Chapter 50
I decide to start with Khephnes. Four years ago, I devoured the newspaper articles about King Tut’s tomb like everyone else. Though I suppose he might not want to talk about his homeland, his home time, since he’s apparently trapped here.
I scuttle over to him, deliberately not thinking about the foreign motions of my limbs. Every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the water, it horrifies me anew. If I end up stuck like this forever, like Khephnes…
No. I can’t think about it.
“Hello,” I say, when I reach him. He’s occupying his usual window. The vast jungle stretches out, interrupted by the peaks of other ziggurats. Members of the Swarm, made tiny by distance, make their way to and from the buildings on whatever inscrutable business they undertake.
Khephnes doesn’t answer, merely continues to gaze out, though I assume his side eyes must have spotted me.
“I’m Sterling Caine,” I add, and hope I’m not being hopelessly impolite according to the standards of his culture.
When he fails to acknowledge me, I bumble ahead.
“I imagine this view must seem very strange to a man from the desert. Though I suppose it’s lush along the Nile, so perhaps not? ”
“Why are you talking to me?”
I draw back a little. My trunk flashes dots—I have no control over its color, but I assume the dots are the equivalent of an embarrassed blush.
“I-I haven’t been here long, and I want to know more.
About what’s happening. Or even how it’s happening.
I read The Time Machine—wait, you won’t have heard of that. ”
“You don’t want to know.” He finally turns his head so more eyes can focus on me. “Just pray to your gods that the Swarm takes better care of your body than they did mine.”
Why did I think talking to this poor man was a good idea? I don’t have hands to wring, but I scrape my front legs together. “I’m so sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Well, that’s an obviously untrue statement.
I search for something, anything, I can say to lift his spirits.
“I’m from, well, quite a while after you lived.
But we still remember your people!” I skip the part where mummies were used as firewood for trains, and that we’ve been digging up his rulers and carting their treasures off to museums in foreign lands.
Khephnes’s mind-voice laughs in my head, a sound of bitterness rather than mirth. “It doesn’t matter—none of this matters. It will all come to ruin, like my home.”
Belatedly, I realize telling him that his society was nothing more than a memory in my time probably wasn’t the most comforting thing I might have said. “I’m sorry—I’m making a mess of things. Can we start again?”
“No.” He turns back to the window. “Just hope your body lives, endure the time you’re imprisoned here, and be glad you won’t remember any of it when you return home.”
“I won’t?” This is disconcerting news.
“The Swarm’s existence would be known long before your time, if their captives remembered their sojourn here. They don’t want that. So your memories will be taken away when they decide to return you.”
Something about the way he says this makes me think it’s more than mere conjecture. But it’s clear he’s done talking to me, so I leave him in peace. Before I can make it halfway back to my bed, however, Bianca intercepts me.
“Did you get anything out of Khephnes?” she asks eagerly.
“What? That is, he says we won’t remember any of this when we go back to our bodies.” Maybe I should be grateful. How could I ever tell anyone about this? I’d be sent back to a mental hospital.
“Hmm.” The colors on her trunk grow more muted for a moment.
“I suspect he knows more than he’s letting on.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Swarm particularly care about any of us—they wouldn’t kidnap us through time if they did—but since he’s stuck here, they seem to give him more latitude than the rest of us.
I don’t know if they feel bad for him, or if they just want to honor the body he ended up trapped in, or what.
But I think he’s learned more about them than the rest of us. ”
I resist the urge to look back at him. “It doesn’t seem to have done him any good.”
“No.” She taps some of her legs on the stone, giving off little clicks. “It doesn’t. But no matter—I’m trying to find out everything about the Swarm I can. Do you want to help me?”
“Why? That is, why bother? Khephnes said we forget everything when we go back.”
“Maybe there’s a way to remember.” Her segments ripple in a shrug. “The Swarm are doing this for a reason, but what is it?”
“Curiosity?” I suggest. That was what motivated the Time Traveller in Wells’s novel, or at least such was my impression.
“If they were curious, wouldn’t they interview us when we arrived?
” she counters. “That way they could find out about our times via two avenues, not just one. Instead, they segregate us in this room, except when we’re allowed out for exercise and sunlight.
Even then, they only keep an eye on us to make sure we don’t try to damage these bodies we’re in. ”
She has a point. “Any theories?”
“Not yet. I’ve been reading as many of the writings on the walls from previous human captives as I can, but so far none of them have known anything either. Can you read?”
Of course—reading wasn’t nearly as common in her day. “My own language, English, I read very well. I know a bit of Latin and Greek, a smattering of German, but nothing more.”
“Look for the inscriptions you can read, and we’ll compare our findings. Maybe you can decipher something I haven’t.”
I don’t have much hope that any previous captives knew more than we do…but who can say? It’s something to occupy my time, anyway.
Obviously, the Swarm don’t care what we do with the room, so long as we aren’t harming ourselves or each other, because the walls are covered with inscriptions in a multitude of languages.
I recognize cuneiform from seeing it in museums, as well as Mayan hieroglyphs.
There are modern languages beside tongues I have no knowledge of that perhaps have been lost to time altogether.
Of the ones I can read, most are simply names, sometimes with locations or dates.
Gregory Miller of London, or Art Greene, 1723.
A few are more expressive: Mary Rathlin, taken from her children, may God Almighty keep them in His care.
None, however, are informative, except to drive home just how many people the Swarm have kidnapped over the millennia.
But why? The more inscriptions I read, the more I wonder what purpose there could be behind all of this.
A few days later, some of the Swarm enter and announce that anyone who wishes to take a walk may do so.
At this point, I’m sick of the room, however cavernous it might be, and eagerly join the line forming near the door.
A bit to my surprise, Khephnes does as well, though as usual he doesn’t speak to anyone.
Bianca joins me, along with Titus. I’ve learned in the days since meeting him that he’s a Roman soldier, Titus Quintus Blaesus, who was taken in the middle of a campaign against the Gauls.
According to Bianca, he’s helped with some of the Latin translations, but is more interested in physical pursuits than scholarly.
Hence his daily martial exercises, I assume.
We’re led through the blue-lit corridors, past the flaking murals and signs written in what I assume must be the hieroglyphic language of the Swarm. Our captors take us to the top of the ziggurat and leave us to our own devices. Some bask in the sun or skitter around peering out at the jungle.
I’m not sure what I expected of Khephnes, but he takes up a solitary post at the edge of the platform, staring out yet again. He could have done that just as well in our room, though I suppose this way he can at least enjoy a different view.
Perhaps the sunlight will cheer up him a little, though given his position, I can’t blame him if it doesn’t. Still, I take the opportunity to approach, in hopes he might be open to speaking more.
The view is similar to every other one I’ve seen—teeming jungle, with great shapes moving off in the distance, and more buildings closer in. But the nearest structure is different from the others—a low, flat circle with no visible entrance.
“What is that building for, I wonder?” I say, more as a conversation opener than anything else.
“It’s the creche, where the larva are hatched.”
“Oh!” Maybe he is feeling more talkative. “Did they tell you, or…?”
His trunk flashes a complicated series of colors I have no way of interpreting.
“When I was first told I was trapped here…I was a scribe, before they stole me. I deluded myself into thinking I might build a life of sorts here, so I asked them to teach me to read their language. One of the signs we passed points to the tunnels that lead to that building. According to it, it’s the creche. ”
My interest sharpens. I don’t know how reading the signs could be helpful, but maybe…?
“Can you teach me?” I ask.
He turns all five eyes on me. “Why should I bother to do that?”