Hal Duncan, page 32
And yet:
20 March 1921. We have barely left the surer footing of the Old Military Highway and already the weather has taken a turn for the worse. With the sun shrouded in storm clouds and the mountains around us cloaked in mist and sleet, the grey rock-faces before us seem an even more daunting prospect than ever. Following the Terek River back towards its source leads us north and west, and ever higher.
My suspicion that the professor is keeping something from me grows. He seems preoccupied, as if turning some idea over in his head as he walks. If there is something I should know, I would be glad if he would let me in on it, rather than keeping me in the dark. He spends much of the journey with Pechorin who, it turns out, is something of a linguist himself, not that you'd know it to look at him.
Pechorin's men look more cut-throat than ever, but I wonder if I may have underestimated him. For all his savage appearance, in the nuances of his words and habits he betrays an education and a privileged upbringing. I suspect he is the classic nihilist, assured of his own destruction, romanticizing his own life and death, choosing to hide his background behind contemptuous silence. There is a fierce intelligence in those eyes, though, if he would only choose to use it. Still, this may sound petty and spiteful, but I really do not like that man. I do not trust him at all.
The Tablets of Destiny, the Book of the Dead
10 September 1942, near Karacaevsk. From Majkop's burning oilfields, we moved east with the SS tank battalions to split from the main body somewhere north of Cerkessk, then started moving down through the rugged countryside, along the River Kuban, towards the Caucasus proper. Our escort is comprised of the select of SS Division 'Wiking', a unit of twelve men put together under the command of Strang. All seem uncomfortable in their stolen NKVD uniforms ¯ far too unstylish for these German jackboot dandies.
The whole army seems low on fuel and ammunition. Strang claims that Himmler is more concerned with the covert, esoteric aspects of the mission than with the mundane act of capturing the oilfields. I had heard that the Nazi Inner Circle had some strange ideas but it seems inconceivable Hitler would stake so much on the success of one small mission, even if we were to rediscover a lost city of Aryan ancestors. Yes, it would be, for them, the single most momentous sign of racial superiority. But even the Nazis cannot be so mad as to place that much faith on a mere symbol; Strang must be covering for the failures of his leaders.
Unless Pechorin has told them. My God, those words, that language, in the mouth of a Hitler!
I look at the neat printing on a crisp white page, so distinct from the tattered scraps it sits amongst. Times New Roman. Twelve point. A translation from the German, done by an old friend of mine, a linguist who ... who I should never have involved. We used to joke about it, my crackpot conspiracy theory bestseller. Nazis and ancient artefacts. You don't believe any of this, he used to say. Do you?
I place the page beside my grandfather's journal entry.
All goes well, writes SS-Sturmbannfiihrer Strang. The trucks are provisioned and the men ready. They are all good, strong children of the fatherland. Oberfuhrer, I believe that not only will we find Aratta and conclusive proof that the Sumerians stole their wisdom and learning from the great Aryan civilisation that preceded them, but that we can take this treasure that Pechorin speaks of right from underneath the Russians' noses. He is, I admit, still elliptical about its nature. The Tablets of Destiny. The Book of the Dead. When he talks of it there is an emptiness that comes into his eyes. Of course, he is a Slav. The power of the ancients is not his birthright. It is ours, Oberfuhrer, and I will bring it back to Germany where it belongs.
You asked me once if I trust Pechorin. He is in no position to he to us, and, indeed, seems almost eager to co-operate. He claims he has virtually deciphered the tablet fully new, says there is no doubt at all that the language is indeed Aryan. The Englishman, Carter, still insists it is a bastard tongue off some obscure branch of the 'Turanian' family, as if the yellow-skinned pygmies of Asia could be the Fathers of so grand a culture. The man is demented ¯ I suspect from too much of the Turkish kif. Sometimes I feel we should have left him in the stinking hovel that we dragged him from. If we did not need him to lead us to Aratta, I swear I would have him shot.
The Time of Nomads
23 March 1921. If it is not snowing, it is raining; if not raining, then snowing. The scree of the lower slopes has given way to ice and rock as we move out of the Terek valley and into North Ossetia. Going is slow and I regret ever joining this damn-fool expedition. The tablet ¯ oh yes, I finally saw the tablet ¯ is spectacularly detailed, true but I was shocked to say the least when Hobbsbaum told me how he'd 'translated' it.
To say that his interpretations are 'free' would be generous. He is virtually claiming that we have before us the original Turanian proto-language, the ancestor of both Arattan and Sumerian. I realise now that in his need to prove his theories he has thrown reason to the wind and made idiots of us both. And yet, I still want to have faith in him. I still want to believe him. But how can I countenance this insanity, this mad idea of an antediluvian civilisation wiped out by a flood not of water but of ice? For the period we are talking of is not neolithic but palaeolithic. I am not half the archaeologist or linguist Hobbsbaum is, that's true (my studies were rather rudely interrupted by the Boche), but even I know that if we are talking of a language like Turanian, the original Turanian, we are talking of a period long before Mankind first built his little clay villages on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, long before the walls of Jericho or honey-combed cells of Catal Huyuk. This is the time of Indo-European, of nomads, of cavemen. Civilisation in the Ice Age, destroyed by it or by the floods that came with its ending? It is ludicrous.
28 March 1921. Hobbsbaum and I talked all last night, sat up drinking and laughing, celebrating a find that, if we died right here and now, would make it all worth while. We still haven't found Aratta yet; I don't believe we will. I don't believe we were ever really looking for Aratta, no matter what Hobbsbaum says. There is a sly wink in his eye even as he insists that the tablet surely must refer to that city. Where else could it be talking about? What other Great City of the North is there in Sumer's sphere of knowledge. At times I feel that he is dropping hints, clues, trying to lead me to a logical conclusion he himself has long since reached, unwilling to put it into words because to do so would be to admit insanity. But I am sure now we are looking for something else, something older. I am sure now because we have found it.
The cave is carved all over with the cuneiform that Hobbsbaum calls Turanian. Not Sumerian cuneiform, not even Arattan cuneiform contemporary with Sumer, but a whole hoard of carvings, some in the language of the tablet and some obviously older. Looking at it, one might trace the whole history of the script over time on the walls of this cave, the stylisation of pictographs into symbols, into syllabic cuneiform. Although 'runeiform' might be a more appropriate term for these, lacking as they do the characteristic wedge-shapes of writing imprinted on clay with a reed. Hobbsbaum is enraptured, taking sheets and sheets of notes. I must admit that I am too stunned to do much more than stare. Dear Lord, we may have found the oldest written language in the world ¯ and carved on stone!
Pechorin only scowled, saying that of course his people had writing before the rest of the world. The man's as arrogant as a Hun.
Hobbsbaum's Notes
I keep Hobbsbaum's notes separate from the rest, sitting up on the desk in my room, hidden in one of those manila folders used in filing cabinets. I still have the photocopies and the translations, though I've already deleted the scans from my laptop. I know that they're part of this story but I can't bring myself to look at them again, because when I do all I can think about is a good friend of mine now locked up for his own safety.
So what I lay on the floor is sort of a placeholder.
Email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/04/9914:45:
Jack. That stuff you wanted me to have a look at came through garbled, so can you send it through again? Sounds fascinating. If it looks like a mixture of Roman and Cyrillic, it's more likely your grandfather or the professor or whatever was just using the symbols to transcribe phonetic values. Are there accents on the vowels or diacritics, because if there are, I'd say you're definitely looking at some other language that's been written out in a sort of early 'phonetic' alphabet. Maybe some Caucasian dialect or something? Still, I'd love to see it. You know, I mentioned it to my adviser and he said Hobbsbaum was really a bit of a pioneer in his field. Reckons if it hadn't been for the Nazis he might have got a bit more recognition.
After I got that I did some research. I mean, I didn't even know what 'phonetics' meant until I started trying to put this puzzle together, but what it is is that our normal alphabets ¯ the Roman alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, the Greek alphabet ¯ don't really relate accurately to the sounds we make. The letter C can be a 'k' sound or an 's' sound, or a 'ch' or even a 'ts', depending on where you come from. There are sounds like 'sh' or 'th' which don't even have a letter of their own in the Roman alphabet. But people who study these sounds, these phonemes, and the way they're made, they can classify them exactly and they use a sort of artificial alphabet to transcribe them. They take a letter from here, a letter from there, a Greek theta or a Norse thorn. They can represent the way a sound is spoken with a breathy 'h' of aspiration, nasalized or held back in the glottis. All that's missing is the pitch and stress of intonation.
Hobbsbaum's notes are written in exactly that sort of cobbled-together alphabet. But as well as the diagonal dashes and umlauts over this letter or that, there's these other little ticks and wavy lines running above the texts, rising and falling like a voice telling a story. The pitch and stress of intonation. A pause for emphasis... A whisper. It's as if he was transcribing not a written language but a spoken tongue, listening like an anthropologist to an old man telling a tale around a campfire, scribbling furiously in the flickering shadows as fast as he could, just trying to keep up with him and using whatever sign or squiggle seemed appropriate to that sound, transcribing the full complexity of the oral tongue as best he could. That's what Hobbsbaum's notes look like.
And then there are the sketches, the direct copies of the writing that the ancients left behind them, that this tiny, forgotten expedition came across in 1921. I wonder if they felt the same thing looking on it as I do.
Fear.
The Master Race
12 September 1942. 10km south of Tyrnyauz. Strang's trigger finger was itchy today. He placed the barrel of his Luger at my temple and swore at me in German ¯ Schweinehund, Scheisser and so on. More a scholar than a soldier, I know that he's as uncomfortable with the uniform as with his own bizarre hypothesis. Strained, strung-out Strang trying to be strong. A weak man caught up in his fantasies of power. So I goaded him and he pointed the barrel of his gun at the side of my head. Pechorin, inscrutable as ever, reminded him that only I could lead them to their destination. I heard the tone in his voice, subtle and persuasive, the quiet, deadly music. He remembers. I'm sure of it now. The bastard.
¯ You really think we found the 'great Aryan city from which all civilisation sprang?
¯ I know you mounted an expedition after which the professor never published another word, while you disappeared off the face of the earth. I think you found it, then buried your research, covered your tracks, denied all knowledge of it for some twenty years. Why? Because it didn't suit your Jew-loving ideas.
¯ It's some story.
¯ You didn't want the world to know the truth of Aryan superiority. Of a master race who ruled this world long before the weak and decadent races of the East built their pyramids and ziggurats.
[Carter laughs.]
An email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/05/99 14:53
This is a joke right? You need to get a girlfriend or a hobby or something. Jack. How long did it take you to put together, anyway? I mean, 23 pages of pseudo-nostratic. What are you on? I mean whatever it is, Jack, I swear you must be tapping into the old racial memory, or mass unconscious, or a higher plane, or whatever you want to call it, because I know you don't know shit about this stuff. Come on, Jack. Where did this stuff really come from? Who was it put you up to this?
¯ Don't test me, Mr Carter. Now. Think about this carefully. I have the tablet; I have Pechorin. You are a luxury. I don't need you to find the city, only to tell me what to expect. I've heard Mr Pechorin mumbling in his sleep, and I've heard you screaming. ¯ I have a guilty conscience.
¯ It's more than that. You saw something, something the Aryans had that made later civilisations mere barbarians in comparison. Now, before I put a bullet through your brain, you will tell me what you found.
¯ Send out the stenographer and I'll tell you all about your fabulous Northern City of the Ancient Ones. Maybe you want to hear some words in their language? Hmm? It's quite unique, you know. But I doubt that you could handle it.
¯ Mr Carter, I—
¯ [indistinct]
¯ I think you . . . you .. . you may leave us now, Sturmman.
Our Language, Ur Language
Email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/07/99 14:48
Pull the other one, Jack. I'm not buying this granddaddy's papers found in the attic bullshit. Oh, sorry, I mean sent by a mysterious stranger with no return address. Was I born yesterday? Ha ha. Very funny, Jack. You know there's enough clap-trap written by morons about the so-called secrets of the ancients without adding more of this sort of hokum.
I gotta give it to you though, whoever put it together for you did a good job. I got about halfway through translating the first page before the 'written across the forehead' line gave it away. Presumably, the word was 'sucker', right? Just read what I've done so far and tell me, with a straight face, that this isn't a complete stitch-up.
Email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/11/9914:53
OK. Number One ¯ Nostratic is just a bullshit theory made up by crazy Russkis in the Eighties, saying that just as most languages can be traced back to an ancestor like Indo-European or Ural-Altaic, these proto-languages can be traced back further still. IE and UA, along with Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian and half the languages in the world are all supposed to go back to Nostratic. It's a bullshit theory because there's no way we can trace any language back that far. It's a construct built on constructs ¯ one big house of cards.
Number Two. Even if Nostratic was once spoken by some hairy-arsed tribe that wandered over half the world, it would have been about 15,000 years ago ¯ only about 8,000 years before writing was invented. So where exactly is Grandpa Carter supposed to have found this stuff?
Three. Those scans you sent me are sooooooo authentic! What did you do, crumple up the paper and stain them with coffee? I especially liked the dried blood stains on the last page. I'm impressed.
Email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/12/9914:01
Jack. I am majorly wowed. I couldn't resist having a go at some more of your 'Nostratic'. It's fucking tremendous. I mean, it holds together so well as a language, even if it is a hoax. The grammar, the projected sound-shifts ¯ it all makes sense even if it is one massive con. All I want to know is when and why did you learn this much about linguistics, or who's in on it with you? You should write a bestseller, with your imagination. Fuck. You're the one who should be doing the doctorate, not me.
Email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/13/9914:44
You are one sick puppy, Jack. Some bf this stuff, I don't know whether to laugh or throw up. It's one thing inventing a language, but come on. It's fucking genocide you're writing about here and some of it just isn't funny.
Whatever Happened to Jack Carter
Email to jack.carter@miskatonic.edu, 10/13/99 1526
Jack. I'm on page 17 and I'm sending you what I've done so far. I don't know where you got this stuff, but it's real, isn't it? For fuck's sake, Jack, this can't be real. It can't be. But, I don't know why; I just believe it now. If this is a joke, I'll fucking kill you, Jack. I swear to God, I'll fucking kill you. I'll rip out your throat and piss down the hole. Ha ha. Just kidding. Gotcha, didn't I? Gotcha. Anyway, I'll send you more as I get it translated.
I'm running out of space on the floor now, so when I lay that email down I place the second one overlapping it. I could have printed out those last few emails on the same page, but somehow I think they each belong apart. The next is short. The text looks tiny on its own on the white paper. Its time is marked as 17:08, just an hour and a half after the last one.
Jack, it says. Take what I sent you and burn it. Burn it now. Burn it all.
I had read what he sent me by that point, as well as much of my grandfather's journals. And I was starting to feel this crawling nausea. I was starting to wonder myself if this was all some fucking sick prankster stringing me along. So when I opened up that first email in my inbox and read it I didn't get a sudden shock, I didn't get goosebumps or feel a shiver run down my spine. I just realized that I was already scared.
