Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel Read Free Book Online Page B

Arnie. Let me decide what gets shipped or not shipped."
    "Certainly, sir."
    "The transit stage is out of order," Arnie offered.
    Simon tried not to show any reaction. "Is that so?"
    "Yeah. An arrival came in with sideways em-vee. An order of magnitude larger and he'd have been pulped against the wall."
    "He doesn't know momentum from shinola, Arnie," Callahan said. "Do you, Simon?"
    Callahan's mood seemed to improve the lower Simon's got. "No, sir."
    "Well, anyway, our bad luck's your good fortune. No heavy lifting tonight. It's down to the kennel for you, Simon old chap. They need you to clean it up. I know you people haven't invented the mop yet, but we've spent a lot of money training you. You remember how to use it, don't you?"
    Simon nodded.
    "Then get out of those filthy rags and get to work." Callahan turned his back on him.
    Simon headed to the historicals' lockers, segregated from the lockers kept for staff from the future. He wondered whether the out-of-commission transit stage was a coincidence or part of the plan. He had heard nothing. Should he try to contact Jephthah? But if he left the hotel in the middle of his shift at the very least he would lose his job, and at worst he'd arouse suspicions.
    On the shelf of his locker he found a note. Written in bad Hebrew, it told him to look into the closet outside the laundry. He changed from his tunic, robe and sandals into the dark blue coveralls the invaders insisted on, then headed down to the kennel. The dogs started barking as soon as he showed up. A devout Jew could not even own the representation of a beast, but these future people had an obsession with animals; apparently it was a considerable coup to own a pet from an earlier era.
    From the closet he got out the wheeled bucket, the mop, the cleaner. He filled the bucket from the hose at the sink, and squirted in some cleaner. The pungent ammonia scoured his nose. He rolled the bucket down to the aisle of cages. Some of the dogs stood on their hind legs, their front paws against the front of their cages, noses against the glass. Others just lay curled up, eyeing him miserably. He dunked the mop in the bucket, squeezed it out in the wringer, and began to work his way down the aisle, sweeping side to side, not hurrying, his mind on his plans for the night.
    At first Simon's passivity in the face of the futurians' insults had been an act, a veil over his fury. Ten years had complicated that. He looked at the future dwellers with a combination of awe and resentment, and could not accord their ordinariness--they seemed to be people just like him--with their power. Just when he had gained enough knowledge to have contempt for them, they would do something that revealed anew how alien they were. He could not imagine the world they lived in. A world without god, apparently, although they were obsessed with Yeshu and had stolen him away.
    A decade before, when Simon and Alma had first come to Jerusalem from Galilee, he had been mocked as a rustic who did not pronounce his alephs at the front of words. The city was in a queer state of shock. The Sadducees, living fat off the money they stole from the tithes meant for the support of the Temple, strolled through the streets with bland assurance. The Pharisees were more interested in following the Law than expelling these strangers from the future.
    The troops of the time travelers had taken the Roman garrison in Jerusalem in a single hour, had defeated the Roman legion from Caesarea in an afternoon. They had had to do remarkably little fighting. They brought Herod Antipas back from Galilee to nominally rule Judaea. The Romans and their Syrian troops now collaborated, and the Roman Prefect and the Legate were mere puppets. Though Simon took some satisfaction in seeing the Romans reduced to servility to the invaders, it was cold comfort. Jews were one step farther removed from ruling their own nation.
    So he mopped the kennel in a basement room of what had once been the great