Alex Archer - Paradox

RIGHT AROUND A CORNER FROM the television studio was a fancy coffee shop of a sort she usually avoided, mostly because they exuded a self-satisfied smugness that just scraped right up her spine. She bought a cup of coffee for a price outrageous even in the Big Apple, she thought as she walked away from the counter.

No seats were available in the crowded shop but there was some counter space by the window where she could unlimber her notebook computer and avail herself of their “free” Wi-Fi—although to her mind that was what she paid the steep coffee tariff for.

She ran Leibowitz, Rabbi Levi through Google. She would have done it the night before if she’d thought she’d ever have any more dealings with him. But when she took her leave of him and his companions nothing had been farther from her intent.

As soon as the search results began to pop up she wondered if maybe she should have checked after all. Interesting, he looks legit, she thought.

She had been inclined to dismiss him as some kind of right-wing Israeli nut of the sort who tended to run with a certain breed of U.S. militarists—ones like Baron and Bostitch. Instead, she found, he was a homeboy of hers, Brooklyn-based, a high-level genius making his name in the world as a leading authority on ancient Middle Eastern languages and cultures. If not, as he confessed, precisely a colleague of hers, he was a heavyweight in a closely related discipline. Because their areas of specialization—his the ancient Middle East, hers Renaissance Europe—lay so far apart, she’d never come across his name before.

It did surprise her that she hadn’t seen his name on any of the fringe archaeology newsgroups she followed when time and energy allowed. The possible existence of Noah’s Ark, or really any significant artifacts on the perpetually frozen top of a mountain, was right in the zone for discussion in those groups.

“I HOPE I’M NOT LATE,” Levi said, sliding into a chair across from her.

They were in a Cantonese restaurant tucked away on Mott Street above Canal, in a part of Chinatown where the locals still seemed successfully to be resisting the inroads of the hipsters. The lunch crush had mostly eased. The restaurant smelled of hot oil and a touch of spice. The soft gurgle of a fountain mostly drowned out the conversations around them.

“Not at all, Rabbi,” she told him. “I just like to get to a place early.”

So I can get a look at the party I’m meeting as he approaches, see if he’s acting strangely or has unexpected company, she thought. And so I have the best possible chance of getting a seat away from the windows and doors, so I’m harder to spot from the street. She’d made a practice of all of those things long since inheriting the sword had put her in almost constant danger.

He smiled cheerfully at her. “Try the wonton soup,” he said. “It’s to die for.”

“Sounds good. I haven’t been here before. It smells good, though. I’m always looking for a good new Chinese place.”

A tall, young waiter took their orders. They ordered the soup; Leibowitz specified “no noodles,” but she let it go. He ordered duck braised in soy sauce. Annja went for the crispy bean curd stuffed with chopped shrimp.

When the waiter left he smiled shyly at her. “I always order it without noodles,” he said. “You get lots more wontons that way.”

“Good thinking,” Annja said.

“Are you sure you’re not Jewish, Ms. Creed?” Leibowitz asked. The waiter returned and poured them each a cup of steaming green tea. “After all, if there’s one characteristic the Chosen People have in common, it’s love of Chinese food.”

“Not that I know of. In my case it’s more just a New York thing.”

She sipped tea. The warmth felt welcome after the day’s chill. And green tea always felt nourishing to her somehow. Although in this case that mainly served to remind her how famished she was.

“Although I guess I could be part Jewish,” she added.

The truth was, she didn’t know much about her lineage. Her parents had died when she was very young, leaving her with no surviving family and little by way of family records or possessions. None that had ever come Annja’s way, in any case.

“Please don’t be put off by Charlie and Leif and their naive enthusiasms,” Leibowitz said. “They mean well, but—” He shrugged. “I don’t think they really understand the concept of intellectual rigor.”

“Probably not,” Annja said. “It gets pretty annoying, sometimes, when amateurs get out of their depth with the science, and start talking about things they don’t really understand.”

He nodded vigorously. “That’s so true. It’s the same with scholarship—especially ancient languages. And this whole Biblical-literalness thing—” He had got himself worked up enough to be so flustered he couldn’t continue, but could only wag his head like a dog in denial.

He’s definitely a nerd, she thought. Also a bit of a fanatic. But not the sort of fanatic she’d been afraid he was at first. He was clearly fanatical on his subject: ancient languages and cultures.

Not like that’s a bad thing, she thought.

“So you were saying you don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy.”

“Oh, of course not, Ms. Creed. Stories such as the Garden of Eden and the Flood are allegories. They were written by ancient mystics who never intended for them to be taken as factual accounts. They convey profound truths about humanity and its relationship to the Creator. And haven’t fables always been a powerful tool for teaching?”

“True enough.”

“In any event, to talk about any kind of ‘inerrancy’ in the Bible, what you call the Old Testament or New, or any ancient writings really, is just absurd. Leaving aside the doubtful provenance of whole sections of the holy books, they’re filled with errors. I mean, what we’d call simple typos. Remember they were copied out time and again by hand, not always by people who were particularly literate in the character set they were using. Not always literate at all, so far as we can tell—sometimes religious communities found themselves so sorely pressed for one reason or another texts had to be copied by artisans who basically reproduced the characters as images. Pictures, not units of meaning. It’s one reason the whole Bible Code concept is so unworkable as well.”

Annja nodded. Their soup arrived. It was topped with chopped cilantro and finely sliced pickles. She tasted hers. The broth was hearty and cleverly flavored with herbs.

“This is delicious.”

He smiled. It obviously pleased him to please her. That could get to be a problem, although he didn’t seem the sort to push a schoolboy crush anyplace unpleasant.

“Yet, despite all that you tell me, you still think it’s worthwhile going up that mountain?” she asked him.

“Oh, absolutely. You saw the artifacts they had?”

“Sure. And the documentation was in order. I’m not a carbon-14 dating expert, but I know enough to recognize the numbers were all in the right column. I don’t have any reason to doubt the wood is as old as they say.”

“So how did it get there, Ms. Creed?”

She tipped her head to the side. “Not by any flood, I’m pretty sure.”

“Me, too.”

“How, then?”

He laughed. “I don’t know! But I want to find out.”

Their food arrived. In his enthusiasm the rabbi fidgeted in his seat while the waiter set down their dishes. Then he leaned forward over the table, oblivious to the way the steam rising from his duck fogged his glasses.

“What I am sure of is that whatever’s on top of the mountain—this so-called Ararat Anomaly—is a human construct. It must be of inestimable historical value.”

She drew a deep breath, heavy with the fragrant steam. “You make a compelling case, Rabbi,” she said.