The Rosetta Codex

by Richard Paul Russo

  In quieter waters he watched sleek brown stennets swimming beside the canoe in pairs, their tiny black eyes watching him with curiosity. Bulbous-eyed fish rose and splashed at dusk, sending out tiny wavelets in widening circles. In the mornings he watched the sun rise and light up the water with silver and gold reflections, and in the evenings he watched the sun set, coloring the water with darker hues, tinting the silver and gold with deep orange and red.

  He visited familiar parts of Morningstar and areas he’d never seen before. One afternoon he paddled past the narrow channel where the Skyute had been attacked, and later, near the Resurrectionists’ encampment, drifted over the spot where the boat had burned and gone down that night. He looked over the side of the canoe, hoping to see some sign of the sunken wreck. He saw nothing but black murky water, and eventually he dug the paddle into the water with long, deep strokes, making sure he would be nowhere near this part of the city when darkness fell.

  At night he slept in the canoe, letting it drift on the water whenever the numbing weariness set in, ignoring the risk of collisions with other boats. One night, having drifted into the middle of one of the main canals, he was awakened by the blaring horn of a large cargo barge bearing down on him. Without panic, Cale calmly sat up, picked up the paddle, and pulled out of the barge’s path just in time, the corner of the barge clipping the tail end of the canoe, the wake bobbing him up and down for a long time afterward.

  After eight or nine or ten days he found himself paddling toward Sidonie’s dock, and the day opened up to him as if he were emerging from a coma, some trancelike state. The setting sun seemed intense, colors became more vivid, the odors of fish and cooking fires and flowers intensified, and the sounds of people and music and engines and splashing water all grew louder, sharper, and clearer.

  As he pulled in to the dock, he noticed that the Resurrectionists’ skiff was gone, hopefully returned to them. He tied up and stepped onto the wooden planks, then stood there for a time, listening to the city, to the water, breathing in the scent of the deep orange lilies spilling over the banks. The dock moved under him from the wake of a passing boat, and he knew it was time to return to land, even if it was only to prepare to leave it once again.

  He stood outside Sidonie’s door, just as he had days before, once again hesitating, once again afraid she would not be in. He knocked, and when she opened the door she did not appear surprised to see him.

  Cale walked out onto the balcony and looked out at the sun just disappearing behind the highest building miles to the west, a gleaming stone structure he remembered seeing several days earlier from much closer. Sidonie joined him on the balcony and gently put her hand on his shoulder.

  “I’ve lost something,” he said.

  “I know . . . Karimah.”

  He nodded once, then shook his head. “More than that. Something that died with her. And not just because she died.” He paused, struggling to find the words. “I’m not sure I completely understand. Because of why she died, I think.” He turned to Sidonie. “It’s gone, whatever it is.”

  She was silent for a time, studying him, then her own gaze lost its focus as if she were looking into some other place or time with sadness and utter certainty.

  Cale turned and leaned against the balcony railing, then tilted his head back to look up and toward the east at the faint stars just now becoming visible in the darkening blue and purple sky. Sidonie stood next to him, her shoulder against his, watching the stars with him.

  “Take me there,” he finally said. “There’s nothing left for me here.”

  “Maybe,” she replied, sighing deeply. “I know I’ve encouraged you to go back, but I can’t make any promises about what will be there for you. Nothing’s certain.”

  He turned to her. “I learned that a long time ago,” he told her, “but I didn’t remember.”

  In the kitchen the kettle hissed and boiled and Sidonie went inside. Cale sat in one of the chairs and looked off into the west, at the remnants of bloodred sky and the lights coming on all over the city. Sidonie returned with the cups of hot steaming kuma, handed one to him, and sat in the other chair.

  “I’m not ready,” he said. “I have no education, there are too many times when I have no idea what people are doing or what they’re talking about.” He shook his head. “I can barely read. I can’t go back to that kind of life like this. I’d be completely unprepared and overwhelmed.”

  “I understand,” Sidonie replied. “I can find the places, the people who can teach you.”

  Neither of them spoke after that. They drank their kuma and watched night fully envelop the city, watched the stars glitter against the cobalt sky, and the red-white hazy tail of a spike ship rising from the port and heading toward the station, a starlike coin in geosynch orbit high above them.

  He looked down and stared into his cup, at the sliver of reflected light on the surface of the hot kuma, and felt his hands begin to shake. A rushing sound filled his ears from within his own body and he set the cup on the floor, hands shaking even worse now. He couldn’t look at Sidonie. He couldn’t look at anything. Cale bent his head, pressed his palms against his eyes, and finally wept.

  INTERLUDE

  After four years he did not feel ready, but rather finally accepted that there was little else he could do to prepare for what lay ahead. Sidonie made arrangements for their passage to Lagrima, but it would be nearly a year before they could leave.

  He had one final task, he told her, and she could go with him if she wished, but he would go alone if not. He had to go back across the Divide, to that part of the world that had wounded them both, and retrieve something he had left behind. Your innocence? she asked with a sad smile.

  In early spring, after a week of preparations, they left Morningstar in the back compartment of a trader’s van, and headed west.

  They purchased two pack ponies and several weeks of provisions in Karadum, crossed the Divide, then headed north. He knew no other way back to Sproul’s grave, so they retraced the route he had taken through this wasteland years before.

  Eight days after the crossing, they rode into the ruins of the village by the river. Little had changed, except that the blood had long since been washed away and the corpses had become little more than bleached bones clothed in shreds of faded fabric. Cale led the way to the place on the river where he had last seen Lammia’s dead body, but there was nothing there except for a thick patch of flowering plants that was just beginning to bloom.

  In the next stretch of desert, he saw no sign of the burned tree that had induced the visions of Aliazar’s imbecile brother, but the impassioned words and conjured images of that night filled Cale’s thoughts as he and Sidonie rode across the parched and crackling earth.

  Two days farther on, the vast, dark marsh appeared before them, gloomy and cold and somehow both dead and un-dead, as if it existed in some indefinable state between the two, and had so for uncounted centuries. They kept their distance from the marsh, using it only as a landmark. Cale occasionally glanced sideways at the mist-shrouded expanse, afraid a boat with two figures several years dead would appear drifting across the black waters, stark skeletons sitting upright on rotting wood with flaps of dried skin dangling from their bones. No boat appeared.

  Sixteen days later they crested the low hillock and looked down at the ruined dwellings of the deserted hamlet. It was early afternoon, the day’s heat at its peak—warm, but nothing like it was the first time he’d come here. The empty dwellings looked as if they had not been seen by human eyes since his own. The air was quiet and still and smelled faintly of the aromatic blossoms on the nearby plants.

  “What is this place?” Sidonie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cale replied, searching the buildings for some sign of change and finding none, not even a further decay. As if the town had been in a state of suspended animation since he’d left it behind. “Something sacred,” he said.

  “Sacred to whom?”

  Cale didn
’t answer. He looked behind them and saw nothing but dry low hills and sparse brush and a few spindly trees with budding leaves. For several days now he’d sensed they were being followed, though he had never seen or heard anything to confirm it, and had said nothing to Sidonie. He realized now that was part of why he’d decided to come here first before returning to Sproul’s grave.

  “What is it, Cale?”

  “Nothing.” He turned and kneed the pony and led the way down and into the deserted village.

  They dismounted and tied up the ponies just outside the large central building. A heavy silence surrounded them, stifling somehow, the air stagnant. Inside the building, everything was unchanged—the pedestal still lying on its side; the metal bowl on the floor with the cold black and gray ashes of the fire he and Sproul had made; the rotting benches; the holes in the roof; the broken candles and shards of colored glass scattered on the floor.

  “What’s here?” Sidonie asked.

  “Nothing,” Cale replied. He moved forward, making his way toward the altar, and Sidonie followed.

  The stone slab lay unmoved beside the altar, the wood splintered and crushed beneath it, and the altar itself was still empty, emitting not even a hint of the animate azure light that had flowed from it that night all those years ago.

  Cale looked up at the high stone wall and stared at the alien glyphs, once more sensing the power in them. Or perhaps he was only sensing their utter strangeness. Sidonie stood beside him and together they studied the markings, neither speaking, until Cale felt entranced by them, as if he could almost understand their message on some deep and unconscious level.

  Solid footsteps broke him out of his trance, and he turned to see Blackburn in the doorway, aiming a weapon at them. He wore a hat again, but no jacket, and the weapon he carried appeared to be a rifle of some kind. His face held little expression. He studied the two of them carefully, periodically glancing around the building, into the corners, never shifting his gaze from Cale and Sidonie for more than a moment, taking it all in until he was apparently satisfied.

  “Don’t move or say a word,” he finally said. “I won’t hesitate to shoot, not even you, young Cale.”

  Sidonie looked at Cale but didn’t say anything. Blackburn came slowly forward, continuing to survey his surroundings as though afraid someone or something would leap out of the shadows and attack him. When he reached the altar, he looked down into the empty stone container.

  “Are we all too late, then?” he said. He looked at Cale. “It was already empty?” he asked, intently observing Cale’s face.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t find something that you’ve already stashed away somewhere?”

  Cale shook his head. “Look around all you want,” he replied.

  Blackburn nodded. “Oh, I will. I believe you, but I’ll search all the same.” He sighed heavily, and something vital seemed to go out of him. “Do you know what was in there?”

  “No. Do you?” Cale asked.

  Blackburn didn’t answer. His eyes seemed unfocused.

  “Are you alone?” Cale asked, trying to distract Blackburn, afraid of where the big man’s thoughts were going.

  Blackburn’s eyes came back into focus and he gave Cale a puzzled smile. “Of course. I’m always alone.”

  “I thought the Sarakheen might be with you. Aren’t you working for him?”

  Blackburn’s expression hardened and his eyes narrowed, and he said, “I don’t work for anyone except myself, young Cale.” He cocked his head and regarded Sidonie for a time, as though just now noticing her. “Who are you?”

  “Sidonie.”

  After looking back and forth between the two of them several times, Blackburn smiled with amusement. “Surely not lovers?”

  Cale snapped out, “Why not?”

  Blackburn was unfazed and his smile only widened. “No, I think not,” he said. “More like surrogate mother and son, I’d say.” The smile quickly faded and Blackburn said to Cale, more seriously, “You’ve been here before, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here now—you’ve come back.”

  Better to stay with the truth, Cale thought. “Yes,” he admitted.

  “But this wasn’t empty then, was it?” Blackburn asked, nodding toward the altar.

  “No.” True enough—it wasn’t empty until he’d left with Sproul. He pointed to the slab on the floor. “That was still on top of it.” Finally, he gave Blackburn one last piece of truth. “It was too heavy for me to move.”

  “Why did you come back?” Blackburn asked. “If you don’t know what was in there, why did you come all this way? Take all the risks?”

  It was the question Cale had been afraid of, but now he’d had time to prepare an answer. “It had to be something valuable,” he said. “Gemstones or precious metals, maybe some exotic drug, something. When I was on this side of the Divide before, I’d met people who were searching for some kind of incredible treasure, people who were willing to die trying to find it.” Thinking of Sproul, he added, “People who did die trying to find it.”

  Still watching him steadily, Blackburn nodded—nodded in disappointed acceptance of some wonderful thing now lost. He turned to the wall of glyphs and appeared to be reading them. “I wonder who did find it. And I wonder . . .” He didn’t finish. Still studying the glyphs, he resumed speaking in a thoughtful and puzzled tone. “I’ll tell you a strange thing, Cale. I’ve traveled for years on this side of the Divide, I’ve spent much of that time searching for this place, but I’ve never found it before. I’ve been by that dry lake out there more than once, but I’ve never seen these buildings until today.” He turned back to Cale. “What do you think? Does this place only appear on certain days? Is it only manifest when the moon and sun and planets move into some special alignment?”

  Facing Blackburn’s intense gaze, Cale did not have to pretend confusion, for he had no idea what Blackburn was talking about.

  “You really don’t know anything about that,” Blackburn finally said, shaking his head in dismissal. “I thought you were going to lead me to it. Well, you did, but to no purpose.”

  “What is this place?” Cale asked, repeating Sidonie’s question.

  Blackburn smiled again and shook his head. He gestured with the weapon. “On the floor, facedown.”

  “Are you going to kill us?” Sidonie asked.

  Blackburn laughed. “Don’t be melodramatic.” He pointed to the floor again.

  Cale and Sidonie lay down beside the altar and Blackburn bound their ankles, then bound their wrists behind their backs. He left the building, and a short while later, through the open doorway, Cale saw Blackburn return atop Morrigan, the big animal shaking its head and kicking up dust and chunks of dried mud, as strong and feisty as ever. Cale watched Blackburn dismount, remove the bags from their ponies, and begin searching through them.

  “Will he kill us?” Sidonie asked in a whisper.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Over the next hour Blackburn went through all of their bags, then undertook a thorough search of the building, finding nothing. He squatted beside Cale, the rifle resting across his knees, and sighed heavily.

  “It really was empty.”

  Cale didn’t bother to respond. Blackburn rocked slightly on his haunches, looking past him at the wall of markings once again. “Would’ve changed my life,” he said. “Might have changed all our lives.”

  That’s what Sproul believed, too, Cale thought, and he supposed that in a way it was true.

  Blackburn got to his feet, then turned and started to walk away.

  “Aren’t you going to untie us?” Cale asked.

  Blackburn stopped and turned. “Can’t do that. I don’t want you coming after me. Morrigan can outpace those pathetic pack ponies of yours, but I don’t want the trouble. You and your surrogate mother or lover or whatever she is, you’ll free yourselves eventually. Be thankful I’m leaving you the ponies.” He raised and tipped his hat to them, and the sun coming in throug
h the hole in the room gleamed brightly off the shaved head. Blackburn replaced the hat, turned, and left. Outside, he mounted Morrigan, and galloped away.

  In the cool and cloudy early morning hours three days later, after taking a circuitous route, Cale and Sidonie approached the tall, solitary stone and Sproul’s grave. The terrain was unbroken for great distances all around them, and Cale was certain they had not been followed.

  They hobbled the ponies on the other side of the stone, then set to work together to open up the grave. The clouds thickened, and a cold and damp breeze kicked up, but no rain fell. As they scraped and dug away the earth, exposing Sproul’s remains, Cale was surprised that there was only a dry, musty odor. The fleshless ribcage and skull appeared; nothing remained but the dirt-covered skeleton and clumps of hair, the bones stripped clean by whatever subterranean creatures or microorganisms dwelled in the ground.

  The alien book was tilted and wedged between the pelvic bones, while glimpses of the blue stones could be seen among the scraps of stained cloth that were all that remained of Sproul’s vest. Cale lifted the volume out of the grave and set it on the ground before Sidonie. He raised the cover and turned it over, then very carefully lifted one of the metal pages so she could see the markings etched through it.

  He went to the ponies, and from his personal rucksack he removed a bag of thick heavy leather. He returned to the grave, knelt beside it, and as he dug out the blue stones and placed them in the bag, he explained his plan to Sidonie.

  “I’m going to pack the book uncovered in among all my other supplies,” he told her. “I’m not going to try to disguise it or hide it. But I want to bring these with us, because I want the guards at the Divide crossing to think that the stones are what we’re trying to get across. I think they’ll react just as Sproul did—fixate on the stones and ignore the book.”