by Jack Geurts
He gestured to the sky.
“The gods created people to work for them. They brought the people together to build cities and made priest-kings to rule over everyone. Anyway, pretty soon, Enlil, the wind god – he got fed up with all the noise they were making in these cities, so he sent a flood to destroy humankind. But Enki, his brother, the water god – he went down to earth and told a man named Ziusudra to build an ark...”
“An ark?” said Io, recognising the word. “You mean like Noah?”
“You know the Bible?”
She shrugged. “A little.”
“He’s been known by a lot of names. To the Sumerians, he was Ziusudra. To the Akkadians, he was Atrahasis or Utnapishtim. To the Hebrews, he was Noah. Whatever you want to call him, according to legend, he built this ark and survived the flood. Afterward, he went to live in Dilmun. That’s the Sumerian version of the Garden of Eden.” Jasper was getting excited, on a roll now. “Fun fact: the word ‘Eden’ was possibly derived from the Akkadian word edinnu, which itself was taken from a Sumerian word meaning ‘grassy plain’...”
“Fun fact?” Io said, with a confused frown.
“Oh, sorry...” Jasper realised she didn’t understand the expression. “That’s just like an interesting side note...”
“No, I know what it means. I think you could probably just go ahead and call it a ‘fact’, though. Do you not think?”
Now, Jasper realised she understood the expression perfectly and was making fun of him. He laughed, feeling foolish, and she laughed with him.
“I am joking,” she said. “Tell me more fun facts.”
Jasper smiled, glad to see her lightening up – even if it was at his expense.
“Well...Enki, the god who told Ziusudra to build the ark – he was said to live in the Abzu, the primordial sea beneath the underworld. His temple was called the House of the Aquifer, and we’re sitting on it right now.”
Io looked down at the roof of the temple, fascinated. “Wow.”
“And that right there...” He pointed to the temple diagonally in front of them, a little lower on the base platform. “That’s the temple of Ninhursag, the House of the Mountain. She was the mother goddess, and Enki’s wife. She was earth, he was water – their marriage was sacred, especially here, where the land met the sea.”
He shook his head, realising something. “I know it probably doesn’t seem like much to you, given how old your people are, but...”
Io hurried to correct him. “No, this is fascinating. I have always been interested in this planet and its people, as many of my own people are. I only wish I had not come in such dire circumstances, so I could have more time to learn about your culture and history. Please...continue.”
Jasper could see that she genuinely wanted to hear what he had to say. He nodded.
“Okay, so...the land around here had no stone, no metals, no wood except for palm trees, and that isn’t really much good for building. What it did have was water and earth. Mix water and earth together, you get mud. Shape that mud into a brick and let it dry in the sun, you get mudbrick. Pile those mudbricks on top of one another, you get a house. Keep going, you get a ziggurat. Before any of this...” He swept his hand over the city in an expansive gesture. “There was a small sand dune near the shore of the swamp, and the first people built a shrine on it, like a chapel. That was how it began, how the city was founded. Then the temple grew as more and more people came to worship Enki, the water god. But eventually, the power of the land, what they called the ‘kingship’, shifted north, to Uruk...”
Io shook her head, unfamiliar with the word. “Uruk?”
“This city only ever had, at most, ten thousand people living here. Uruk had somewhere between fifty and eighty thousand at its height. If Eridu was the first city, Uruk was the first big city.”
“What happened to Eridu?” she said.
“It was abandoned. From time to time, kings from other cities would come back to rebuild Enki’s temple, but it was never what it had been. What it is now. It was still held in high regard as a holy city, but without any kind of political power. And so it just kind of...faded into legend as the first city – the place civilisation was handed down by the gods. But they reckon that this, right here, Enki’s temple...” Jasper slapped the rooftop they were sitting on. “...they reckon it might have been the inspiration for the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament. And Nimrod, the tyrant who ordered the construction of the Tower – they reckon he might have been based on Enmerkar, a mythical Sumerian king, who was said to have built this very temple.”
He’d worked himself up a little bit now, excited by the chance to talk about all this – he didn’t get to very often. His friends at home were interested in other things – sports, mainly – and his parents only had eyes for dinosaurs.
After a moment, Io laughed and said, “Your file was not wrong.”
Jasper realised he’d rambled on for a bit and offered a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”
“No, it is very interesting. I promise. I just wonder how you know so much for someone so young.”
“I’m not that young.”
“You are not yet a man by the modern standards of your people.”
Jasper got a little defensive at this. “How old are you?”
“In terms you would understand, I am eighteen. A woman by your standards, if not by my own.”
Jasper scowled. “So what if I’m not technically a man?”
“Nothing. I did not say there was anything wrong with it, just that it is unusual for someone your age to be so knowledgeable.”
He wondered if she knew how condescending she sounded, then said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Io smiled, innocently. “I gave it as one.”
Jasper laughed and shook his head. The sun began to drop below the horizon.
“So you’re not technically a woman either...by Precursor standards?”
Io’s jaw tightened a little. Jasper could tell this annoyed her in the same way it did him. Finally, she shook her head. “No. I am not.”
“Then how is it you of all people gets sent here to save the world?”
“Because,” she said. “My father is the king.”
Jasper’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes.”
Her response was curt. It didn’t appear to be something that filled her with awe like it did Jasper, though it did make more sense of her diadem. Where before he might have considered it some fashion of her homeworld, he now saw that it was quite clearly a symbol of royalty.
“And he chose you to come here?” Jasper said.
“No. I volunteered.”
“Why?”
She paused again, considering her answer. “To prove that I could.”
“To your father?”
“To myself.”
Jasper thought on this, but said nothing. A moment of quiet understanding passed between them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Heart Of The Temple
They waited until the sun had gone down and night had fallen. When the people of Eridu had returned to their houses and the temple lay quiet beneath them, they moved.
Out of a dinosaur-hide satchel she had slung over her shoulder, Io took a small, metallic device and placed it a metre or so from the edge of the roof. She pressed a button on its outer casing and immediately, it bolted itself to the roof with a suppressed whump, driving thick masonry bolts into the limestone. She pulled a retractable cable out of the bolted-down box and fixed it to a clip on her belt. Jasper realised it was some kind of abseiling device.
Io peered over the edge, gesturing for him to do the same. There were guards posted around the temple, but they were all facing outward, assuming quite reasonably that any threat would come from there and not from above.
“We have to be quiet,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Hold on to me.”
Jasper’s head snapped up. “What?”
Io had turned around so her back was
facing him now. “Hold on to me.”
He glanced at Dia, who was perched nearby and watching him closely, daring him to obey. Jasper wasn’t sure who to listen to.
After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped forward – close enough that could see the individual barbs of her feathers, the grooves of her scales. He didn’t know what to do, so Io did it for him, taking his hands and pulling him in closer, wrapping his arms around her chest so he was hugging her. This had the effect of burying his face in her mane of feathers and Jasper moved his head back as they tickled his nose. Her scales were not hard and rough like he was expecting, but smooth and soft. Warm, even. More like skin than scales. Her feathers were soft also, and smelled faintly of jasmine.
He wasn’t used to being this close to a girl. If he could call her a girl.
“Okay, now hold on,” she said, then leapt off the edge of the building. Jasper clung to her back like a baby koala and stifled the urge to yell. He hugged her tightly as the cable lowered them to the ground – Io kicking off the wall at regular intervals and dropping down further each time. He worried that he was too heavy for her, but she seemed to bear the weight just fine.
Within a matter of seconds, they were on the ground. Jasper let go of Io, turning to see the guards at the base of the giant staircase leading up to the temple. They didn’t seem to have heard anything. Io unclipped the cable from her belt and left it dangling there for the return trip.
Jasper was about to ask if they were just going to leave Dia up above when the bird floated down in a tight spiral to land right in front of them. It touched down a little awkwardly, running a short way with its wings outstretched as if it wasn’t quite sure how to stop.
The front of the temple was a row of immense columns holding up the ceiling. Each one was fixed with flaming torches on either side to light the entryways. Through one of these, the intruders crept inside, unnoticed by the bored and weary guards.
The interior was vast – a yawning darkness countered only by a dim fire at the foot of a statue. The fire burned in a deep stone dish, not large enough to light the cavernous space by any means, but only to illuminate the statue. As they got closer, Jasper saw that the statue was one of a man, with a crown of six horns atop his head. He had a long, square beard and was cloaked in what looked to be fish scales.
It took Jasper a moment to realise that this was the Sumerian water god, Enki, carved out of stone and brought here from some distant land.
Jasper wondered if the fire had simply been left to peter out, or if it was tended to during the night by the priests. He didn’t see any around, but imagined them watching from the shadows, from behind the tall pillars where the light of the flame did not touch. He could just make out the walls, the ceiling. The smooth and well-swept floor around the statue was just visible, but the fire basin had been designed so that only the statue was lit. A glowing god in the darkness.
Jasper looked down and noticed Dia walking alongside its master. The creature had an awkward gait, using its wings like ungainly arms, holding them up to try and balance itself. It looked almost like a cross-country skier making its way forward with poles – more akin to waddling than walking. He wondered why it didn’t just take flight – surely, that would be more natural to it. It would certainly look more natural.
But now that he was thinking about it, Jasper wasn’t even sure it could fly – he had only seen it walk and glide, and struggle to do even that. Nature had apparently given it the means to use both legs and wings, but not the ability to do either very well.
As they approached the statue, Io held her gloved hand out, sweeping it back and forth. She studied the radar display on her wrist-mounted computer. It showed a kind of x-ray of the temple and the layers of earth beneath it.
She stopped halfway to the statue and, as if by itself, a holographic image was projected up from the computer. It showed a cross-section of the temple, the glowing red dot beneath it. In between them and the red dot was layer upon layer of rubble – the ruins of former temples that had been levelled and built upon. The red dot was beneath the very lowest layer.
She studied the layout and said, “It is right beneath the statue.”
“How do we get there?” said Jasper. “There’s thousands of years of rubble in the way.”
Io simply smiled and aimed her open palm at the foot of the statue. Once again, it began glowing blue, and time began to rewind...
The raising of the statue played out in reverse – slaves lowered the figure of the water god under priestly supervision and took it away at hyper-speed. Then, the floor around where the statue stood began to crumble away, forming a pit. Deeper and deeper it went, falling away into blackness.
But all around him, Jasper noticed, the temple stayed the same. Unlike before, when the entire world seemed to go back in time, now the reversion appeared concentrated to a specific location. Namely, the floor around the statue of Enki.
Not only that – the pit was visible on Io’s holographic cross-section of the temple, burrowing ever deeper, until it reached the red dot. When this happened, time stopped ticking backwards and the holographic image disappeared. Io’s glove was still glowing blue, but now apparently just for the purpose of lighting their way. Without the fire basin, the temple had been plunged into total darkness.
For some reason, Jasper looked at Dia for an explanation, but the Archaeopteryx only glared at him.
Io stepped toward the mouth of the pit and held her glowing hand over the edge as she looked down. Jasper followed, seeing nothing but shadow. The eerie blue light of her glove extended only so far, and then the darkness resumed. She didn’t bother explaining it to him, but simply crouched down to lay another abseiling device close to the edge. She pressed the button and the box bolted itself to the floor.
As she took out the cable and clipped it to her belt, Jasper couldn’t help but ask, “How the hell are you doing this?”
She stopped, stared at him. “Doing what?”
He gestured to the pit – “this” – then to the temple all around – “that”.
“You mean the Time Shift?” she said.
Jasper just stared, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yeah.”
Io smiled, shook her head. “Sorry, I forget that this is all strange to you. The technology is something my people developed to study the past.”
“To study our past?”
She nodded. “And our own. But purely as a research tool. Never intended to be permanent. That is why we had to wait until night. We cannot be seen because when we are done here, I will take us back to the present day. Any mark we leave in this time will undoubtedly have some ripple effect in the future.”
“So just a “look, but don’t touch” kinda thing?”
“Very much so.”
Jasper considered something. “Could it be used permanently?”
Io frowned. “I suppose so, but that is not its purpose. We only use it to travel temporarily into the past, to locate what has been buried – to study. To remain in the past would have great consequences for your present time.”
“You mean like the butterfly effect?”
“The what?”
“Never mind,” Jasper said, forgetting that there were certain human expressions she didn’t understand. “But you can concentrate it to a specific area? It doesn’t have to affect the whole universe?”
“Indeed. To recreate this city, the Reversion was confined to your planet. Now, I have narrowed it significantly to the area just above the first Marker.”
“Is that how Janus brought the dinosaur back to life? Concentrating his time rewind-y thing on the fossil?”
She nodded. “Precisely.”
“Could it...be used on people?”
Io knew what he was getting at. She shook her head, sympathetic but resolute. “We do not use it to bring people back from the dead, Jasper.”
“Why not? Janus used it that way. Why can’t you?”
“Janus broke many
of our laws by coming here.”
“What about those guards outside? What about all the people in this city? You didn’t seem to have any problem bringing them back to life.”
“That is temporary. When our mission here is done, they will once again return to the earth.”
Jasper’s frustration gave way to sadness, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “What harm could it possibly do to bring them back?”
Io glanced at her birdlike companion, who seemed to be softening toward this stranger, looking from him to her with a mixture of confusion and sympathy. It seemed surprised that Jasper had feelings, that he wasn’t some treacherous alien intending to kill them both when their backs were turned.
Io considered her answer very carefully. This wasn’t just theory any more – this was someone’s life she was talking about. An orphan who wanted nothing more than his parents back.
“We learned long ago not to meddle with time,” she said. “It is more destructive than any force you or I can possibly imagine. By correcting the mistakes of the past, we do not learn from them, and if we are always able to go back and alter what we have done, we become unaccountable for our actions. This is why we do not use the technology to make permanent changes, only to observe. I know it seems cruel, but we cannot make exceptions to this rule.”
Jasper said nothing, wouldn’t meet her eye.
She went on, “Even now, it is only used by a few select individuals who can be trusted with it.”
“And Janus,” the boy added.
Io tried to stay calm, but felt her temper rising. “Yes, well...he stole it from one of those people. He is a wanted man where I am from, and one day he will be forced to answer for the things he has done. Believe me when I say I want that just as much as you do.”
Jasper’s eyes flashed with defiance. “No, you don’t.”
“No, I do,” she said, her feathers bristling now. “You see, the person Janus stole this technology from was my brother, Callisto. In doing so, he killed him. I begged my father to use the Time Shift to bring him back, but he would not. His own son. And like you must think me cruel and heartless, I thought that of him a hundredfold. It took me years to understand why, but now I finally do. Perhaps in time, you will also. Despite how much it hurts now.”