Read at your own risk

ARIES
The prophet in you spies money is on the horizon and the lover in you sees romance is just around the corner! The skeptic in you says “Tread lightly…” and a bird in hand is better than no bush at all and with your sun in the house of spent dreams, take the path of least resistance and sleep on it. Besides, The Price is Right is next.

TAURUS
Beware of cloying friends this week. Your companion stars are in retrograde and you’re not up to heavy lifting of the long-suffering. Post a note on your door to advise all to merrily go elsewhere. Gay west end Tauruses may execrise discretion and have empathy for lonely, adolescent torsos. But go easy. Celestial Broncos are in heat this week.

GEMINI
Charge those twin engines and slather on the grease! Your mooning is in retrofit and you’re roaring along on steel rims. This is one week you can feel two-fisted confidence about your every little gesture. Half wits find you irresistible and your engine is in gear for four on the floor. And with that extra roll of construction plastic, you’re good to go.

CANCER
Thou lingereth too long on thou moniker. Soon, thou calleth hoary death to do thy bidding on thy name. And if of meagre mind thou find the deity, “FatChance’” may well escape thy next mother’s lips. Hail Cancer!

LEO
Take charge of your agenda this week and fear not the wrath of Mommy. Your half moon is in your Dad’s outhouse and your celestial siblings are rubbing each other the wrong way so this fortuitous diversion provides your chance to be in command of all the dinky toys in the sandbox. Thump anyone who tells you otherwise. And to acquaint yourself with that head-in-sand situation, join the Davie Street Business Improvement asssociation on the next full moon.

VIRGO
Just when you thought you were being overlooked, a scorpio your way cometh. Tickle its belly underneath the fur and use a moist rag to rub across its forehead for optimal exposure to sunstroke. Brag the rest of the week about your technique. No one else will.

LIBRA
After last week’s run-ins you’re feeling a little overexposed to the perverted morés of a lost civilization. Pray to Zeus and ThoreauAster to have your moon illuminated from behind. Then, on the cusp of green tea leaves, ride your broomstick to the nearest Exxon and demand an overhaul with plenty of grease. For clarity, refer to H Greenspan’s prognostications.

SCORPIO
You have a date with Virgo. No use putting her off. She’s been well-briefed. Wiggle your best. You might trim your fur.

SAGITTARIUS
Someone up there loves you, sagging and hilarious as that is. Renovate your umbrella and ask Julie Andrews for tips on obsequiousness. But do not attempt singing. It’s already scheduled to rain on Scorpio’s parade.

CAPRICORN
Don’t envy Libra’s broom . After all, you carry the talking stick. Ask Big Bear Rubbing Butt for a favourable weather report to figure on which day would be auspicious to tap your stick lightly three times on one of the heads of the swamp toads and then ask reverentially for permission to take ownership of Julie’s chimney relics. Then using sacred stick to croak the presumptuous toad, dice and serve.

AQUARIUS
Are we there yet? Chorus please (again). “When the moon is in …”

PISCES
Your soul mate is in town. Stay home. Try not to think about her. They’re never what you expect. Don’t you always feel somehow more tawdry, trivialized by the experience? Is your soul really that petty? You see? If Einstein was right, “We are who we are in relation to other people,” and that’s your soul mate then you’re in serious trouble. For favours from hoary death, cue behind cancer.

LightStream Excerpt
(from Chapter 2, see book cover below in Issue four.)

By the time Devon was climbing onto the bus, he had decided he would indeed let Sarah in on his little secret. So despite the crowded and sweltering conditions on the old bus, having managed a seat next to the driver, Devon was oblivious to the discomfort as his mind was enjoying its quiet thrill of anticipation. If not today, surely this week he would have in his possession the precious scroll of Jo Asaph.
In his four years as Assistant to Father Gregory Atkins, he had felt like a secret agent, a mole doing his clandestine work to betray his cohorts, to undermine everything for which they were striving over the years. And while the outcome of his private travails may indeed have a devastating impact not only on the credibility of his immediate co-workers and Atkins but on the very tenets of the Mother Church itself, he did not feel like a traitor. He was a student of the truth and his researches were driven by his desire for knowing, and damn the consequences. Truth would set its own balance and woe to those who were desperately clinging to conventions and dogma when defied by words of light.
Devon never knew just how much his fellow translators were involved in what he viewed as a cover-up of the real significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so he wasn’t really fearful or paranoid of Catholic agents lingering in dark corridors counter-spying on him. He had slyly concurred with his immediate bosses in their interpretive shenanigans and thus gained their trust completely. This ruse allowed him to pursue his own translations and researches covertly. While the existence of the scroll of Jo Asaph had been conveniently dismissed by Atkins et al as being a fabrication, or just another lost needle in the scriptural haystack, Devon Baird had come across references and cross references which led him to make the one key discovery: the approximate whereabouts of the cave which housed it.
For two years on his summer breaks, he searched in vain for the entrance to this cave reportedly marked by the family crest of Jo Asaph - three spheres of different sizes like three suns at different points of ascension. This marking, he believed, would have been carved on a rock or in a tree to denote the location of the cave site. What he found on the third day of his labors last week were three boulders somewhat unnaturally protruding from a rock cliff between the two other caves. It was in those caves the scrolls which alluded to a House of Jo Asaph were discovered. He believed that these three boulders, each of different size but of what appeared to be of a man-made roundness, must signal the site. In his bag he was carrying the crowbar and chisels he thought would suffice to dislodge the smaller of the boulders, rendering a wide enough hole to permit him entrance.
His musings were interrupted by the driver’s query, “When you gonna take a day off, Father? Every day you go digging. You call that taking a holiday?”
“I enjoy it, Ben. It’s good for me, this work. I’m sweating all that beer off.”
“You’re obsessed, Dr. Baird. Obsessed. Besides, on a day like this, even Jeshua would be drinking cold beer. What are you looking for out there? Haven’t those Bedouins just about picked those caves clean?”
“It’s a wonderful site, Ben. Very intelligently designed - waterways and sanctuaries, butcher houses and bakeries. Who would have thought, just looking at the terrain, such a forbidding area could have housed such a community?” A good, evasive answer thought Devon, and he noted the enthusiasm in his own voice. His life was indeed becoming fun.
“True enough. True enough. A remarkable people those Essenes. I’ve read a little myself you know. When are you going to publish something yourself, Father? I’ll buy a copy. That way I can let you do all the work. I’ll just read about it in my air conditioned study.”
“Fair enough, Ben,” and Devon couldn’t resist adding, “Keep your eyes peeled. Very soon, I’ll be publishing my letters. I think a lot of people may find them interesting.”
“Really, Father. Okay, I’ll do that.”
The bus was pulling into Qumran.
“Coming back on the 6:15, Father?”
“Yes, Ben. Will you be driving?”
“That’s my last run. See you then… and good luck Father.”
“God bless you, Ben.”
“Shalom, Father.”
As the bus clattered away and the sand clouds settled, the Jesuit explorer surveyed the scene. Three Bedouin tents, the nearest was Jafaar’s, a man whom he had hired last summer and who was a thief. He tried to end the association with a semblance of civility but Jafaar’s suspicious mind and blatant greed led him to accuse Devon of cutting him out of the imagined wealth he so desperately sought in these ancient caves. Scroll looting was his profession and in Jafaar’s mind Baird was onto something. Devon was forced to avoid him altogether. Now his tent was the nearest and as luck would have it, the Arab would have to pick today to stake his claims. If a heart could sink, Devon’s was bottom feeding.
The Dead Sea sat complacently blue, undeterred by millenniums of conflict on its banks… offering no shelter on its even shores of sand, pebble and rock.
‘Now, slip away, slip away,’ thought Devon. ‘No time for ruminations! Head uphill onto the winding paths. Move away before Jafaar can spot me.’
He began his ascent and as he continued to climb, his mind began to race along fearful tracks counting the ways he could fail. His heart was beating rapidly, pounding excited blood back into his nightmarish specters of disaster. He was bringing on an anxiety attack and he knew it and this frightened him even more. He was becoming hesitant, disoriented. As soon as he found a shady spot, he unloaded the weight off his back and began breathing with a practiced deliberateness - through the nose and out the mouth. Through the nose and out the mouth. Through the nose and out the mouth. Again that day he prayed, “Help me Father. Help me. Give me your strength. Give me your strength, Father. Help me.”
The shade, the rest and the prayer contributed to his becoming calmer and he allowed ten minutes to pass before embarking again on his climb and not until after a healthy swig of his lukewarm, bottled water.
He began again to wonder if he could pull this off by himself. Maybe it would be better to wait. Maybe he should ask Sarah Negev to help him. His confidence was eroding as he began to look for another rest stop, on a flat of ground somewhere off the incline. He decided to proceed to where he stashed his flashlight and canteens on his previous trip. By the time he got there, he was sopping with salty sweat pouring into his eyes, and cold with fear. His first thought was to rest and then return to Jericho, and this thought and the fact that he had this option relaxed his mind some. He guzzled more water, emptying the first quart on his face and over his head. Regaining his composure, he again considered the avenue of retreat. He could any time, and he was feeling better now so why not continue?
The fear of an anxiety attack had greatly diminished – a stupid memory of a moment of weakness. Such a discovery demands courage and single-minded will, he thought. He allowed a few more moments to pass and newly resolved, began again his ascent.
He felt stronger on this last ascent. Determination and resolve of purpose had gripped him and the word ‘obsessed’ seemed correct now. Right now, God alone knew his courage. Nothing and nobody would steal from him the glory of this task accomplished. His name, BAIRD, would be hailed and remembered for centuries into this new millennium, the Age of Aquarius, as the bringer of the water, the truth to pour out to the thirsty. And his work he would dedicate to the loving memory of his wife Janine and his brother, Marty, and at last Devon Baird would be free.
It was 12:30 p.m. before he reached the three rocks and while his spirit remained most keen, uninterrupted now by doubt, and enlivened by his arrival, his body had reached its limit. He had time, he thought, to rest for a good half hour before tackling the middle rock, the smallest of the lot. For the first ten minutes he lay flat on his back, his head propped by the packsack. And the last 20 he used for lunch, devouring the sandwiches, the vegetables, the O.J. and half the rest of his second water bottle there in the shade of the north end of the cliff slope. Once he had the rock out of the way his heavy labors should be over. He had explored caves hereabouts and while one had to move with alertness, he hadn’t found it heavy work. And the descent would be breezy compared to the climb and if indeed his discovery were to be today, he’d fly downhill and be making very merry with Sarah at the Palms in no time. On this thought, he withdrew the crowbar and mallet from his pack.
He examined the rock’s face meticulously with particular attention to its outline where it met the wall. Indeed it looked placed. He lodged the point of the crowbar at the peak of the rock, thinking if it were to give it would roll outward at an angle away from him, as he was standing off some, leaning toward it. The rock itself was as high as his hip, perfectly round, but it’s face potted with small crater-like depressions. Sandstone, likely, he surmised. He pounded on the butt of the crowbar with his mallet and with little resistance the crowbar sunk an inch or so.
“That was easy,” he remarked aloud. He braced himself and pounded again and this time the crowbar went right through making a small aperture, and to Devon’s astonishment, out of it exploded an extremely loud cry. One sound emitting at great volume, Aye. Simultaneously, gasses erupted through the aperture spewing a terrible stench and Baird knew right away they were toxic. He fell back leaving the crowbar stuck in the rock wall while the sound and gasses continued to violently eject themselves from inside the cave. He cupped his ears and turned away from the specter. It scared the hell out of him. That blasted sound seemed to last an infinity and he could still hear the gasses blowing out of the hole. From that, he felt no danger, as the open air and slight breeze were diffusing the toxins. It was that piercing sound that knocked him over. He loosened his hands from about his ears just enough to hear the subsiding of the cry and detected in it a tone, a base tone, low and sure, as if authoritative, as if someone had only one chance throughout their lifetime to speak but one word and this was it. He waited a moment for the plume of dirty air escaping the cave to thin until nothing was left to see or hear except a crowbar sticking out of a rock wall on a steep hillside in the desert, and the sound of his own tentative movements.
He touched the crowbar. It felt greasy - from the gasses, he expected. He sniffed his hand and scowled at the putrid smell. He took his hanky to wipe his hand and the realization he had just tapped into an ancient cave began to register. His heartbeat steadied and he picked up his mallet and readied for another strike. He hammered the butt of the crowbar again. This time the shriek was louder, different, and again unexpected. Baird bolted away from the rock at a dead run. When he rounded the wall and was outside the immediate earshot of the blast, he sat on his haunches, panting in fear and disbelief. ‘What in God’s name is that?’ he wondered.
His fear was balanced by his knowing that he had penetrated to the inside of the cave. All he had to figure on now was that terrible sound and how to contend with it. It seemed the bloody thing was going to scream at him every time he punctured a hole around the rock. He peeked around the corner and saw again the crowbar projecting outward at a 45 degree angle from the rock. No sound now. No gasses. He crept forward. The rock rolled out as though of its own will. One plop, and there it was sitting on the pathway, the crowbar having been dislodged, leaning on the rock like a workman at rest.
“My God! I’ve done it!” He ran to see the hole and smelled that musty air and stepped back instinctively; but there it was, the door was open. The entrance descended at a fairly steep angle. He was going to need his rope. With the rope over his neck, flashlight in hand and shoulder bag to his left side, he ducked into the cave. Hunched over at first, the further along he went the narrower and steeper it got until he was crawling on his belly inches at a time. He was becoming concerned about his ability to engineer crawling back when the floor of the cave evened and the height of it expanded. He could still make out the light at the entrance behind him some 60 feet or so, and proceeded cautiously forward on his hands and knees until he reached an edge. Past this edge was an abyss described only by the sound of water cascading somewhere in the depths of this black hall, some unknown distance below.
This was curious. This was a cavern of unusual dimensions. The beam of his flashlight dissipated when he pointed it downward and to each side, his left and right, it traced the inside walls until again it dimmed from sight.
Laying on his stomach, he swept his right hand across the stone floor, found a small rock and tossed it out ahead of him. He heard one crack of it soon after, possibly ricocheting or perhaps landing. It was deceiving. Did it land? If it did, the floor of the cavern wasn’t too far. His rope would do. If it ricocheted off a side wall or a protrusion of sorts, when did it land and why didn’t he hear it land?
He felt for another stone, repeated the throw, except this time threw it out farther. Same thing. Crack and then nothing. He pointed the flashlight toward the sound and this time he could make out an outcrop of rock establishing a platform about 15 feet below him. He wondered still where the actual cave floor was. He would have to descend to this lower platform for another look. He thought about using the rope to ease himself down but realized he may need the entire length of it to access the floor from the platform. He probed the wall sides again and spotted some crevices and jutting stone pieces which he figured he could scale and which led onto the platform. He realized it would be necessary to pack away his flashlight in order to use both his hands for this first descent. With the rope still about his neck he crept over to the side wall. Very slowly, very deliberately, feeling every step, concentrating on his every move, breathing fully, rhythmically, he succeeded in descending to the platform in absolute darkness.
He was unusually calm. He noted the stream was louder now as he retrieved his flashlight and began peering again for a floor below. It was frustratingly similar to what he had seen from above him – almost nothing. Just the concave sides again. He picked up another stone and from his kneeling position and leaning over the edge, let it go. This time he heard a faint landing, and one more bounce. After a moment, he thought he could make out a floor. Perhaps his eyes were getting used to the darkness below or his eyes were playing tricks, hoping as he was to see a floor. Five minutes had passed on the platform before he acknowledged his only line of action was to ease himself down with the rope secured on the platform. He began to look for something to tie the rope to.
This was becoming worrisome as he really had no idea what a professional climber might do in this circumstance. What do climbers affix their ropes to? Finally, he felt the jagged rock edge of a small outcrop and pulled hard on it, kicked it and determined it was solid. There was enough space for the rope and he tied it firmly. He tied a knot at the end of the rope and hooked it into his belt. He threw the rest of the rope over the side and didn’t want to admit to himself he didn’t hear any of it land. He sat down a few feet away from the ledge and pondered his predicament, the endless cascade of a stream somewhere below his only company.
At the top of his lungs he yelled at the abyss, “Hey you!” And back the two syllables came from across the cave. The purity of the echo was amusing to Devon. As he sat there in the minor illumination of his flashlight, he wondered how long it had been since these walls had echoed the sounds of human voices. If he could gauge by the findings in the other caves of Qumran, probably about 2100 years.
Once again his options were obvious. Retreat. Call it a day. He knew he could climb back to his first lookout and exit the site. He flashed on his watch: 1:15. He had a good four hours to work here if he chose. If only he knew just how far down that bloody floor was. Not knowing certainly heightened the risk and intensified his agitation.
He crawled over to the edge, lay down on his stomach and with his head and shoulders out into the abyss and his hands cupped around his mouth, called out, “Hey you.” He waited. “Hey you,” came back, after a bit. A bit too long, he worried. “Hey Joseph are you down there?” And “Hey Joseph are you down there?” returned. This time the “bit” seemed like just more than a couple of seconds and not being an expert on echoes, or the speed of sound related to the distance from the caller to where the echo originated, and the time it took to get back to him etc., he remained flummoxed. To hell, he thought. Go down. Get it and get out. Simple enough.
He got up and paced back and then around, his flashlight leading the circle he was following, as he dragged the rope about from his waist. He unclasped his leather belt and re-hooked the rope. He looped the loose rope around his left forearm and the same with his right. He clasped the flashlight to his belt, remaining lit. He began his descent. His heart began to pound as he realized the danger. Then after only three steps down the face of the wall his left foot landed on solid rock. Greatly relieved, his right foot landed and he stood upright, probing with his left foot the width of this rock ledge – about a foot and a half and he braced to go out again. The shoulder bag was secure across his neck and occasionally his flashlight yielded some forms. He was descending step by step, sometimes requiring the full tension of the rope; sometimes stomach leaning on the damp rock face; the stream getting closer, his spirit enlivening. He was checking the whole way down to feel how awkward it might be to get back up and so far so good, he reasoned. He landed again on an edge enabling him to stand once more, and rest his arms. This time he felt a loose stone under his right foot and kicked it off. He heard the landing and it seemed the sound was much closer and most welcome. “Thank God! Thank you, God! Thank you!” He pushed out, taut on the rope, the tips of his boots pushing off the wall. Six more pushes and he landed again. It wasn’t the floor, too narrow. He realized this is where the little rock had landed. He placed his full body weight on the edge to rest again. Then it fell out from under him. He lost his grip on the rope temporarily, and could feel his torso and legs scraping hard against the rock face.
The invisible river thrashed on as though indifferent to the plight of the dangling priest.

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