Chapter 19: The Greatest Demon

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that taking things out of order like I have would mean I have to go back in time in order to explain what happened next. In this instance, I’m going back around fifteen hundred years.

I’d been wandering around Egypt for some fifty or seventy-five years. Rome had consolidated its hold on the world and I had parted ways with Caesar when he burned the library at Alexandria. Well, he didn’t burn it, Cleopatra’s brother started the fire, but Caesar didn’t help. But since my ship was also burned, I had some trouble getting out of Egypt.

Yeah, me and libraries. I love books. I saw Ptolemy’s rabble headed toward the docks and had to choose whether I’d save my ship or the library. I ran into the great library to tell the librarians to start packing. I opened a portal into the infinity room and the librarians scooped up every scroll and book they could carry and took them to my little world. Then they came back and grabbed another handful. I went through the library grabbing everything I could and shoving it through the portal, telling the librarians to sort it all out when they got there. The library wasn’t quite empty when the flames caught up to us, but we’d saved thousands of volumes. I closed the bag and ran.

Ultimately, I ended up wandering around in the desert like the proverbial Moses, which was a big legend told in Egypt. “Be good, children, or Moses will get you.” It was quite a different story than what was told in Judea. In Egypt, Moses was painted as a lying magician who double-crossed the masters of the land, set traps that killed their children, and sent plagues on the land that forced Pharaoh to expel him and his chosen people. And then the idiot led a million people out into the desert and wandered around until all who had left the good life in Egypt were dead, including Moses. Their kids descended on the land near Jordan River like a swarm of locusts and consumed everything and everyone in their way. Egyptians had no love of Moses.

I digress. I wandered with little or no purpose. There were other libraries in Egypt and I could foresee more destruction in their future. So, I picked up the families of the librarians I’d collected and made my way south to the Temple of Rameses, later changed and rebuilt by Ptolemy Soter. The significant thing was that it had an immense library. The priests of Horus, who were also the librarians, had already begun moving and hiding the many volumes stored there. It took me a long time and a lot of convincing, with a few visits from the librarians of Alexandria, to get the priests and librarians to bring the books all to the infinity room and then to get them settled.

I almost settled down there and joined them in the infinity room. In fact, I did for a while in order to create rebuilt replicas of the two great libraries. There were a lot of old places in Egypt where I could hide us. I’d heard about Kafre’s tomb and the great Sphinx, but I’d never been there. What an engineering wonder! There was no question in my mind that the many Egyptian demons—djinni—had a hand in building the massive structures. There were places there where I could occupy a corner of the space and just enjoy the infinity room and my women.

After fifty or seventy-five years, I had a yearning for new wine and decided to head north again. This journey took me on the same perilous route Moses led the Israelites on. Except I took a few shortcuts and avoided the Red Sea altogether. There were other adventures, but I’ll talk about those later. That’s not the point of this story.

When I got up to Jerusalem, I found the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.

I’D HAD dealings with Jews over six hundred years before—ah, sweet Miriam, my wife—and found them to be reasonable people in everything except their religion. And I saw a few examples of why they were so devoted to it. But nothing had prepared me for Jesus.

I first heard of him from an itinerant preacher out in the wilderness who was baptizing people and telling them the Lord was coming. Well, I’ve always been one to follow the customs of the god whose land I was in, so I got in line and got baptized, too. Got the satchel sprinkled as well, so I counted that as having all its hundred thousand plus citizens baptized. Then I went off to see Jesus when John pointed him out.

I liked that dude! He preached some of the same things I’d advocated over the millennia. Peace, love, and kindness. It got me real excited. I mean, here was a demon summoned by an entire nation! They’d been working on the chants and pleas with their god for centuries until they finally built up enough unified will to conjure Jesus. He healed people, fed people, chastised those who were greedy, and forgave those who were weak. Just like Ninra and Namri. I wanted to do a little something for his ministry and I figured I could set myself up at a watering hole someplace in the wilderness and do what John was doing: Give people a ritual cleansing that would prepare them to meet Jesus.

I’d just found a place where I thought I might set up when I heard that John was dead! The fuckers cut his head off! What kind of place was this? I knew the Romans were merciless killers, but I’d never heard anything about the Jews being so single-mindedly violent toward one of their own.

I took shelter in a cave where I found a few scrolls buried in clay pots. I didn’t want to defile any holy place and there was no one to ask about taking the books. Being a basically honest demon, I took the pots into the infinity room one at a time and worked a duplication spell on them that I’d found in one of the old scrolls. Did I tell you about that? Oh, yeah. I did. Once I had duplicated the contents of a pot, I took it back and worked a little spell on it to make it watertight and impervious to the elements. No telling how long it was intended to stay buried there as a kind of time capsule. Then I took the next pot in line and duplicated it. I wished I could find some Jewish librarians to join me, but nobody was doing any active work except in the temple.

It really burned me when I heard the Romans had executed Jesus. I found out all I could about it and decided they couldn’t have been successful. You see, Zeus had told me when I was only a year old how a demon could be killed. I was sure Jesus had to be alive and word eventually filtered out that his disciples had seen him. I was relieved to hear it.

Still, I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay in this area. They’d just keep trying. And that decided me that I shouldn’t stay in the area either. I crossed over Jordan headed east and knocked the dust off my sandals, so to speak. I wanted as far away from this place as possible.

I knew this area from ancient times and it hadn’t changed all that much. I made my way back to the great river and built a raft on which I floated leisurely south toward the sea.

I ACQUIRED a good-sized fisherman’s boat near the mouth of the river and started stocking it up with trade goods to take me through the Persian Gulf to the Sea of India. I worked a few spells on the boat to make it more sea worthy. The routes were well-known by traders of the day and even back in my days in Bathra, we had seen traders bringing spices from the south. While I was working on the boat and preparing it for sea travel, a voice behind me spoke.

“Are you heading for the open sea in the south?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s the plan if I don’t get blown apart. I’ve had a bad time with Poseidon in the past, but I don’t think he’s active down here.”

“I would expect there are others, but no one who would have a reason to harm you,” he said. He sounded familiar and I pulled my head out of the hold to turn and look at him. There was Jesus! Well, I’d assumed he wasn’t in Judea any longer. He sure couldn’t stay there after being crucified.

“Lord, how may I help you?”

“Start by not calling me Lord. I’ve had quite enough of that. Call me Issa. That’s the name my friends in the south use. If you can stand the company, I’d happily ride with you to get home.”

“That’s great, Issa. I understand you know your way around boats as well. I have provisions, so we can launch as soon as you’re ready.”

He grabbed a towline and we pulled the boat toward deeper water, then we both jumped in.

Ah, the salt wind in my hair! The smell of the sea! The sound of the waves lapping against the sides. And a congenial partner to share the journey—even if not the lusty goddess Aphrodite.

We talked and relaxed on the boat for the better part of a month, fishing and eating and enjoying each other’s company. Then he guided me to a port where I tied up and embraced him before he disembarked.

“Can I come with you, Issa?” I asked.

“Oh, Bob. You know it’s not a good idea for two like us to stay in the same place. I love you, brother, but I don’t want to compete with you.”

I understood, I guess. I’d considered doing miracles like he’d done. He’d tried to teach me the simple spell for turning water into wine and the result tasted so foul it brought tears to his eyes. I poured it overboard with my apologies to the local sea god. I’d stick to making my wine from fermented grapes.

I waved goodbye, and then shoved off to continue farther south along the coast of what would become India. I was in that region for a century or three before I continued eastward. I’ll revisit some of my adventures in India later. It’s a story worth telling about. I learned their pantheon of gods, the castes and social order, the architecture, oh! and tantric sex. From an interesting perspective. One day I’ll tell you all about that.

I bring all this little digression to the fore simply to tell you that I knew Jesus and I knew India. I knew the people there. I have many people in my household in the infinity room from the Indian subcontinent. I traveled the many islands surrounding the great peninsula and ventured across the warm eastern sea to the lands in southeast Asia, Japan, and China.

The people we saw on the island where Columbus first made landfall were not Indian. It was as obvious to me as the greed of my shipmates. They all but ignored the people who came out to greet us and went in search of gold and riches. They were disappointed.

Of course, you couldn’t tell Chris that he wasn’t in India. No, he named the people Indians and went to search for all the gold. Even if he had landed in India, I could have told him gold was a rarity there. The great trade goods from India and Asia were spices and silks. That other idiot explorer, Marco Polo, had given people false expectations. We crossed paths briefly in China. Maybe I’ll get a chance to tell you about him later.