Waiting for the Olympians

What I like about going to science congresses isn’t so much the actual papers the speakers deliver - I can get that sort of information better from the journals in the library. It isn’t even the back-and-forth discussion that follows each paper, although that sometimes produces useful background bits. What I get the most out of is what I call “the sound of science” - the kind of shorthand language scientists use when they’re talking to each other about their own specialities. So I usually sit somewhere at the back of the hall, with as much space around me as I can manage, my tablet in my lap and my stylus in my hand, writing down bits of dialogue and figuring how to put them into my next sci-rom.

There wasn’t much of that today. There wasn’t much discussion at all. One by one the speakers got up and read their papers, answered a couple of cursory questions with cursory replies, and hurried off; and when each one finished he left, and the audience got smaller because, as I finally figured out, no one was there who wasn’t obligated to be.

When boredom made me decide that I needed a glass of wine and a quick snack more than I needed to sit there with my still-blank tablet, I found out there was hardly anyone even in the lounges. There was no familiar face. No one seemed to know where Sam was. And in the afternoon, the Collegium-Presidor, bowing to the inevitable, announced that the remaining sessions would be postponed indefinitely.

The day was a total waste.

* * * *

I had a lot more hopes for the night.

Rachel greeted me with the news that Sam had sent a message to say he was detained and wouldn’t make dinner.

“Did he say where he was?” She shook her head. “He’s off with some of the other top people,” I guessed. I told her about the collapse of the convention. Then I brightened. “At least let’s go out for dinner, then.”

Rachel firmly vetoed the idea. She was tactful enough not to mention money, although I was sure Sam had filled her in on my precarious financial state. “I like my own cook’s food better than any restaurant,” she told me. “We’ll eat here. There won’t be anything fancy tonight - just a simple meal for the two of us.”

The best part of that was “the two of us”. Basilius had arranged the couches in a sort of V, so that our heads were quite close together, with the low serving tables in easy reach between us. As soon as she lay down, Rachel confessed, “I didn’t get a lot of work done today. I couldn’t get that idea of yours out of my head.”

The idea was Sam’s, actually, but I didn’t see any reason to correct her. “I’m flattered,” I told her. “I’m sorry I spoiled your work.”

She shrugged and went on. “I did a little reading on the period, especially about an interesting minor figure who lived around then, a Judaean preacher named Jeshua of Nazareth. Did you ever hear of him? Well, most people haven’t, but he had a lot of followers at one time. They called themselves Chrestians, and they were a very unruly bunch.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Judaean history,” I said. Which was true; but then I added, “But I’d really like to learn more.” Which wasn’t - or at least hadn’t been until just then.

“Of course, Rachel said. No doubt to her it seemed quite natural that everyone in the world would wish to know more about the post-Augustan period. “Anyway, this Jeshua was on trial for sedition. He was condemned to death.’

I blinked at her. “Not just to slavery?”

She shook her head. “They didn’t just enslave criminals back then, they did physical things to them. Even executed them, sometimes in very barbarous ways. But Tiberius, as Proconsul, decided that the penalty was too extreme. So he commuted Jeshua’s death sentence. He just had him whipped and let him go. A very good decision, I think. Otherwise he would have made him a martyr, and gods know what would have happened after that. As it was, the Chrestians just gradually waned away. . . . Basilius? You can bring the next course in now.”

I watched with interest as Basilius complied. It turned out to be larks and olives! I approved, not simply for the fact that I liked the dish. The “simple meal” was actually a lot more elaborate than she had provided for the three of us the night before.

Things were looking up. I said, “Can you tell me something, Rachel? I think you’re Judaean yourself, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m a little confused,” I said. “I thought the Judaeans believed in the god Yahveh.”

“Of course, Julie. We do.”

“Yes but—” I hesitated. I didn’t want to mess up the way things were going, but I was curious. “But you say ‘gods’. Isn’t that, well, a contradiction?”

“Not at all,” she told me civilly enough. “Yahveh’s commandments were brought down from a mountaintop by our great prophet, Moses, and they were very clear on the subject. One of them says, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ Well, we don’t, you see? Yahveh is our first god. There aren’t any before him. It’s all explained in the rabbinical writings.”