Papyrus
Fiction - by Christopher J. Kattner
Personal journal of Dr. Sarah Gerges, Yeg expedition, day 546
I'd been working alone, tagging and packing artifacts in the icy excavation pit all morning when the lepid cub's head poked above my worktable. His many-faceted eyes glinted in the sapphire sun. I couldn't say how long the little guy had been standing there, absorbed in my work as I was.
The swan-sized creature clenched the lower mandibles of his three-piece bill, dropped back onto all fours and scuttled around the table. Thin arms unfolded from within the silver-brown fuzz that covered his thorax, and he held up a rough-edged slip of paper or reed. Reflexively, I took it. Turning the slip in the light showed faint, squiggled lines. No discernible meaning.
"Thanks?" I muttered. Maybe he thought it was a label I had dropped? With a chilly sniff, I shoved the slip into a hip pocket of my parka. "Get, now. I'm busy."
Not that I wasn't curious; this was the closest I had come to a lepid in all eighteen standard months we'd been on Yeg. But I still had dozens of artifacts to log and was already behind. Dr. Torma, our project lead, had gone to scan site F at first light that morning—taking with her our geomorphologist and all four interns, leaving me, the linguist, to do all the grunt work and fend off the fauna.
The little lepid clicked its jaws and clawed at my pocket until I returned the scrap. "Happy now?"
Promptly, he shoved the slip into his serrated bill and chewed, then ejected the mulch onto the frozen ground.
"Yuk," I said, twisting my boot aside. If I ignored the creature, he'd probably go away.
I turned back to the lustrous artifacts waiting on the table, all made of an odd aluminum-ceramic hybrid etched with circular glyphs that were my responsibility to decode. Most pieces were cracked and shattered. We couldn't say what had broken them, but it seemed deliberate. Their glossy surfaces showed only mild abrasion from the diamond-hard silicate we excavated them from.
After I finished tagging them, I set each artifact assemblage into a crate of shock-dampening beads then slid that onto a lev-trolley. When it was filled, I waved over a bipedal drone to push it up to the cargo ship.
When our team arrived on Yeg, it had been the dead of winter, and the frozen marsh was devoid of life. The sun, then a blue pinprick in the sky, had swelled as an ovular orbit swung the planet closer, and was now bigger than my outstretched palm. We'd planned to be gone before the ground thawed and became too liquid to dig in. But delay had led to delay, and spring crept closer. Tufts of greyish reeds already poked up from the gritty muck, and some sort of backward dragonfly-looking bugs swarmed at dusk. And now a lepid.
Yesterday when I'd first caught a glimpse of the cub snooping around the dig site's perimeter, Dr. Torma told us to chase him away. We couldn't have him damaging any artifacts. No one had ever studied lepids, but preliminary observations ranked them around a six on the index of extraterrestrial intelligence, somewhere between a bonobo and Homohabilis. A species needed to hit at least a seven point five—above Homoerectus—to garner funding for a study. Homo sapiens ranked a nine. Sometimes, I thought that was too high.
Anyway, we weren't on Yeg for the living species, but for an extinct one, the Archaio-Yegians.
It wasn't long before the lepid cub emerged from behind the table again. I nodded up from my tablet screen. "I don’t have time to play." The lepid's hand disappeared into his bumblebee fuzz and came back with another slip of dried mulch. He pushed it into my palm, the touch of his claws gentle. Humouring him for the last time, I held it at an angle to see what was drawn on this one.
"WHO YOU?" was printed across it in curly capitals.
My jaw fell slack. "You're, you’re not supposed to..." I stammered. The lepids had no language, but this one had just forged a crude sentence in English. Skeptical, I scanned the dig site, expecting the interns to be giggling at the success of their prank. But I was alone.
I rubbed my eyes and checked the slip again, switching a lamp from infrared through ultraviolet for better contrast. The letters glowed in undeniable magenta. "How did you do this?"
His unmoving eyes reflected back the deep blue sky.
Of course, he didn't speak. I swiped to a blank page on my tablet and wrote with a finger. "My name is Sarah. What is your name?"
He grabbed back the slip and scratched a clawed finger across the reverse side.
"I NAME IS OOo0O." The "name" was squiggles like his first slip.
I was stunned. Here we'd thought intelligent life had disappeared from Yeg millennia ago, yet a new species was emerging. Just wait till I told Dr. Torma.
"Nice to meet you, MolO," I said as I wrote. (To me, the first overlapping circles resembled a cursive 'M' and the squished circle an 'l'.) He turned out his lower jaws which I took as a smile.
I wrote, "How did you learn to write my words?"
He answered, "YOUR WORDS ALL OVER EVERYTHING LEARN SO EASY"
I blushed. My progress on compiling a corpus of the Archaio-Yegian language was taking months, and this lepid was having a conversation with me in English in less than a day. He grabbed at the slip between my fingers, but I held it out of reach. "I'd really like to keep this one."
MolO insisted. Reluctantly, I returned the first evidence that his species was capable of learning a language and watched him chew it up. I sighed. His intellect was inconsequential to our expedition, and I didn't have the time to indulge my interest. If the ship missed the jump window, the museum would have nothing for the opening, they'd lose Heartland/Sky as corporate sponsor, and our bid for another grant would be sunk. No zoological discovery, no matter how impressive, would cause Dr. Torma to forgive that.
MolO thrust another slip of what I dubbed papyrus, since it was made of dried reed pulp, in front of me.
"I don't have time now," I scribbled. "Maybe once all this is loaded."
His jaws drooped, and I could tell he was disappointed. He continued to dog my steps: a nuisance, but at least I could keep an eye on him.
I stacked another polymer crate onto a lev-trolley and called over a drone which latched on and plodded up to the cargo ship. At the top of the pit, the drone splashed a muck puddle. It began to screak. The legs churned then stopped altogether.
"Heartland/Sky junk." The thawing silt crippled more of our gear every day. I unlatched the trolley and pushed it up to the boxy cargo ship myself, stopping at the back of the hold near the nav-com. This ship was equipped with a jump drive that would take it back to Jupiter Orbital Station in minutes. But that kind of jump was hell on living organisms, so the ship had no pilot, and no cockpit: simply a glass-doored alcove where the nav-com lived. Sadly, when the team departed in three days, we would be riding in a passenger shuttle to a station and then home on a spaceliner. A journey that would last months.
MolO, his steps so light I hadn't heard him follow, seemed to be marvelling at the blinking lights on the panel beyond the glass.
"Don't mess around with that," I said, forgetting he was non-vocal, then gave him a nudge to shoo him out.
Back in the pit, I grabbed my voice-comm from the table.
"Dr. Torma." I waited for a reply.
"Torma here."
"Another drone bit it. Can you send back one of the interns? I'm not going to get all these crates loaded in time on my own." I hoped she would send Rinah. Eric was stronger, but I'd rather not spend more time with him.
"Sorry, Dr. Gerges," was her answer. "By the time anyone can get back, you need to be done. The jump is in three hours. You can ask Nurse Avi to help you."
No, I couldn't, and she knew it. Avi was our medic and asking him to help would be a contract violation. Not to mention he hadn't the training to handle fragile artifacts.
"Thanks for nothing then." I hoped she could hear the middle finger I was holding up in my tone of voice.
"Be sure that all priority one artifacts are loaded. The others can wait." Like I didn't know that already. "Got to go. I'm confident you'll get it sorted."
She was confident I'd work my butt off because a recommendation letter from her would make or break my career, and I was on thin ice already. Why, Sarah, do you have such a problem with authority? she'd said the first time we butted heads on an issue. I have no problem with authority, just you! had been the wrong answer, and I'd been paying for it ever since.
"One more thing," I said into the voice-comm, hoping to end on a positive. "I made a fascinating discovery this morning you should-"
"Unless," she cut me off, "you've found a live Archaio-Yegian, Sarah, you'll have to fill me in when I return. Torma out."
Gritting my molars, I flung the voice-comm back onto the table, nearly hitting the highest priority piece of all. Yikes. Artifact tSY2241.34.12.5, a large, oblong orb that we'd affectionately dubbed the “Egg” since raising it from the icy silt, and I had been avoiding because it was so heavy. At one angle, the Egg's surface shone white-chrome and from another, it became translucent, its vein-like structures visible within. Somehow this piece had survived unscuffed by the sand, which was strange since everything else was so broken. We suspected it to be some sort of canopic jar, although that hypothesis was only thinly supported by my glyph interpretations. I traced the Egg's there-not-there lines with a gloved finger. Magnetic resonance imaging suggested a dead space inside, though there was no seam to open. We hoped it would make a worthy centrepiece to attract press to the museum and donors to our faculty. The Egg resisted analysis, so that alone would garner interest, but we still understood little about the Archaio-Yegians. Their surviving technology was beyond us by several orders of magnitude. Perhaps the Egg would still function if we had a power source. We'd theorized that it may be near-field or DNA activated. But since the Archaio-Yegians had vanished millennia ago, we wouldn't be cracking the Egg here.
I affixed the label and wrapped my arms around the Egg, struggling to lift it. That’s when MolO hopped onto the table, wanting to help I suppose, and lay his spidery fingers upon the Egg. "Don't touch!" I said, and a line of blue-white rings, sharp as laser light, scrolled across the Egg. I let out a gasp loud enough to wake the extinct.
As I pulled MolO away, the Egg went dark, but the circular glyphs had burned themselves into my mind. Although they lacked the connecting line along the top, they were nearly the same as the curls MolO had been scribbling on his papyrus. I was a fool. I'd spent so much time with the glyphs that I should have seen the similarities in the first slip he wrote. I blamed fatigue.
"Could you read that?" I wrote to MolO with a shaking hand.
MolO nodded—a piece of non-verbal communication he had no doubt picked up from me—and scribed upon my pad. "IT SAY TO OPEN STROKE."
"Try it," I urged him.
He climbed back onto the table and placed his hands on the Egg, spreading them as though parting tall grass, and the metallic surface split wide. MolO started, but what was inside astonished me more. A loose pile of hundreds of strips of crisp papyrus.
Why would a civilization as advanced as the Archaio-Yegians store scraps of lepid papyrus? Could the lepids be related to them? Impossible. The Archaio-Yegians had built the most advanced technology I had ever seen, and the lepids just scraped about in the mud, chewing grass. But the congruencies in their writing were irrefutable. And MolO's touch had brought the Egg to life. Whatever this meant, I couldn't do anything until I consulted Dr. Torma. The cargo ship was supposed to jump in less than three hours, but if the lepids' ancestors had made the artifacts, removing them would be unethical and illegal.
Worried that exposure to light and moisture was already degrading the ancient papyrus slips, I grabbed my lens to make a recording. As I framed the image, MolO's pincer hand reached into the Egg and plucked out a slip. My neck tensed. After ten thousand standard years, organic matter would turn to dust if disturbed. But it held together. Somehow the Egg had preserved it.
I barely had time to shout before MolO had read the slip and thrust it toward his gnashing jaws. Dropping my lens, I seized his thin arm. "That’s an invaluable artifact." I snatched the slip away. It was scripted with small circles far neater than MolO's text. With my free hand, I wrote, "What does it say?"
"NAME AND TIME - NO SURE," he wrote back in curled print. "PLEASE LET I DESTROY IT."
I shook my head and wrote. "Why do you chew everything you write?"
"WORDS AREN’T MEANT TO LAST FOREVER."
I retrieved my lens off the sand and held up the slip. But the hard silicate had already scratched the glass, and it failed to focus. Before I could hunt for another lens, the Egg gelled shut. At least the rest were safe from MolO's jaws. "The Egg is not to be touched," I wrote. I didn't want him opening it and chewing anything up.
Sliding the ancient slip into my pocket, I rested on a stool next to the table and zipped loose the front of my parka. There was so much to consider. This was the only site on the planet that had turned up artifacts, and truth was, we weren’t expecting to find more at Site F. The dearth of material had led Dr. Torma to the hypothesis that these artifacts had not originated here at all. The first human to reach Yeg had crash-landed due to a navigational error caused by the planet's irregular orbit. Dr. Torma theorized these artifacts came from an ancient ship that had crashed in the same way. If the exhibit went well, she hoped to search for their world of origin.
But a lepid connection cast doubt upon her theories. Convincing her would be difficult even with the evidence we had. Whatever the correlation, learning the lepid language was surely my key to understanding the artifacts. "MolO," I wrote. "Will you teach me your words?"
He drew a large circle on my pad with a smaller one inside. Beside that, he wrote "YES."
The blue sun drifted low as we went through my lexicon of Archaio-Yegian glyphs. MolO appeared to be adding new English words to his vocabulary at twice the rate I was learning his. The language was fractal, I discovered. Glyphs could be nested within glyphs; whole sentences could be combined into a single ring. I was sure the journals would be falling all over each other to publish the paper I had already begun drafting in my head.
Dr. Torma and the others returned forty minutes after the cargo ship was supposed to have jumped back to the Solar System.
I heard the hum of the land craft die, then Dr. Torma, flanked by gear-laden interns, appeared at the top of the pit, her straight grey hair poking out from her thermal cap and face cacked in sunscreen. "Dr. Gerges. Please tell me that my watch is slow, and that the cargo ship has not missed the jump window."
"I'm sorry, but your clock is fine," I called up.
"Then why are you playing around with the wildlife? Why are these artifacts not packed?" The fat tripod slung on her shoulder made her hip jut in an extra disapproving stance.
"First let me tell you the good news," I said, trudging up the ramp. "I've finally succeeded in decoding the glyphs."
Her face softened. "That's excellent." She set the tripod down. "The bad news?"
"We can't take the artifacts off the planet."
Torma stood silent a moment, interns and I holding our breaths. "I'm waiting for the explanation," she said at last.
"You might want to sit down," I said with a glance at the lab dome. It was better if we discussed my discovery alone first.
She turned to the interns. "Get that equipment stowed and start on the data from the GIS." Then to me, she said, "My office," and strode into the dome.
I lingered a moment, giving Rinah a nudge. "How'd it go out there?"
"Site F was a bust," she muttered.
I tilted back a knowing nod and followed after Dr. Torma.
The recycled air in her office smelled of camomile tea and stale breath. Torma paced. I knew how much the exhibition meant to her, to us all, and expected fury. In fact, I got a twisted little joy out of it, anticipating the moment I floored her with the news about the Egg, vindicating myself after months of poor progress. I wouldn't need her recommendation after this.
Dr. Torma leveled her gaze on me. "Do you know how difficult it is to chart a jump back to the Solar system?" I did but remained quiet. "Each gravity mass between us and Jupiter Orbital must be in the exact right position. They wanted everything last week. Well, what have you got to say for yourself?"
"Remember what you said about finding a living Archaio-Yegian?" I inhaled. "We have been working under the assumption that they are an extinct civilization. I'm no longer certain of that."
Dr. Torma shook her head slowly and sat behind her desk, an ordered pile of chaos. "That would seriously affect our work here. And who are the inheritors of this technology?" She smirked. "Lepids?"
"It looks that way."
"If their ancestors created the artifacts, why have we found nothing anywhere else on the planet?"
"I don’t have an answer for that. I-"
"Then what do you have, Dr. Gerges?"
From my pocket I produced the slip of papyrus.
"I know about the paper they make." She scowled. "Sarah, you're a linguist not a zoologist if-"
"You can't deny the similarity between their writing and the glyphs on the artifacts."
"Writing? Let me see that." She thrust forward her hand.
I placed the slip into her palm. "It's clearer under UV."
She grabbed a hand scanner and flicked on its UV torch. As she scrutinized the glowing script, the muscles on her forehead tensed. "Intriguing. You say that lepid wrote this? You're sure?"
"No. He wrote a whole bunch of them, but this one." I paused. "I found inside the Egg."
Her complexion went a little grey. "You found a way to open the Egg?"
I grinned. "Not me, MolO. And inside there were hundreds of slips like this one."
She stared at me, waiting for a punchline I did not deliver. "You're serious, aren’t you?"
I nodded.
"This," she said, "changes everything. We'd thought the lepids too primitive, but Archaio-Yegian artifacts may have influenced their development. They may know where more artifacts lay hidden."
That was plausible too. MolO had learned English, why not Archaio-Yegian? Yet I saw a more direct link.
Dr. Torma adjusted the wheel on the hand scanner and pushed the papyrus slip against the tip. "Carbon dating will help us place the age of the Egg." An expression of disappointment dragged her face low. She set the scanner down. "The slow pace of your work is one thing, Sarah, but this ruse to distract from your ineptitude?"
"What?" My brow knit.
She put a hand to her forehead as though nursing a headache. "This scrap of paper isn’t even a year old."
"Impossible," I snatched the scanner and checked the result. How could that be? I must have mixed it up with one MolO had written. I dredged my pockets but found nothing.
Torma's voice-comm chimed. She tapped it. "Torma here."
"Bit of a situation, Doctor." It was Rinah. "Can you come out? And bring Nurse Avi."
We rushed out to find Eric holding a bloody hand. "Thing damn near took my finger off." His breath puffed in clouds before his face.
Avi went right to work with a wad of gauze and began to dab clotting gel onto the laceration.
"What happened?" said Dr. Torma.
"I was packing the Egg," Eric said, "And the weasel-bug-thing jumped up on the table. Tried to push it away, and it stuck its teeth in."
"Where did he go?" I said.
Eric pointed. "Still in the pit. Didn't kick it that hard."
I scowled. "You what? Don't forget we are the visitors here."
"Sure, more sympathy for an animal than me. What was I supposed to do?"
I thrust a finger at Eric. "That 'animal' is adroit, sentient. He's taught himself English in under two days."
Eric cocked a disbelieving eyebrow.
"Come on, Dr. Gerges," Dr. Torma interjected, "you're crediting this creature with all kinds of abilities."
"Ugh." I threw up a hand—I had to help MolO—and ran down the clanking steps into the pit. "MolO," I called, tiptoeing over the matrix. "Where are you?"
Huddled against a wall, he lifted his head and limped over to me, one of his four legs twisted against his body. I didn't know anything about lepid biology, but I was sure his foot was not meant to bend that way. "You poor thing. Does it hurt bad?"
He pushed me away when I tried to touch him. I grabbed the tablet to explain that I wanted to carry him up to see Avi. He nodded, seemingly half-conscious. The pain must be excruciating. I scooped him into my arms. He weighed almost nothing.
Above ground, I lay him on a table. Avi shook his head. "His legs have some kind of exoskeleton. I'm not sure where to begin. Worried I'd do more harm than good."
Sheepish, Eric looked at the ground. "Damn. I didn't mean to…"
Torma shot him a glare then said to me, "You see what your games have led to? I instructed everyone not to interact with these things."
"He's not a thing." I clenched my teeth. "We must get him back to others of his kind."
"We saw a group of the bigger ones this morning on our way out," offered Eric.
"Which way?"
"About twenty minutes east of here."
I lifted MolO and marched toward one of the wheeled land craft parked near the dome.
"Dr. Gerges," Torma called, "if you leave now, you'll–"
The rest of her words drowned in the wind as the craft sped east, MolO quivering on my lap.
We whipped past smooth boulders of metamorphic rock and the scrubby, dark-leafed vegetation that snaked across the ground. The blue Yeg sun emitted far more UV light than Earth's yellow one. I wondered how this grey landscape would appear to an eye evolved in its cool light. After a few klicks, a group of half-finished conical hives sharpened into view. I stopped fifty meters away and, cradling MolO, walked the remaining distance across the muck to avoid alarming the inhabitants.
Three large lepids, heads reaching higher than my waist, rushed over and collected MolO from my arms with little regard for me. They lay MolO on the wet ground, their lower jaws stretching wide. Two exchanged slips which I desperately wished to read, but of course, they were chewed and spat before I could see. Meanwhile, the third pulled on MolO's injured leg. MolO rubbed his bottom jaws together, issuing a bloodcurdling shriek like some nightmare cicada.
The adults grabbed fistfuls of the grey-green reeds, which grew more densely here, and shoved them into their mouths, chewed, then packed the pulp around MolO's wounded leg.
I wanted to know how bad the break was and if he'd be okay and let them know how sorry I was. But only MolO understood English, and the words he'd taught me were not nearly sufficient. I gave one of the adults a cautious nudge, then crouched and traced in the sand with my finger the looping glyphs for Molo and then the linked rings for okay and happy, just as MolO had taught.
The lepid rubbed out my words with a slender foot, then assessed me for a while in the purpling light. Finally, the adult pulled a slip of Papyrus from its fuzz and wrote with a fingertip.
The script was far more delicate than MolO's, closer to the slips in the Egg. I couldn't interpret most of the glyphs, but I recognized MolO's name, the big circle for yes, and the future tense verb "to be." I smiled, chewed it up and spat it out. It did not taste good.
Hoping for more conversation, I pulled the tablet from my parka to try another phrase but saw a message from Rinah: Everything ok? Coming back soon?
Yeah. Be a while longer, I replied. I should have returned to the dig site then. My nose was getting sunburned, and Dr. Torma must be writing up a formal reprimand. I wasn't eager for that. But there was the looming, unresolved matter of the artifacts' provenance. If lepids had indeed made the artifacts, I hoped I could establish a dialogue with them, and perhaps they would grant us permission to take the Egg. I leaned against a cold stone, watching these lepids build their hive cluster. Piles of harvested reed lay near, which they chewed and spit, forming the walls.
A short time later, Molo was back standing, hobbling along on three legs. His cast had hardened. On my tablet I wrote, "Are you OK? I'm so sorry that asshole kicked you."
MolO jotted back, "THAT OK. I SHOULD NO BITE HIM. BUT HE WAS TRYING TAKE EGG YOU SAID NO ONE TO TOUCH IT."
"MolO," I wrote, "I need to talk to the adults. Are they your parents? Would you translate for me?"
"YES AND YES"
Two of the domes in the cluster were finished while work continued, connecting them with tunnels. I followed MolO across the gravel into one, a flock of the backward dragonflies whizzing above.
Inside, three lepids crouched around a bowl of some dark liquid, (dinner maybe?) and regarded me with cool eyes.
"MY PARENTAL GROUP," MolO wrote.
Three parents? Well, I felt a little silly for thinking MolO was a boy this whole time. I had no clue how they divided gender, if at all. MolO passed them a slip of papyrus, and the three turned to me.
I began by introducing myself, unsure what details would be relevant to them. "I am Dr. Sarah Gerges, of Earth. And I'm honoured that you have invited me into your home. While this may not count as a formal first meeting, I would like to extend a hand of friendship from my people to yours."
MolO read the message but didn’t translate. I asked him if it was too complex. But he said he had already explained who I was. I asked if he would translate my message anyway. He cleared the screen and wrote his translation on the tablet. The adults refused to look.
I drew a question mark and MolO wrote, "THEY ARE VERY TRADITIONAL." Then he scribbled onto a papyrus slip and offered that instead. The adults slowly read it. And just as slowly, wrote a reply.
They didn't appear pleased when MolO translated on my tablet, "WE HAVE RETURNED TO THE MARSH. IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO LEAVE."
I crouched beside MolO and scribbled, "We will be here just two more nights."
"GOOD."
So much for cultural exchange. At least they weren't kicking me out the door then and there. Hopefully they would share the information I wanted. "Are you familiar with the artifacts?"
"SUCH THINGS ARE NO CONCERN TO US."
That was no help. Next, I asked about the Egg, if they knew of it or how it was made.
"PRIMITIVE CULTURES MAY CARE ABOUT THESE THINGS. WE DO NOT."
I frowned. There's no such thing as "primitive culture," I thought, only culture. And I wrote as much on the tablet.
MolO translated, and the response took a while with much papyrus passing between them. There was a pause in the exchange, then one of the adults tapped a claw on the side of the bowl before them. All watched as concentric ripples circled in and out and dissipated. And for the briefest instant, I thought I caught a lepid word in them.
At last, MolO began to write on my tablet. Some words in his own language then some English beside and scratched it out.
"THE EGG. I DON’T KNOW HOW TRANSLATE. KEEPER? PRESERVER?"
"Did your people make it or know who did?" I hoped the lepids would agree to us taking the Egg for study. Perhaps they too wanted to know how it connected to their history.
After another long delay, they replied with more vagary. "FORMER REGENTS OF YEG ARE NO CONCERN TO US."
Who were the former regents? Did that mean the artifacts were created by others? I wasn't sure how to ask. Even if they didn't self-identify with the makers, that didn't mean they weren't their ancestors. I needed to understand their worldview, or I'd never ask the right questions.
I explained that I believed the artifacts belonged to them. And my team wanted to take the Egg away to be studied in a museum near my planet.
"LEAVE YEG AND LEAVE YEG AS YEG IS," translated MolO.
"Does that mean you want us to leave the artifacts?"
"THE ARTIFACTS ARE NO LONGER A CONCERN TO US."
We were going in circles. I wanted to find common ground, but it seemed that these lepids wanted nothing from us other than departure. Through the open doorway, night was falling. And I had to get back. If the artifacts were their history, they didn't care.
I rose to go but hesitated. These were the first intelligent extra-terrestrial life forms I had ever met. There was so much I wanted to know, their social structure, their history, but I had no time for all that. Instead, I asked if they would share their creation myth. To my delight, they agreed. I sat on the cold floor, tightening the collar of my parka.
The tale did not begin with the birth of their species, but with cataclysm. Their progenitors, the masters of Yeg, once lived side by side with non-living creatures, devices more fantastic than the vehicle I had arrived on. But in their creating, they had drained Yeg of its lifeblood and the planet died. When they had demolished all the devices that had killed Yeg, the lepids were reborn, and slowly the planet was restoring. Now, they lived as servants of Yeg, returning all to Yeg that they took, leaving no trace behind, building hives anew each migration.
MolO translated slowly, stumbling over some words. Once I'd read the last screen, I slid the tablet into my pocket. Of course, I had more questions, but I had no more time. I thanked them for sharing their story and said goodbye, the corners of my eyes damp. This was likely the last I would see of MolO. He waited by his door as I walked back to the land craft beneath a navy sky stippled with stars.
As I rode back to the dig site, I dreaded how I would explain everything to Dr. Torma. I wasn't sure if what I had learned strengthened my belief that we should leave the artifacts or weakened it. Obviously the lepids were more intelligent than anyone had assumed, but they had not claimed the artifacts nor wholly rejected them. I regretted not asking more specifically if they knew why the Egg was filled with papyrus. Dr. Torma wouldn't fake the C-14 dating result just to keep the exhibit on track. Yet I couldn’t believe I had given her the wrong papyrus slip. MolO had chewed the others up. So why did the slip not exhibit any decay from the millennia inside the Egg? If the papyrus had been added more recently, we would have seen substrate disturbance. MolO called the Egg a preserver. It was stopping the contents from returning to Yeg. I could see why they did not value its function. But that wasn't the same as giving us permission to take it.
Soon the dig site came into view, the cargo ship a trapezoid silhouette next to the sleek passenger shuttle. Everyone was in bed, it seemed. However there was a light on in Dr. Torma's office, glowing through the dome's polymer skin. I suspected she had fallen asleep at her desk again.
I crept like a thief to my bunk to steal what hours of sleep I could. Under my pillow lay my grandmother's Komboskini. The prayer rope had religious significance back home, though beyond a memento of her, it meant nothing to me. It was merely an artifact now. I clutched it, counting each beadlike knot. I had no idea how to pray.
Personal journal of Dr. Sarah Gerges, Yeg expedition, day 547
Yawning, I pulled my breakfast of rubbery falafel from the Mr. Eats, and slouched over to the table.
Rinah drained her coffee as I sat. Glancing at my plate, she smirked. "The Mr. E. food living up to its name again?"
"It's fine," I said. "As long as you don't let it touch your tongue."
She smiled. "We missed you at backgammon last night. So, everything go okay with your friend?"
"I think so. His family made him a cast, and he was walking."
"A cast? Glad to hear." Rinah stood. She inhaled as though she would say more then stopped, murmured, "Gotta get to work. Torma's cracking the whip today." She slathered on sunscreen as she hurried out of the kitchen.
Between bites, I swiped across my tablet. Something about MolO's translations still nagged at me, and I checked through my notes from the past months, now armed with a deeper understanding of the glyphs. MolO had translated the Egg as "preserver" but maybe "decay stopper" was more accurate; he had scratched that out.
I prodded my breakfast with my fork. Decay meant rot. But it also meant radioactive breakdown. If the Egg could stop atomic decay, could that be why the C-14 scan showed none in the papyrus? I was no physicist, but it seemed to me the only way that could happen is if all atomic action were halted. That would make for one hell of a preserver. It was essentially stopping time.
A time-stopper? A stasis pod. I pushed my plate away as that sunk in. If the stasis worked on living organisms this could solve the problem of space jumps. Once word got out, Yeg would be swarmed by more researchers, journalists, and who knew, maybe the military. I had to convince Torma to leave the artifacts until proper diplomatic relations were established, difficult as that would be with an isolationist people.
I found her in the cargo ship, double-checking my cargo log.
"So, you decided to come back to us," Dr. Torma said, not looking up from the list.
"Dr. Torma," I began. "Natali, we need to talk."
"Yes. We do." Her voice heavy with authority. She faced me, and her expression softened. "Look, I know there's been a lot of pressure on all of us these past few weeks. So, I'm going to look past that episode yesterday. Let's put our differences aside. You're an excellent linguist, and your team needs you."
It wasn't an episode, I wanted to say but bit my cheek instead. "I learned a lot at the lepids homestead. There's far more to them than anyone realized, a rich culture. And they don't like us digging up the marsh. They want us to leave. They wouldn't tell me who made the artifacts though I think they know. We can't take them. Not without proper consultation."
I waited for a reaction, but she kept checking labels.
I went on. "We can't ignore—"
She tossed her tablet against the bulkhead so hard I thought it would shatter. "Who the capital F do you think you are?"
"Doctor I—"
"You drag your feet for eighteen months. Delay after delay. Quibble with me over every issue. And now, at the eleventh hour, you have something to show for it. An end to our work. Our expedition fruitless."
"It's not fruitless. We've—"
"Would Machu Picchu ever have been excavated if they held consultations with every chinchilla that crawled by?" She slowed. "Look, if we don't have the exhibit, Heartland/Sky will pull the museum's funding. This planet won't have archaeological protection any longer. We'll go back to Earth and who knows what will happen here. Would that make you happier? If looters ran off with everything? That's what happens to unprotected sites."
"Of course not. But are we any better than looters if we take the artifacts?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You're the one who's convinced herself the artifacts belong to the lepids."
"But the papyrus inside the Egg."
"Yes, the Egg. We had a good look at it after you ran off, pushed it through the scanners again. There's nothing inside. No organic material of any kind at least. Even if there were, it wouldn't prove the lepids made the Egg. Only that they stuffed it with shreds of paper." She retrieved her tablet from the ground and dusted it off, checking for cracks. "We discovered the artifacts; we must maintain control. This is best for everyone, including the lepids. Can't you see?"
My throat went dry. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "All I see is a selfish old woman who cares more about her prestige than she does living, breathing cultures. I should report this to UNESCO Planetary Heritage."
Fuming, I marched out of the ship into the cold light. Eric, Rinah, and the other interns stood at the top of the pit, surrounded by a group of adult lepids. One, which I hadn't seen before, was almost as tall as Eric and it moved with a stiffness that made it seem much older than the others, an elder maybe. MolO, still hobbling on three legs, was translating. Some larger lepids gazed at the open pit, their lower jaws drawn wide. The same way they had reacted to MolO's injury.
As I jogged toward them, Rinah said, "They want to see the Egg." She held up a scrap of papyrus that MolO grabbed from her hand and chewed.
Eric looked at me. "How did that little one learn to write English?"
Finally, vindication. "Run and get the Egg please, Eric."
He trotted into the ship and returned, guiding a lev-trolley laden with one white crate. Dr. Torma followed.
She shook her head. "Isn't this convenient?"
"They have made a request to view this artifact," I said.
"By all means. I haven't abandoned the First Code of Ethics, Dr. Gerges," She gestured Eric to go ahead.
Eric unsealed the crate, withdrew the Egg from the damping beads and set it on the lid.
Torma wet her lips, eager as all of us to see how the lepids reacted to the Egg, if it would open for them. After some exchanging of papyrus, the tall lepid stepped toward the artifact and lay its fingers on top.
As the glyphs wrote themselves in blue across the surface, Torma sucked in an audible breath.
"Whoa!" muttered Eric.
The elder's actions were smooth and deliberate like it had done this before. The lepid spread its hands apart and the Egg flowed open, revealing the slips of papyrus inside.
I expected the adults to take them, but instead, they gave a message to MolO who tugged at my leg until I handed him my tablet.
"We ask respectfully that you return to us the names of the damned," I read aloud when MolO finished. Names of the damned? I was dying to know what that meant, but now was not the time for my questions.
Torma asked, "What of the Egg itself? We wish to study it."
I jotted down her words and showed MolO.
"ALL THINGS MUST RETURN TO YEG."
"That can certainly be arranged," said Dr. Torma. "Once we're done with our analysis, all artifacts will be repatriated."
I scribed her words and MolO worked out his translation but stopped at the word repatriated, gazing up at me. I thought for a minute and wrote in English returned home.
MolO nodded and continued writing his curls and gave his translation to the elder.
In time they handed back their reply and MolO began his translation yet again.
"Well, what do they say?" Dr. Torma demanded when he stopped.
I handed her my tablet.
Torma smirked as she read it. "So, if we return your bits of paper, we are free to take the Egg, the other artifacts?"
I jotted that for MolO.
They answered, "YOU MUST GO AWAY. YOUR HIVES, YOUR MACHINES, ALL OF THIS. LEAVE YEG TO YEG."
Torma grinned. "That's precisely what we intend."
I should have been happy, but it didn't sit right with me. Agreeing to give us the artifacts as long as we withdrew wasn't exactly permission—more like ransom. "Dr. Torma," I said, "speaking with this group alone can't count as a proper consultation."
"If the local population affirms no connection to the artifacts, we may recover them. It's perfectly legal."
"Archaeologists have not operated on a finders-keepers principle since the 20th century," I shot back.
Torma shook her head. "You're still convinced these simple creatures built these artifacts. I don't know what your motivations are, but you don't seem to be on the side of science."
"I'm only convinced that we can't be sure. That we need stronger verification."
"That’s something our timeline won't allow. We've been over this."
"They're about to destroy the most solid proof we have."
She shook her head. "It was never proof. Even the carbon date disagrees with you. How do I know you weren't the one who filled the Egg?"
That slander cut deep, and it took all the control I had not to smack her. My volume rose. "What about the fact that their hands alone can open it? That proves the connection."
"Not at all." Torma kept her cool. "We don’t know how the Egg works. If it is a genetic lock, then any life form in their genus may have the power to open it. You and I share 99% of our genes with chimps. That doesn't mean apes built your tablet, even if they can find a way to unlock it."
She had a point, but it was by no means conclusive. I said, "You were here when we unearthed the Egg. The strata were undisturbed. The papyrus is ancient, and you know it. Why the carbon dating disagrees I'm not certain, but I think the Egg creates some kind of atomic stasis. We must proceed slowly. If you would only look at some of my newest translations."
Dr. Torma paused for a moment, hand at her temple. Had I finally gotten through? She said, "We may never know why the Egg was filled with papyrus, but we certainly won't learn that if we leave it here, and we can't keep the papyrus when the lepids want it back. Would you have me deny them their request?"
I shook my head no. "But—"
"Archaeology is not a glamorous field, Sarah. Sometimes, a lot of the time, we get our hands dirty." She crouched down to MolO, writing on my tablet as she spoke, "Go right ahead. Please take them."
I swallowed hard as I watched the adults scoop out the slips. But I was surprised to see they chewed them without reading. After a few minutes, a mass of the masticated mulch had piled on the ground.
Once all of the slips had been chewed to a pulp, Torma reached into her pocket. "Hold on. There's one more." She handed them the papyrus slip I had given her earlier. The final piece of evidence. I didn't know if it was honour or spite. The tall lepid tucked it into its bill and chewed.
The adults had no further words for us. As they began to leave MolO tugged at my arm and wrote. "HAVE A SAFE REPATRIATION."
Goodbye MolO, I wrote using his language.
He nodded and hobbled over to his parents, and one gathered him up. They turned their faces towards the sky and gossamer wings, near-transparent, unfolded from within the fuzz on their backs. The group took to the air. MolO twisted back and waved, another gesture he had learned from me, as they faded into the hazy distance.
We watched them until Torma broke the silence. "Eric, get that artifact back on the ship. Listen up folks, the only viable jump window between now and when our shuttle must depart for the port-station is right after sunrise. It's extremely narrow, so I want every artifact loaded long before then." She turned to me. "I trust you won't abandon your colleagues to do all the heavy lifting without you?"
"They can count on me to do my share," I said, defeated.
We worked into the blue darkness, crating up artifacts and striking our equipment.
Personal journal of Dr. Sarah Gerges, Yeg expedition, day 548
We rose at first light the next day. At breakfast, Dr. Torma called the team together for an announcement.
"I've been on a conference call with the museum curator and their cosponsor, Hartland/Sky Enterprise. They have agreed to delay the opening on account of our fantastic discoveries." She smiled at me. "They are very eager to examine the Egg for themselves. Dr. Gerges's hypothesis that the Egg holds matter in stasis seems to have caught their attention. Looks like we won't have to worry about further funding. They want to set up a permanent station on Yeg to search for more Archaio-Yegian artifacts. There's going to be a big bonus for everyone, even the interns."
"A permanent facility?" I said, my face growing hot.
"Fantastic," said Eric.
No, it wasn't. "But Dr. Torma, you agreed that we would leave the lepids in peace. Now you want to bring in Heartland/Sky and break ground on a new lab. Did they promise to put your name on it?"
"Dr. Gerges, you're out of line."
"Site F yielded nothing. Are you just going to randomly dig up the planet?"
"Sarah, if you can't control yourself, I will put this insubordination in my report. Remember we still haven't been paid for this project. If you want that paycheck, you'll do your job. Right now, that means helping your colleagues get all this equipment squared away."
That's what it was all about for her, the paychecks. I wondered what she'd known about the lepids before the project began, what inconvenient information she'd ignored. I glared at her and opened my mouth for a retort but paused. I'd already lost that battle.
"Fine," I said and headed outside. The new facility was the museum's decision. I'd have to negotiate with them. Hell, they'd need me. I understood the Egg better than anyone at this point. If I could leverage that, maybe I could buy some time to work out another solution. I snorted. That was a pipe dream. Torma hated me. I'd be lucky if I still had a job when we got back. I loaded a trolley and pushed into the ship. While the cargo arm stowed the crates, I watched the yellow lights within the computer alcove flicker like votive candles, wishing I had found another way.
What had happened all those millennia ago? What was the cataclysm that led the lepids to reject the Egg, all their technology, and what would Hartland/Sky do once they had their hands on it? Maybe the lepids hadn't made the artifacts, but they certainly knew they heralded no good. If the Egg made its way to Earth, would it bring cataclysm there as well? I regretted telling Torma what I surmised the Egg was capable of and doubted it would ever be repatriated. If only I could sink it back into the marsh, lose it for another ten millennia. But now that Heartland/Sky was directly involved, there was nothing I could do, no way I could hide it from them. I set my fingertips on the glass door to the alcove. Was there some way I might reprogram the nav-com to send the ship someplace else? A smile tugged at my lip.
I scanned through the reference guides on my pad but there was nothing on how to reprogram a Heartland/Sky cargo ship. Just a few basic FAQs on how the principles worked, most of which I already knew.
I did learn how jump calculations were entered through the remote console. But if I messed around with that, someone would notice for sure. Maybe I could disable something in here, but stopping the jump would only cause a delay. And the one document available merely showed how to replace the atomic chronometer module. Fat lot of good that would do. I swiped to the next page then swiped back. The chronometer. The ship depended on a clock module, small enough to fit inside the Egg, to calculate a jump path. To ensure accuracy, it was replaced regularly. The ship rode a gravity wave, narrowly missing all celestial bodies that would pull it off course. For some reason that brought to mind the rippling in the cup I'd seen at the lepids home. When the ripples struck the centre, they rebounded to the edge. Modifying the parameters of our GIS, I drew up a crude simulation to calculate how I might do the same to the cargo ship. I had no assurance that my plan would work, but I had to try. I ran the simulation again, and again. Twenty-five point two seconds off and Yeg's oblong orbit carried it to a position where a supergiant's gravity would rebound the ship back to its point of origin. Another half-second later and it jumped to three thousand meters below Yeg's surface, burying it for 10,000 more years. I hoped.
Could my hands be that precise? I was only going to get one shot at this. I slunk out of the ship with my empty trolley.
Outside, I stopped at the place where the lepids had spit the masticated slips. The mulch had frozen overnight but was already half thawed. I scooped some into a sample baggy, sealing it airtight. Then I hustled to work. I wanted to make sure every last artifact was loaded on that cargo ship.
As per Torma's command, all crates were loaded well ahead of the jump window. And with that done, we rushed to load what gear we could to avoid adding more mass to the passenger shuttle. The dig site looked unfamiliar now. Thaw was filling in the pit and one of the domes was half-collapsed. The other we would be leaving. Eric was raising the perimeter fence, caging the whole dig zone, presumably to keep out the lepids. Our relationship had already soured.
Now was my time to act. I furtively tossed a handful of gritty mud at one of the still-functioning drones. With a tooth-grinding screech, it seized up, and I offered to cart it into the ship.
While the cargo arm buzzed, I stalked between the racks, hunting for the Egg's crate, manually loaded it down onto the trolley and pushed it over to the nav-com. I carried the Egg inside the alcove, lights from the instruments glinting off the Egg's smooth surface. The chronometer ejected easily from its slot, green indicator pulsing to show that time was being kept.
Next, I opened the baggy of chewed papyrus laden with lepid saliva and DNA, and coated it over my hands then placed them on the Egg, somehow warm and cool as the blue glyphs appeared. My heart thundered. An almost-not-there tingle prickled my fingers as I spread them, splitting apart the Egg. Even though I'd seen it twice already, it took my breath away. A cringe of pain twisted in my core. If all went as I hoped, no one would see it again.
I placed the clock into the vacant cavity, and the Egg resealed itself. Through the translucent shell, I watched the pulsing light die. And at the same moment, I started a count down on my tablet.
"Sarah?" Rinah's voice came from the mouth of the hold.
I held my breath. If I waited quietly, would she go away? The sunburn on my nose itched but I couldn't scratch, my hands still covered in goop. The clang of boot on deck rang louder. I shoved one hand into the bag and wiped the other on my pants before poking my head from behind a rack.
"What is it, Rinah?"
"Dr. Torma's looking for you."
"Be right there," I said, nonchalantly as I could, heart slamming my ribs.
She took a step away, paused. "Want a hand?"
"I've got it covered. Thanks."
She gave me a nod and padded off.
I raced back to the Egg. Two seconds to spare. One sticky hand was enough to open it again, and I withdrew the module, green light pulsing anew. Once I replaced the clock, I wiped my hands clean then returned the Egg to its crate which I slid back into the racks. I prayed this would work as I trotted off the ship.
Torma approached, parka zipped to her chin. "Well Dr. Gerges, you seem more enthusiastic than you did yesterday." She was letting her suspicion show.
"I guess a little time has a way of changing one's perspective."
She curled her mouth at that. "Everything ready on the ship?"
"Far as I can tell." I glanced back at the closing cargo door.
"You know, I'll be looking forward to reading your paper on the lepid's language once we're back at the university."
Was that lip service? I fully expected her to expel me from the project once we were back and I had submitted all my research.
"There are positions in the faculty to fill. I want you to know," her voice became low, "I admire you standing up for your beliefs. And for knowing when to back down."
"Actually," I said, "I was thinking of leaving the field. There are so many living cultures yet undiscovered. That might be my calling."
"Mmmm. Probably for the best," she said.
The cargo ship emitted a low hum, and the jump cells glowed their dim amber.
"Five minutes until jump," Eric called from the control console, one of the last pieces of equipment still set up.
In the final moments, he counted down from ten. Had my modification worked? This was the moment. "Four, three, two, one."
The ship lifted and hovered six meters up in standard pre-jump sequence. A minute later, cells throbbing yellow, it was still there.
"What's the matter? Why is it not gone?" Torma demanded.
"I don't know," Eric said. "The jump is controlled by the nav-com."
Torma shot a bilious glance at me then shouted at Eric. "The window's only open for another minute."
"I know, but the AI has taken control. There's nothing I can do."
Torma pushed him aside. Thirty seconds left in the window, then twenty. Torma issued another futile command. Five seconds. Zero.
The ship hung in the air.
"Damn it!" Torma slammed her fist on the console, knocking it off the pedestal. She spun at me, hot rage in her eyes. "What have you done?"
"Me?" I said in a too-innocent tone. "What could I have done?"
"You’ve only delayed the inevitable, Dr. Gerges. All you've accomplished is making me and your colleagues look bad. If your career wasn’t over already, it certainly is now. You'll be blacklisted from every institution from Earth to—"
Abruptly, the cargo ship rose into the sky, up out of the atmosphere until it was an imperceptible speck. Then, in a small flash, the ship was gone. The artifacts were gone. The greatest discovery of my lifetime. Gone.
"Where did it go?" Torma cried.
Eric picked the console off the sand and tried to access the nav charts.
"I don’t know," he said, tapping and swiping. "No arrival confirmation."
I felt a faint tremor in the sand below me.
"Wait a moment. Now it says the ship is still here. I don't get it." Eric turned a pale shade of green.
Torma glared at me, face red. "I don't know what you did but—" She hung her head. "All our months of work, nullified. How could you? And for what? For a bunch of primitive, mulch-spitting insects!"
I turned my back and strode for the habitation dome. I didn't have to listen to Dr. Torma any longer and I had my bags to pack.
When I got to my bunk, I fell on it, burying my face in my pillow as tears began to stream from my eyes. My hand found my grandmother's prayer rope. Had I done the right thing? Unless the ship was located, there would be no proving my tampering. Nonetheless, my career in xenoarchaeology was over.
Personal journal of Dr. Sarah Gerges, Yeg expedition, day 549
Neither Torma nor the interns spoke more than a few words to me again on Yeg. And when we boarded the shuttle not even Avi sat beside me. Rinah was the last to enter. Without looking around, she took the grey seat to my left, offered a half-smile, and put in her headphones. I glanced at her, but she refused to meet my eyes. The interns would have had their pick of institutions. I hoped no major fallout would land on her. She alone knew that I had been up to something in the cargo ship before the jump. It was up to her what she did with that.
A long four-day sailing to a waystation lay ahead, and I wished I could crawl inside a stasis egg until I got back to the Solar System. I'd made the right choice: a living culture mattered more than how we might profit from a dead one. And the Archaio-Yegian culture was dead, even if it belonged to the lepids. I bit my lip, doubting I, or anyone, would understand them more. Another tragedy irremediable.
I powered on my tablet and paged through my notes. I smiled, finding the translations written by MolO. A tear rolled from my eye. It had been a brief friendship, but I would miss him. As I swiped back through the pages, I came to the myth told to me by MolO's family. Did they know turning to a new screen didn't erase it? "WORDS AREN'T MEANT TO LAST FOREVER," MolO had written on the first page.
I slid my finger toward the trash icon.
It hovered there…as though frozen in time.
.