Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 Read Online Free PDF

several
millennia that they were more philosophical about it. While they
could neither forgive nor forget the horrors of the Metamorphosis,
they could put the past behind them and think about the present and
future. There was still life to be lived—and they were in a unique
position from which to live it.
    Just as God’s Purgers were ceded the planet
of Purgatory, the Jews convinced the tsar to cede them the planet
Goliath, which they promptly renamed New Zion. As they proudly
said, this was the second time the Children of Israel had defeated
Goliath. In return, the Jews agreed to keep the mines open and
supply the Empire’s ever-growing need for the heavy metal ores. New
Zion became the first undisputed home the Jewish people had had
since the days of the ancient Roman Empire.
    But the Zionians realized they had another
resource at least as valuable as their planet’s ore—themselves.
They were stronger and could react faster than any normal person,
giving them an extraordinary advantage in situations that required
physical skill. They were barred from competing against unmodified
humans in professional sports—although there were some all-Zionian
leagues whose games were breathtaking to behold—but that still left
them a wide range of possibilities. In the hundred and thirteen
years since the end of the Metamorphosis, they’d become very
popular—and expensive—as bodyguards and in private security
services. And as Le Vaudeville Galactique demonstrated, they made
first-rate entertainers.
    Even those spectators who knew the
vaudevillians were Zionians didn’t feel cheated. It didn’t matter
to them that the entertainers had been genetically modified; they
were still extraordinary people performing extraordinary feats. The
audience was being treated to a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, and
they were duly appreciative.
    As the Dance Masters of Space reached the
climax of their act, including leaps through ever-higher spinning
rings, the stage seemed to explode with people. Performers dropped
from the flies on ropes, bounced up out of trapdoors and
somersaulted in from the wings, the pit and the back curtain. All
the entertainers who made up this incredible show bounded onto the
stage in what could easily have been a chaotic mess, but instead
was precisely choreographed to show off each act in turn. Singing,
dancing, juggling; fire, lights, miming; acrobatics and
prestidigitation; a mind-numbing finale to remind the audience—in
the unlikely event that anyone forgot—what a masterful spectacle
they had witnessed here today.
    And the audience responded by leaping to its
feet with a roar of applause that shook the very walls of the
theater, with whistles, with cheers, with the clapping of hands and
the stamping of feet, with every conceivable form of enthusiastic
appreciation. They had been bedazzled, amused, astonished and,
above all, entertained. They had spent an evening in the theater
they would never forget, an evening they would brag about to their
friends for years to come.
    Curtain calls went on for ten, fifteen
minutes. At last the house lights came on again and the stage was
as bare as when the show began. The audience, feeling both
exhilarated and drained, slowly began shuffling out of the theater
with a loud buzz of conversation, each person remarking to his
neighbor about his favorite moments in the show.
    Backstage the atmosphere was no less
exuberant as the performers reveled in the addictive high from the
applause. Drenched in sweat but deliriously happy, Judah and Eva
hugged their colleagues and one another, their spat of just a short
while before totally forgotten. Yet another audience had been
conquered. Was that not cause for celebration?
    Avram Bar Nahum, the Ville’s manager, Judah’s
father and Eva’s uncle—though he’d been her de facto father as well
for most of her life—came up to them with a broad smile on his
face. He was a man near fifty, once as trim as Judah himself but
now going