Fallen From Babel (paperback)

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Peter Thornton doesn’t believe in God.

Or rather, he doesn’t believe in one God. “All paths are valid,” he teaches his university students.
One evening he ventures to the archaeology museum and touches an artifact recently discovered from ancient Babylon.
At the touch he is transported three thousand years back in time to Old Testament Babylon.
Somehow the people know him as Rim-Sin, sorcerer and high priest to the gods of Babylon. The moment he arrives he is accused of murder—a murder Rim-Sin committed—and he must run for his life.
Against the backdrop of Nebuchadnezzar’s court at its zenith, he and rival sorcerers vie with Beltshazzar, the Jewish upstart, for the king’s favor. As Peter scrambles to get back to the twenty-first century he encounters a lovely young woman who has some disturbingly powerful arguments about the God of the Bible.
Peter won’t get home until he has fallen from his pride. Fallen from his polytheism. Fallen from Babel.

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“A good story with mystery involving what truth is.”

“Well written, with strong character development, good plot, and powerful message!”

“I felt transported to ancient Babylon! Tracy has captured the imagination of this reader and I felt like I was there! Her descriptions were vivid and compelling. It was an instant immersion into the sights, smells, and sounds of a world so different from ours and yet familiar. Excellent characterization; the people were believable and well rounded.”

“The realism is marvelous and all her books and we've read all she has written and there are great story lines that make putting down the book sort of like losing your best friends and you want to know what's happening to them.”

“As usual with Tracy's books, I was enthralled. This one kept me up way into the night when I needed to be sleeping since I had to go to work the next morning. I loved her characters, and I definitely experienced her story!”

“Tracy’s uncanny ability to transport the reader back in time, is extraordinary. Her characters are well thought out and believable and her historical research is beyond measure. You are living in Ancient Babylon the first moment you grasp the pages. You are drawn into the story yourself and wonder how will Peter return.”

“Intelligent and well crafted, great character development, lots of surprises, it kept me up more than one night until my eyes were so gritty I had to put it down.”

“I love this story. She takes you back in time 3000 years to one of history's most famous cities: Babylon. Through her writing, you actually feel like you are living in Babylon.”

 

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Enjoy a sample from Fallen From Babel

PROLOGUE

Am I back? Dear God, am I back?

The same blinding headache. The same odd taste of sulfur.

A blessed absence of heat jolted his senses. How long since he stood in a climate-controlled room? What day was it? What year? 

Dear God, am I back? he whispered again into the silence, wondering if God Himself might answer. 

He still held the blue glazed terracotta vase in his hand. It took willpower not to send the thing crashing to the floor. He glanced around the tiny room. He was alone. The naked bulb suspended above the vase cast an iridescent sheen on the centuries-old glaze. He stared at the markings on the side. 

Underneath. I must look underneath.

He tilted it backward. There it was, the simple mark scratched into the surface.

Shaking, he returned the vase to the table and backed away.

Kaida. Oh, Kaida, I’m so sorry. I had no choice. If I could have made you understand, you would have agreed. I had no choice. 

He fumbled for the door. Tears blurred his eyes. Not bothering to lock it behind him, he stepped into the cavernous hall that held the museum’s Babylonian collection. An exit sign across the unlit room spilled a red trail across the floor. His footsteps thudded across the empty hall.

He barely had a conscious thought for the three flights down to the street exit of the museum. He unlocked a side door and stumbled into the alley. The city slept under a blanket of fresh snow. Where had he left his Buick?

The cold cut through his rented tux, and he wondered what three thousand years of late charges would amount to. No, he seemed to have returned to the moment he left. Time must have remained fixed here in Boston. And yet he knew…

Five weeks had passed since the night of the University’s Annual Fund-Raising Gala, the night he had stepped into the museum to see the vase.

CHAPTER ONE



The muted buzz of conversation and clinking of silver and stemware in the banquet hall quieted, and a wiry man stepped to the podium and adjusted the microphone. Peter looked up from his smoked salmon to give Hugh Rohner a half smile. He knew Hugh hated these affairs almost as much as he did.

The hotel’s banquet hall held close to five hundred of the university’s vital donors. And lots of jewelry, thought Peter. The ornate chandeliers seemed to bounce their light off a thousand gold-studded cuff links and glittering diamonds. He glanced over the room from his place at the head table, the faces merging into sameness. Blue hair and blue blood. Come to give away some money and make themselves feel crucial to the cause of research and education. Correction. We will make them feel crucial.

Hugh cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “We are honored by your presence here this evening. I trust you are enjoying your meal.”

As Hugh droned on with his opening comments. Peter’s mind wandered. Was it possible that only yesterday he had scaled the face of Mt. Shasta? His trip to California seemed a century removed from tonight. He wished he were hanging by his fingertips right now, instead of checking the order of his speech cards. But it was an important night. In just a few days, the announcement he’d waited his whole career for would be made public, and Peter would be named as the new president of the university. Tonight was all about impressing the alumni. He took a deep breath. Hugh would be escaping from the podium any moment now.

“…his classes are among the most sought-after here at the university,” Hugh was saying, “and his research into ancient near-eastern mythology has put our humble institution on the map.”

The crowd tittered obligingly at Hugh’s modesty. 

“He has been a professor in the Religious Studies Department here at the University for the last fifteen years, making him slightly younger than myself.” Again the polite laughter. “Like me, he spends all his time poring over crumbling artifacts, searching for information about dead religions. Perhaps that’s the reason he’s still a bachelor!”

Peter smiled. What would you think, Hugh, if you knew that yesterday I was hanging from a cliff?

Hugh was Archeology and Peter was Religion, but Hugh knew people didn’t give away money merely to let someone else dig up broken pots. They wanted to know what good it brought humanity now. That was why Peter was here.

“So let me step aside and give you the man you came to hear. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Peter Thornton.”

Peter grabbed his cards and checked his watch as the crowd applauded. Hugh had given him twenty minutes to impress the room with the fascinating research going on and the dire need for more funds. But he knew his audience. They didn’t want twenty minutes of dull facts. He had to give them something to hang on to, something for the starched old ladies to repeat to their friends tomorrow at the country club luncheon.

“Good evening,” he began. He patted the pocket of his tuxedo. Where were his glasses? His notes were swimming across the cards in front of him. He found them and settled the gold wire-rims down to the end of his nose so he could peer over them at the crowd. The ladies loved that, he knew. The whole Indiana Jones thing.

“We stand poised on the edge of a new era, ladies and gentlemen. Current research into the past gives us new direction for the future, as we synthesize the myth of yesterday with the faith of today.”

He delivered that last line with drama. He had their attention.

“The study of ancient mythology has taught us one thing: that all myth is essentially the same. It has a certain Oneness which unifies it. Centuries of study—accelerating in our modern era—have revealed to the attentive student that there is no ‘correct’ religion. We must look within, ladies and gentlemen, to the divinity of our own consciousness.”

He was losing them. He could see the glazed look even from here. Simplify, Peter, simplify.

“One day even our modern Judeo-Christian beliefs will be relegated to the category of ‘myth.’”

There. That woke up the old ladies who directed their church bazaars. He saw the raised eyebrows and smiled. 

“Let me explain. Christianity is part of the Whole, as all myths have been. But no doubt you have seen—this is a new era. People everywhere are embracing all types of spirituality, tapping into the power of the Universe. The marriage of yesterday’s myth and today’s faith has given birth to a new doctrine, what some writers are calling the Doctrine of Divine Man.”

From the dimly lit room full of tables, a shout rose up. “They have changed the truth of God into a lie! They have worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator!”

Peter paused and squinted into the murmuring audience. Where did that come from? Hecklers were not uncommon when he spoke on campus, but usually the people at these events had better manners.

Peter continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is chiefly the study of ancient peoples that brings us this new perspective. Your generous funding—”

“For the wrath of God will be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men!”

The crowd’s displeasure with the interruption was louder this time. Peter looked up from his note cards and removed his glasses. Two men from the Phys Ed department were approaching a table in the center of the room. 

A tall man with a shock of wild blonde hair stood and pointed at Peter. “Once the gates are open, the demons will come pouring in!” The two Phys Ed guys each took one of the man’s arms. He twisted away. “You will see! There is no power that is amoral. There is only good and evil, and you invite evil! Your invitation will bring the old gods upon us, and they will not rest until we are destroyed!”

Yikes. Peter debated quickly: Address the crazy guy or ignore him? Security guards arrived and made his decision for him. They pulled the doomsayer from the table, but couldn’t keep him quiet. His last prediction, delivered as they yanked him from the room, echoed across the tables of shocked alumni. “It is already happening! The old gods are rising! And they will enslave us!”

Peter took a moment to readjust his glasses and let the room settle. When they were quiet, he opened his mouth to continue. “Têtê malkuthach. Nehwê tzevjânach.”

Peter swallowed. What did I just say? The quizzical look on the faces below him proved he had not imagined it. What language was that? Aramaic? Maybe it was something he’d overheard in some recorded speech in Hugh’s office in recent days.

He gave a half smile. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have so much to learn from the cultures of the past. And it is irrational fear, such as we have just witnessed, that we are here to eradicate. There will always be those who fear the future, but I assure you, with your help, there will be no end to what we can achieve.”

* * *

He went on for exactly twenty minutes. Peter was always punctual. 

A half-hour later, while the donors were milling around and writing checks, Peter spotted Hugh’s head over the sea of benefactors. 

Hugh pulled him into a little group clustered near the bar, drinks in hand. “Peter, come meet Mrs. Weaver.” 

Peter pasted on a smile and nodded at the older woman with shocking red lipstick and jangling earrings. 

“Oh, Dr. Thornton, I just loved your little talk. Very inspiring. I heard you speak two years ago at the commencement. Just wonderful. And where is that lovely woman you had by your side that evening?”

Hugh rescued him. “Ah…Mrs. Weaver, tell Peter about your work with the children.”

Peter smiled and nodded as the woman chattered. He forced himself to watch her eyes and not the thin, red lines of her mouth. 

He had to get out of here. Small talk was not his strength. Besides, he was anxious to get over to the museum to see Hugh’s latest artifact. “Unbelievable,” was all Hugh would say when Peter had pressed him for details.

Hugh pulled him away from the group minutes later. “Lauren is around here somewhere,” he murmured, searching over the tops of heads. “I wanted you to say hello to her. She’s just started her graduate work. You’ve met my daughter, haven’t you?”

“I think maybe once or twice.” Peter remembered braces and giggles. Graduate work already? He was getting old.

“Never mind,” Hugh shrugged. “She must have left.”

“I hope she got out before the nutcase started his tirade,” Peter said.

Hugh said nothing.

“Oh, come on, Hugh. I know you’re a traditional monotheist, but you don’t go along with that loon, do you?”

“The man obviously has some problems, Peter. But I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what he says. You know that your fascination with power outside of God has always concerned me.”

“Hugh, it’s not power outside of God, it’s—”

“Let’s not argue tonight, Peter. Besides,” Hugh smiled knowingly, “shouldn’t you be working the room, in preparation for Wednesday’s big announcement?”

Peter sighed and looked around. He made eye contact with someone and was rewarded with an enthusiastic wave. 

“Dr. Thornton!” Another jangling woman, on the arm of a gray-haired tuxedo. Hugh abandoned Peter this time, moving on to network with the deep pockets. Peter glanced at his watch. One more hour.

* * *

Precisely an hour later, Peter stepped from the hotel lobby into the city street. It was late, but the museum was only four blocks away. And it was worth the extra time to see Hugh’s newest treasure. Peter jogged along the deserted street and pulled his overcoat against his chest to counteract the sudden chill. 

His thoughts drifted back to Mrs. Weaver’s earlier question about the woman she’d seen on his arm at commencement. Where was Julia? He wondered that himself. Married by now? Probably. She had been the only woman who had ever understood him. Saw right into his soul, or so he thought. Since then not another woman had given him a second look. Not that he blamed them. The mirror explained much. And Hugh was right about how he spent his time, the occasional rock-climbing trip notwithstanding. Some of his best friends had been dead for centuries. Not exactly an attractive trait. 

So much the better. He had important work to do. Research and teaching were companions enough. He spent his vacations alone, counteracting the tedium of university life with rock climbing whenever he got the chance, though his colleagues didn’t believe he had a life outside the classroom walls. But all that was about to change. The university-sponsored Ultimate Success Seminar a few years ago had started him down the road of self-discovery, tapping into his own divinity. Now he was about to be named University President. 

He got out the MP3 player in his jacket pocket to finish listening to the motivational sessions from another Success Seminar. Certain phrases stuck out as he listened. 

Everything you need to change your life lies within you at this moment. Unlocking the power within yourself is the key to Ultimate Success.

The power within himself. Where could it take him? What extraordinary things were possible for him if he could unlock it?

The moon slid behind a thin line of smoky clouds and left the street in shadows as Peter reached the side entrance of the museum. He resisted a panicked look over his shoulder. He visited the museum at night frequently. There had never been a problem.

His key slid into the side door, and he locked it again behind him. The three-flight climb felt good after the heavy meal, but he couldn’t shake the chill that gripped him in the street. The empty building creaked and whispered tonight. He put his MP3 player away.

Pushing open the door at the top of the steps, he entered his home-away-from-home. He paused a moment, thinking he might have heard the side entrance open again below him. Had someone followed him? When he heard nothing more he entered the dark hall, knowing the room well enough to navigate by the red glow of the exit sign. Unlocking another door, he entered Hugh’s private sanctuary. One bare bulb flooded the room with light that glared off the piles of unimportant finds and stacks of yellow legal paper.

There it was, on the table. Had to be Hugh’s prize. A blue-glazed terracotta vase. Neo-Babylonian, Hugh had said. Circa 600 B.C.E., during the reign of the Chaldean, Nebuchadnezzar II. 

Peter loved pottery. It was firmly linked with his love for archaeology—for what was that science, he often joked to Hugh, but the study of old pots? He loved to study pottery and he loved to create it on the wheel he kept in his apartment. 

This piece across the room was striking. Eighteen inches high, rounded out wide in the middle and tapering to a narrow neck. But what was so “unbelievable” that Hugh had urged him to check it out tonight? He took out his glasses again, planning to examine the markings around the side. An odd sensation flitted at the edge of his consciousness. He felt powerfully drawn to this piece, as though he were connected to it somehow. It was the oddest feeling. He felt as though he understood where it came from, understood the man who created it. Stepping to the table, he reached out a tentative hand to tip the vase backward.

The moment he touched it, a deafening roar whooshed through his head. He saw the vase, saw his hand on it, but it had receded from him, as if he looked at it through binoculars held backwards. Hot pain seared across his brain.

Was he having a stroke? He had only a moment to wonder before the vase, the room, and the museum disappeared as if they had been part of a dream.

* * *

Heat. Unbelievable heat. Pain in his head, pain in his side. The slight taste of sulfur. His eyes finally focused.

He stood in a large room, the walls a buff-colored mud brick, the high ceiling made of wood planks covered with reeds. By the light filtering through a terracotta grid of holes in the wall, it seemed to be dusk.

One of his hands was wrapped around the center shaft of a tall gold lampstand of some kind. The metal was burning hot. He yanked his hand from the shaft. It crashed to the ground, splashing oil onto the baked-brick floor.

And then he saw the man. Lying a few feet from him, an obsidian-handled knife buried to the hilt in his chest. Blood everywhere. On the floor. On himself. He looked down to the pain in his side. Was that his blood? He looked through jagged tear in his tunic and found a two-inch long knife wound. 

His tunic? Where was his tuxedo?

Movement behind him. He whirled around. A woman backed away from him, beautiful, but terrified. She rubbed at her hand as if it were injured. Her back brushed the wall, and she put her hands behind her to steady herself. The look of panic on her face no doubt matched his own. Her lips moved but without sound. 

He spun back to the man on the floor. The first aid course he’d taken before he began rock-climbing would be of no help. The stillness of death had fallen over the man’s features. Peter turned back to the woman. She had blood on her, too. Had she stabbed the dead man? Had she stabbed Peter? He glanced at her face again, this time defensive. The gash in his side throbbed.

She shook her head, as if to keep him away. 

What had happened? Where was the vase, the museum? Why was he in costume? The dead man, the gash in his own side—these were not movie props, but every part of his mind screamed at him that there was a rational answer.

To his left, the door opened to a hallway leading to a courtyard. Peter could see another man running toward him across the courtyard.

“My lord!” the man called. “He knows you have it! He is coming here!” The man ran into the room, his eyes taking in the dead man at once.

“What have you done, Rim-Sin?” he whispered to Peter.

“I—I didn’t do it!” Peter stammered. He looked at the woman behind him. She shook her head again. 

“What has happened?” the man asked again. 

Peter stared at him. Was that English the man spoke? It must be. He knew it was not but he understood him perfectly. Impossible. Impossible!

“You must get out of here, my lord. The rab alani is not far behind me. You will be on trial for murder before the day is out!” He looked at the woman. “Perhaps you should take her with you—she is covered with blood.”

Once more, the woman shook her head. Peter recognized the glassy look of someone slipping into shock. He swung around the room one last time, then pushed past the man and ran into the courtyard. 

He had expected to be outdoors, but he was not. All around the sides of the courtyard other hallways led to other rooms. He circled like a caged animal, realizing he was trapped in the center of the house. Which way was out?

Choosing a hall, he flung himself through it and landed in the kitchen. A man glanced up from a cooking hearth, then bowed his head respectfully when he saw Peter. Peter backed up, returned to the courtyard and chose another hallway. 

This place is like a maze! Another startled servant in this room, but Peter could sense that the door across the room led to the street. He scrambled past the doorkeeper, through the door and up the five steps that led to street level.

The sight pulled him up short. A dream. It must be a dream. He stood in the center of a paved road lined with palm trees. Houses like the one he had escaped bordered both sides of the road. The heat! He could taste the gritty heat of the desert. 

The street was in chaos, even though the sun was setting. Crowds pushed and pressed past him with no regard for his injury. Why were all these people in costume? Was he on a movie set for some biblical epic? His eyes traveled down the length of the street. And then his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.

A pyramid-like structure overhung the horizon a half-mile in the distance. 

He recognized the 300-foot, stepped ziggurat immediately. Seven levels of unadorned stone towered above the city, as though a giant child had stacked all his wooden blocks in a pyramid, then shouted, “Look what I made!”

Etemenanki. The House of the Platform of Heaven and Earth. Commonly believed to be the biblical Tower of Babel.

Peter stood rooted in the center of the street, jostled by the passing crowd. As he stared at the tower, only one thought thrashed its way into his mind. 

I am in Ancient Babylon. 

A yell from behind startled Peter into action. A turbaned man on a camel shouted to clear the way. Peter stepped to the wall of the house a moment before the camel crushed past him. The wall was cut into a sawtoothed pattern, and Peter pressed himself into one of the shadows. 

He glanced in both directions. Several hundred feet down the street, three men strode toward him, cloaks flapping behind them, a cloud of sand swirling at their feet. Somehow Peter sensed they had come for him.

He lurched away from the wall and ran down the road dodging animals, children, merchants. He ran through the city streets with no idea where he was going. The ziggurat always loomed over the buildings, giving him a sense of direction, but there was no place to hide.

Trial. Murder. The words pounded in his ears as he ran. Behind him, he heard shouts. The men had seen him. They were chasing him. Maybe he should stop and explain that he didn’t know what had happened. 

Sure, Peter, they’ll believe the old “I’m in a time warp” defense. 

Better to run. He tried to sprint, but the jagged cut in his side tortured him. He put his hand over it, blood seeping through his fingers as he ran. 

Finally, when darkness hid the streets, he could no longer run. He stumbled through the nearest doorway and fell at the feet of an astonished man who held a blazing reed torch.

“Get out!” the man screamed, punctuating his command with a kick to Peter’s stomach.