Catacombs

Yesilkoy District

Istanbul, Turkey

16 March 2010

Lourds reached for one of the lanterns the men carried. Before the man could react, the professor had it in his hand. He didn’t know the man was reaching for a gun until the barrel was pressed up against his cheek.

‘What are you doing?’ Lourds asked in disbelief. ‘I need the light if I’m going to be working.’

The leader waved the man off, but he clearly wasn’t happy about removing the gun. He growled what Lourds believed were curses and walked away.

‘My apologies, Professor,’ the leader said. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you made no sudden moves. We lead very dangerous lives. There are people who would kill us on sight.’

As I recall, your people don’t have any problem responding in kind, Lourds thought but didn’t say it.

‘Now we have reached something of an understanding, allow me to introduce myself.’ The man bowed his head slightly but never dropped his gaze from Lourds’. ‘I’m called Qayin. Other than light, is there anything else you need?’

Lourds’ mind spun as he looked at the page again. ‘A desk, perhaps?’

‘No, sorry.’

Now that he had emptied his bladder, Lourds discovered he was starving.

‘I suppose asking for a pizza would be out of the question.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Then do you have my backpack?’

Qayin nodded to another of his followers and the man sprinted away. He returned momentarily with Lourds’ backpack, but when the professor reached for it, the man held it too far away.

‘I don’t have any weapons in there,’ Lourds said. ‘I do have a couple of nutrition bars.’

When the man finished searching the backpack, he handed it over.

Lourds hunkered down. All the men in Qayin’s gang pointed their lanterns and pistols at him. He could hear safeties click back and pistols cocking. Moving slowly, Lourds reached into the backpack and took out a journal, a pen, two trail bars and a bottle of water. He displayed his treasures for the rest of the group to see.

‘I need something to work with,’ Lourds said, ‘and I’m hungry.’

The pistols and lanterns slowly drew back.

Lourds stood, hoisted the backpack over one shoulder, and juggled his food, writing utensils, and the book Qayin had given him. He crossed the room and sat with his back against the wall.

‘This wasn’t written on the page.’ Lourds traced his fingers over the symbols on the surface. They felt slightly matted, and the texture told him that a fixative had been applied to the page. ‘This is a rubbing.’

‘A child could have told me that.’

Lourds ignored the sarcasm. ‘Where did you get this? Where was the rubbing taken?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘I beg to differ. Knowing where this rubbing came from and when the original carvings were done might help me isolate this language. Establish the root.’

Qayin hesitated, obviously ill at ease when it came to revealing anything about the book.

‘It came from here.’

Lourds took a bite of his trail bar and chewed quickly. ‘By here, you mean Istanbul?’

Qayin nodded.

‘Or do you mean Constantinople?’

A look of irritation flashed across Qayin’s hard features. ‘This city. That’s all you need to know.’

‘No, that isn’t all I need to know. Istanbul began as Constantinople, a city with a European history – that’s if you discount the Neolithic settlements and choose to begin with the Greek settlers from Megara. Then the Romans took over. After that, the Ottoman Empire arrived under Mehmed II. This city has constantly been torn between the east and the west, between Christian and Muslim, and marks have been left throughout the city on various pieces of architecture.’ Lourds tapped the paper. ‘This is a rubbing, and I’m willing to wager that it came from some building within the city. If someone went to the trouble to create a new language, then I need to know if the mind that created that language was European or Eastern or African in origin.’

‘You think this is an artificial language?’ the young woman asked.

Qayin didn’t look happy about her asking questions.

‘I don’t recognize this language,’ Lourds said. ‘I know all the languages of this region. But throughout history a number of people have created artificial languages to keep their secrets.’

‘Did you think the language that led you to the discovery of Atlantis was artificial?’ the woman asked.

‘For a time I had to consider that possibility, yes. As it turned out it wasn’t artificial.’

‘Then you could be wrong about this one as well.’

‘You should listen to me here. You’re out of your area of expertise.’ Lourds sighed. ‘We’re not kidnapping anyone here now. This field is where I’m expert.’

‘The way I hear you, if you don’t understand something, you can always cop out and just say, “This language isn’t real.” ’

‘Even an artificial language is real. Star Trek fans insisted that the Klingon language be made real. Tolkien invented languages for his characters, human and non-human. People are always creating languages. It’s one of the things we do that sets us apart from every other creature on this planet. We communicate via language. Look at cellphones. Only a few short years ago they didn’t exist.’

‘Maybe at your age they didn’t exist.’

Lourds ignored her snarky attitude and continued. ‘People had to come up with a name for telephones that were fully portable. The term “cordless” had already been taken. So people started calling them “cellular telephones” at first. That quickly became bastardized to “cellphones”, and that gave way to just calling them “cells”. Mention “cell” after 9/11 and many people think of terrorism. However, the cell terminology didn’t take in Britain. Over there, they call them “mobiles”.’

‘I’m aware of that. I’m not a child.’

‘I have no doubt that you’re aware of it. Your accent tells me you’re acquainted with Ulster. I’d go as far to say that you’ve been in Ireland often. Probably grew up there.’

From the way her face went blank, Lourds knew he had hit close to home.

‘But being aware of language and thinking about it are two different things,’ he continued. ‘Just because you know something doesn’t mean you’ve thought about it. Language was created to express thoughts and ideas, to hand down education and history, to paint pictures of things that could only be imagined. Words have such an ephemeral quality to them because language is so organic that many words quickly pass in and out of usage and disappear. Or the way they are employed changes. Take the word text. Until that function was created for cells, it was never used as a verb. Now when people think of a text, they don’t think of books. They think of electronic messages they receive on their cellphones.’

‘Professor,’ Qayin interrupted sharply, ‘you don’t have time to give a lecture.’

‘I wanted to make a point. Not only is language geographical, but the time a document was written is also tremendously important.’

‘You are running out of time.’

Lourds fixed the man with his gaze. ‘Fine. Then tell me where this rubbing came from and when it was made.’

Qayin’s hot, angry gaze held Lourds. All the fear the professor had been holding at bay returned in a gut-twisting rush.

You’ve just got yourself killed. Lourds tried not to be sick, but his mouth turned dry as cotton.

After a moment, Qayin said, ‘I’m told that the rubbing was taken from somewhere inside this city. The writing is from early in the second century after the death of Christ.’

The enormity of the statement settled over Lourds. Almost two thousand years had passed since these words were written. He focused on the rubbing.

‘This ought to be some form of Greek language, then,’ he mused out loud. He opened the water bottle and drank as he thought. ‘We’ve done a lot of work with Mycenaean Greek, Ancient Greek and Koine Greek. But we can’t rule out the possibility that this is some kind of proto-Greek.’