“So…” Uberstühl said, clearing his throat. “Let me give you a price to think about while I go get the item. Twenty thousand U.S.”

Denton squeaked out a laugh and gasp simultaneously. “I’ve, um, gotten similar pieces for around five.”

“That would be a bit low in the best of circumstances. But in this circumstance…”

“What about this circumstance?” Denton asked, then sensed that this was where the rotten stink was coming from.

“Allow me to get the document, Mr. Wyle.” The dealer gave another meaningful and lengthy gaze at his computer before exiting the room and leaving Denton alone.

Denton didn’t need the man to call out the fire department to give him a clue. There were only a few messages in the in-box. It had no doubt been cleaned out for his benefit. The one he was supposed to notice was at the top. The return E-mail address was SSchwartz. Uttering a curse, Denton double-clicked on it to read the text.

Two years ago I purchased part of an Auschwitz manuscript from you. It was written by Yosef Kobinski in 1943. I would like to upgrade to an exclusive arrangement on this document. Please respond with the necessary details of the transaction as soon as you can.

Denton gasped in outrage. The bastard! Schwartz had called Mr. Fleck a few weeks ago, wanting to know who was on to Kobinski and why. Apparently, Fleck had placed an ad in several international antiquities magazines and Schwartz had seen it. Mr. Fleck didn’t tell him, of course (having money was really quite nice at times). And it seemed Schwartz had not connected the reporter who’d come into his office months ago with this mysterious new buyer.

What Schwartz had done was utter dire warnings, something about how it was “dangerous” to publish Kobinski, yada, yada, yada. He’d even threatened to sic the Jewish League on them. Still, Denton was aghast that Schwartz would go to this length. Where was the man coming up with the additional cash? Some rich kabbalah Nazi donor? Who did he think he was?

Thank god Uberstühl was one greedy son of a bitch.

Denton heard the door open and got up quickly, forcing a smile. The German had a small flexible black binder with a neat label on the cover: “Kobinski manuscript, Auschwitz, 1943.” Denton grew light-headed at the sight.

“Have you been thinking about the price, Mr. Wyle?”

“Yes. Yes, I have.”

“And?”

Denton kept his smile fixed. “I’ll have to see the manuscript first.”

“Naturally.”

Uberstühl sat down at the desk and motioned Denton to pull up a chair. He didn’t hand Denton the manuscript but kept hold of it himself. He opened it delicately to the first page.

The Xerox was not perfect by any means. There was something dark about the surface, as if it had been copied from many generations before or, more likely, from a very poor original. But the Hebrew characters and even the notations in the margins were legible. Where they weren’t someone had gone over them with a fine-tipped pen. All said, it was an exacting, professional job. It ought to be, for twenty grand. It ought to be written on gold tablets by the finger of God.

“And the other pages?”

Uberstühl showed them briefly, only a few seconds per page. Long enough to confirm that the material was all there but not long enough to read. As if Denton could.

A full-fledged presidential debate was going on in Denton’s head. He shouldn’t buy it. Even his trust fund wasn’t limitless. Did he really want to pursue this thing if the price was going to jack up like this? There was no guarantee he’d see a return. And Schwartz, Schwartz had threatened him. He was rather afraid of Schwartz.

“Um, what kind of paper was the original on?”

Uberstühl flipped to the front inside cover. There was a photo of the original and a thick label giving all the details. “Two of the pages were heavy dark butcher paper. One was a waxed wrapper, and the rest were paper toweling used in the officers’ toilets.”

Denton leaned forward to peer at the label. Was that… Did he read there that some of the ink was identified as a mixture made with human feces? He could see the shock on Barbara Walters’s face as he mentioned it.

“I’ll take it,” Denton said.

While Uberstühl went to check Denton’s platinum card, Denton looked again at the E-mail. This time, he was no longer surprised and the weight of it sank in a little deeper. It was such a profoundly warlike thing to do—unfriendly, unfair. It struck Denton that he had a nemesis. Denton Wyle, easygoing rich guy and the best little brownnoser you’d ever care to meet, had his very own Moriarty. In a yarmulke. It was enough to make a bunny very ill indeed.

And he also saw what he had not seen the first time, sitting right in front of his eyes. First, that S. Schwartz was all the identification given. There was no hint that S. Schwartz was a rabbi. Fleck had warned Denton about the Holocaust artifact market. The last person a non-Jew seeking good money for an artifact would want to deal with was a rabbi. Rabbis and Holocaust museums and the like had a habit of trying to claim moral rights to such property and get out of paying at all. The fact that Schwartz was buying “incognito” might be turned to Denton’s advantage someday.

The other thing was the TO line. Uberstühl was not the only addressee on the E-mail. There were, in fact, three others. Denton had just found the sources of three more fragments.

Denton grinned. “Take that, Moriarty!”

Consider: A star is nothing if not a war between the strong nuclear force and gravity. The intense fuel of the star wants to explode, expand outward. But gravity is working in exactly the opposite direction, forcing the star’s energy down into itself.

Gevorah (restriction, judgment) is the gravitational force. Gravity is its embodiment. And chesed (love, expansion) is the nuclear force—light. So there is a lesson for us in the stars, you see? Gravity and light must dance together, expansion and contraction, in balance, just like judgment and mercy. This is the dance of the spheres, of life.

If gevorah and chesed have an equivalent in the physical realm, then so do good and evil. This is where the most critical aspect of my work has been done. I have found the physical correspondences of good and evil. The energy patterns of matter in the higher dimension, the fifth dimension, cannot be understood without them.

The Midrash says that for every blade of grass there is an angel who has the sole task of leaning over it and whispering, “Grow, grow.” This is not far from the truth, although it would be more accurate to say that there is also a demon leaning over it saying, “Die, die.” The life impulse and the death impulse: both exist in equal measure.

It is all there in my equation, the equation. Indeed, when my work becomes public there will be a revolution in the sciences such has not been seen since Galileo first trained a telescope at the stars. This is why the work must not be allowed to perish in this place.

But back to the point. At the subatomic level we can get close to a glimpse of the true nature of physical matter—energy. It is at this level that we find

[Notation: Further pages of this entry missing]

…

Nearly all of my work for the past ten years has been concerned in some way with the fifth dimension. By exploring the three dimensions of space scientists can only learn what and where. The fourth dimension of time allows us to learn when. But the fifth dimension… the fifth dimension will tell us why.