Major Goldman sat beside the bed of the man whose ID tags read, "Casey Romain," watching his patient and listening to the sounds of the air conditioners straining to keep the hot night away. Air conditioners in a war zone. Time progresses… Goldman sat quietly, occasionally taking the vital signs of the casualty on the bed. A timeless unreality hung in the room like strange music probing the edges of the doctor's mind, the ironic symphony of some incomprehensible deity who blended the air conditioner noise with the rales-the crackling, rattling breathing-of the man named Casey and periodically punctuated both with volleys of distant artillery fire crumping its way through the surrounding mountains in search of an unseen enemy.
A vague uneasiness troubled the doctor… as though there were apresence in the room.
Watching the still figure on the bed, Goldman let his thoughts run over the events of the past day and night, troubled and amazed by what had come from the mouth of this strange man whose body was covered with scars, whose wound should have been fatal. He had no right to be alive.
Casey moved slightly as if dreaming. The rales slowed. Goldman focused on the sleeping man's face, and a stark clarity burst in the doctor's consciousness.
Iknow you, he whispered silently within his brain. Iknow who you are. There have been legends written about "the one who must wait." I know that you are him, that you are the one who waits for the Coming. Yes, Sergeant First Class Casey Romain, I know who you are.
He was not prepared for the real words. When they came, clear and loud, they were like a splash of ice water across his consciousness:
"You do, do you? You really think you know me. Doctor?"
Casey had sat straight up in the bed, nude from the waist up, that scarred body a shocking sight in the room. But it was not the scars that caught Goldman's attention, it was Casey's eyes. They had an overwhelming power over Goldman. He could not tear himself away from that glowing gaze.
"You really think you know me and know what I am? Then look closer, Doctor, and see that which no man but me has seen in almost two thousand years."
Hypnosis? Goldman's mind told him there was hypnotic power in his patient's eyes, a power he could not tear himself away from, but even in the thinking his mind seem to split, one part alert and knowing the reality that was happening, the other part…
The deep, demanding voice of Casey blended with the glowing eyes, a unity in Goldman's brain he could no longer separate. He felt himself being drawn into the eyes, felt himself falling through clouds of clearing mist…
There was an interim when Goldman felt himself falling out of one plane of reality into another, when he could see buildings drawing closer. As though he were in an airplane making an approach for a landing. The details were confused… dirt roads, adobe walls… a paved stone road… stone walls… flat topped buildings… narrow streets… stone, stone, stone… a sense of eternity as though this place had been here before the beginning of time and would be here forever… trees… a grove of olive trees… rising ground…
And then one enormous, gleaming white, dominating structure, massive, beautiful… as though God, Himself, had polished the stones…The Temple? Was this the Temple? Great God in Heaven! No wonder my people remember…
Goldman wavered between reality and the vision. It seemed for a moment that the vision was gone… He was drawing close enough to see the people, and he was seeing them with twentieth-century eyes…like a scene from a Cecil B. De Mille movie… men in robes… a wrapped head covering…turbans?… riding asses and camels… a marketplace where vendors cried out for the attention of potential customers. The people were familiar. He felt as though he knew them.
Were they Arabs? Then…
He looked up.
The Temple!
Bearded long-haired men, arms lifted in prayer, their voices becoming intelligible as they wailed the ululating prayers of the Hebrew…
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one…"
My God! It really is the Temple! said the consciousness that was Goldman.
"Yes," came Casey's voice, almost unwelcome to the doctor. "It is the Temple of the Jews that you are seeing now, learned doctor. The Temple of the Jews. Watch and learn the truth of this day and what it means to me, I, Casca Rufio Longinius, soldier of the legions of Imperial Rome in the reign of the great Tiberius…"
The words boomed in Goldman's brain, and the transition was complete. He stood on the stone pavement of a Jerusalem street, in the land of his people, in the time of his people. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God.
The greater reality enveloped him.