The Rosetta Codex

by Richard Paul Russo

  The passenger ring slowed, and eventually came to a stop far above the street, at a featureless platform that extended several hundred feet from the elevator and hid the streets below. Several hovering vehicles waited at the edge of the platform, sleek and expensive in appearance.

  The seat restraints remained in place, and Cale glanced at Sidonie. “Not for us,” she said with her amused and crooked smile. “We get off at street level. This is for the elites. Would have been us, I suppose, if we weren’t coming in unannounced and under different names.”

  Two women and a man emerged first from the inner elevator compartments and stepped out onto the platform. Bodies enclosed in elaborate coppery exoskeletons, they walked leisurely across the platform toward the waiting vehicles. They were followed by a family of two adults and several children all dressed in simple hooded brown robes; behind them trailed three self-propelled carts stacked with crates and metal tubes and elaborate yellow baskets, guided by an old man with two tufts of white hair sprouting just above his ears. Last to emerge were four masked and helmeted figures wearing what appeared to be military uniforms, dark green shock suits with insignia on their upper arms.

  As the first three slid their exoskeletoned forms into the rear compartment of a long blue and silver vehicle with blacked-out windows, the elevator resumed its descent. It dropped into a dark shaft, then emerged with a burst of light into a vast terminal swarming with people and vendor carts and jinrickshas.

  The seat restraints unlatched and retracted. Cale and Sidonie stood and retrieved their bags from the locked cubicles behind their seats—rucksack and duffel bag for Cale, two duffels for Sidonie. Everything they owned. “Hang on tight to your bags,” Sidonie warned him. “What security they’ve got down here is just about worthless.” They stood in front of their seats, and after an unintelligible digitized voice sounded, the steelglass before them rolled up into the ceiling, letting in an incredible rush of noise. They stepped out into the terminal.

  The heat washed over him, heavy and damp and enervating, and he stopped and swayed, momentarily dizzy. “Wait until midday,” Sidonie said. “You’ll see why so much of the city is climate controlled.”

  “Where to now?” Cale asked.

  “We’ll walk. It isn’t far.” She pushed her way into the crowd and Cale followed.

  Sidonie had decided not to go to the Alexandros Estates right away, to wait until daylight when people were more likely to be awake. She knew of an inn that at one time had been run by one of her cousins, and they would stay there if it still existed. If not, there was no shortage of places to stay here in the port sector.

  Cale felt overwhelmed by the unfamiliar smells and sounds and lights of the streets. Music and barked orders and the aroma of cooking foods and sputtering signs and a blaring klaxon and squawking animals and the stench of burning plastic all became mingled so that he could barely distinguish one from another. He tightly gripped his bags and tried to stay focused on Sidonie as they walked past jinku parlors and taverns and stunner arcades and day spas and neural hook-ups, soup sellers and street preachers and ratpacks and pedalcart cabbies and two barking dogboys crawling past them on all fours.

  Fifteen minutes later they discovered that the inn had changed names and ownership several times in recent years. Now it was a stunner arcade. They stood for a while and watched the jerking forms in the stunner booths through the front window, then turned away. They’d have to find some other place to stay.

  A straw hat bobbing in the mass of people across the roadway caught his eye. Something very familiar about that hat . . . not just the hat but the way it moved, something about the gait it implied.

  “What is it?” Sidonie asked.

  “Don’t know,” Cale replied. “That hat. I thought it . . .” He pushed forward through the crowd and stepped into the street, weaving his way through the vehicles and pedestrians, trying to keep the straw hat in sight. He followed it around a corner and across another street, steadily gaining on it.

  As Cale got closer, he could make out the figure beneath the hat. In one hand the man held a string sack filled with two bottles and several paper-wrapped parcels. As Cale saw the skinny bare arms and legs and the ragged shorts, memory rushed through him and he thought he knew who it was, even though the old man was by himself. Cale pressed forward, squeezed his way between two people, and put his hand on the man’s arm.

  The old man cried out and spun, holding his free hand up as if to defend himself or deflect a blow. It was the face Cale remembered.

  “Aliazar,” he said.

  Aliazar lowered his hand and looked up at him with squinting eyes. He straightened a bit and the tension in his face eased. He regarded Cale intently, then slowly nodded once.

  “Ah, young sire. I know you. From another time and another world, yes?”

  “Yes,” Cale answered.

  “You’ve grown up. A young man now. But . . . I don’t remember your name.”

  “Cale.”

  “Ah, yes. Cale. I remember now.” He leaned to the side, looking behind Cale. “And who’s this with you?”

  Cale turned, then stepped to the side, introducing Aliazar and Sidonie to each other. “We met on the other side of the Divide,” Cale explained to her.

  The old man laughed, gesturing at the crowd and the buildings around them. “A little different, this place, don’t you think? Where we first met was a little quieter.” He sighed. “A lot more peaceful.”

  “What about your brother?” Cale asked. “Is he still with you?”

  “Harlock? Of course. Until one of us dies.” He held up the string sack. “I was getting supper for us. He’s with the menagerie.”

  “Menagerie?”

  “Only a manner of speaking. My idiot brother and I signed on with a traveling festival of sorts a few years ago. We’re staying on the beach for two or three weeks, performing. Why don’t you join us for supper? There’s plenty here. And if you need a place to sleep, our tent’s big enough, easy.”

  Cale looked at Sidonie, who shrugged in reply. He turned back to Aliazar. He was drawn to the old man, even though he suspected Aliazar had drugged him that night all those years ago. Something to do with Harlock and his visions. Still, Aliazar hadn’t taken anything from him, hadn’t done anything but leave without a word in the morning.

  “Okay,” Cale said. “Thanks.”

  The beach was less crowded than the streets, but not by much. Few people were in the water, but hundreds wandered among the fires and booths and distilleries, or strolled out onto the floating docks lined with bars and restaurants and dance pavilions.

  The traveling festival was set up far back from the water, a roped-off encampment of fifty or sixty tents of various sizes and shapes, though all were made of the same green and red wave-patterned fabric. Aliazar’s tent stood on the perimeter, the smallest in sight, its open flap facing the sea. Aliazar asked Cale and Sidonie to wait, then ducked under the rope and clambered through the tent opening. He emerged a few moments later, cursing.

  “I told him to stay here,” Aliazar said. “He doesn’t realize how easy it is for him to get lost. Half the time he doesn’t even realize he is lost. The hours I spend looking for him . . .”

  They stood together and surveyed the beach, the festival grounds, the streets behind them, searching for some sign of Harlock.

  Cale saw him first. Harlock stood hunched and misshapen out near the end of the closest floating dock, staring intently at something in the sea. The dragonlights from the restaurant behind him gave his face a strange flaming glow and cast a long shadow across the water. His clothes were drab rags and his feet were bare.

  Aliazar shook his head. “He better be careful not to fall in. He can’t swim, he knows that. Hah. Neither of us can.” He turned to Cale and Sidonie. “I almost drowned once, fell off my boat into a swimming hole. Harlock stood on the shore and bawled. Didn’t have enough sense to go get someone. I was lucky enough to get hold of the boat and hang on until
someone found us.” He started across the sand toward the dock.

  Cale and Sidonie followed the old man. They hadn’t quite reached the dock when Harlock lifted his head, stepped forward, and dropped into the water. He sank quickly with no sign of struggle.

  “Harlock!” Aliazar cried.

  Without thinking, Cale shucked his bags at Sidonie’s feet, then broke into a run, taking the last few steps across the sand, up the stone ramp, and onto the floating dock. He ran along the edge of the dock, a mostly clear path ahead of him, jumping over a series of planters, a springboard, and a purging trough, hardly breaking stride.

  When he reached the end of the dock he looked down through the clear water and saw Harlock on the bottom, his body upright, feet and hands and arms drifting like thick pale kelp. The water wasn’t very deep, less than fifteen feet and illuminated by drifting underwater lamps. Cale kicked off his boots, took a long deep breath, and dove.

  The water was warm, and so clear and well-lit it seemed he was looking through hazy air. A flat orange creature with two bulbous eyes swam toward him, only veering away at the last second so that Cale felt the tickle of its tails on his ankle.

  Cale swam down at an angle to come around in front of Harlock, kicked and stroked twice more as he reached the big man, and drifted down to the bottom, looking into Harlock’s open eyes.

  Harlock’s eyes widened briefly, then softened, remaining open. Cale was certain those eyes implored him to leave, to swim back to the surface alone and leave Harlock to his new-found peace.

  For a moment Cale thought about granting Harlock’s wish, but he just couldn’t do it. He swam behind Harlock and wrapped one arm around his chest, crouched, then kicked off the sandy bottom. Harlock didn’t resist, didn’t struggle, but didn’t help. Cale pulled with his one free arm, kicking fiercely, legs whipping the water again and again, thrusting them slowly but steadily upward.

  They broke the surface and hands grabbed them, dragging them up and onto the dock. Cale crouched on his knees, coughing, and watched as two med-techs carried Harlock away from the edge, laid him out on a pad, then bent over him as they pulled out their rescue equipment. Aliazar hopped from one foot to the other, gazing down at his brother and moaning.

  A short time later Sidonie arrived, struggling with all the bags. She dropped them onto the wooden planks and sat beside Cale, putting her arm around him.

  “You all right?”

  He nodded. His thighs shook, even though he was warm, and his breath still came hard and fast. He felt incredibly tired; not all of it was physical. “I don’t know about Harlock, though.”

  “I heard one of the med-techs say he was going to be fine.”

  Cale looked at her and said, “He might live, but Harlock will never be fine.”

  Harlock slept inside the tent, snoring. Cale, Sidonie, and Aliazar sat at a table near the tent flap, drinking spiced wine from stone cups and listening to the snores and the hushed sounds of the beach at night.

  “He wanted to die, didn’t he?” Aliazar said. “He . . .” His voice trailed away. He looked out at the dark waters decorated with the shape-shifting jewelry of reflected lights.

  After a while Cale answered. “I can’t really know.”

  “I think he’s wanted to stop living for a long time.” He breathed in deeply, then released it with a quiet moan. “The visions . . . they’re hard on him, they take everything from him, but they’re all he has.”

  “He has you,” Sidonie put in.

  Aliazar looked at her. “I’m his brother, and I’m to take care of him, but I don’t know what that means anymore.” He turned to Cale. “Maybe that means you should have let him die.”

  “I couldn’t,” Cale said.

  Aliazar nodded. “And I can’t, either.”

  TWO

  Cale hardly noticed the city moving silently past the hired air sedan’s windows as they traversed Lagrima, and only a few specific images registered: a transparent fountain that floated thirty feet above the ground, two spouts of fluorescent green water arcing out and down and then flowing back into the central core of the fountain; the road’s surface liquefying and bubbling as two conversing men sank into the street, then smoothing out as they disappeared; a building shaped like an upside-down teardrop with solid walls in which windows and doors materialized and dematerialized with astounding frequency. He was conscious only of a vague impression of traveling through a technological wonderland, a city and people of a distant future that existed only in the imagination of some mad visionary like Harlock. None of it was familiar, nothing evoked even a fleeting pull or twist of emotion. Sidonie felt much the same.

  “Lagrima is in constant flux,” she said. “Buildings and neighborhoods change, they grow and shrink, new ones sprout into existence while others disappear. Even the streets and walkways sometimes change direction or level. Only the port and the sea remain relatively constant.” She sighed heavily. “It’s been more than twenty years, Cale.”

  The sedan glided into view of the main entrance to the Alexandros Estates, though it remained some distance away. Those who had business with the Family, or hoped to, waited on floating platforms before metal and glass latticed gates. Crystalline walls rose and curved above the platforms toward a massive falcon’s head that stared down at them with open beak and glowing black and red eyes.

  A panel in one of the gates became transparent, and an armored and helmeted figure stood in the opening, behind the faint shimmer of an active Metzen Field. A floating platform with two women drifted toward the open panel, and the women bowed.

  Sidonie tapped codes onto the guide screen and the sedan veered away from the entrance and dipped toward ground level. They skirted the perimeter of the Estate: the lower walls formed of featureless black stone, the upper walls a dense network of beautiful figures carved in dark red woods, shining webs of coppery cable, and waterfalls emerging from unseen sources and pouring over massive clumps of giant ferns.

  The boundary of the Estate stretched on and on, and it was hard for Cale to imagine that the Estate had once been two or three times larger. As they came around to the rear of the Estate several miles from the main entrance, the black stone gave way to stretches of rough-hewn dark wood and light brown rock broken by black metal gates, the walls thirty feet high and all giving off the pale yellow glow of Metzen Fields.

  The air sedan set down in a clearing surrounded by bronze trees, and Cale and Sidonie disembarked. The vehicle rose into the air behind them and flared away, headed back to its station.

  The heat was oppressive, without a breath or hint of a breeze. Sidonie led the way through the bronze trees, the metal leaves chiming gently when touched, across a stretch of broken ground, then along a gravel path to one of the metal gates. Stone falcon heads with open beaks flanked the gate. Sidonie approached the one on their right, leaned forward, and whispered into its beak. A few moments later the Metzen Field faded and the gate swung open.

  They entered and walked along a winding, high-walled passage that took them deeper into the Estate. Eventually they reached another gate, another set of falcon heads, and once more Sidonie whispered into an open beak. A heavy contented sigh whispered around them, Sidonie pushed the gate and went through, and Cale followed.

  They entered a courtyard overgrown with flowering stalks and shrubs and dense hedges choked with creepers awash in beautiful pale violet and white blossoms. A sweet, cool perfume hung in the air. Grasses hid the legs of three benches and a wooden table. Pieces of flagstones were visible, enough to hint at a meandering path that eventually led to a massive wooden door that glowed with its own Metzen Field. The door led into an immense building that rose in terraced fashion and extended as far as he could see to both sides.

  “We’ll wait here,” Sidonie said. “After all this time, the House won’t let us inside. Into my courtyard, yes, but no farther. It can’t be sure we’re actually still alive. Meyta will come if she’s here.”

  “Meyta?”

&
nbsp; “The Keeper of the House.”

  They sat on one of the benches, the rotting wood giving under their weight. Sidonie turned her head slowly, surveying the courtyard.

  “This was my place,” she said. “I loved it here, when it was cared for. It was my place to be alone, even from you. I only brought you here once, when you were a tiny baby.”

  Nothing was familiar. He felt strangely empty. . . numb.

  A long time passed, an hour, maybe more, the heat growing. The city noises did not penetrate here, but the courtyard had its own quiet sounds: the rustling and clicks and whirring of unseen creatures moving through the dense foliage, and the dripping of water from several different directions, the water as hidden as the creatures.

  The large wooden door slowly and haltingly opened with cracking sounds and a brief squeal. The aroma of sweet cooking spices emerged from the doorway along with two armed soldiers, weapons held at ready. The soldiers were followed by a bent old woman leaning on a cane as she stepped into the deep grasses, her head tipped to one side as she stared at Sidonie. She stopped a few feet away from the bench, but remained silent.

  “Meyta,” Sidonie said.

  The old woman closed one eye and her cheek twitched. “Is it really you?”

  Sidonie nodded, and Cale could see tears forming in her eyes. “Yes, Meyta.”

  Meyta’s lips trembled and she straightened slightly, then came forward and brushed a dark and gnarled finger lightly along Sidonie’s ruined face. When she spoke, her voice was choked and quiet. “Yes, Sidonie, it is you.” She turned to Cale. “And . . .” She halted, swallowed visibly. “And who is this?”

  “Cale,” Sidonie said.

  “I thought you might say that.” She appeared to shiver. “Let’s go inside.” She gestured dismissively at the two soldiers, then turned back to Cale. “Welcome home.”