Title: Grammatology
By:
aescCharacters: John/Rodney (implied), other
Ratings/Warnings: not much. PGish
Disclaimers: So not mine.
Summary: Lost words, lost time, lost city.
Notes: Though the idea for this came some time ago, I've spent a lot of my time lately reading things like "We're pretty sure Author X knew these other authors, but we can't tell for sure because the texts don't survive or there are no manuscripts we can definitely say Author X had in his possession," and this is kind of... Well, yes. Part wish-fulfillment :>
Many thanks, as ever, to
sheafrotherdon for audiencing & encouragement.
(NB: "Grammatology" here is the study of writing systems.)
GRAMMATOLOGY
A girl, dark-haired, curious, sees it for the first time in the small part of the Tesauritzu, the great museum, that is open to the public.
Inscribed fragment, metal/alloy (unknown)
Date: 200 AO-100 PI (?)
Provenance: Ezciu Highlands
Sailless she sailed on seas of stars,
without rigging plied the deep way to Tsera
They choose her because she, Adamne Sor, had once studied things that are lost. Fragments, words here and there, salvaged from metal and synthetic artifacts, a few lines of an inscription found on a scrap of something like steel at the edge of the ocean, a few more lines from another piece dug up by builders clearing land. Stone, once, or something like it, from an excavation of what they thought had once been a system of piers, but not enough, though, survives to constitute any meaningful study, so much lost during the Oriu iarasz, and in the Search.
Now the Recorders work mostly on preserving the memories of the Tserans who live now, or those who still remain alive in memory. No use chasing ghosts, but a few of them, like Celim, do. Adamne did once, but no longer except in odd moments when she has to open the old files in her data book and look at the strange letters-or when, as now, other forces compel her.
"Audan asked for you specifically," Celim tells her as he escorts her to the circles, when she asks for the fifth time why, "and you've worked with this language before."
It is, Adamne reflects, the first time anyone has considered her hobby useful, and she tries to ask Celim why Audan thinks she's needed, and why now, and where is Audan anyway?
Celim hears none of it. He nods to the day's guard, who bows and keys in the command for the second circle, the great one. Eight sigils light, and Adamne blinks.
"Not Lahantja," she says, but she knows it is. All the scholars know the sequence.
Celim only nods. The sigils glow and lock, and the Water roars to bright, glowing life and Adamne can see, dimly, her reflection in its surface. She steels herself; she doesn't like walking through the circles, and still less walking the road to Lahantja, where all the Recorders must travel at least once in their lives, to see the beginning and the end.
"Audan is there already, with guards," Celim says. He doesn't look at her; the Water traps all his attention, bathing his face in pale radiance. He's one of those who longs for Lahantja, though as Lord Archivist he is forbidden to leave Tsera. For all her love of lost things, Adamne can't understand that desire, his need to touch the face of a long-dead world.
It is a ritual gesture, to kneel and touch a few grains of soil to the lips, an honor paid to Lahantja though few know why.
"You must go; may you find water again." Celim bows to her and touches her forehead to his, hands stiffly formal at his sides. He isn't a demonstrative man; the ritual greeting and leavetaking given to those departing for Lahantja is the only time Adamne sees him touch anyone where anyone else can see.
Adamne picks up her satchel and steps forward, steeling herself. At the border of air and water she pauses and turns, hearing the thick, heavy life of the circle behind her shoulder; Celim still stands there, tall, dark hair greying and thin but still unruly, hands folded now behind his back. He had been her preceptor when she'd been admitted here, had sent her off on her first and only journey to Lahantja. She had come back crying, and Celim had embraced her and listened to her nonsensical, desperate whispers, oh it's dead, Celim, why? and taken her back to her room and put her to bed, a fond hand on her cheek, a kiss on her temple. The memory still warms her at the cold edge of space; she offers Celim a hesitant smile as thanks for that even now, and everything else he has done for her.
Celim only nods to her, unbends his formality to gesture for her to keep going. She half-bows, for respect, and turns her face to infinity.
On the dead world they left a circle,
to Lahantja, the desolate tomb, a way back.
The dead world has two names, though neither one is true. Lahantja is what the scholars call it; Adamne's parents, like everyone else who isn't a scholar, call it Zeru Incaana, The Unknown World, connected to Tsera only by a tradition whose source is as long-vanished as those who built the circles. Mostly, Adamne thinks of it as the planet, when she thinks of it at all. She tries not to think of it, too much a reminder of loss for her heart and head to understand.
The Water shushes thickly behind her, and although she has not come here for fifteen years, the gesture comes automatically to Adamne: she kneels, aware of the circle shutting down behind her, two fingers brushing the soil then pressed to her lips. The grains are rough, strangely bitter when she licks her fingertips, and they grit under her teeth. She grimaces and stands, adjusting dark hair that the wind has already begun to pull from its knot.
Audan, in her blue robes, is a bright drop of water against the sere, scarred sweep of the planet. Her hands are buried in the folds, gripping them, as Audan does when she is nervous, her data book hanging by her side. Guards in their severe black uniforms circle her, but their eyes are on the strange cylinder-shaped ship lying half-buried in the dirt. A long trench mars the ground behind it, stretching nearly a half stade close to the edge of the Rift and the crater.
"May water be yours this day," Audan says when Adamne steps into the protective encircling of the guards.
"Do you know what it is?" she asks.
"The metal fragment in the Tesauritzu," Audan bends to consult her data book. "The one with the inscription on it that you studied; there's writing on this," a quick gesture to the ship, "Your writing, Adamne."
The wind catches Audan's red hair and whips it about her face, strangely fiery for a woman so calm and professional. Something bright and unfamiliar tinges Audan's voice; Adamne realizes it's excitement and her stomach twists unpleasantly. Her hobby as her friends call it, the few inscriptions she's so carefully studied, thinking they were the trace of some ancient Tseran culture, one so time-lost only the ghost tracks of its people remained... People from before her own, who lived on the planet before the Oriu iarasz and the Search.
Not here, she thinks. I don't want to bring it here. She hates the Ancestors, suddenly, the great, ancient ghosts that hover over all her work, the mis-remembered goal of their endless search, to find what was forgotten.
"Your language," Audan is saying, her austere face alight with a discovery Adamne dislikes, "it could be what remains of Lahanthi--the tongue of the Ancestors, Adamne." Boldly, she strides outside the circle of the guards; they move automatically to flank her, but Audan ignores them as she ignores everything when focused. "There is writing on the hull--it looks similar to yours, but only you can say for sure."
Reluctantly, Adamne pulls her data book from her satchel, though she doesn't need it to know that the markings on this strange craft will resemble those that have circled her head for fifteen years. She steps closer, the wind that's been pushing against her veil fading in the shelter of the ship. The surface is warm under her fingers, smooth, a dull gold that gives back no reflection, only her shadow, the etchings its only roughness.
"Do you know what it says?" Audan hovers over her shoulder.
"Let me transcribe it first," Adamne snaps. She struggles to manage paper and pen in the wind; Audan moves a little, sheltering Adamne in the tall curve of her body. Adamne's hand shakes a little as she copies down the symbols, as she presses the keys of her data book to pull up the files of her small scraps of research.
She knows little. The writing system is an alphabet, not a syllabary, though she can only guess (distantly) at probable sound values, their equivalents in Tseran Standard, though she can find only the scantest basis for such a relationship. But Lahanthi... Nothing of that language survives, little more than a name to which legends are attached.
Like the city that had held the space of that crater, too great and miraculous a thing to be believed. What had become of it? ask the skeptics -- no city that size could vanish, or be overgrown. Yet something terrible had happened here, something the planet still carries in its bones; even standing so close to Audan, Adamne shivers with desolation.
In a moment she has a rough translation for the simple line of text, though she can pry little meaning from the word. The name of the ship? Its owner? A blessing? A curse? It might be a tomb; the cylindrical shape is like those of mysterious devices she's seen in the Tesauritzu, coffins or sarcophagi with glass plates through which to see the faces of the dead. This is much larger, meant for a general or a leader with its secrets and riches buried under the earth, maybe, exposed only through the workings of wind and time.
But the trench... she looks back at it, unable to miss seeing the crater this time, a great circular absence. The galaxy belonging to Lahantja is as much a mystery as this planet is. A burial in space? Likely; monsters are said to live in Peyagos, twenty-foot tall pale creatures with white hair and fangs, who sweat blood and flee the sunlight and their scream can steal the souls of men. She can credit a people giving their dead to the darkness, to the great abyss.
Hesitantly, she picks her way over the rough dirt to the aft of the ship-tomb. Audan follows her, almost subservient, her demands kept hovering on her tongue for once. The metal under Adamne's hand is warm, but not from the sun--she can't explain it, but this heat seems to come from within, as though the ship is a living thing, pulsing with blood instead of its long-vanished power source. She dismisses the thought immediately.
And, the moment she does, the aft of the ship--a door, she thinks wildly, a hatchway, the gate of a tomb--lowers, slowly, painfully, a grinding sound. Hesitant, she walks into shadows and a confusion of wires, all leading to a strange device on the floor by the hatch. Despite the warmth she sensed it's cool inside, dark, but still the impression of life remains, of a presence watching her with knowing eyes. Adamne swallows back her fear and tightens her hold on her data pad, is ironically grateful for the guards and Audan behind her. The compartment she's standing in lights up, and the strange device powers down, a sudden absence of white noise.
Her relief lasts long enough to realize why she has felt eyes on her, a presence.
There are two men there--phantoms, she thinks, spirits, but when they move their booted feet are loud on the deck plating and the click of the weapon one aims at her chills her blood with its threat.
Two of them, in clothes she's never seen before, short jackets, black and blue, old-fashioned she tells herself, wanting to laugh (one of them is holding a weapon pointed at her), and both wearing suspicion and determination, something like a bone-deep exhaustion that Adamne recognizes despite her fear.
"Recorder?" One of the guards; all four of them crowd the rear of the ship, their shadows stretching toward the bow.
"Don't do anything," Adamne breathes. She fixes her gaze on the one with the weapon, dark hair touched faintly with grey, fierce green eyes that are alien to her though the face looking back at her is human. The hand with the weapon--like the energy guns the guards use, dull black metal--remains steady.
"I am Recorder Adamne-Sor," she says, half-bowing but not taking her eyes from his, "may you find water this day."
The man stares at her, ferocity fading briefly, and she realizes he doesn't understand her.
Never again the water, though they sought it;
adrift, the city, through the wheel of centuries
"The Ancestors," Audan says again, pacing Celim's office. Her robes whisk behind her and snap when she turns. "Who else can it be but them?"
Audan's argument is from deep apocrypha, half-recalled stories written down generations ago and still recalled today in fairy tales. "I hadn't expected you to be so romantic," Celim says to this, and Audan shrugs. "Is there any other explanation for it? They were in a ship--a ship whose materials and writings match those belonging to Adamne's fragment."
"There are plenty," Adamne says. There are, but she's shaken (still) and can't think of anything. To avoid Audan's eyes, she turns to the great window and stares down into the room below, the two men standing in the center of it.
Celim's office overlooks one of the great holdings, a room full of glass cases of artifacts and shelves crammed with books and tablets, old machines many have lost knowledge of how to operate and even their purpose. Every now and then, the devices will light for one of the Recorders; when it lights for the occasional visitor or tourist, that person finds (as Adamne did) his or her life changed, and surrounded anew by ancient memories.
The two men are below, and the devices light for them, flickers of iridescence in the dust and earthiness of ordinary things. They're talking, clearly audible through the recording devices that dot the entirety of the Tesauritzu, but in words none of them can understand. Arguing, if their body language translates, the dark-haired one trying to say something but being cut off every few syllables by an impatient gesture from his companion.
"It was once said the Ancestors alone could make such devices work," Audan says.
"A lot of things were once said," Adamne snaps.
"Go find the fragments." Celim stands on Adamne's other side, no escape for her now, between Audan's blind obstinance and Celim's authority. "We won't learn anything unless we find some way to communicate with them; the fragments may help us begin that."
The order is for her; reluctantly, Adamne takes the great ring of keys from Celim and walks down to the repositories, the weight of dust suddenly insupportable.
With the Osgyr, the Iaf, she came, the beautiful one,
to war. Her bones, now, Tsera's ornament.
Rodney McKay is the one in blue, the one whose hands mark the air like birds and whose impatience Adamne thinks can translate into any language. John Sheppard is the other, still and quiet where Rodney is all movement, with an authority in every gesture that curbs the storm of Rodney's anxious enthusiasm. His expression eludes interpretation, but she can read the sadness and shock in his face, though Rodney's voice and constant motion speak enough for both of them.
They tell her their names after she re-introduces herself and shows them the fragments, the four small, precious pieces that have been collected over the course of years. Rodney touches the piece of inscribed metal, the one Adamne still remembers seeing as a little girl, with a reverence and such plain confusion that makes her look away, for respect.
He has something like a data book with him, a thin black tablet with lights and keys, hooked up to Adamne's own data book--persuaded from her with much impatient gesturing, while John looked on with a slight smile--and he is doing.... something, making soft noises that sound of satisfaction and, occasionally, puzzlement. At last he removes the connection, presses a few more keys, and turns the screen of his book to her.
A translation program, she realizes, her heart skipping, and the sudden ability to communicate surprises her so much she almost doesn't see the screen. When she focuses, she sees that the word in his language is on the left, hers on the right.
Atlantis. Lahantja.
"You are from?" she asks awkwardly, the words alien on her tongue. She points to Atlantis to be sure.
They both nod.
She manages to sit before her knees give way, torn between irritation that Audan is possibly right and something too deep, too overwhelming to be called surprise. It reaches past that, into places between her bones, the place that lights up when those few devices do. No one lives on Lahantja, or has since the Recorders started keeping time in the years following the end of the Search.
What the Search was, or from what place it had led, they have forgotten. The first Recorders do not mention it beyond the tersest words: a great enemy in the stars, direst need, a loss too great for memory to encompass, and so the Recorders never tried. They speak of a wandering, five hundred years of the homeless city, before coming to Tsera to end the Ori occupation, and then only in poetry. The only clear token they left behind, the eight-sigil address to Lahantja, no reason for it other than honor must be given.
John is looking at the fragment of pseudo-stone, touching it. He says something to Rodney, who bends over it, scowling, and begins to enter the text into his tablet. A moment later he shows the screen to her again, and Adamne struggles to focus on it.
Year? Iarja.
She tells them--or, enters it carefully into Rodney's data book--and the two of them go pale, leaning close to each other as though for support. Rodney's mouth slants into unhappiness, and John looks away, jaw tightening against what Adamne knows to be despair. When Rodney begins to enter text again, his hands shake.
We don't belong in this time. Tijem nur gelangtja ver.
A widow she was, deprived of sons,
a city homeless, whose homes were many
Caritza is clever with the data books, persuading them into things Adamne scarcely thinks possible. She writes a program to allow the book to translate the conversations the recording machines pick up, so long as Adamne plugs the book in to one of the receivers.
Now she sits in her room, reading the book and listening to John and Rodney talk. She supposes she should feel guilty at having Celim put them in a room with the devices, and every now and then guilt does dig sharply at her heart; their tones are low, soft, those of people with heads bent close, where words are as much breath as meaning. If she closes her eyes, their voices wash over her, their strange cadences, pauses she imagines as belonging to kisses or brief caresses.
--lost, John. The Wraith, the planet-it-was-destroyed. Crater, you saw it don't tell me you didn't.
I did see. Escaped, good that they did. Got back to Earth-Terra-Tsera
A hundred years five times over passed, yes, they did. Eventually. Died out there, all of them: CarsonElizabethTeylaRononLorne -- all that's left, John --
-- lived, Rodney. They survived, they persisted --
-- looking. Terra Atlantica-Atlantis-Lahantja ocean-became-vapor-nothing. Wraith brought that about. Went back to Earth after a hundred years five times over passed.
-- five and a thousand years in the future, you said to me. How is it that this-came-upon-us?
Hyperdrive [?] failed or something-it-happened-to-us -- event horizon. Refugees! Elizabeth charged us to preserve them. What -- what happened to them?
How do we return, Rodney?
-- know. Not-know-I that I can save us, John.
-- you will.
A pause for breath, for the two of them, Adamne imagines, to move closer. To imagine a world of pure water, before loss, and a brilliant city like a jewel in the heart of it and these two men belonging to her. And then a doom hovering in the darkness beyond, five thousand years that would bring, eventually, the smallest parts of her to a Tseran shore, to a museum, to a small girl's curious and, later, a woman's, uncomprehending eyes.
Return, you people, and honor her:
her fair home, the Water, may you find it.