The Old Dispensation Page 3

  No… we whisper. Shemesh hangs dead from his chains, yet his eyes open, his mouth moves. He speaks to us, in words of compassion and sorrow, speaking the ancient heresy of Abulafia, saying that we are all the same. And we think of the old world, the one we had left behind, how in antiquity they’d capture our agents and send them back to us, booby-trapped.

  Such an elaborate seduction. It must have taken years to plan. The robot, planted on Kadesh. The word, trickling out. All for this moment, all in wait for the Adjudicator to come.

  To come, and do his job, and return to his nest, return to the holy see, return to us.

  No, no! we moan. Shemesh is Treif, he is contaminated, his blood drips into the mikveh, his eyes stare out at us. We try to flee. Too late. It’s in us.

  We shake our tentacles. We flee to our Sanctum.

  We … are… Exilarch!

  Yet our shout of defiance comes weak. We flee to our window, here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods. We look out over New Jerusalem, over the Temple, and we look up, at the stars, all those stars. Our protocols are being compromised, we are infected with that which is not pure, unchosen. We are become Treif.

  We look up at the stars. We look at the horizon. We feel a great peace descend on us. No, no. We must fight it. On the edge of the horizon, light streaks. Dawn breaks, and the first tendrils of sunlight begin to chase away the dark.

  The sun.

  The word is “Shemesh”, in the old tongue.

  We stare, spellbound, as day breaks; and we look upon at last and see the new Jerusalem.

  About the Author

  Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama (2011), and of The Violent Century (2013) in addition to many other works. He works across genres, combining detective and thriller modes with poetry, science fiction and historical and autobiographical material. His work has been compared to that of Philip K. Dick by The Guardian and The Financial Times, and to Kurt Vonnegut’s by Locus. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017 by Lavie Tidhar

  Art copyright © 2017 by Wesley Allsbrook