The First Bird: Episode 1 tfb-1

by Greig Beck

  “Beautiful,” he whispered. They were more art than language.

  Megan nudged him. “I wish you’d show me that sort of adoration.”

  “Wow. Wow.” Matt ignored her, walking slowly around each column, occasionally stopping and fingering a particular raised pattern, symbol, or image. The carvings wrapped all the way around the poles, the story being told in a sort of spiral. Matt could see that each had pole been carved over a long period of time, as the glyphs closer to the bottom were encrusted in lichen and of a slightly different style to the ones at the top — the story, or message, started at the base and worked its way upward.

  Kurt and Steinberg came up behind him. “So, not a complete loss after all.”

  Matt frowned and spoke without looking at the movie producer. “Depends on your perspective — they’re all dead. So, I think a big bloody loss, for them at least.”

  Kurt snorted. “Yeah, caused by that asshole Jorghanson, I hear.”

  “That’s enough, Kurt.” Steinberg looked at Matt with a somber expression. “Of course you’re right. We should be more respectful.” He paused for a moment, then immediately brightened, flashing his golden grin. “Tell me you can decipher them.”

  * * *

  Matt and Megan heaved the last body onto the pyre, throwing their gloves in after it. The group had made three large fires and added the bodies one at a time to ensure they were fully carbonized. In a matter of hours, the Ndege Watu would be nothing more than memories — the lost tribe now fully lost to the world.

  Matt worked with lost races and language fragments, and knew that what he and other scholars could decipher from their work, no matter how imperfect the translation, would now be the only chance this strange and primitive native group would get to tell their story — to impart their knowledge, and tell them their secrets, their loves, fears, and legends.

  What a waste. Matt remembered Carla’s words about the disease being our gift to primitive tribes for centuries. We might as well have just used a machine gun, he thought glumly.

  John was pounding a stake into the ground at the base of a tree. He then tied one of the tribe’s skulls to the stake with a nylon cord, threading it through the empty eye sockets. He moved quickly, completing the job before Moema could see him at work on his grisly task. He finished by covering it with leaves, and some soil, and then stood to pull his gloves from his hands and stretch.

  He noticed Matt watching him, and nodded toward the small mound. “The bugs will clean that down in a few days. Hopefully the larger animals won’t be able to carry it off.” He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  It was getting late, and Kurt was calling for camp to be set up around the totems, as this was the closest clearing that was dry, level, and away from the stinking ash of the burning bonfires.

  Joop stood examining one of the bladders from the Ndege huts, his face drawn into a tight frown. He lifted it when he saw Matt approach.

  “Strange. It’s definitely animal, but I cannot identify it. Might be some sort of reptile, given the long cell structure, but …” he shrugged.

  Matt grunted. “Sleep on it — maybe you’ll work it out?”

  The jungle around them was strangely quiet — either the flames or the alien noises they made scared the local fauna away. Or perhaps it was a respectful silence for the passing of such a large number of forest souls. Lying in his tent, it took Matt hours to drift off to sleep, his mind haunted by images of coughing natives and the skinless scientist who had unwittingly delivered death to them. Beside him, Megan tossed and turned and murmured in her sleep, perhaps sharing the same nightmares.

  The next morning was uncomfortable — muscles complained, mouths were dry and tasted of ash, and eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep. Breakfast was roasted local yams, and something Moema brought in from the jungle to cook. It could have been poultry, reptile, or even a type of meaty fungus. It didn’t matter. That morning, food was nothing more than fuel, and most of them chewed and swallowed like automatons.

  Matt finished eating and stood, stretching. He walked a few paces to the green corridor leading back into the camp and turned to see if Megan wanted to join him. His heart sank a little when he saw that Kurt had already taken his seat, and that the pair spoke animatedly. Jealousy burned a little and Matt turned away, walking the few dozen paces back into the open compound.

  Small ghosts of smoke lifted from the center of the funeral pyres, which were now little more than oval scars of damp ash, like sores with silvery crusty scabs on the red earth. Matt stretched again and drew in a breath. It was odd — in amongst the odors of old roasting meat and damp ash, there remained an underlying hint of flowers, still strong despite the fact that there were few open blooms in the vicinity. Those plants that did feature large purple or green trumpet-like flowers were near odorless to him. He ignored it, putting the smell down to spoiling vegetation in the huts.

  Jian and Carla passed him, already locked in conversation. Each of the team had been allocated tasks, but much of what happened with the expedition hinged on what Matt could find out from the Ndege Watu totem poles. He and Megan would pretty much spend the day seated before each of the poles, unraveling the words, sentiments, expressions, and general essence of the age-old artifacts.

  At least, that’s what he thought he and Megan would be doing.

  Matt jumped slightly as Steinberg called his name too loudly. He came out from the green corridor with Kurt and Megan in tow. Matt noticed that the big bodyguard held a small brown satchel monogrammed with calligraphic initials. PJ — Pieter Jorghanson.

  Steinberg held out his hand and Kurt handed the slim pack to his boss, who in turn passed it to Matt.

  “Here, it’s all the material we were given by Jorghanson. He, uh, departed before we could really talk to him about any of it in any detail. You might find something useful in there to speed up the translation.”

  Matt took the satchel. “Thanks.” He flipped it open, noting the mini-discs, half a dozen small string-bound books, and a slim electronic tablet that played movie content. He looked up and nodded. “Okay.”

  Steinberg shrugged. “Well, you’re part of the team now, so no secrets.” He paused, hardening his gaze. “From anyone.” He turned and sauntered off.

  Kurt saluted Matt with one finger, gave Megan a winning smile, then followed his boss. For a minute Matt expected Megan to follow, but instead she came and put her arm around his shoulders.

  “No pressure, champ?”

  He moved out from under her arm. “You know how it is — it’ll happen when it happens.” He glared at Kurt’s back for a moment. “So, you’ve joined the A-Team then?”

  She ignored him and pointed to the satchel. “What else is in there?”

  He watched her face for another moment, before deciding to shake off his petulant mood. “Let’s see.” There was no reason for him to carry on being surly — she was his girlfriend, but it wasn’t like they had even talked about getting serious. Still, he felt he was somehow competing for her, and it burned him.

  He sighed, opened the satchel again and began sorting through it, drawing forth several small leather books bound together with an elastic band. He opened the first.

  “Trip diary.” He began flicking through the pages, quickly passing over the early stages of the man’s travels. He finished the first book and shuffled it to the back, then opened the next … and then the next.

  “Okay, here we go. Jorghanson making contact with the Ndege.” He went to the next book in the small stack. “Looks like language classes, day one.” The ink drawings were of the totems, with Jorghanson’s carefully handwritten notes beside them. It was obvious the man was struggling to understand the language, and their writing was totally beyond him.

  “Hello … looks like he found his Rosetta Stone.” There were detailed drawings and a description of one of the members of the tribe, a female, pointing to the symbols and mouthing specific glyph’s meanings. There were long interpretations of the sounds
and words — ank-arg-okah, eban-kken, doo-arnoh-da — the list went on. Matt spoke the words slowly.

  “It’s like a blend of a written form of ancient Olmec, but spoken with a different tongue — as if the images are being interpreted with an accent.” He turned to Megan, who was frowning.

  “Megs, imagine if we found an English manuscript from the 1500s, and struggled through reading it aloud — it’d sound damned different to how the original author meant it to sound half a millennium ago.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not making sense.” He started to flip through the pages of the notebook again. “Come on man, give me something.”

  Then he stopped, the frustration in his knitted brows easing, and a smile spread across his face. There it was, the key Matt was looking for. Jorghanson’s drawings now had directional arrows showing how the woman would point at a symbol, image of a face or animal, and make the sounds for the glyph, and then move her hand across to the next pole — not to the next symbol on the same pole. The key was which image was interpreted next — all the poles were to be read together. “Bingo — it’s not what you read, but the order you read it in. They key is knowing how it fits together.”

  Matt couldn’t help the admiration creeping into his voice. “Simple, but complex — one image by itself is like a letter … but read all together, they become something more.”

  He grabbed Megan’s hand. “Let’s go.” They headed back to the smaller clearing, where the totem poles were. He slowed in front of the poles and walked along them, then came back to the center pole. Matt put the notebooks down and took a few steps back.

  He snorted. “You almost had it, Professor Jorghanson. I bet he thought she was just showing him the images for his own education, trying to teach him their language. In fact, she was probably breaking all the tribe’s taboos and actually reading it to him.” Matt walked along the line of poles again, then pointed to one. “Here … I think it starts here.”

  Matt laid his hand on one of the symbols, then moved to the next pole to touch another, then on to another, his lips working silently as he pulled the meaning from the ancient patterns.

  “‘The Old Place’, or ‘the First Place’ …uh, let’s go with the Old Place. Okay, ‘the Old Place where the giants live … should not be entered by …’ something here that could refer to anyone who is not blessed or clean … maybe cleansed. Anyway, it goes on to say: ‘Take not the unclean meat, lest the anger of the gods takes from you all that covers you.’” He turned to Megan. “All that covers you — could that mean your skin?”

  Wow, Megan mouthed. “Just like Carla’s bug.”

  Matt clapped his hands once. “I think this could be it, Megs.”

  “I’m getting Carla, she’ll want to hear this.” Megan took off.

  “Wait, I haven’t …” But he was too late. Sighing, he walked along the poles, reading as he went. “The Old Place … entering the Old Place, but from where? Where is this Old Place?”

  Fronds and branches were beaten aside as Megan led a panting Carla into the clearing.

  “You’ve got something?” Carla was sucking in breaths, even though she couldn’t have come more than a few hundred feet. Matt guessed her excitement and anticipation were taking her breath away more than her lack of fitness.

  “Maybe. I think so … I can read the totem poles — they mention angry gods taking your skin. They also mention an Old Place, where giants live.”

  “Promising. Are you sure?” Carla straightened as her breathing returned to normal.

  Matt shrugged. “We’ll never know if I’m right, will we? The authors, or at least the caretakers, of this language are all dead. So I’m all there is right now.”

  Carla tilted her head. “Okay, okay, professional pride aside, tell me what you’ve got. Where is this place?”

  Matt looked back at the poles and shook his head. “Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I don’t know yet. I need to read more of the totems — front and back.”

  Carla nodded and looked around, as if searching for a place to sit.

  Matt hunched his shoulders. “Might take a while.”

  Carla shrugged and sat down on a patch of thick grass. Steinberg and Karl pushed into the clearing.

  “We just heard, well done. So, what can you tell me about the bird?” Steinberg slapped him on the shoulder, then stood with his hands on his hips. Jian and Joop joined them.

  Matt looked hard at Megan. “It’s a bit premature for high-fives just yet. All I’ve managed to decipher is something that might be about the infestation … or rather, its effects. It might not be related at all. It’s going to take me a while, so I …”

  “We don’t have a while, son. The wet season is right around the corner. Believe me, you do not want to be trapped here, or trying to hack your way back through this jungle, with a million gallons of water dumping on you every minute of every hour.”

  Kurt grunted and nodded, and then turned to Matt as though he was addressing a slow child. “Ever seen the giant Amazon leech?” He raised his eyebrows.

  Jian grunted. “Haementeria ghilianii — I have; very big.”

  Kurt snorted, keeping his eyes on Matt. “I’ll say it’s very big. Very fucking big at eighteen inches … and it just loves the wet season. And let’s not forget about footrot to the ankles — makes athlete’s foot look like a small blemish. You can actually lose toes.” He turned and winked at Megan, who smiled and shook her head in a shame on you, you big lug, type of way, then turned to Matt, imploring, as if urging him to get with the program.

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, you know what? I think I have encountered a jungle leech before.” He noticed Carla smirking.

  Matt looked at the row of faces, all waiting on him. He exhaled slowly, feeling himself deflate. “Look, give me another few hours … and give me some peace and quiet, okay?” Matt went to turn back to the poles as Megan shooing the others from the clearing. He half turned.

  “Everyone.”

  Megan’s mouth fell open and she stared at him for a moment before turning on her heel and storming back through the green fronds.

  * * *

  Matt sat cross-legged and stared up at the poles. His own notes were open beside him on the soft, fleshy grasses. He believed he had drawn some of the translation from the strange symbols, leering faces, and interlocking lines and dots, but it still refused to make any logical sense.

  “I wish Professor Brenner was here,” he said to one of the moss-covered faces. “Or Megan. Why did I kick her out?” He already knew the answer. Because I’m a jealous asshole, that’s why.

  He picked up his notes and examined the sketches he’d made. He had summarized the glyph-strings into three logical — as far as he could tell — story lines. The first referred to an Old Place that was “hidden” or “behind” something, and called the “blood jungle”. Sounds inviting, he thought grimly. It was where the “teocuitl” was kept. Females or untested warriors were forbidden to enter. Only the special elders of the tribe were allowed there, to hunt.

  The second story string told of water and people with what looked like two heads, swimming. Only one head was covered in hair. A depiction of their gods, maybe? There was also the sign for washing, or cleansing. Washing away the dirty water, or cleaning themselves before entering the water?

  Matt pushed his damp hair back off his face, and exhaled through the side of his mouth. He looked at the final string of characters. It talked of the “land of giants” — represented by tiny human-like characters shown next to what were either tree trunks or the legs of huge beasts. Hmm, there were no elephants in South America … at least, not for about ten million years. He scratched his head and looked at the last few images. Flowers — that was all, just pictures of blooms.

  He put down his notes and spread them out, like a pulled apart comic book, then leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands, and let his eyes move over them. As the sun rose high in the sky, Matt continued to simply
sit and stare. Occasionally he would rearrange the sketches, or stand to pace around the poles. Then he’d make more notes, and then pace again.

  Eventually he slowed, and then stopped, freezing mid-step. To anyone watching he would have looked like a machine that had wound down. His gaze was directed at the ground, but his focus was nowhere near the clearing he was in. Matt’s gaze had turned inward as he let his imagination take the images in intuitive leaps and bounds.

  In a flash, his muscles unlocked and he darted back to the image of the men with two heads.

  “Maybe.” He started to grin and nod. “Just maybe.”

  He ran back to the huts.

  * * *

  Megan spun to face Matt as he rushed back into the small camp.

  “Maybe.” He darted past her, his enthusiasm pulling her after him, and also drawing Carla, Jian, and then the other members of their group.

  He went quickly to his small pile of gear and retrieved the drinking bladder he’d found in the Ndege hut. He peered at the stopper, and then turned it over to examine the seals before facing the group, now assembled in a half circle behind him. He held it up.

  “You know, I thought these might have been used for food or water. But the nozzle and stopper looked strange. I couldn’t work out what it was actually for until I remembered a remote tribe up in the north-eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. Their village is on a natural lagoon that flushes out every tide, and deposits shellfish into a deep gutter at its edge. The young men dive down to the bottom to collect them … they stay down for ages, and not just by holding their breath — they take another lungful of air with them.” Matt held up the bag, and put the nozzle in his mouth.

  Carla went to stop him. “Don’t do that, remember the …”

  Matt shrugged. “I’ve had measles.” He put the nozzle back in his mouth and blew — the bag inflated. He took it out, and the bag remained inflated. He nodded. “Yep, that’s what I thought — it’s not for water, it’s for air … just like the New Guineans.” He held the bag up, now ball-shaped, and shook it. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is an aqualung.”