He held the old concert T-shirt, and his hands shook. Is this it? Is this the only fragment of my life I have left?
He’d never even liked that band.
It wasn’t until Yerith started talking in a rapid panic that Nate realized he was crying. He didn’t understand her, but her gist seemed to be, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m a fucking prisoner. What do you think?” Nate looked up at her and saw from her expression that she might not get his English, but she seemed to read his expression well enough.
Nate sighed. “Shouldn’t blame you, should I? You did what I asked.”
He didn’t have the local word for “thanks,” so he just held up the shirt and did his best to smile. “You bring,” he told her.
She looked at him uncertainly and replied, “I bring.”
Aren’t we the witty conversationalists?
Nate looked back down at his T-shirt. The language barrier was rising on his list of frustrations. Every new word he learned almost seemed to make the communication barrier worse. Every time he looked at Yerith, a tidal wave of questions tried to smash through his thirty-word vocabulary.
Who the hell are you?
Where the hell am I?
Who the hell were the people behind those masks?
If I told you what Cleveland was, could you point me in the right direction?
At least she seemed more interested in keeping him comfortable than Scarface and company had been.
Nate got dressed, impressing himself by being strong enough to stand up and pull on his pants without help.
She does seem to be as interested in talking to me as I am in talking to her.
“Let’s see,” Nate muttered to himself, “how committed we are to the learning process.” If he was going to progress at anything approaching a reasonable pace, he needed more than a couple of fifteen minute visits a day.
He didn’t have the words he needed, but he used the concert T-shirt to help get his point across. He laid the shirt on the bed between them, the back of it facing up. The back didn’t have any pictures, just a list of bars and gig dates.
He grabbed a spoon from his last meal and squatted over the shirt, tracing the letters with the tip of the spoon.
Nate looked up at her and said, “You bring . . .” He waved the spoon at the unknown word. She looked at him, then down at the shirt. He could tell he had surprised her again.
She traced the lines of text with her fingers.
He tried to figure out a way of telling her that these were words in his own language. The best he could come up with was, “Clothes speak to eye.” He moved the spoon and traced the letters. “Hand speaks to clothes.”
She looked at him, eyes wide, and said, “You can . . .” The word that followed, almost certainly meant, “Read.”
Yeah. I am just full of surprises.
“You can read,” she repeated.
“I can read,” Nate said, doing his best to pronounce the new verb.
Yerith started pacing. She shook her head and chattered in her language too fast for Nate to pick up on the words he did know. She seemed to be debating something with herself. After a few moments, she looked at him, then at the shirt. She looked as if she had come to a decision.
“I bring,” she said.
Yerith did bring.
And she brought a lot.
First, she brought a worn wooden case three inches wide and about a foot long. Inside it were a pair of brushes and a small black oval that had a depression worn in the center. The set was very well used and completely unadorned.
Then she brought him a journal. It was a foot square, with a cracked leather binding, and had about a hundred pages. Except for handwritten notes on the first two pages, the rest of it was blank. The paper was thick and brown, but still seemed flexible enough that Nate wasn’t afraid to turn the pages.
Finally, she brought him books. So many books that for the first time Nate saw one of the aliens helping her with her burden. The creature didn’t enter the room, it just stood there holding the volumes in its arms as Yerith started piling books into the room.
There must have been twenty volumes of various sizes.
“I bring, you can read,” she announced.
Nate started keeping notes in the journal. Diary entries mixed with notes on the language mixed with speculations concrete and theoretical. He came up with a rough estimate that it had been between two and three months since he had arrived in this world. He was pretty certain that he was into his second month under Yerith’s charge.
Yerith’s schedule was regular for the most part. A “morning” visit and an “evening” visit. She brought him food, linens, water, took away the used chamber pots, and helped him with his language.
He occupied his days, outside the half hour or so that Yerith spent with him, continuing to exercise—running in place, doing sit-ups, chinning himself with the chains holding the lamps.
When his body was worn out, he would take the journal and one of the books, and try to read. The attempt was taxing. Trying to figure out the written language was worse, in some sense, than the physical exercise. But, unlike the spoken lessons with Yerith, his time with the text was unlimited.
He was fortunate in that the written language was phonetic, not ideographic. That meant he could tinker with it and get some idea what a novel word might sound like. Armed with that information, he could have a list of questions ready for Yerith when she came, which made the process go much more efficiently. Instead of getting one or two words a day, Nate was picking up maybe half a dozen.
He also learned that the language was tonal. The way you said a word—rising, falling, the accent—changed the word’s meaning. That was the reason behind all the strange flourishes he saw connecting distant characters in the written text. They were guides that showed how to intone the basic syllable, word, sentence, or paragraph.
Fortunately for Nate’s learning curve, the language wasn’t like Asian languages where a different tone on a syllable could give a word a completely different meaning. This language used tone to indicate the tense of a statement—which explained a number of misunderstandings he had had with Yerith. Whenever he had been asking a question, the rising tone at the end—which meant a question in English—placed the whole sentence in the historical past tense.
That was going to be a hard habit to break.
By the middle of his third month as Yerith’s charge, Nate could honestly say, “I can read.” Even if it only meant one sentence every five to fifteen minutes while referring to his growing crib sheets on Yerith’s language. He had, so far, bulled through a quarter of the first of Yerith’s books, a gardening textbook.
That was also the point where he started seriously examining the latch on the door that kept him prisoner.
When Nate felt adept enough, he asked, “Why am I kept here?”
“We keep you safe,” Yerith said. “You are not safe out there,” Yerith pointed toward the door.
“How long?” Being sequestered here was fine enough while he was recovering, but he was back to normal physically. In fact, since he had kept up with the physical regimen, he was probably in better shape now than when he had come here.
“I am waiting,” she said.
And I am the one in the fucking hole.
“You wait for what?” Every sentence was a struggle. He could come so close to what was in his mind, and still have to dance around it.
“A man.”
“Who?”
“His name is Arthiz.” Godot by any other name.
“Why do you wait for him?”
“He . . .” Nate watched her struggle for a common word, before she came up with, “He leads.”
Just following orders, huh?
Nate frowned. In reality the only thing that made his current captivity tolerable was how it fared in comparison with the bastards who got their paws on him first. He was still a prisoner, and objectively, if it hadn’t been for his horrific initial expe
rience, he wouldn’t be nearly as sanguine about being kept here.
However, he was becoming less inclined to wait for Yerith’s leader to come to some decision about him.
“Why do I wait for him?” Nate asked.
Yerith took a long time to respond.
“He needs you,” she finally said.
How nice. “Why do I need him?”
She looked at him in a way that made him realize he had sacrificed a bit of mutual goodwill with that question. Nate couldn’t help it. He was stir-crazy. He needed to see the sky, smell the air.
Have a cheeseburger.
Yerith obviously had the same frustrating time with language that Nate was having. Whatever she wanted to say couldn’t be easily put in their common vocabulary. She finally repeated, “You are not safe out there.”
It wasn’t a very satisfying answer, and she knew it. She looked at his face, then she stood up and grabbed one of the volumes that still sat by the foot of Nate’s bed.
“Read this,” she said.
That day, Nate switched from the gardening textbook to the volume that Yerith had handed him. That day, he also figured how to jimmy the door latch from the inside.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE BOOK WAS local mythology, at least that’s how Nate interpreted it . . .
Thousands of years ago, a race called the ghadi ruled the world. They worshiped a demon named Ghad. Ghad gave the ghadi race the Language of the Gods, the language of creation. With it, they could write words to change the world, create or destroy, and form the earth itself to their liking. The Ghadikan nation had lived and prospered for uncounted aeons.
There were other demons, brothers to Ghad. Ghad would show them the Ghadikan and say, “Look how prosperous. Look how powerful and happy my ghadi are.”
Mankin, one of Ghad’s brothers, rebuked Ghad for his unseemly pride. Ghad laughed and said, “No race could do better than my Ghadikan.”
Mankin then wagered with Ghad that he could place his own race in the world, naked and helpless, and in twelve hundred years they would surpass the Ghadikan’s prowess.
Ghad, in his pride, allowed it to be done.
And Mankind appeared in the world.
Yerith was obviously not an experienced jailer. Either that, or she never examined his clothing very closely.
The mechanism of the door was very simple, just a hinged iron bar that fell across the front of the door. The belt from his jeans provided Nate with the means to lift it from the inside. He just needed to loop the end of the belt and dangle it out the small window in the doorway. It took a toss or two, but he could catch the end of the bar and lift it out of its cradle.
If anything—once he decided that it wasn’t time to cut and run just yet—the mechanics of closing the thing from the inside were more difficult.
However, he managed.
After one dry run, opening and closing the door, he waited for Yerith to notice something amiss. She didn’t.
After that, he timed his explorations carefully.
He left the room at “night” a few hours after her second visit. While there was some variation in the times she came during the day, she never came before Nate woke up in the “morning,” so Nate was sure of something like ten or twelve hours by himself.
After she would leave in the evening, Nate would study for long enough that he was certain that Yerith was no longer in the vicinity, then he would unhook the oil lamp and open the door.
The first few times sent his pulse racing, as if masked acolytes waited in the shadows to pounce on him. It was nerve-racking enough that he confined his first travels to the corridor in the immediate area.
The corridor was stone, with a peaked arch for a roof about fifteen feet above him. Doors like the one to his room were spaced at irregular intervals, though all had been rusted shut. Nate noticed that the face of his door looked no different. When shut, it would appear, at first glance, as frozen and immobile as the rest.
Not far down the hall from his room, Nate discovered what this place was.
Between sets of doors were low, long niches set into the walls. Nate held the oil lamp close and saw a pile of bones.
Catacombs, Nate thought, they’re hiding me in a place of the dead.
The bones weren’t human. He saw the extra joint in their limbs.
Are these the ghadi?
First the ghadi thought the new creatures brute animals. They kept them as slaves and pets, which amused Ghad. For six hundred years, they used Mankind as slaves, to bear the work that no Ghadi should do. Ghad was pleased with this; he saw it right that his creation should do no mean labor.
“See,” Ghad told Mankin, “Your race is fit for nothing but slaves to my beautiful ghadi.”
However, because the Ghadikan kept Mankind so close, Mankind learned. Mankind learned to speak, to use tools. They learned writing and science. Some were also able to learn the Language of the Gods.
One day the Ghadikan woke up to find their servants had gone. Their food was left uncooked, their crops left unharvested, their palaces left unfinished. So long had they relied on Mankind’s labor that the whole Ghadikan nation ceased to function.
Overnight, it seemed to the Ghadikan, Mankind had raised their own city far from the ghadi, halfway around the great crescent of the world from the farthest ghadi outpost.
This displeased Ghad, and Mankin said, “Why should you fret? Our wager’s half done and your wondrous Ghadikan still rules all the world—except this small bit.”
Ghad knew that Mankin taunted him. So he ordered the Ghadikan to prepare for war.
After the first few days of exploring, Nate realized that it was a good thing he was cautious in his exploration. It was a maze down here. Seemingly endless stone corridors, walls piled with bone, and iron doors—all the same.
One time he passed a door that had frozen partway open, and Nate got a look at what his little cell must have looked like, originally. This room had the same long narrow footprint, but occupying the center of the floor was a marble sarcophagus.
Great, Nate thought, I’ve been living in someone’s crypt for the past three months. Damn good thing I’m not superstitious.
Not long after that, he had to take his journal along with him so he could map out the passages to keep himself from getting lost.
On the page, lines grew from the small box representing his cell, spreading out like a spiderweb. It was clear that there were miles of these passages that twisted and turned in on themselves.
Nate began to think that the only way he’d ever find his way to the surface would be to follow Yerith there.
In the six hundred years that Mankind were slaves, the Ghadikan had grown soft. It took them many years to prepare their war against Man. While the Ghadikan prepared for war, Mankind studied, learning of the world, and of the Language of the Gods.
When Ghad sent his Ghadikan against Man, he was prideful and confident. “See,” he told Mankin, “What a glorious army. Surely nothing could stand before it.”
“Indeed,” Mankin said, “Nothing in the world can stop such a force.”
But Ghad feared, because he knew Mankin taunted him again.
True to Mankin’s word, nothing in the world stopped the mighty army of the Ghadikan. The men of the city, seeing the force upon them, turned to the College of Man who spoke the Gods’ Language.
“Deliver us from this threat,” they pleaded.
The men of the College said, “Long have we studied the Language of the Gods. We have learned much. There are words in it too terrible to be spoken.”
“Please,” said the men of the city, “speak them so we shall be delivered.”
The men of the College, seeing their plight, chose to speak those terrible words.
The Ghadikan did not know that Mankind could speak words of such power. When the great army heard them, it trembled, for those words called stones to fall from the sky. Great boulders, as large as mountains, fell and slew the whole Ghadikan army.
The fires of their destruction were so great that the smoke blocked out the sun for sixty years.
One foray, one of the farthest from his cell, brought him into a chamber that was different from any of the others he had seen so far in this labyrinth. It was nearly a half-hour’s walk in a nearly, straight line from his cell. In terms of his map, his cell was near the center of the page, while this place was over the edge of the neighboring page.
It was the terminus of one of the corridors, the first place he had come to that dead-ended rather than looping back on itself, or branching into two or more corridors.
The hall emptied into a cylindrical chamber with a peaked ceiling twice as high as the corridor itself. Stone chairs were carved into the walls, and seated on them were skeletal remains that seemed to be held in place by elaborate suits of armor. The bodies were the alien race, that Nate had now mentally named “ghadi” from the mythos he was reading.
Unlike the living ghadi Nate had seen, these Nate could picture taking part in a great army. As long dead as these ghadi were, they still bore a great fierceness that showed through their expressionless skulls and corroded armor.
Standing, central to the chamber, was an oversized sculpture of a ghadi, resting its gauntleted hands on a massive sword. One foot stood on its helmet as its bare face looked upward—
Waiting for the asteroid to hit? Looking for Ghad? Expecting rain?
At the base of the statue was a plaque. Nate looked at it, hoping for an inscription in the common language that he could try to translate. Instead he saw a rectilinear scratching that was all too familiar.
The same symbols that Nate had seen marking Scarface’s flesh, marking the sphere that had spoken, that Scarface had carved into the doomed guardsman’s chest.
For some reason he couldn’t fathom, the presence of these runes frightened Nate.
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