Joshua was still in bed recovering when the next vision vaulted him firmly into the future. It was a near-future, too, not more than a year or two away. As Joshua watched, in his vision, people began to die, strange, horrible deaths. People all over the nation, all over the world. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of them. Not every person. Only certain people, people with the “Jew gene.” Genocide had been genetically engineered, using a retrovirus which only became viable if a certain gene had a certain chromosome with certain characteristics. Joshua didn’t know enough about genetics to understand how it worked. It didn’t matter.
At the end of the vision, a smiling man in a white lab coat. On the lab coat a nametag which said in German, “Hauss, Assistant Geneticist, State Research & Development, Cologne.” After that came the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles during a concert featuring Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, on September the fourth. In the audience on an aisle seat in the high balcony sat Hauss. Behind him sat Joshua. While Te Kanawa sang “Glitter and Be Gay,” Joshua—
Joshua called his father and told him of the vision.
“This,” his father said over the telephone, “is a true vision.”
“So?”
“Fulfill God’s will. Go to Los Angeles.”
There must be another way, Joshua knew. There must be. What kind of God would demand a blood sacrifice? An Old Testament God! The same God he had turned from when he was old enough to think for himself: why would a God evolve, change when people changed? The God of Vengeance, the God of Wrath.
There must be a way to change this Hauss, to talk to him, to change his mind, to change his life. “There must be,” he told his father.
“There is no other way. You do it God’s way, or the vision comes true. I know! Don’t you think I tried to kill the little Austrian after 1933? After Czechoslovakia? After Kristallnacht? I know.”
“I can wait,” Joshua protested, knowing that September was too close to allow him.
“You cannot wait. You have been given the place. This man might be minutes away from his discovery, from publishing something which somebody else could use. Maybe he figures it out while listening to this woman sing.” There was no arguing with his father’s remorseless logic.
“Thou shalt not kill,” Joshua muttered wanly. A feeble argument.
“Remember Saul and what happened when he disobeyed the Lord.” Another Biblical reference. Surely his father could quote more and more of them, burying Joshua’s sickly objections. The Old Testament God did not relish being crossed. The Old Testament God. Magnified and Sanctified be the Great Name. Amen! Magnified and Exalted. Even the Arabs said that Allah was Merciful. A strange sort of mercy.
Knowing the outcome, Joshua made his plans to go to Los Angeles.
Harlow stood at the front door stamping his feet in a three-year-old’s anger. He was whining, “Don’t go.” Socorro stood behind him with her hands on his tiny shoulders. It was, Joshua knew, Socorro using the boy to express her own feelings. She did not want Joshua to go. Joshua did not want to go. She did not understand and had told him as much. How could she understand what Joshua himself could not understand? I’m going to do the bidding of a God that doesn’t exist. I’m going to murder someone I’ve never met. No, he could not explain matters to her. It was better to say nothing. So he had told her nothing of his plans. He withdrew the money from the savings account—the money they had saved for a trip to Lake Tahoe.
Love went only so far. He had always thought that in a conflict between love and duty, he would choose love. Every time. But this was different.
As for Harlow, there was no point in trying to reason with him. He kissed the boy first, Socorro second, and left. Kevin waved from the front yard and went back to spraying the garden hose on the driveway once Joshua was in the car.
Joshua arrived in Los Angeles on the morning of the third. His travel agent had arranged for the flight, the hotel, but not for the concert ticket. He wanted no record of that. He took a cab to Music Center, bought a ticket at the box office, pointing out the seat he wanted on the chart, paying cash, and stopped on the way back at a hardware store and bought twenty feet of 20 mil wire. He was surprised when he figured out how expensive the concert ticket was. Dame Kiri received as much as many rock stars. The wire was cheap.
In the Times he read about the Symposium on Human Genetics at U.C.L.A. This, he figured, was why Hauss was in the country. In the schedule he noted that a Theodor Alban Hauss was to give a talk in the morning. Open to the public.
The lecture hall was small compared to some he had seen in Princeton: Biology 101 had a seating capacity of over 200. This one would hold half that number. And only about half the seats were filled when Theodor Alban Hauss made his way to the lectern. Outside the door, in the little display box was a notice of the lecture. It was called, “Gene 14, Chromosomes 9 and 11—Breaking the Code.” The audience was mostly students with a few professors in the back. Joshua sat in the back.
When Hauss spoke it was in a heavily accented English.
Joshua didn’t understand what he was talking about, numbers and flags and computer outputs, references to works he’d never heard about. It was Greek to him with a German accent. Joshua did not stay to the end. He left with a pair of professors. One of them said, “Sounds like the same eugenics cant from the 30s.”
He’d see Theodor Alban Hauss tomorrow night.
The fourth of September was pure hell. Joshua could not concentrate on anything. The weather was hot and smoggy. He couldn’t see forty yards out his hotel window. He refused to go outside into air that was so foul—just a first stage smog alert, he heard, and then found out that there were two stages beyond that, that were worse. How could people live like that? All he could do was wait in the air-conditioned hotel. He went down to one of the shops under the hotel and bought a pair of leather gloves. Waiting for fifteen hours was too much. He tested the strength of the wire over and over. The gloves saved him from cutting his hands. He hated waiting. Especially as he knew what was at the end of the wait. Hauss, another Nazi, might deserve to die for what he would do, but Joshua didn’t want to be the instrument of his death. Joshua didn’t believe in the death penalty, had marched in protest of the Vietnam War. But here he was, across the country waiting for a concert to begin so he could kill someone he didn’t even know.
Finally, the time dragged around. Joshua took another cab to the Music Center. He walked up the outdoor steps like a man going to his own execution. The bright glare of the lights in the water fountains didn’t brighten his mood. The laughter of people meeting on the stairs and hugging in the foyer—he felt none of it. He bought a program. As he climbed the stairs under the fabulous chandeliers, he looked at the infinity of reflections in the mirrors lining the stairs—what did all of those grim-faced Joshua Ben Josevses mean? In the coat pocket of each one was an instrument of death.
The Bernstein “Glitter And Be Gay” was scheduled third, after a song by Peter Warlock and another by Samuel Barber.
Joshua scanned the crowd, the furs, the jewelry until he spotted Hauss. Hauss was with a woman, a blonde. They came and sat on the aisle in the row in front of Joshua. Just like in the vision. He tried to remember the woman from the vision, but she wasn’t there. They chatted—the woman spoke with an English accent. They had a good deal of trouble trying to understand each other. Language-wise, anyway. The woman was very impressed that Hauss had spoken at U.C.L.A. the day before. Hauss seemed impressed with the woman. Just before the orchestra tuned up, he patted her knee in a fatherly fashion, left his hand there when she didn’t object.
The Warlock song—Joshua heard it in snatches. What kind of a name was Peter Warlock, anyway? The Barber was tranquil. The audience applauded both loudly. And then the “Glitter And Be Gay” began. Joshua reached into his pocket for the wire. He wrapped one end around his left glove. He slipped out two and a half feet of wire and grabbed the remaining loop in his right hand. He tested the strength of the wire again.