The cars arrived, though the drivers seemed bemused at why four people insisted on two cars. As it was, they’d barely fit us all. I got into the second one, with Monica, Tobias, and Ivy—who sat between Monica and me in the back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ivy asked softly as she did up her seat belt.
“I don’t think we’ll find her, even with this,” I said. “Sandra is good at avoiding attention, and the trail is too cold. ”
Monica looked at me, a question on her lips, obviously thinking I’d been talking to her. It died as she remembered whom she was accompanying.
“There might be a good reason why she left, you know,” Ivy said. “We don’t have the entire story. ”
“A good reason? One that explains why, in ten years, she’s never contacted us?”
“It’s possible,” Ivy said.
I said nothing.
“You’re not going to start losing us, are you?” Ivy asked. “Aspects vanishing? Changing?”
Becoming nightmares. She didn’t need to add that last part.
“That won’t happen again,” I said. “I’m in control now. ”
Ivy still missed Justin and Ignacio. Honestly, I did too.
“And . . . this hunt for Sandra,” Ivy said. “Is it only about your affection for her, or is it about something else?”
“What else could it be about?”
“She was the one who taught you to control your mind. ” Ivy looked away. “Don’t tell me you’ve never wondered. Maybe she has more secrets. A . . . cure, perhaps. ”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “I like things how they are. ”
Ivy didn’t reply, though I could see Tobias looking at me in the car’s rearview mirror. Studying me. Judging my sincerity.
Honestly, I was judging my own.
What followed was a long drive to the city—the airport is quite a ways from the city proper. That was followed by a hectic ride through the streets of an ancient—yet modern—city. It was uneventful, save for us almost running over a guy selling olives. At our destination, we piled out of the cars, entering a sea of chattering tourists and pious pilgrims.
Built like a box, the building in front of us had an ancient, simple façade with two large, arched windows on the wall above us. “T
he Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” Tobias said. “Held by tradition to be the site of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the structure also encloses one of the traditional locations of his burial. This marvelous structure was originally two buildings, constructed in the fourth century by order of Constantine the Great. It replaced a temple to Aphrodite that had occupied the same site for approximately two hundred years. ”
“Thank you, Wikipedia,” J. C. grumbled, shouldering his assault rifle. He’d changed into combat fatigues.
“Whether tradition is correct,” Tobias continued calmly, hands clasped behind his back, “and whether this is the actual location of the historical events, is a subject of some dispute. Though tradition has many convenient explanations for anomalies—such as reasoning that the temple to Aphrodite was constructed here to suppress early Christian worship—it has been shown that this church follows the shape of the pagan one in key areas. In addition, the fact that the church lies within the city walls makes for an excellent disputation, as the tomb of Jesus would have been outside the city. ”
“It doesn’t matter to us whether it is authentic or not,” I said, passing Tobias. “Razon would have come here. It’s one of the most obvious places—if not the most obvious place—to start looking. Monica, a word, please. ”
She fell into step beside me, her goons going to check if we needed tickets to enter. The security here seemed very heavy—but, then, the church is in the West Bank, and there had been a couple of terrorist scares lately.
“What is it you want?” Monica asked me.
“Does the camera spit out pictures immediately?” I asked. “Does it give digital results?”
“No. It takes pictures on film only. Medium format, no digital back. Razon insisted it be that way. ”
“Now a harder one. You do realize the problems with a camera that takes pictures of one’s very location, only farther back in time, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Merely this: we’re not in the same location now as we were two thousand years ago. The planet moves. One of the theoretical problems with time travel is that if you were to go back in time a hundred years to the exact point we’re standing now, you’d likely find yourself in outer space. Even if you were extremely lucky—and the planet were in the exact same place in its orbit—the Earth’s rotation would mean that you’d appear somewhere else on its surface. Or under its surface, or hundreds of feet in the air. ”
“That’s ridiculous. ”
“It’s science,” I said, looking up at the face of the church. What we’re doing here is ridiculous.
And yet . . .
“All I know,” she said, “is that Razon had to go to a place to take pictures of it. ”
“All right,” I said. “One more. What’s he like? Personality?”