The Rosetta Codex

by Richard Paul Russo

  “But if the stones killed Sproul, aren’t you risking the same thing?”

  Cale shook his head. “I’m going to keep them in this bag and let it drag a ways behind us. That should be safe enough. I was with Sproul for several days, usually close to him, and I never got sick.”

  “And when we get to the Divide?”

  “I’ll have to keep them in the rucksack for a short time, but I’m willing to take that risk. The guards will focus on the stones, I think. My guess is they’ll take some of them as ‘payment.’ And I hope they won’t even notice the book.”

  When the bag was three-quarters full, he stood, leaving the rest of the stones with Sproul’s remains, then he and Sidonie refilled the grave. He packed the book in his rucksack, tied a long cord to the bag of stones, tossed the bag to the ground, then tied the other end of the cord to the back of his pony’s packsaddle.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to be as far from here as possible before we make camp for the night.”

  Sidonie nodded her agreement. They unhobbled the ponies, mounted, and rode away from the grave as the first drops of rain fell.

  Several days later, just after midday, they arrived once again at the burned village. Despite the painful images and memories the place conjured up for Cale, they decided to spend the night near the river in the only hut that was reasonably intact. They were both exhausted from the days of travel and welcomed the chance to rest, grateful for shelter from the damp night air.

  After helping Sidonie clean the hut, Cale went out to wander about the ruins. He walked among the charred remains of the huts and other buildings that had once comprised this village, deliberately studying the skulls of the dead and reminding himself that these skeletons of bleached and scorched bones had once been living men and women. The evidence was there even amid all the devastation: a smoke-stained necklace of polished stones; a charred boot; a gold ring around the stripped finger bone of a detached hand.

  Eventually he made his way upstream to where he’d made camp that night. Someone else had made use of the site since then, for there were far more half-burned branches, dead coals, and ash in the makeshift fire pit than he had produced that one night. He poked through the ashes with a stick; they were clumped with moisture, and patches of black moss grew beneath them.

  He followed the river back downstream until he reached the flat patch of grass that had once held Lammia’s dead body. Nothing at all remained; perhaps if he were to walk out into the water and wade downstream and search among the rocks and the riverbed, he would find her bones. Cale knelt on the grass and watched the water rushing past, rippling over stones and dead branches. He had known her for only a few hours, but the ache of her loss still resided within him, adding itself to the much larger ache of Karimah, so that both were linked in death.

  The scent of the flowers blooming around the edges of the grass was strong and comforting. Cale lay on his back, breathing deeply, and watched the high scattered clouds drift by above him.

  The sun was setting when he returned to the hut, and Sidonie was seated at a table with the alien book before her. Two thin wooden sticks protruded from it, like page markers. The coppery covers reflected a swimming, burnished light from the oil lamp she’d found somewhere.

  “You never looked closely at this, did you? Looked through it, page by page?”

  “No. I didn’t have it long. I didn’t think there was any point. I couldn’t read back then, but even if I could have, I couldn’t have read that.” He pointed at the book and sat across from her.

  Sidonie nodded once and said, “Yeah, it’s Jaaprana writing. But you could have read it. Or a part of it. You didn’t realize it, but it’s not all in the Jaaprana’s language.” She opened the book, carefully turning the metal leaves a few at a time until it lay open where it was marked by the first stick. There, the page was no longer like a stencil; etched onto the metal leaf in black were rows of figures, ideographs he couldn’t read but which he’d seen in some of the anchorite’s books and on signs in several districts around Morningstar.

  “I think that’s Chinese,” she said. “We can find out for sure later.” She turned another batch of pages until she came to the second marker, where the figures changed once again—this time to the Roman alphabet. “Reform English, more or less,” she said.

  Cale sat stunned, confused about what to think, with no idea where to begin, no idea what it might mean. “Have you read it?” he asked.

  “No, only the first page. I wanted to wait for you.” She got up and knelt by the camp stove, where a pot of kuma steamed and brewed with a gentle hiss. “I thought we should read it together.”

  Cale nodded absently, staring at the words on the page upside down before him. He was both excited and afraid. Excited about the possibilities, and afraid that the text would turn out to be mundane and pointless, making this entire excursion a waste of time.

  Sidonie brought the pot and cups to the table. Cale slid his chair around so that they sat side by side, and they began to read. . . .

  I was already a revenant when you arrived. A ghost from your future and our past.

  Also from your past and our future.

  I have been waiting for years, for decades, and now for centuries.

  Here.

  Now.

  The initial waiting ended decades ago with your arrival on this world. I watched you build a city, the one you call Morningstar, watched you build it atop the rubble which in turn lay atop the ruins of our own ghost cities, which in our deaths we had deliberately sunk into the earth where they lay in hiding, waiting as I waited. And where they still lie, hiding and waiting.

  Waiting for you, and for us. For our return.

  Waiting for you.

  Who are we? You name us the Jaaprana, from the city where some of your people first discovered remnants of our lives. What we name ourselves cannot be translated into any of your languages without confusion and misunderstanding, so I refer to us as the Jaaprana even though that is not who we are.

  We are a people in a way similar to the way in which you are a people.

  I lived among you, invisible, though sensed by a few who had no notion of who or what I was. I learned your ways, your languages, until I could create this manuscript, which holds the keys to our return.

  Not my return, however, for I sacrificed my life to become the revenant for this world, the keeper and the maker of this manuscript.

  There followed many pages providing a broad overview of the history of the Jaaprana, from their earliest appearance in cities on their home world, to their first ventures into space, and to their subsequent colonization over many decades of fourteen other worlds. References were made to conflicts, to wars, to catastrophes natural and self-inflicted, to great technological advancements and social achievements, to scientific successes and failures.

  Not so different from human history, Cale thought. This entire section had the feel of an obligatory recounting of the Jaaprana’s story as a civilization, and perhaps that was just what it was. But he and Sidonie kept on, and soon the tone changed again, intriguing him once more. . . .

  Then came the time of our death.

  But not our end.

  We were dying as a people. No new generations arose, and no understanding or solution despite the greatest of efforts.

  Extinction loomed.

  Re-genesis became the only option.

  Willing our deaths, willing the destruction of our cities, willing our entombment in the Graveyard of Saints.

  Centuries will be needed for our re-genesis, and now you are needed to initiate the final steps, to revive the Emissary and release us.

  You are the one who can bring us back, the one who can unite your past and ours, your future and ours.

  We have much to offer you, as you have much to offer us. The wisdom of lives that can only come from those who have lived them.

  We learned a great lesson from our coming deaths. A value to life that cannot be understood
unless lost and regained.

  A lesson your people have not yet learned.

  There is a gate to where we lie entombed, to the Graveyard of Saints. A gate to a place out of time, a gate to a place that is not a place. You must take this manuscript through that gate and to the shrine in the Graveyard.

  The gate will be found near a star of solitude, an inner world that is not a world but a portal where no other worlds exist. The star’s own special satellite.

  This volume contains within it the map to the star of solitude, and the gate. When it is opened to the end page, you will find a tab laid into the binding. Press the tab and a chart will manifest to guide you. This is your destination.

  The gate lies near the star, fixed in its position. You enter the gate by a straight path, the path through the gate and toward the star, the two aligned before you. The gate will take you not to the star, but to the place that is not a place, which is named Graveyard of Saints.

  Our mausoleum and our home.

  In the Graveyard of Saints you will find a shrine: the processor of this manuscript.

  Lay this manuscript in its place atop the shrine, and revive the Emissary. When the process has begun, take it back and keep it with you. For if the Emissary does not awaken or does not function, you must find the next and you must have the manuscript with you to begin again.

  When the Emissary awakens, you will pass on this manuscript when requested.

  This will be your final task, for it shall be the Emissary who will set in motion our re-genesis.

  And our return.

  Those were the final words. Cale looked up at Sidonie.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It would be incredible if it’s true.” She breathed in deeply, then slowly let it out. “What I can understand of it. I don’t know, Cale, it sounds true to me. It feels true.”

  Cale nodded in agreement. There was something about the words, a feeling of power to them that was much like the power he’d felt in the village when he’d first seen the alien markings on the wall behind the altar. He could not have explained what that power was, or what produced it, but he felt certain of its presence.

  “Try it,” Sidonie said. “Activate the star chart the way it says. If nothing happens . . .” She shrugged.

  Cale opened the book to the last page, a metal sheet blank and thicker than the others, then held the page straight up and looked at the binding. He saw a dull black tab at the edge of the binding, laid the final page atop the others, and slid the tab to one side.

  Panels folded out from the spine, hinged to the book and angled slightly up and toward each other. A faint whirring sounded, then crimson glowing matrices appeared in the air before them. The red lines glistened, then brightened and expanded until they filled all the shadowed reaches of the hut. The matrices faded, replaced by gold and silver stars, a night sky surrounding them, shining brightly so that it seemed that he and Sidonie had become suspended in space. Near the center, a single star appeared as a larger pulsing green light.

  “Cale?”

  “Yes?” he said quietly, regarding the shining stars, the pulsing green star at their center.

  “Are we going there?” Sidonie asked.

  Cale looked at her and nodded. “Oh yes. Someday. We’ll find a way, Sidonie. We’ll find it.” He reached toward the oil lamp and turned down the wick until the flame went out, and they sat in the darkness, surrounded by stars.

  Eleven days later, skies clear and bright and hot above them, Cale and Sidonie rode into the dusty settlement of the Northern Crossing. They sold the ponies and whatever provisions they couldn’t carry, then approached the border station on foot, the bag of blue stones now tucked into Cale’s rucksack. Several hours later, when Cale had been cleansed and tested and was dressed once again, one of the security officers handed his rucksack to him with a poorly hidden smirk. Cale knelt and glanced through his belongings; the bag of stones was definitely smaller, and the senior officer stood to the side, watching Cale with a steady gaze as though daring him to complain. But Cale had seen the corner of the strange book, and that was all that mattered. He opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it without a word. It was understood by all—the missing stones were the price for passage, and Cale felt only a twinge of guilt that the security officers might soon be paying their own far higher price.

  When Sidonie emerged from the building a few minutes later and joined him, Cale said nothing, and they set out together across the bridge.

  They lost half of the remaining stones to the security officers on the other side of the bridge, but entered Karadum with the alien book intact. As soon as they were out of sight of the station, Cale pulled the bag of stones from his rucksack and tossed it into a pile of trash on a side street behind a gambling house. They walked on.

  The next morning they bought a ride in a trader’s van not unlike the one in which they’d come to Karadum. They would be in Morningstar in a few more days, and then after that they would soon be leaving—leaving Morningstar, Conrad’s World, this star system. They were returning home, Sidonie said. Cale wasn’t so sure. But now, at last, he was willing to see if it was possibly true.

  BOOK THREE

  ONE

  Lagrima. Home?

  They began their descent in artificial twilight, then emerged from the orbital station and into the unexpected blinding glare of the sun. Cale shaded his eyes, blinking, just as the steelglass before him polarized and eased the glare. Seated beside him, Sidonie put a hand on his arm. “Sorry, I forgot to warn you about that.”

  The passenger ring continued its drop down the outer rim of the space elevator’s cargo shaft, rotating slowly, while the sun appeared to be setting in fast-motion, the sky’s colors transitioning from lighter hues to darker, from the palest turquoise blue to wide swaths of deep yellow and fiery orange. Then, as the sun disappeared and their view slowly spiraled toward the south, the sky became a dark rose that blossomed into a rich bloodred. Disoriented, feeling as if they were descending through time as well as space, Cale watched the final transitions through darkening violet and then cobalt and indigo until, as they entered complete night, stars appeared both above and below them.

  The thousands of shining points below and steadily approaching were not stars at all but the lights of Lagrima. The city lay spread out beneath them for miles in all directions, its boundaries delineated by a band of darkness blacker than shadow.

  The sea came into view, strangely lit from beneath the water near the shore, the shallows a bright aqua that darkened toward slate as the water deepened, and eventually became nearly black. Several thin appendages of the city’s eastern perimeter extended out over the surface of the water, buildings and avenues gleaming with light and movement. Tiny sparkling shapes rose and fell with gentle swells out on the deeper darker waters. Translucent cloud-like forms drifted above the sea, trailing gold streamers.

  Their rotation and descent continued, revealing a ragged, sparsely lit coastline that stretched far away from Lagrima, somehow separate and independent of the city, and which then disappeared into darkness and heavy mists. Then the main city reappeared, vaster and nearer now, brighter and more alive though they were still miles above it. Multicolored lights of flying vehicles wove chaotic patterns above the city.

  Sidonie pointed to a glistening structure of gold and crimson lights near the distant edge of the city, the lights forming the three-dimensional shape of a glowing-eyed falcon with talons outstretched as though reaching for its prey. The image was familiar to Cale in a vague and unsettling way, so that he wanted to turn away from it and yet stare harder at it at the same time.

  “Home,” she said. “The Alexandros Family Estates.” She shook her head. “It used to be more than three times that size, before you were born. The largest on this world, the largest on two worlds. It was still nearly twice that size when we left, and much nearer to the core of the city. Things change so fast here.”

  She gestured at a
vast and sparkling emerald enclave shaped like a pyramid, and an enormous tower of silver and blue lattices rising two or more miles above the city. Both were significantly larger than the Alexandros Estates, denser and higher, as well as covering far more territory, and both gave off a blazing luminescence that pulsed into the night like the beating of gigantic and primeval hearts.

  “The Saar Family Consortium, and the Titan Consortium,” Sidonie explained. “They used to be weak competitors, much smaller than what you see. Now they’re leaving you far behind, and mostly warring with each other. Before long they’ll try to completely eliminate you.”

  “That might be a good thing,” Cale said.

  “Cale,” she said, looking sternly at him. “The Consortium is your inheritance. Your heritage.”

  Cale didn’t reply, and soon they were again facing the sea. Shadowy forms looped through the water, thin white lines of waves sluiced up the long expansive slopes, never quite reaching the clusters of people and shelters scattered along the beaches. Smoke rose from dozens of outdoor fires; a scattering of black disks shot out over the water; an elongated balloon drifted above the docks.

  When they came around to face the city once more, farther down the shaft, Cale finally began to appreciate how extensive Lagrima was. Structures that were clearly several hundred stories high still seemed quite small, and he now realized that the city boundaries were sixty or seventy or more miles distant. Lagrima would completely dwarf Morningstar if they were to be set side by side.

  One final slow rotation and he could make out swimmers in the sea and diners at outdoor tables on long floating docks, distinct roadways and smaller individual buildings, and the throngs of people in the streets around the port facilities.