinking. However intelligent and capable she might be, Sharon didn’t strike me as a person who had ever experienced anything going completely and horribly wrong.

I could imagine many things happening to such a woman in the first century — none of them good.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she said. “My family has provided ninety percent of your funding for the last three years.”

“I’m not saying you can’t go,” said Lavon. “I’m saying you shouldn’t . It’s simply too dangerous.”

Like my client’s son, though, logic could not dissuade her.

They bickered for several minutes before the archaeologist shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh.

He glanced over to me, looking for support, but this time he found none. I’ll admit it; while the others argued, I caught the bug, too. Markowitz was right: Whatever happened, we’d figure out a way to deal with it.

Finally, Lavon recognized the inevitable and admitted defeat.

“All right,” he said. “I need to round up some provisions. We’ll meet back here in a few days after you’ve all had a chance to get your affairs in order.”

Like Markowitz and Bergfeld, I neglected to consider the usual meaning of that phrase.

Three days later, Lavon wheeled in four large boxes and stacked them in an unoccupied corner of the conference room. One of his old colleagues had recently left an Israeli dig to open a Biblical study center in rural Georgia, where he had meticulously recreated a first century Palestinian village. Lavon had gone there to borrow clothing and replica artifacts.

He could see that none of us had changed our minds, though he did have an unanswered question.

“Juliet, you never explained how can we signal this, um, device to return?”

She didn’t immediately respond, which we all found disconcerting.

“We can signal it to come back, can’t we?” he asked.

“Yes,” she finally said, “you should be able to initiate a transfer on your end.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out four thin plastic wafers that resembled the flash memory cards in digital cameras.

“The system is programmed to return you to the present time automatically after a pre-set interval, but if you run into a more urgent situation, squeeze this for ten seconds, and you’ll bring back all mammalian life forms within a two meter radius.”

Unless we got tangled up with rabid dogs, that sounded easy enough; too easy, in fact.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“The catch is that the transport process requires a tremendous electrical surge. If we schedule your arrival in advance, we can have the capacitors charged ahead of time. But we can keep them in that state for only one hour. After that, we must shift to a stand-by function.”

“How long does it take to go from standby to fully operational?” asked Markowitz.

“We’ve narrowed the time required to thirty minutes.”

“I see. So if we end up running for our lives?”

“You’ll have to keep running for half an hour. I’m sorry. It’s the best we’ve been able to do.”

***

The others grew quiet as they considered this, but in the end, they didn’t lose any of their determination to proceed. Still, one more issue nagged at me.

“Juliet, given that all new technology goes through a gestation period, so to speak, where the kinks are worked out, I assume you tested this before Henry ventured back?”

She nodded.

“Once we developed the capability to transmit three dimensional objects, we conducted a number of experiments using dogs. The automatic recall apparatus proved successful, and more importantly, we could detect no ill effects on the animals’ biological systems, either at the time or several weeks later.”

Bryson opened a cabinet under the credenza to her right, pulled out a remote control, and pressed a button to lower a screen from the conference room’s ceiling.