The Last Generation

Dr Élise Varenne was summoned to Rome by a letter which contained neither invitation nor explanation.

There was only an address, a date, and beneath them a sentence printed in Latin.

Non praeteribit generatio haec.

This generation shall not pass.

She recognised Matthew 24:34 before she had finished reading it.

At the bottom of the card someone had written, in blue-black ink:

We believe we have discovered why.

There was no signature.

She went.

The room beneath the old monastery contained no crucifix.

This surprised her more than anything else.

There were shelves, locked cabinets, a long walnut table and eight chairs. A green-shaded lamp stood before each place. The walls were stone and smelled faintly of dust, candle wax and something medicinal.

Monsignor Valeri sat at the head of the table.

He was not what she had expected. There was no theatrical severity about him. He was perhaps sixty, clean-shaven, carefully dressed, with the manner of a physician preparing to discuss an unpleasant diagnosis.

Three other people waited with him.

Professor David Sloane, an English textual scholar whom Élise knew slightly and disliked without enthusiasm.

Samuel Harcourt, an American whose immense wealth had made him famous among people who believed wealth itself to be a form of revelation.

And a woman introduced only as Sister Miriam.

Valeri waited until Élise had taken her seat.

"You know the passage."

"Of course."

He opened a folder.

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."

Élise looked at him.

"And?"

"And it did not."

She smiled despite herself.

"That problem has occupied theologians for nineteen centuries."

"No," said Valeri. "A different problem has occupied theologians for nineteen centuries. They have asked why the prophecy apparently failed."

He turned one page.

"We are asking whether it failed at all."

There followed a silence which Élise later remembered as the last entirely ordinary moment of her life.

Valeri pushed several photographs towards her.

The first showed an old man leaving a railway station in Prague in 1922.

The second showed the same man in Vienna in 1887.

The third was a photographic reproduction of a portrait painted in Amsterdam in 1641.

The face was the same.

Not similar.

The same.

"Who is he?"

"We have called him many things," Valeri said. "He has called himself more."

Sloane spoke without looking up.

"Ahasuerus."

Élise laughed.

No one else did.

The Wandering Jew.

She looked again at the photographs.

The nose. The eyes. The curious downward turn of the mouth.

Valeri placed another file beside the first.

"Longinus."

A third.

"Johannes."

A fourth remained closed.

"There are others."

Élise looked from one face to another.

"You brought me here to tell me that medieval legends are true?"

"No," said Valeri. "We brought you here because we believe several people alive during the ministry of Jesus remain alive today."

"And because of Matthew."

"Precisely."

She understood then.

It was absurd.

It was also, she realised with an unpleasant little tightening beneath her ribs, logically exquisite.

"This generation shall not pass."

Valeri folded his hands.

"Until all these things be fulfilled."

Élise stared at the photographs.

"You think the Apocalypse has been delayed because some members of the generation haven't died."

Valeri inclined his head.

Harcourt smiled.

"We think history is waiting for them."

They called the organisation Continuatio.

It had existed under other names.

For several centuries it had been merely observational. Monasteries, royal courts, diplomatic missions and later intelligence services had contributed fragments without understanding what they possessed.

A man who appeared unchanged in Constantinople and Venice.

A soldier encountered during the First Crusade who spoke provincial Latin as though it were his native tongue.

A traveller recorded in Spain in the fifteenth century, in Poland in the seventeenth and in Palestine in the nineteenth.

There were descriptions of wounds which did not heal and yet did not kill.

There were signatures separated by centuries.

There were fingerprints.

The twentieth century had made immortality inconvenient.

Passports, photography and eventually facial recognition had transformed legend into an administrative problem.

"What do you want from me?" Élise asked.

Valeri answered gently.

"Confirmation."

"Of what?"

"That the generation remains."

Harcourt answered instead.

"And then we finish what history has been unable to finish."

She looked at him.

It took several seconds.

"You intend to kill them."

"To release them," said Sister Miriam.

It was the first thing she had said.

The euphemism disturbed Élise more than the proposition.

The first was found in Paris.

He lived above a locksmith's shop near the Canal Saint-Martin and called himself Aron Weiss.

There was nothing impressive about him.

That was perhaps the most terrible thing.

He opened the door wearing slippers.

He was thin and bald, with a grey cardigan buttoned incorrectly and spectacles held together at one hinge with transparent tape.

He looked first at Valeri, then at Sloane, then at Élise.

Finally he sighed.

"Again?"

Valeri said nothing.

The old man stood aside.

"You might as well come in."

His apartment contained books, newspapers and a single unmade bed. On the mantelpiece stood photographs of people who had presumably been dead for decades.

Perhaps centuries.

Weiss made tea.

No one drank it.

"You are Ahasuerus?" Harcourt asked.

The old man gave him a long look.

"No."

"But you are the man described under that name."

"I have also been Prester John, Cartaphilus, Joseph, Buttadeus, Michob-Ader and, for eleven very tiresome years in Bavaria, Herr Rosenfeld."

"Did you see Christ?"

Weiss removed his spectacles.

"Yes."

The word altered the room.

Even Harcourt became still.

"At the Crucifixion?"

"Before."

"What happened?"

"Many things happened."

"Did he curse you?"

Weiss smiled.

There was extraordinary weariness in it.

"No."

Harcourt leaned forward.

"Then why are you alive?"

At this Weiss looked at Élise.

She did not know why.

Perhaps because she was the only one who had not yet asked him to prove anything.

"He asked me to remain."

"Until he returned?"

The old man hesitated.

"Those were not his words."

"What were they?"

Weiss replaced his spectacles.

"He said, 'Remain until I come.'"

Harcourt exhaled triumphantly.

Valeri made the sign of the cross.

Only Élise noticed that Weiss had begun to tremble.

They attempted to kill him three nights later.

Élise was not told beforehand.

That was deliberate.

When she arrived, Weiss was strapped to a wooden chair in a cellar outside Paris.

He was naked to the waist.

The sight embarrassed her, though there was nothing sexual in his exposure. His body was simply old: ribs, loose skin, white hair, the frailty of someone who should have died long before photography existed.

Harcourt stood behind him.

There was a pistol on the table.

Élise stopped.

"What is this?"

"Confirmation," said Valeri.

"You already believe him."

"We believe many things."

Weiss looked at her.

"Tell them."

"Tell them what?"

"What I told the others."

Valeri frowned.

"Others?"

The old man laughed softly.

"You imagine yourselves original."

Harcourt struck him.

It was not a hard blow.

The casualness of it was worse.

Élise moved forward, but Sister Miriam touched her wrist.

Not restraining her.

Merely touching.

As though reminding her that one did not interrupt a ceremony.

Weiss turned his head back towards Harcourt.

"The Franciscans tried drowning me in 1311. A bishop in Trier ordered me burned. Someone in Prague cut my throat in 1618. The Germans were particularly thorough."

Harcourt picked up the pistol.

"And?"

"And I remained."

The shot was astonishingly loud.

Weiss jerked backwards.

For perhaps three seconds nobody moved.

Then he inhaled.

The wound in his forehead remained visible.

There was very little blood.

His eyes opened.

Harcourt dropped the pistol.

Weiss looked almost bored.

"Now," he said, "may we discuss the important part?"

They released him.

Not from compassion.

Because there was nothing else to do.

He dressed slowly while Valeri watched.

"You said others have tried."

"Many."

"Why?"

"The same reason."

"To bring about the Parousia?"

Weiss laughed.

"Oh, no."

He buttoned his cardigan.

"To prevent it."

Nobody spoke.

Weiss turned towards Élise again.

"You should ask about Longinus."

They found Longinus in Istanbul.

He had been a surgeon for forty-three years.

Before that, according to records eventually assembled by Continuatio, he had been a physician in Alexandria, a barber-surgeon in Venice, an army doctor in France and an apothecary in Damascus.

His present name was Lucian Cassar.

Unlike Weiss, he had prepared for them.

He served wine.

"I wondered when Aron would finally tell you."

Valeri remained standing.

"You are Longinus?"

"I was once called something similar."

"You pierced the side of Christ."

Cassar looked amused.

"I stabbed a condemned man because an officer told me to determine whether he was dead."

"And his blood made you immortal?"

"No."

"What did?"

Cassar looked towards the dark window.

"Something noticed me."

Élise felt the hairs rise on her arms.

Valeri said, "God?"

Cassar turned back.

"I have had two thousand years to consider that question."

"And?"

"I sincerely hope not."

Longinus explained it after midnight.

There had been, he said, something wrong with the sky that afternoon.

Not darkness.

The texts had simplified it.

The darkness had been a consequence.

There had been a sensation of depth where depth should not exist.

Men had fallen to their knees because they lacked any other physical vocabulary for terror.

At the moment the condemned man died, Cassar had seen something through him.

Not behind him.

Through him.

For an instant the body on the cross had been transparent to a distance which could not be measured.

He had seen stars.

Not the stars above Jerusalem.

Other stars.

And between them something immense had turned its attention towards the world.

"I pierced his side because I wanted the vision to stop."

His hand moved unconsciously to his own ribs.

"The blood touched me."

Harcourt whispered, "The blood of Christ."

Cassar stared at him.

"You still don't understand."

He rose and crossed to a cabinet.

From it he removed a sheet of paper.

There were seven names written upon it.

• Ahasuerus.
• Longinus.
• Johannes.
• Enoch.
• Elijah.
• Cain.

The seventh name had been erased.

"The traditions disagree," Élise said.

"Of course they do. Traditions are memories subjected to centuries of frightened editing."

"What are these names?"

Cassar answered:

"Locks."

Human beings, he explained, had mistaken sequence for prophecy.

Revelation did not describe events which must happen.

It described conditions which must be satisfied.

The witnesses.

The seals.

The trumpets.

The dead rising.

The stars falling.

The language was symbolic because no other language existed.

John had seen machinery and described liturgy.

Or perhaps he had seen liturgy and mistaken it for machinery.

After nineteen centuries Cassar was no longer certain there was a difference.

"But why you?" Élise asked.

"We were present."

"At the Crucifixion?"

"At the opening."

She looked at him.

"What opening?"

He smiled without pleasure.

"The one everyone calls the Crucifixion."

Continuatio divided.

Valeri wanted further investigation.

Sloane wanted the records opened to scholars.

Harcourt wanted the immortals destroyed.

For him the revelation changed nothing.

If anything, it strengthened his faith.

"The enemy always presents salvation as catastrophe," he said.

Élise asked him how he knew which side was the enemy.

He looked at her with genuine pity.

"Because Scripture tells us."

"But Scripture is precisely what we're trying to understand."

"No. Scripture is what we're trying to obey."

There it was.

The thing beneath everything.

Not belief.

Obedience.

Élise understood then why Harcourt frightened her.

He had surrendered the burden of judgement.

Nothing he did could be wrong provided it had been commanded.

The annihilation of mankind would become virtue if properly footnoted.

She thought unexpectedly of Weiss sitting naked in the chair.

Of Sister Miriam's fingers resting lightly upon her wrist.

Of the strange serenity of people who have given responsibility to someone else.

There was temptation in it.

That was what horrified her most.

Harcourt disappeared three weeks later.

So did Sister Miriam.

Continuatio's files were copied.

Several accounts were emptied.

And in Jerusalem an old man named Yohanan Ben-Zakai was found dead in a rented room.

He had no identification.

No living relatives.

No medical history.

The body appeared to be approximately seventy years old.

His fingerprints matched those found upon a Syriac manuscript photographed in 1912.

A manuscript which itself had supposedly been sealed since 1743.

Beside the corpse was a single sheet of paper.

One sentence had been written upon it.

HE WOULD NOT TELL US HOW TO KILL THE OTHERS.

Élise flew to Jerusalem.

Cassar arrived twelve hours later.

Weiss came by train and ship because he refused to fly.

When he saw the body he sat down.

For a long time he said nothing.

Then he began to cry.

"Who was he?" Élise asked.

Weiss wiped his face.

"You called him John."

"The Apostle?"

He shrugged.

"Names become very untidy after the first five hundred years."

"Is he really dead?"

"Yes."

"But how?"

Cassar examined the corpse.

There were marks around the throat.

Burns.

Needle punctures.

Several broken fingers.

Nothing which explained death.

Finally Cassar opened the dead man's mouth.

Under the tongue was a small black object.

He removed it with forceps.

It resembled a piece of glass.

Weiss recoiled.

"What is it?" Élise asked.

Cassar stared at the thing.

"I don't know."

Weiss did.

He whispered:

"A seal."

The first astronomical anomaly was detected eleven hours later.

A radio telescope in Western Australia recorded a transient signal from beyond the orbit of Neptune.

It lasted 0.7 seconds.

Three hours afterwards another observatory recorded it.

Then another.

The source was moving.

That was impossible.

The apparent displacement implied either an error shared by instruments on three continents or motion at a velocity which conventional astrophysics did not permit.

The following night the source appeared again.

Closer.

Not much.

But closer.

Valeri telephoned Élise at 03:17.

His voice was very quiet.

"We've compared the observations."

"And?"

"It isn't coming from the direction we thought."

She sat up in bed.

"What do you mean?"

"It isn't entering the Solar System."

He paused.

"It was already here."

They gathered for the last time in Rome.

Six folders lay on the table.

There had been seven.

Nobody mentioned the empty place.

Cassar stood beside the window.

Weiss sat with his hands folded.

Valeri prayed silently.

Sloane stared at a computer screen displaying orbital projections he plainly did not understand.

Élise looked at the six names.

"Can John be replaced?"

"No," said Weiss.

"How do you know?"

"Because he asked."

"Who?"

The old man looked at her.

"You know who."

She thought of the question and hated herself for asking it.

"Christ?"

Weiss's face changed.

For the first time since she had met him, he looked afraid.

"My dear," he said, "after all this time I no longer know what that word refers to."

At 05:42 the signal changed.

Every radio telescope capable of observing the relevant frequencies recorded the same event.

The object - if object it was - altered course.

Not greatly.

Only enough to remove any remaining possibility of coincidence.

The new trajectory intersected Earth.

Sloane stared at the calculations.

"When?"

Cassar answered.

"We don't know."

"Years?"

"We don't know."

"Centuries?"

"We don't know."

Weiss gave a small laugh.

Everyone turned towards him.

"You still think time matters to it."

Valeri whispered something in Latin.

A prayer.

Or an apology.

Élise looked at the old Jew who had walked through kingdoms, republics, empires and exterminations.

"Why didn't you tell us before?"

Weiss regarded her almost tenderly.

"Would you have believed me?"

"No."

"Exactly."

He stood.

For the first time he seemed very old.

Not physically.

In another way.

As though history itself had accumulated behind his eyes.

"Your species has spent two thousand years begging for the end of the world."

He put on his coat.

"You have written hymns about it. Painted it. Predicted it. Prayed for it. Murdered one another over the correct sequence of events."

He wrapped a scarf around his neck.

"And now someone has finally succeeded."

Valeri said, "Where will you go?"

Weiss opened the door.

"On."

"For how long?"

The old man looked back.

There was almost amusement in his expression.

"Until he comes."

The door closed.

No one followed him.

Élise remained at the table.

Before her lay the surviving files.

Longinus.

Ahasuerus.

Enoch.

Elijah.

Cain.

And one name which Continuatio had never successfully identified.

Outside, Rome was beginning to wake.

Cars moved along wet streets. Bells sounded somewhere beyond the shuttered windows. People opened cafés, swept pavements, kissed their children, cursed the traffic, bought newspapers.

The world continued with the perfect confidence of something unaware that continuation had ceased to be guaranteed.

Élise placed her hand upon John's empty folder.

For centuries men had argued over the date of the Apocalypse.

They had calculated generations, reconstructed calendars, searched Daniel and Revelation for hidden arithmetic.

They had been wrong about almost everything.

There had never been a date.

There had only been a condition.

One of the seven was dead.

Somewhere in the darkness between worlds, something which had waited longer than Christianity had existed was moving again.

There were six of them left.

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