The Templar’s Bowl
by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 1: A Simple Man of Simpler Times
Eighteen ships, boy. Eighteen ships laden with treasures even a miser’s mind couldn’t conceive, relics to blind a Pope’s eyes gathered from the violent world we know. Great statues of gold, armor of silver built for the wearings of kings, silks softer than... all smuggled past the French even as Molay burned at the stake. And sailing West, as Templar maps from the Zeno brothers had attested, we found a land, clean and well-wooded, and there we hid what was not ours to keep and built traps with false faces to keep it from prying, greedy eyes. Deep, deeper and yet deeper again. We dug the traps half way to Hell where we left treasure waiting for a time when those who earned the owning of so great a prize could use it again.
The pretty young woman in the light blue shirt looked up from the notes she was furiously fingering. It appeared as if by rubbing her finger across the ink, the knowledge held within would be imprinted in her memory. Her soft brown eyes looked up at the intruder as if she was inquiring of him, not the reverse. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence as the combatants both wrestled for an opening.
“Ex... excuse me. I’m looking for Dr. Thompson. I... I have a three-thirty...” The young man stammered awkwardly. She blinked and smiled, pointing not into the faculty offices but to the mall at the north end of the campus.
“By now, Doc T is out by the Knights’ rally oak. Weather permitting, he holds court there. Just look for the crowd, you can’t miss him; he’ll be the one with the bubble gum cards.” She lowered her head back into her note pad with an air of finality.
A spread on medieval times for the Sunday edition wasn’t his idea of a basis for the Pulitzer of 1963, but he had to eat! The things some writers will do for money! He nodded to the now faceless head, descended the small staircase in the old quarter of the history building, and worked his way through the early September heat of Kansas into the union square of the latest federally funded construction project. It was wide and flat and large, and there were small pockets of humanity shot-gunned throughout.
Dr. Thompson was a highly respected scholar, considered by many to be the greatest authority of the Dark and Middle Ages in this country, perhaps the world. Owning a reputation as an extroverted recluse, his students, seekers of knowledge, and certain clergy always knew where to find him, but to the outside world he was all but invisible. The paper had been surprised when Thompson’s secretary had returned their call requesting an interview with an affirmative response. As far as the paper was concerned, it was a black tie and tails affair.
But this was August in Kansas and the collar of a brand new shirt. As he paused in what little shade the small, under-grown trees lining the walk way had to offer, the thought finally occurred to him that he still had no idea what Thompson looked like. The only clue to his quarry’s identity was a veiled reference to baseball cards. Maybe the guy was a collector; who the hell knew what these eggheads were into? He twisted his head about, as freely as his collar would allow. A loud cheer behind him captured his attention.
At the far corner of the square was a man in a wheelchair surrounded by what were obviously students. The chair was fitted with what appeared to be a small electric motor to drive the wheels, allowing the rider to be freed of a human source of power. In the spokes of his wheels were what appeared to be baseball cards held fast by a number of small plastic clothespins meant to increase the noise the chair generated, as a child might do with a bicycle. He was slight in build, or perhaps frail might be a better way to explain him. While his beard was neatly sculptured, his hair was long and wild and black, with shocks of gray peppered throughout. It was immediately obvious that he had only limited usage of his arms, and he was strapped across the chest to keep him upright. A stiff harness girdled his neck to assist keeping his head from drooping downward. This odd bit of humanity seemed unlikely capable of ruling a court; he barely ruled his own form. And while his chair was somewhat mobile, a man in a black polo shirt and white slacks walked several paces behind the chair to assist.
The reporter approached the crowd cautiously. Brown-eyes said he’d be holding court and this fellow, wheelchair and all, certainly was. He was near enough now to make out details. There was almost a smile on the face of this unlikely king, yet it seemed that while his spirit required it, the muscles working his mouth wouldn’t support it without effort and complaint. His words were sort of gasped out and the forced words were greedily gathered by his followers and transcribed to pads and notebooks as if their lives hung in the balance of their effort. While his body was virtually limp, his eyes jumped from student to student to be certain they netted the words that floated from his weakened voice into the air.
“Now, follow me. At the height of that period, around the time of Richard and Henry of England that we loosely call the time of High Chivalry, our young knight here, Sir Irving, and our lovely Lady Kayla would seek to sleep with each other... and that’s it! Sleep! Buck up, Irv, word is that’s still better than you’ve been doing lately. And by the way, it didn’t work for them either!”
The crowd groaned its approval and the fellow gasped out what seemed like laughter. “That’s it, class over. Go home and do what young people do, and when you sober up remember, test on Monday.” As the crowd peeled away, the man in the chair, obviously Thompson, looked up at the uncharacteristically dressed observer. Pressing a small lever on the arm of his chair with his elbow, the mechanical throne rotated around to face the visitor. “Livingston, I presume.”
“Actually, it’s Liebenstein, but close enough.”
“Congenital and degenerative and very little time left, at least that’s what they told old Pop Thompson and his wife when I was ten. It’s funny, of all the days of my life, that’s the one I recall the most clearly. Well here I am thirty years later, fully motorized and wired. AND, I’ve got a deal going with Quaker State. If I finish in the top five at this year’s Indy, they’ll sponsor me! I still haven’t figured out where I’d put the decal, though.”
The joke had caught the young man off guard and a solid sip of hot coffee got blow through the reporter’s nasal passages. “You’ve got to watch me every minute. Under a full head of steam, I’m an S.O.B.” Thompson could see he had left his interviewer in a very uncomfortable position. “Now Bill, don’t let the chair intimidate you. I was taught that humor is one of the weapons mankind uses to survive!”
“Well, Doctor Thompson, you do seem to have an unusually good outlook on life.”
“It’s Ric...or Doc, some of my students call me Doc, and considering I was slated for infinity by the time I was ten, yes I do!”
“More coffee, Doc?” A waitress had come up from behind them. She held the pot where Thompson could see it without straining his neck.
“See! Jeanie was in my 101, now she shares majors in Medieval Literature and Archeology. Yes, please Jean.” The reporter sat up as straight as he could. “Doc, I can understand Medieval Lit... but Archeology? Where are you finding, who are you...”
Thomson just smiled. “All in God’s good time, Bill.”
As the man kept talking, the waitress removed the top to the plastic cup attached to Thomson’s wrist and refilled the cup. “I get a lot of help around here, so I don’t like to leave, ’cause at heart, I’m lazy as sin. They even made the library ramped, so us motorized scholars can get in easily.”
“Besides,” the waitress interjected, “if we let him outa here, we’d be one float short for the Homecoming Parade!”
“Well, there goes your ‘A’ next semester!”
“Just don’t stiff me on the tip.” The waitress smiled at the two men and walked away. Thompson’s eyes rolled away from the girl to the interviewer and noted that his guest now seemed more at ease. There was an easy pause as Liebenstein’s journalistic sensibilities began to kick in and he studied this strange being in his natural surroundings. There was an odd completeness to this physically limited piece of humanity that he was not used to in his everyday life.
“Why does a man in a wheelchair become the world’s foremost archeological authority on the Middle Ages?”
The head seemed to swing on its neck and his cheeks rounded as if to indicate a sly smile. “To be honest with you, I’m no authority on anything. They were simpler times to live in, and I’m a man of simple needs. Oh, the politics were crazy, but the average life was simpler. They lived with something we don’t. Conviction.” Thompson paused, raising the mug attached to his wrist towards his face. His lips grappled with the fixed straw and, when he was certain it was firmly in his mouth, inhaled. His eyes had never left his inquisitor.
“And what is conviction? Didn’t we see conviction with two World Wars in half a century?”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. They picked a direction, a path, and they followed it until their lives ran their full courses.” He paused, looking off into some private infinity. “Their belief in themselves and their God was so strong, so powerful, some even followed their path after life had run its course.” The dark eyes of the orator fell dull as if a great weight had settled upon the speaker’s head, but he caught himself and looked back at the present from a dark corner of the past he had been communing with. “I’m sorry, Bill. I was thinking about some Templars I once knew.”
Liebenstein had been caught off guard a number of times by the left-field humor of his subject, but their was a strange earnestness in the tone of the struggling voice’s utterances that convinced him this was a path to be followed.
“You’re referring to the Masons?”
The face in the chair perked up, amazed that Liebenstein would even know of the supposed connection of the Masonic Lodge to these medieval warriors, but his response to this was not the one the reported expected.
“I have a three o’clock which runs until about four. Would you like to join me for dinner in the twelfth century?”
“My God! A castle in Kansas!” Liebenstein gasped as he stood looking at the great fortress that loomed in front of him, situated in the middle of miles of Kansas emptiness. A circular tower rose ten stories in the air, and was flanked by three towers of a slightly lesser height that ran off angled on each side. Bannered spires flapped in the wind. They were locked as one by a five- or six-story-high wall, which appeared to have viewing stations—or firing ports—cut in. At the far end of the walls appeared the top of what might be seen as a gate. The most amazing thing about the structure was that all the inner buildings were joined nearly front to rear by a pitched stone roof. The reporter stood, hands on hips, dumbfounded. He hardly noticed the gate of the small truck lower Thompson and his chair to the ground.
“This is home? I should have gone into teaching!”
“Why? You like long hours, short pay, and ignorant children starving for the meaning of life?” Thompson sputtered as he jockeyed his chair off the lowered gate and began rolling lazily through the portcullis. The dazed reporter drifted behind him. Thompson was barely though the archway when he halted, his guest nearly toppling over him. The two stayed there, motionless, studying the first building through the gate.
“It’s round! The whole bloody thing is one interwoven tower!”
“Yeah, round. The man that designed this building, hundreds of years ago, was tortured to death while Salah al Din... ah, Saladin himself watched. The blueprints originally called this a fortress-church, meant for the Holy Land, though most people today would have trouble finding the ‘church’ part. It was to sit between two other fortresses, both of which, though miles away, could be seen from the primary tower. It was said that the French Knight-Templar, Geofray Beaumond, was entrusted with the safe keeping of the Templars’ most sacred possession...”
“The Grail?”
“Why, Mr. Liebenstein, you know your history! When Salah al Din couldn’t extract the whereabouts of the Grail from Beaumond by having his fingers severed, testicles crushed, and eyes removed, he ordered his execution. He died, not cursing his persecutors but praising God for the gift of life he had been granted.” Thompson’s chair began to move, drawing the reporter along in its wake. “Within the hour of his death, a surprisingly small army of Templars stormed Salah al Din’s encampment and drove him back into the wilderness. Beaumond’s body was recovered, properly eulogized as the worthy and great man he was, and—as Templars were sworn to poverty and allotted no money for burials—the remains were left for the dogs to eat.”
The drift from known civilized ritual startled Liebenstein. “You can’t be serious!”
The chair suddenly brake-jammed to a halt. “I’m very serious. The Templars became possibly the wealthiest societal organization of all times. They were bankers to kings and princes, makers of Popes, and gatherers of the wealth and wisdom of the east. In our time we say, “It’s only money!” To them, it was only money! The soul mattered more than the shell it left behind when it flew to judgment. One of their key symbols has always been two knights mounted on one horse to show their commitment to poverty.” The wind seemed to expel from Thompson as if he was deflating. Then the chair’s wheels began to turn again. “I’m sorry, Bill. I sometimes forget not every guest visiting is here for a lecture.”
They followed the contours of the great round structure. As they past the second door the reporter expected to enter through, two figures, dressed in black and viciously kicking and punching at each other, appeared in a small courtyard open to the sky from an immense gap in the roof. One of the combatants, seeing the entrance of the duo, threw his hands in front of his face in submission to his partner. Thompson’s chair had stopped moving and Liebenstein, almost as if he was using Thompson as a shield, had placed himself behind it. As the black-clad warriors approached, he could see a small cross on the left breast pocket of each warrior.
“My God, they’re Jesuits!”
“Bill Liebenstein of the Kansas City Herald, I’d like you to meet Fathers Nicolas McGovern and Rodrigo Bya of the Society of Jesus, my spiritual advisors.” They exchanged amenities and the foursome—Thompson’s fifth ”advisor” had disappeared as soon as the gate had hit the ground—continued around in a one hundred eighty degree semi-circle to what in essence was the rear of the building. Oddly enough, Thompson had shut down the motor on his chair and put himself in the massive hands of Father Bya.
Liebenstein felt as out of place as a fish on skis. He lagged slightly behind as his host conversed with his entourage. He kept getting the feeling that these strange and grim-looking clergy were as much bodyguards as advisors. He was even more amazed when they reached a recessed half-porch with a table set for four and Fathers King and Kong suddenly began acting like houseboys, serving drinks and disappearing to shower before the evening meal was served, as told, within the hour. Now the reporter knew where the driver had disappeared to.
As the two remaining companions sat quietly passing time in light conversation, the reporter became aware of a breeze that cooled the August heat enough to make life pleasantly livable again. Yet the breeze did not seem to emanate from outside the dome that served as Thompson’s home. The reporter alertly noticed the flame from a scented candle on the table was flickering in the wrong direction.
“Our young Beaumond was a clever and observant fellow.” The frail figure reported, seeing the inquisitive expression roll across his inquisitor’s face. “There are... what would you call them? Breathing channels woven through the walls from catch holes on the roofs of the towers. The spires trap the winds and the cooled air flows through the house. It was something he ‘borrowed’ from the Muslims.”
Liebenstein just nodded. As a calm dusk settled over, the questions were building up—but before they could be breached, dinner was served! Thompson hadn’t been kidding. The meal was undoubtedly from the eleventh or twelfth century. He could not identify the meat, some sort of succulent bovine-like flesh—but definitely not cow—which seemed to have been roasted over open flame. It was aromatic and alluring in a strange, wild way. Barley and wheat breads, pickled vegetables, and salt in open sellers. On several platters placed around the table were several types of small fowls stuffed with an herb breading Liebenstein had not previously encountered.
As the courses were set down, the shocker came. Neither of the two Jesuits, nor Thompson for that matter, affected any sort of Grace over the meal. It was torn into with abandon. With a smile, Bya began piling food on the reporter’s plate and urged him to please begin. McGovern had begun shredding and fragmenting the food on Thompson’s plate that he might feed himself with a spoon affixed to motionless fingers. The reporter was certain it was for his benefit. No doubt the priest would have happily sat there and feed the lord of this strange manner.
The outsider shrugged and lowered his eyes to the two or three pounds of meat on his plate. When in Rome, he thought and reached for the strange utensil that passed for both knife and fork. It was flat-tipped and curved like a small scimitar, with a sharpened two-pronged end allowing food to be cut and stabbed with the same hand. As he began to raise the instrument to his plate, a glint of light from a candle caught the blade and it fairly illuminated as if on fire.
The sudden flash of light astonished him and he forgot where he was. Lifting the blade to the light of the half-moon overhead, he became aware that his fork was pure silver encased in a hand-fashioned ivory handle. He felt along the edge of the instrument and felt markings left by the craftsman that had made it. He placed it back on the table and quickly shifted his eyes to the plates in front of him. This was no pattern from Macy’s! The plates were hand-worked gold, finely turned and hammered. As with the fork, running his fingers beneath the lip of the dish produced a signature of sorts. He carefully raised the laden dish straight up and over his head. A small circle in which two medieval knights seemed to be mounted on one horse marked the bottom.
He looked across the table to where his host sat, eyes fixed on him.
“Beaumond?” the reporter asked.
“Friar Hamet, a Friar and Knight of sorts of the First Crusade. Possibly the first Scottish Templar.”
“Oh. Was he, did he...”
“No. He lived to a ripe old age. He spent many years traveling between the palace of a Sultan, Rome, and the Templar stronghold at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, carrying only a sword to defend God’s honor and a small clay bowl that he used to beg money for the poor. Thinking about it, he ate and drank from it, too. A local Laird laid him to rest at a small church in Scotland when he died. The plates you’re eating off of were a gift to Hamet and the Templar Knights he served from that Sultan.”
The reporter suddenly realized how ridiculous he must have looked and lowered the plate to the table. Christ, he thought, what next? King Arthur’s sword as a cake cutter? He looked at his host, who was merrily shoveling food into his face.
“Thompson, this stuff is... is... priceless! These belong in the Vatican, or a museum!”
Thompson lowered the spoon, which had almost made the journey to his mouth. “No”, he said calmly, “these... objects belong to Templars. I only use them.”
“Use them?”
“They’re ‘on loan’ so to speak. But finish dinner please. These are merely keys to unlocking a greater story.”
“A what?”
“Most of what you see in front of us is only the beginning of a greater story. You see golden objects. They were merely the eating ware of a once drunken, murderous Scot who plundered a man who didn’t even know he had an enemy, and was ill-prepared to defend his life or fortune.”
“Hamet was a murderer?”
“Perhaps in our terms, by our standards. But in the year of our Lord 1095, when Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade, young Hamet, all fifteen years of him, was the right man for the job. It was a war called to rescue a place that needed no rescue. Muslims, whose religious tolerance at that time would be a lesson for us now, controlled Jerusalem and the surrounding lands. The city fell in four bloody years to an army of men in chain mail.”
“Strange work... for a friar, I mean.”
Thompson paused thoughtfully for a moment. “By the year 1110 Anno Domini, most European Knights, fatted on plunder, had returned home. Hamet learned to love the killing and stayed on, soon commanding his own small army. But in the year 1118, Anno Domini, the very same year Hugh de Payens and Bernard of Clairvaux...”
“Saint Bernard?”
The two dark eyes of the scholar fixed hard on the face of his willing captor. “I confess to seeing only what is in front of me.”
“My father was Jewish, my mother a Catholic,” Liebenstein explained. “My older brother is a Rabbi, my younger a Priest. My youngest sister is taking vows soon. Theology raged supremely through our holiday table.”
“Still! I doubt one Christian in a hundred would know...”
“Be that as it may, please continue.”
“Yes. 1118 was the year that Payens, Bernard, and less than ten knights founded and solidified the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ, as Templars were then called, to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Lands—and Hamet’s life was to change forever. The legend has it that an Angel appeared to him and ordered him to cast away his shield and remove his armor, for God had chosen him for a great task. Hamet seems to have had other plans and flatly refused. Again the Angel ordered him to throw away the world of men, for God had need of his strength. Angered by the Angel’s persistence, he drew his sword and attacked the spirit, but it cast Hamet, body and soul, to the place in Hell that Hamet had fashioned for himself. Needless to say, he accepted God’s task. Took it to heart, really.”
“Not surprising.”
“Hell will do that to you. Hamet took the vows of a friar and several years later joined with Templars. The man who had once slept on silks from Asia and ate off of plates fashioned from gold now slept on the bare floor and ate from a worn clay bowl.”
“You have quite a fascination with these fellows, don’t you?” Liebenstein saw the two Jesuits begin to smile, as if party to some joke. “Excuse me? Did I say something humorous?”
Thompson looked at the Jesuits, who immediately stopped smiling, and turned his head to the reporter. “Yes, you did. Mildly. Bill, all that you see about you—the house, its trapping—are all recovered Templar artifacts. If you shut your eyes and listen, on a quiet summer’s night you can almost hear them speaking. I’ll tell you what! Father McGovern and I have some affairs that must be addressed. Let Father Bya show you about, and then I’ll give you some wonderful tales for your story.” Thompson lifted his chin from his chest and smiled. “Real Pulitzer Prize stuff.”
Liebenstein’s eyebrow raised in wonder at the mention of the Pulitzer Prize.
As a child, Liebenstein’s father had taken him along on a business trip to New York. He had visited a grand museum where great suits of armor rested on armored horses and tapestries from ages long past covered the walls. It felt to him as if he had stepped back in time to Arthur’s court. Thompson’s fortress-home had left that childhood memory in the dust. This place was King Arthur’s court!
The outer structure, as large as it appeared, deceptively lied as to the true dimensions of the building proper. The small alcove, which sat behind the porch where they had dined, actually entered into a grand dining room. The heart of this immense chamber was a fireplace on the inside wall which was higher than a tall man and at least twelve feet across. The table, centered below a great chandelier, seemed to be the length of a bowling lane with a dozen hand-hewn oak chairs on either side.
Thompson had been true to Beaumond’s plan. All the furnishings and decorations (if you could call them that), right down to the people who dwelt therein, seemed to belong to a different time. Bya drew him from room to antechamber to sleeping cubicles, all of which seemed from a different age. Even Bya himself would have seemed more at home in the robes of a medieval monk than in the black garb of a Jesuit. He was a tall and primitively powerful looking man, humorless and stern; but the sternness seemed more aligned to the conviction Thompson spoke of than any religious solemnity would ordain.
They had moved almost to the center of the structure when the darkened hallway they passed through gave way to two massive wooden doors. The priest paused, looking at the doors as if they were to give him instructions as to what to do next, then turned to his charge.
“This is Beaumond’s chapel. It was removed from the Holy Land and brought here almost two decades ago when this... home was built. I...” The Jesuit hesitated, joining his hands together as if in prayer but touching his extended index fingers to his lips.
“If my being Jewish...”
Bya smiled gently. “Not at all! In the year this alter was consecrated, most Jews were considered enemies of the state. This is a Templar chapel, more a sanctuary than a church. The beaten, the poor, even the excommunicated, which in itself caused great scandal with Holy Mother Church, could find peace and aide here. A Jew, a Muslim, a Christian in need, all were welcomed. For more than five centuries, only Templar clergy were allowed to celebrate the Mass at this alter, no other clergy. Several events of a miraculous nature have occurred here. Be of that mind. Ask no question nor cause conversation until we’ve left this place.”
The black-robed man pulled one of the great doors open, revealing a circular room of plain stone and mortar construction. It was cold in nature, and were it not for the altar, one would not believe it to be a holy place. The newsman entered several paces ahead of the Jesuit. The altar reach out and grabbed the viewer, forcing him or her to look at it. The reporter genuflected, the priest nodding appreciatively for the respect shown. There were no pews as in a modern church, neither were there kneelers. Kneeling was done on the rough stone floor. The altar was of three great slabs of marble, each neatly larger than the slab it supported. Of a swirling blue color, they formed steps to the altar on which rested a golden box encrusted with jewels of great value. Herein resided a plainly crafted cup of brass lined with gold wherein the Eucharist was kept. The incongruity of it all froze Liebenstein where he stood at the base of the first step, straining forward for a better look.
The priest startled him by touching his shoulder and pointing upward to the three crucifixes which appeared to float over the altar. The dark clergyman motioned the visitor up the altar steps for closer inspection. As he climbed the great steps, the room seemed to close in on him, the air growing hot and very heavy. He had to catch his breath as he peered at the glowing box. It stood nearly two feet high, and almost that measure side to side. The gold forming the walls were at least four inches thick, molded in great detail to exact specification. He could have spent the rest of the evening counting the precious gems that adorned its sides and still not have reached their full count, like so many stars in the Kansas sky. Across the face was inscribed:
Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.
The fascinated reporter ran his finger along the inscription and, forgetting the request for silence, translated aloud in a hushed whisper.
“Not unto us, Oh Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name be the glory.” He caught himself and looked up with a horrified expression on his face. The Jesuit smiled at him softly and nodded an Indulgence. Liebenstein wasn’t certain if it was an approval of the translation or of the breach of silence, but for whatever reason, it relieved him.
They genuflected in unison and climbed down the steps. As they were descending, the reporter became aware of an ominous cache of weapons resting silently against the curving wall opposite the altar. Sword after sword stood as if waiting for its Master to return from Mass. At the center-point was a sword almost the height of a man, its grip and double hand guard was spectacularly bejeweled and, unlike its brothers that rested in their scabbards, this blade stood bare. He could not affix a worth in human terms of this ancient masterpiece. It did not stand in competition to the altar, but rather more as a complement. He forced his eyes away, and with light encouragement from Bya, began his exit. His knees were buckling and he had to press against the wall, feeling his way, inch by inch and hand over the hand, to the great door. In this unpretentious chapel was the ransom of a dozen kings. He pushed himself through the door. Waiting there was Thompson and the other Jesuit. He could feel his chest heave and his lungs ache from the rush of cool air that seemed to over-expand them. Thompson gave him a moment to catch his senses, and then spoke.
“It’s only the doorway to a greater story.”
In the Kansas sky the cosmos glowed with a great brightness. It was a brightness that burned more fiercely than Liebenstein could recall in any sky, anywhere. The half-porch was lit better than the few candles spread around would allow. As his head cleared, he became more aware that while there was electricity throughout the rooms he had seen, it supplied power to no lamps. He realized he had sat there with Thompson for nearly half an hour in idle silence. Reluctantly, the reporter broke the silence. “Why are you showing me all this?”
Thompson was still looking up into the heavens, and the reporter wasn’t certain he had even heard the question, till at last tired dark eyes rolled down. There was a listless, almost submissive look to the quadriplegic—and then slowly, as if forcing him to wake from a dream, focus and purpose returned to the teacher’s face.
“So many lives since the dawn of time. So many!” He paused, struggling to push the air out of his lungs. “They pass through the ebbs and flows of time and then disappear, for only God’s time is infinite.” He gasped hard and Bya reached out as if to render assistance to the frail being, but Thomson waved him off. It took several minutes for Thompson to regain himself. The reporter studied the face, and then, as fog rises from a lake, the veil of ignorance lifted from his eyes.
“You’re dying, aren’t you? That’s why I’m here? You’re dying?”
Thompson flashed a faint smile. “It depends as to how one defines ‘death.’ ” However. There’s still something to be left behind. A greater...”
“Yeah, I know, a greater story. And what do you want me to do with this story?”
“I really don’t know. It’s merely something on my ‘things to do before Infinity’ list.”
There was a pause. Liebenstein studied the creature, still recovering air to breathe with, and reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small tape recorder.
Thompson smiled weakly. “Father Bya, might we have some coffee?”
