By the time the ship reached land, Gloria was desperate to get to shore. Years working across the islands had seen her grow quite fond of island life but she had never adjusted to being at sea, and this trip had been longer than most. The island they visited now was far out of the way of any shipping lanes, and it had taken a miserable seasick couple of months in order to get here.
Gloria tapped her foot impatiently as the navy men took their time disembarking, then scrambled off the ship, her arms straining with the weight of her bags. By now she had only a few changes of clothes and almost no personal items besides them, easily tucked away into a small bag at her back. A second bag hung heavy from her left shoulder, brimming with notebooks and textbooks and correspondence. A third much heavier bag strained under her right arm, packed neatly with wax cylinders and a compact device for playing them. It occurred to her, as she hurried down to the beach, that she was carrying her entire life's work here -- though she'd had enough papers published that that wasn't quite true anymore.
Geologists and chemists and a dozen other breeds of researchers were being dropped off at each of the island's two ports. Gloria let herself be swept up in the crowd of chattering academics until they made their way to a large pavilion where they would be split into groups. It was noisy and humid and the sun was blinding even under the thick canvas canopy that stretched overhead. Gloria found it a relief after the long rocking of the waves. At the front of the line a clerk was checking people's papers. It took some awkward fumbling and rearranging but Gloria managed to fish out a neat binder from her bags to hand to the clerk before the researchers behind her could get upset at being held up.
The clerk flipped quickly through the papers and fished out the letter of summons. He trained a smile on Gloria that seemed almost genuine, gesturing with the binder before handing it back to her. "Alright, you're gonna be in camp four. It's the dig site that's furthest inland. You'll be walking, but they're sending down a cart at the top of the hour to bring people's bags. Here," passing her a ticket that he tore off a long sheet, "is your housing assignment. Once you've got your bags put away you'll want to report to Dr.Lynn. Um. He hasn't put an orientation on the schedule. I don't think there's enough linguists coming in to warrant it. So just find him as soon as you can to get yourself sorted."
Dig Site Four was a bustling camp tucked away in the trees at the end of a long and muddy road. Gloria tried to be grateful that she hadn't had to carry her bags the whole way, but it was hard to stay cheerful while getting whacked by ferns stumbling over roots. The afternoon stretched long as they walked, and the easy chatter that had surrounded her when they set off was ground down to a sweaty sullen nub by the hours of travel. By the time they arrived Gloria's legs were burning and her face was speckled with bug bites, but even that was not enough to curb her excitement at finally seeing the camp.
The trees here had been cleared, and a large swath of tents and simple wooden buildings made a wide crescent around the perimeter of the clearing. Some buildings, Gloria knew, would be set aside for analyzing and packaging the artifacts that they pulled from the ruins. Others would be dedicated to manufacturing explosives, sharpening pickaxes, repairing boots, and providing all the other physical tools that a team like this needed. The large circular structure in the center Gloria guessed would be for eating communal meals, which meant the smaller structure jutting off of it would be the kitchens. In her prior expeditions Gloria had spent much of her time at those cafeteria benches. She found it easier to focus on her work with friends and strangers passing by, and the constant murmur of conversation around her. In her own tent, where nobody could see how focused and studious she was being, she was much more likely to get distracted.
The navy who had ferried them all here had their own camps, mostly nearer to the beach. Gloria had heard that some of the other dig sites had more military presence, but Dig Site Four was up a steep incline that was a hassle to traverse, and this side of the island simply had much fewer dangerous animals to deal with. There were a few men in uniform strutting about, to be sure, but far fewer than Gloria had expected. Maybe a dozen, compared to the couple hundred researchers and scientists stationed here.
The camp was arranged neatly but not intuitively, and it took Gloria a long hour to find her new home. The housing Gloria had been assigned turned out to be a cramped cabin near the outermost ring of the camp with beautiful translucent curtains fluttering against the screens in the windows. A series of neatly carved numbers above the doorframe matched her ticket. She double checked it a half dozen times before setting down her heavier bag, swallowing her nerves, and knocking on the door.
It was opened by a large woman who Gloria guessed was only a few years older than herself. Her hair was pinned neatly in place atop her head, and she seemed to glow in the late afternoon light.
"Hello," Gloria said immediately, sticking out her ticket "My name is Gloria, I believe I'll be living here now."
The woman burst into a huge smile and, ignoring the ticket, clasped Gloria's hand in both of her own. "Oh how lovely! We were afraid you wouldn't make it today. My name's Elizabeth but you can call me Lizzie. Come, come inside! Let me get your bag. Ooh, it's a hefty one! How was the trip? Wonderful weather for hiking today, I think. Everyone at the site was in good spirits. The rain's finally letting up, you know. Everyone, this is Gloria!"
Gloria was bustled along into the cabin with no chance to reply. The cabin had only one room and reminded Gloria eerily of the dorms she'd lived in when she'd first gone to university. Against the left and right walls were two sets of bunk beds, with enough clearance above to sit comfortably. Two desks and a low bench sat between them on the far wall, the bench festooned with pillows, and another desk sat at the foot of each bed between them and the door. The rest of the wall space was covered in shelves and drawers, just barely enough space to fit four girls' clothes and essentials.
A gangly red-haired girl was bent over the nearest set of drawers, carefully transferring in folded clothes out of a rough suitcase. She did not smile but nodded respectfully at Gloria before returning to her work.
"This is Florence," Lizzie said. "She's new also. She just got here today, chemistry."
"Chemistry?" Gloria asked, a bit lost already in the torrent of information.
"They brought me in to brew explosives," the redhead said. She stood up straight and set about arranging smaller items on a high shelf on the wall. The sunlight through the window made a fiery halo out of her hair. "Some dynamite of course. Mostly weaker things, trying to remove the ash quickly without damaging the buildings underneath."
"They.. we're doing the excavation with dynamite?" Gloria asked, and heard someone laugh across the room.
Florence only nodded, but Lizzie piped in to explain. "We wouldn't need to go that far if it had been a recent eruption, but the eruption that buried the site happened around 1200 years ago now. It's all condensed and calcified under there. And then of course there's been volcanic activity since then, lava flows, so we need to break down through that stone crust to even get to the dirt and ash that we're removing. It's really fascinating stuff. I never thought I would be lucky enough to study such active volcanism. And it means everything in the city is so well preserved."
The fourth girl snickered again and Gloria turned to meet her final roommate. A short girl with a long blonde braid lay draped across one of the lower bunks, propped up on a generous pile of cushions. "Lizzie," she said, "thinks there's pirate treasure under there." That got Florence to smile for a brief moment and had Lizzie sighing dramatically.
"Well of course there's no pirate treasure at our dig site," Lizzie huffed. "We're too far from the water. But there's pirate treasure at dig site two."
"That's the one along the big bay on the north side of the island," the new girl explained, shifting her body to lean closer to Gloria and offering her hand. "I'm Pauline, by the way. Pallas to my friends." She winked at Gloria and gave her a firm handshake which sent Gloria's heart fluttering. "Lizzie's a geologist, and an appraiser. She sees treasure everywhere."
Lizzie rolled her eyes, but her smile never left her face even as she huffed and puffed her denial. "Why else do you think the crown would sink so much grant money on some random ruins on a random island? Pirates camped out here in the caves and exposed ruins near the bay, and they stashed their secret treasures there, and then kaboom!" She threw her arms in the air. "Another explosion, lava flows covered over all the cave entrances, and their secret was lost to time... until the crown rediscovered it and sent us all in to reclaim it. It's very exciting!"
"See?" Pallas smirked. "Everywhere."
Gloria stuck around long enough to claim her bunk (top right, over Florence's, across from Lizzie) and drop her bags before excusing herself. "I have to meet with Dr.Lynn before dinner. It seems I'll be working under him during my stay here."
Pallas and Lizzie shared a look. "You're on the main archeology team then?" Lizzie asked.
"Ah, no. Linguistics. They need someone to translate the inscriptions."
"Oof. You've got your work cut out for you then."
"I'm sure I'll be able to manage. I've spent most of my career on the Allogloss language and I've seen some rubbings of the inscriptions. The script appears quite related."
"Oh, I'm sure," Lizzie rushed to say. "It's just... a small team. And Dr.Lynn can be difficult. Or so I've heard."
"Is there... anything I should know?"
"Just... make sure you dress smart, I suppose. Don't give him room to complain about propriety." The women shared a grimace at the thought. It was a well understood agony that, even a decade into her career, it had become no easier to be a woman in academia.
Florence had her own orientation to attend and offered to walk with Gloria. A half dozen other chemists had arrived today and the whole chemistry team was meeting before dinner to do introductions. It was convenient - Florence's sense of direction was evidently much better than Gloria's. The taller woman led Gloria, first through the winding rows of dormitory cabins and then the larger structures that served as offices and workshops. She gave the bare minimum of response to Gloria's attempts at small talk but the silence that followed was comfortable.
"This should be his office," Florence said at last, nodding at a squat building near the center of camp. "I've got to attend an orientation too, for the chem team, but umm.. well I think I'll get dinner in the common area after, if you want to rejoin me." She nodded to Gloria, quick as a wink, and then turned on her heels and walked away.
The archeology building was sprawling, full of rows of long shelves and wide counter tops where artifacts were cleaned, cataloged, studied, and packed up to be shipped back to the mainland. Gloria did not see anything she would call pirate treasure. Mostly it was the detritus of daily life, petrified for a millenia. Cookware, chairs, scraps of cloth. One table was laden with bricks, each etched with deep letters that Gloria recognized from the Allogloss script. The wall behind was covered in paper and charcoal. Gloria could only assume the researchers here had been taking rubbings of the bricks, recording the writing before shipping off the stones themselves. She lingered there, fingers ghosting over scraps of paper, and read them off to herself in a whisper.
"bɪˈɡɪn ˈsteɪtmənt .... ɪnˈkləʊʒə ... ˈwɔːtə.... θɜːst- no, θɜːd ˈɔːdə ˈprɒpəti... ˈfɪfti ˈsɛvᵊn pəˈsɛnt..." The script was as familiar to her as her own hands, but the words themselves were alien. She was pulled from her reverie by a sharp cough. Gloria yanked her hands to her heart and spun around, an embarrassed flush coming to her cheeks. "Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't.. I mean, hello, I -"
"You can speak the language then," the man said. He was tall and sharp, every part of him stiff. His dark hair was speckled with gray and cropped short like a military man, but his suit was a dusty gray that screamed of academia. His hands were clasped behind his back and he stood ram rod straight, looking Gloria over like a scientist reviewing a new specimen - which might actually be the case, Gloria thought.
A name badge hung around his neck, naming him Dr.Lynn.
"Yes sir. Well, kind of, sir." Gloria reached out a hand and was greeted with a handshake like a vice. "My name is Gloria Deoradhan. I just arrived today. I can speak it, yes, but translating will be a different matter."
Dr.Lynn's scowl was scathing. "Kind of does not advance our work, Miss Deoradhan. If we can begin the work of translating these inscriptions, we may find use for the knowledge they hold --assuming such primitive works hold anything of value."
Gloria clasped her own hands behind her back, matching Dr.Lynn's posture and squeezing her fists tight to stop them shaking. Her stomach churned. She felt stiff with rage and indignation.
Dr.Lynn continued. "If we cannot translate them, then they are no more than bricks, and there is no purpose in our preserving any of them. I was told that you are the crown's foremost expert on the language, the script, the people" He spat the word. "who lived here once upon a time. I was told you are quite passionate about your work. I was told that you enjoy this language. But this," He gestured around them, to the rows of tables, the crates of packed up artifacts, to the dig site beyond. "is not a playground, Miss Deoradhan. It is a work site. It is a laboratory for history. It is a place where men of science come to eek some small value out of this sweltering rock." His hand fell, sharp, pointing to the earth below. "If you are not able to assist us in our mission then we need not keep you here."
It was not, Gloria mused, a promising start.
It was only afterwards, hunched over a bowl of fish and rice and strange tangy fruit, that Gloria allowed herself to feel the terror of that moment. "I'm just not sure I can do it," she whispered. "I'm going to try. I mean the translation, I don't think there's anyone better suited to the task." Except perhaps the population she'd lived with these last years, who she'd studied and researched, whose freedom she'd traded for her own one essay at a time. "But I don't know how long I can stand to work beneath that man."
Florence gave her an awkward pat on her shoulder. "Just uh.. keep your head down, right? Do the work. Try not to talk to him. Get through the... how long is your contract for?"
"Six months."
"You can push through for six months. And then run back to the mainland and find someone more pleasant to work under. Or apply for some fresh grants and go back to your.. uh... islands."
Gloria groaned and shook her head. "I'm surprised there's even grant funding for this, honestly. After this stint? I doubt the crown will care all that much about the dead branch of a language that they don't even need to master anymore." The crown had begun setting up schools across the distant islands that Gloria had been working on for the past years, and everyone knew that those were the beginning of the end for anthropological research. Once the schools had operated for a few years they would move to build hospitals, and churches, and post offices, and import stores, and by the time they got to a governor's mansion there would be very little left of the local culture to study at all. Research grants were only easily available while the crown was still looking for an angle to get its hooks in. "Anyway," she grumbled, "I won't even make it through six months if I can't get a handle on the language itself, start piecing out the lexicon."
"What? I thought you've been studying the language for years," Florence laughed nervously. "How do you not know any of the words?"
"Because," Gloria huffed, "it's been... however long, thousands of years since the eruption, and the Allogloss language has been changing and growing that whole time. And I can't even compare spelling, not really, because spelling in Allogloss isn't consistent. It changes with the pronunciation. Two people in the same village in the same year writing the same words might spell them differently. They sent me some of the rubbings along with my offer letter so I've been working ahead. I've dug through some of the very oldest word banks I've got, and I might have found a few cognates, but even then..." She sighed. "Cognates in living languages don't necessarily mean the exact same thing, let alone after millenia of drifting apart. It's all very exciting honestly, trying to piece together the language from the bits and pieces we have here, but I don't expect to have any sort of working glossary until, oh... a year or two. If I can hold out that long. If they let me stay."
Florence blinked and cocked her head curiously. It occurred to Gloria that Florence had very beautiful eyes, wide and sparkling green, when she wasn't scowling. "Oh?" Florence asked. "I thought... what about the rosetta stone?"
"You're thinking of Kemetic, I think. The rosetta stone had the same message in a few different languages, and that gave us enough vocab to finally crack Kemetic and start translating it. Dynagloss wasn't one of those languages though, and that's what's here on the ruins."
"Ah," Florence sighed. "Well. I'm sure you'll do a fine job."
Gloria just nodded. She appreciated the effort, but she wasn't convinced.
The next few weeks passed in a blur. Her days were mostly spent in the archeology lab, where she slowly took over a large table and rack of shelving in the corner. She set up her gramophone and her collection of notebooks and recordings, the wax cylinders arranged in neat rows on her shelves. Each one held dialogue, conversations in Allogloss, and was paired with a page number in her notes. There she'd worked with her speakers over days and weeks to transcribe their speech in their own writing, to capture the phonetics as the people themselves represented them. Underneath each line of text, in her own precise handwriting, were her translations. Often several translations, different ways of rendering the words across language, trying to capture the subtleties of their talk.
Drawing connections between those words and the charcoal rubbings she needed to translate was a painstaking process. Progress was slow. There were always a few other researchers around, mostly serious men who had been working under Dr.Lynn for many years, but Lizzie also worked in this building and would stop by whenever her schedule allowed to see how Gloria's work was progressing. Gloria was happy to explain her work when asked, but by and large she tried to follow Florence's advice and keep her head down.
Thankfully none of the other workers here were as stern as Dr.Lynn, or as visibly displeased to be working alongside a woman, though Gloria suspected that several were simply better at hiding it than he was.
In a real way it felt like each day only began when she left the lab at the day's end and got to spend the evening with her new roommates.
Pallas and Lizzie, Gloria learned, had both been part of the second wave of researchers brought out to the island after the ruins were discovered. They could have returned to the mainland after the first year and still considered it a respectable career step. They could have returned to a world of streetlamps and running water, given lectures on their findings here. Lizzie at least would have been able to return here as a senior researcher if she'd only taken a season back at the academy first. Instead they'd both decided, time and time again, to stay.
They smiled like they were daring Gloria to note how odd that was, but she could only shrug. She'd spent years enough on the islands, avoiding the rush of the city and the politics of the university. It was easy to say the work was too interesting or too important. One of the best things about work, Gloria knew, was that it was perpetually too interesting and important for you to possibly consider going home again quite yet.
Lizzie was a well respected member of the geological team. She bounced back and forth between the excavation site and her little office where she was responsible for dating and cataloguing many of the artifacts that were recovered.
Pallas was an engineer, which she revealed to Gloria on her first morning there by offering to share a peek at her pet project and then dramatically yanking away a blanket that had been draped over the back of one of the desk chairs. Not a desk chair at all, it turned out. It was, Gloria had to admit, the most overengineered wheelchair she had ever seen, which she also had to admit was fantastically fashionable right now. Pallas would have turned quite a lot of heads on the mainland. Bells and whistles were definitely in, as were the gear boxes and steam vents that she saw tucked against the chair's undercarriage.
"Initially I was just trying to make it easier to navigate on the uneven ground here, but one thing led to another and, you know..." Pallas shrugged, suddenly a little embarrassed, and set about transferring herself off of the bed and into her chair. She pulled a lever to unlock the brakes, and another to give the chair a little spin. Gears and pistons sparkled in the light.
"It's gorgeous. And you... need it?" Gloria winced as she said it. It hadn't been so obvious when Pallas was half under the blankets, but now that she was moving it was painfully clear that one of her legs ended high above the knee. It was a dreadfully stupid question to ask.
Pallas took it in stride. "Mining accident, about five years ago. They sent me in to work on the lift, and it all... well if they'd brought me in when they first started getting performance complaints it wouldn't have been an issue. You know how it is though, they're always waiting until the last possible minute to do any maintenance, and then things go kablooey."
Pallas and Lizzie bickered incessantly but it felt good humored to Gloria. They'd been with the expedition long enough that they could have requested to get relocated, at least to different sleeping quarters, if they really cared to. Instead they'd stuck together and outlasted a slew of other roommates. Their most recent companions had relocated to Camp Two a few months prior. They were very friendly to Gloria and Florence, but Gloria couldn't shake the feeling that they would have preferred to have the space to themselves.
___
The work was hard, but progress felt rewarding. Gloria was not very good at leaving work at work, and would be thinking through problems long into the night, but for once she was not alone in this. All of her roommates were similarly obsessed by their work and passionate about its completion. It felt comforting in a very real way to not have to pretend to be normal about her studies.
By the end of the first month their little household had fallen into a steady routine. They'd wake at the crack of dawn and head off to the kitchens or to work before anyone was really awake enough to hold a conversation. It was only Lizzie who had the gall to be chipper that early in the day. If they both remembered to take lunch, and if their lunch times aligned, Florence and Gloria would eat together in the big pavilion and talk about nothing much. Florence had a surprising passion for fashion and would point out all the little stylistic details that she liked or hated on the folks around them. If Gloria forgot to leave for lunch then Lizzie would often bring her something to eat a couple hours later.
Gloria didn't cross paths with Pallas much at work, but she hardly needed to see her to know how her work was progressing. The woman had a strong reputation as a formidable engineer and a frustrating conversationalist. She was perhaps not the chief engineer, but the chief engineer was so swamped in paperwork as to be fully inaccessible, and Pallas picked up a lot of his slack. She was a truly fascinating woman. Her main job was maintaining the machinery of the dig site, the hulking coal-powered behemoths that moved earth and stone and ash from one pile to another. She also oversaw - unofficially - the maintenance of the rail lines that ran between camp and the dig site and the main locations for dumping removed earth. The small machine that pulled carts along the rails was rather too petite to qualify as a train in Gloria's opinion. It certainly never carried passengers, except on the rare occasion that Pallas needed to go down to the dig site in person.
"I'm working on some modifications to my chair that would let me go down under my own power, but they're a long ways from finished."
"How would that work?" Gloria asked. "I thought the main road was all gravel."
Pallas smirked. She was laying on the floor of her workspace, tools scattered all around, wedged half underneath her chair as she fiddled with some mechanism up in its underbelly. Gloria didn't come here often. The smells of coal and machine oil were noxious, and the noise could be intense. But Pallas had offered to bring home some wine to share if she could get some help today, and Lizzie and Florence were both occupied, and Gloria was too curious to say no. Helping in this case mostly meant passing Pallas the occasional tool or grabbing any nuts or bolts that slipped from her fingers and tried to roll away.
"It is gravel," Pallas agreed, "which would be hell on most chairs. They can't handle that much variation. The arm strength required would be completely infeasible."
Gloria rolled her eyes. Frustrating conversationalist indeed, drip feeding information so she needed to ask and ask and ask to get her answers. "Okay, so what modifications are you doing?"
Pallas peeked out at her, smile wide and toothy. "Do you want to see?"
"Obviously I want to see."
"Very cool, ok. Help me up."
Gloria helped Pallas up to her foot -- she could balance on the one good leg for a surprisingly long time when the need arose -- and into the seat. "It's the first modification I started on when I got here," she admitted, "but I only got it really working properly recently. Turns out you need your gyroscopes to be isometrically isolated in order for the cross-frequencies to compound properly."
Gloria hadn't the faintest clue what that meant, and could only stare slack jawed as it was demonstrated for her. With the flick of a couple switches and the pull of a hidden lever, Pallas's chair seemed to ;unfold before them. The wheels knocked outwards, folded in half, and compressed into the body of the chair. In their place, six legs emerged, jointed like a spider's and gleaming brassy and bright in the sunlight.
"Much better for terain," Pallas said with a wink.
Gloria burst out laughing. After a moment of shock Pallas joined her. "Oh, honey.."
"I know it's a little ridiculous," Pallas admited.
"No, it's marvelous! Look at you! Like a big metal spider."
"I worried it might be a bit creepy."
"It's magnificent." The legs were long and slender, with taut wires running through a series of grooves along their tops and bottoms. They moved fluidly and each part flexed in unison. The effect was rather like an orb weaver, with Pallas's chair sitting like a round body atop these elegant stilts. "Really, it's beautiful. I don't know how you even fit them under there, honestly. How do they walk? Do they work very well on the gravel?"
"Well enough, but I've got some ideas for how to make them better. I don't want to risk tripping out there. If my whole weight landed suddenly on a leg it might warp the metal. But I believe with a few more months of testing I should be able to get out to the dig sites under my own power. Or, well, coal power. It's just a shame I can't work on it durring the day. This is officially a personal project, you know."
"My work on Allogloss was a personal project once," Gloria replied. That got a wide smile from Pallas.
Stewing the legs away under the chair took rather a lot more time than unfurling them had taken, but they got it wrangled eventually and were able to head home again.
___
Most evenings after dinner the girls would all go back to their cabin, to talk and complain and laugh together, and tonight was no different. Lizzie always wanted them to play cards, which they ended up doing around half the time. Much as she hated to step away from her translations, Gloria found that the break always made her that much sharper the next day. Pallas knew all sorts of card tricks and dazzling shuffles. One evening she brought home a bottle of contraband wine made from the tart and sticky fruit that grew around the perimeter of camp. It wouldn't get them in too much trouble, she explained, as long as they behaved themselves. Alcohol wasn't strictly allowed in the camps but nobody much cared. On her third drink she confessed that she'd paid her way through university by dealing blackjack.
"And sometimes by playing, too," she admitted. "Counting cards isn't so hard once you've learned how."
Gloria let out a peal of laughter. "You worked in a gambling den? How scandalous!"
Pallas elbowed her in response, light hearted but still a sharp jab to the ribs. "And how'd you afford it then? An education isn't exactly affordable these days."
Gloria rolled her eyes. The drink made her feel sloppy and comfortable in a way she wasn't quite used to. "I got very good grades, and a lot of scholarships."
"Oh, boo," Lizzie huffed, "a full ride's worth? I don't believe it."
"Well." She huffed right back, suddenly defensive. "My family helped a bit. But mostly it was scholarships. Why, how did you pull it off then?" She gestured back at Florence, sloshing wine on the floor in the process. That would be a hassle to clean tomorrow, but she was truly not interested in doing anything about it right now.
"Oh, me?" Lizzie's already wide smile threatened to split her head in two. She gulped down the rest of her drink and then took the bottle from an unprotesting Lizzy to pour herself another. "Good looks will get you far in this world, ladies. Take note."
"What in the world is that supposed to mean?" Lizzie asked.
"It means I made a very pretty penny selling boudoir shoots to dusty old men."
Gloria felt her blush deepening at the thought.
"Oh," Pallas cooed, "Florence did the same thing." She turned a shit eating grin on the taller woman, then dissolved into giggles.
"I... I didn't... that's not really honest, you know." Florence's face had been a cheery shade of pink since her second glass of wine, but it now blazed a bright red.
"It is kind of," Pallas insisted.
"Florence," Gloria gasped, leaning forward expectantly. "how did you afford it?"
Florence mumbled something into her cup.
"What?"
"Isaidmyhusbandpaidforit." Florence glared daggars at Pallas, who only snickered in response.
"Oh!" Gloria's stomach did an uncomfortable flip at the revelation, a confusing reaction that only made her feel more on edge. "I didn't realize you were married."
"Yes, well," Florence sighed. "Some things are worth going to sea for." At Gloria's confused look, Florence quickly addded "like the advancement of the sciences," but her heart didn't seem to be in it.
_______________________
In her third month on the island, on a lazy saturday afternoon, Gloria was woken from a lovely nap when Lizzie burst into the cabin. The door was thrown open with such force that it rattled everything on their little shelves, and Gloria found herself yanked crudely out of a dream.
"Gloria!" Lizzie shrieked, waving a newspaper incessantly. "Good news! Great news!"
Gloria rubbed at her face and groaned, squinting down at Lizzie. "What is it, Lizz? I was sleeping."
Lizzie gave her a smile like a cat and went up on her toes to pass Gloria the newspaper. "News from the mainland. The crown has gone to war again with the eastern colonies."
Gloria frowned and snatched the newspaper from Lizzie's hand. "Give me that. How is that good news? That's horrible. I thought the peace talks were finally going well?"
"Oh, it's very sad. I mean, of course." Lizzie rocked back on her heels and shrugged. "Sorry. But it is good news, very good news, because Dr.Lynn is going to return to the mainland to help aid the war effort. The university is recalling him."
And just like that, Gloria was wide awake and brimming with hope.
As news spread across the camp Gloria was able to piece together more of what had happened. Dr.Lynn had been part of the second wave of researchers after the island and its mysteries were discovered. He'd already been well respected in the academy at that point but his ruthless ambition had made him a few powerful enemies who couldn't afford to attempt to publicly discredit him. The initial researchers on the island knew they'd found something great here but lacked the influence to secure the kind of funding that the dig sites would require. Dr.Lynn was sent to the island for the twin purposes of getting him far away from the university and raising the legitimacy of the projects here.
And a triplet purpose, a few girls in chemistry hinted, of avoiding the messier ways that influential people might find to make someone disappear.
By the time Gloria had been brought onboard the dig sites were a well respected if niche operation, the scientific importance was well established, the funding channels as secure as grant money ever could be, and the people who still cared enough to want Dr.Lynn off the mainland were outnumbered by the people who wanted him off the island. And then war erupted and suddenly there was use for his talents in aid of the empire, without having to dive back into the depths of university politics. He spent little time settling his affairs or setting things up for his predecessor before leaving. And just like that, Gloria was out from under the thumb of the tyrant.
He wasn't the only person to leave when the news reached them. A good portion of the archeology team left, which was unfortunately the core of the whole operation. Some chemists, a great number of laborers, a few engineers. Some people wanted to help with the war effort and some wanted to be closer to their families and some just wanted the opportunity to go home.
Gloria was offered the same deal as the rest. Cut your contract early, no harm no foul, and go home to the people who love you. She did not need even a moment to think about her answer. The people who loved her were here, she hoped.
__________________
Laying in bed that night, Gloria could only wonder at the summersaults her heart seemed to be doing lately. Florence could be terse, avoidant, especially when she was in the middle of a project. Yet for all it stung to be passed over, Gloria found it only made her want Florence's attention more. She would go to the chemistry labs each day when her shift ended, hoping to grab Florence on the way out. When Florence wasn't available Gloria would find herself despondent and melancholy, wandering aimlessly or sitting at her desk in their cabin and staring out the window for hours. She tried to spend the time wisely, to focus on her own interests, but she found her mind drawn again and again to the other woman.
Yet when Florence was free, Gloria was never certain she really wanted to be spending the time together anyway. She had spent many long hours sitting on her bed and trying to read a book or pen a letter, listening to Florence and Pallas prattle on about chemical engineering or mechanical ergonomics or any of a variety of topics which Gloria couldn't begin to wrap her head around. They seemed to have so much in common, and got on so well. Neither were ever mean to Gloria, not at all, but somehow that made it worse. The teasing they aimed at each other seemed to show how much they trusted each other and how well they'd grown to know each other. Sometimes the kindness they showed Gloria felt like a wall being carefully erected around her.
The only time Florence and Gloria really spent alone together was when Florence was ahead on her projects and Pallas and Lizzie were otherwise occupied together. Those two were so clearly first in each other's hearts, and Gloria took a small bitter comfort in Florence's hurt when their time together made them unavailable to Florence or herself. Florence and she would go on long walks through the jungle around the camp. Wide hats trailed bug netting around them and protected them from the worst of the flies.The humid air seemed to stick to their skin. They would talk about all sorts of things, but as time went on the finicky nature of the relationships in their cabin came to dominate the conversation more and more. Florence felt bitter at the time the others spent together. Florence felt jealous and didn't dare speak it. Florence felt chipper and energized after a pleasant evening with Pallas. Gloria felt like she would drown in it.
And yet, when the four of them were together, Gloria felt serene and joyous. Their companionship was a light in a dark abyss. It was water in the desert. She could not understand how she could ever have felt jealous, for each of these women were so darling in their own ways, and each felt so tenderly for her and for each other. They lit up in each other's company and the joy they brought each other was beautiful to behold. They all brought out the best in each other. Florence, usually so sullen, became animated and excited whenever she had a chance to explain her ideas to Pallas. Pallas, usually consumed by her own projects, became attentive and curious whenever Lizzie was there. And Lizzie... well from what Gloria could see, Lizzie was steady and kind, devoted to her friends at all times, and putting in a great deal of effort to make Gloria feel welcome and included.
When Gloria thought back on it later it made her feel odd. She knew that Lizzie must see how lonely she got sometimes. Why else would the woman work so hard to make Gloria feel welcomed so many months into her stay here? It felt to Gloria like pity and condescension, but only in hindsight, only when the work grew long or the evenings grew quiet and she had time to think back over every interaction of the week. In the moment it always only felt like being loved.
Lizzie was the one who declared that Gloria's reading voice was like an angel's, and after that would coax her to read passages for them. She was embarrassed at first, but over time found it a source of great peace. She had commandeered some fiction from Florence's shelves for the practice and would read a chapter or two most evenings that the girls were all available. It hurt so badly to feel outside of things, but it felt euphoric to sit at the center of these women's attention.
When Pallas or Florence were busy, and only Lizzie was there to ask for reading, Gloria would sometimes read from her own work notes. Lizzie said that the language was nearly as beautiful as her voice, and anything she said would be nice to listen to, especially if there was no story to distract from the words. Gloria found it a baffling concept but was more than happy to oblige. She would sound out long strings of words, hoping that if she played with their pronunciation enough she might find some paralells in her Allogloss dictionaries.
It was Lizzie, half asleep as she listened to one of these rambling talks, who truly had the first big break through of the translation project.
"I recognize that one," she murmured, rolling over on her bunk and blinking big eyes open to peer at Gloria. Gloria, sat at her desk and pouring over her notes by lamp light, looked up in surprise. "It was on the list you started on today," Lizzie continued. "This is Dynagloss, right?"
"This now is, yeah," Gloria agreed. "But I started with an Allogloss conjugation chart."
"Hmm," Lizzie murmured. "I recognized the end part. ɪʃnəs. It sounds like wind."
Gloria frowned, flipping back and forth through her notes. "....You're right. If I move the vowel sounds back a notch then they line up well. But then the root word here is.. ɡreɪt, which is like... mightiness? Largeness? And the ɪʃnəs is an obscure conjugation that's usually only applied to emotional adjectives, meaning like.... a small amount? As a noun. So like.."
"Happyɪʃnəs," Lizzie purred, "a very small quantity of joy."
Gloria nodded. "Yeah, exactly. Oh, this is so weird though. If they're using atypical conjugation patterns... or no longer typical conjugation patterns, I mean that would explain why it's been so difficult to find matches. I need to start breaking the words up smaller probably, trying to match them up by piece and not by the whole word."
"ɡreɪtɪʃnəs" Lizzie purred again, beaming up at Gloria. "A small quantity of greatness. Moderate esteem. I knew you were up to this, darling. You're so smart, you'll be translating whole sentences soon. A very cunning linguist." She winked.
Gloria's smile felt tight, and inside she felt her stomach twisting into a vicious knot. It hadn't been her breakthrough really, it was Lizzie's. It hadn't been her intelect or training or expertise that had done the job. It was kind of Lizzie to let her keep the credit, she thought, but cruel to rub it in her face like this. So she smiled, and nodded, and kept her head down and her mouth shut for the rest of the evening as she worked on breaking all of her carefully transcribed words apart.
When the others finally came home to sleep, and Gloria herself snuffed her lamp at last and laid down to rest, she thought she saw Lizzie peering out at her from beneath her blankets, eyes large and dark and wet. As if she had shed some silent tears while Gloria worked in silence.
A trick of the light, probably.
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The sixth month and final month of Gloria's contract ended and Gloria was still here. After everyone who wanted to leave had left, the nice ladies in admin ran all the numbers and declared that they had the budget to bring in some new linguists, and would Gloria like to stay on as a senior researcher to oversee the new team? Did she have any staffing recommendations, as their most esteemed and successful and only current linguist? She compiled a small list of peers from her university days, stared at it for a long time, and then methodically shredded the paper into a hundred tiny pieces. When she went back to the admin building it was with a very simple proposition which she knew would never be accepted.
"What this project needs," Gloria said, "is not academy trained lingusits. It's speakers. It's people who know this language well enough to play in it, and who have studied it deeply enough to recognize the many forms it's taking."
"But you're the only researcher who's studied Allogloss, Ms.Deoradhan," said the dainty secretary who was managing the rehiring. It seemed everyone had been promoted a couple ranks when their supervisors moved out.
"I'm the only university-trained researcher. But I'm not the only scholar."
In the end, sending out the invite to some Allogloss speakers was only about half as impossilbe as she'd expected. Job offers were sent out to fifteen university scholars and five Allogloss speakers who Gloria had worked closely alongside over the years and who she thought might be excited by the prospect.
Two months after they first asked for her input, the first ship of new hires arrived on the island. Gloria went down to the beach to greet them and to introduce herself to the new linguistics team. Among their number were five eager young ladies fresh out of university, two young men who were likely here as part of some elaborate draft-dodging scheme, and five Allogloss speakers wearing new suits and wide smiles.
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After that the work grew swift and exciting. Things still felt stiff with her peers in the lab, but they thawed significantly once she had real progress to show. She was a senior researcher now, with a sizable band of new recruits under her. The translations they produced were clunky and strange, awkward and without confidence, but increasingly she was able to pin meaning to the meandering sentences she was given.
They spent so much time defining the most precise subjects. Long compound sentences, longer than the paragraphs Gloria would write, would sprawl across the stone just to detail the very precise area of space being described. And what of that area? Oh, you know. Something about water, maybe. It's wet there, slightly more than usual. The fire there is small. Pointless and meaningless messages that drove Gloria into confusion and obsession.
"I just don't understand why they'd bother," she complained over lunch one day. "It takes so much effort to carve such complex script into stone. What's the point of it, if they're going to spend eight sentences detailing a space that an Allogloss speaker would use two words to name, and then... say something about dirt that I can't work out the conjugation on."
Florence shrugged, scowling down at the fish and steamed veggies they'd been served today. "I don't know. This whole island is weird. Have you been down to the dig site lately?"
"I haven't been at all! I just work with the samples that your teams send me. Or, I guess lately, with rubbings that Lizzie's team brings. I guess they've stopped breaking the buildings apart quite so much."
Florence gave her an odd look, head tilting in puzzlement. "You haven't been down there at all?"
"No," Gloria sighed. "I'd love to though. I miss being able to interact with the things I'm working on. It's so different, working with living speakers.
On the Allogloss islands, Gloria had felt like a student and a scholar because she was learning constantly. She had lived closely with her research subjects and they had become great teachers to her. Here, she felt like a student only in that she was constantly being graded and judged on the merits of her work.She'd also had a degree of esteem and power, to be the only white person in the village while the navy patrolled the space between islands. Here, she was a white woman, and felt she got no respect at all. It made her feel so hopeless, to think of how her work had accelerated the Crown's efforts which made her work obsolete.
"You should come down to the site. I'll be going down later this week, once the new batch of explosives are prepared. We've had some real issues with the calcium deposits on the west end. They reacted poorly with some of the solvents I like to use, but I think I've found a way to get past them and get us access to the ash layer for removal, without just blasting through and damaging the structures underneath. Plus the last batch of recruits is grand. I guess the war effort has all the men busy on the eastern front. The women who are joining us now are so much more passionate about the work, and so much more pleasant to spend the days with. The excavation is expected to pick up significantly from this point. It's very neat down there, and it's possible that seeing these words in their context might help you with piecing everything together."
The prospect of an afternoon on the dig site with Florence made Gloria's heart flutter, and she was quick to agree.
When the day actually came, all four of them were given the opportunity to go together. Lizzie worked in the dig sites frequently anyway, and Pallas was being sent in to work on one of the trucks that had broken down, its inner workings clogged in ash and soot. Gloria felt cheated when she learned that she would not get any time alone with Florence, but when the day came it had a cheerful and jovial air about it. And anyways, she was able to stick to Florence's side while Pallas and Lizzie set about their separate work.
Gloria expected Pallas to have difficulty with the gravel road to the dig site, and was delighted to hear that that wouldn't be the case.
"I think I finally got the legs working well enough to get out to the dig site. And then, Florence's team has been helping clear off some of the main road, so I should be able to maneuver normally out there."
"Oh! Are you through with prototyping?"
Pallas shrugged. "I don't think you ever stop iterating on a project like this, but for now, yeah. They're easy to switch back now, that was the biggest issue. And they walk cleanly. Here, look."
The transition was indeed smoother this time. The chair rose slightly as the legs unfurled and the wheels tucked away. A small trickle of black smoke snaked up from behind Pallas as the engine kicked to life. The chair made a little more noise in this form, but it glided over the gravel and odd tree roots without a single issue. The legs moved in trios, the front and back leg on each side synchronized to the middle leg on the other, and in this way gave Pallas a smooth ride over the perilously bumpy path.
Florence was giddy at the reveal, and for once Gloria couldn't even blame her. Pallas truly was a mechanical genius. Her works were beautiful and bizarre and they revealed the true intellect that Pallas commanded.
Countless long avenues had already been uncovered and swept free of ancient ash. Scattered bricks became low walls, snaking between the trees and ferns. Pillars and cracked foundations dotted the jungle. The main road had been wrought in gravel and bark chips which Pallas's wheelchair struggled to traverse, but the geologist was determined to see the ruins in person as often as she could. Much of the city had been buried for a long time by ash and, above that, layers of soil and hardened lava and soil again, until only the scattered tops of second and third story buildings pierced above the ground. The excavation process, digging out the centuries of earth that covered the lower levels, was a tedious process. Gloria could see why dynamite would be desirable. At the center of the city stood a building that the archeologists here had taken to calling the spire. In the central district the buildings were more intact than elsewhere, but the tallest stood only two stories tall. The spire, though, stood a good three stories larger than even that, and had no easy entrance on what had previously been ground level. It was a massive stone monument with a wide avenue leading towards it, much smoother than the road leading in. Gloria suspected that this smooth road existed beneath the gravel one for most of the road's length, but the excavation teams had only been motivated to dig through those last few inches of obstruction as they approached the tower. A great archway stood there, but where all involved had expected an entrance into the spire they found only a neatly bricked wall.
"Why would they brick over the doorway?" Gloria asked, dumbfounded as she finally took in the site. "I mean, this was clearly the entrance, right? It looks... it has all the signs of a gateway."
"It is," Pallas agreed, running a hand over the stones. "That arch isn't just decorative, it doesn't just look like a door. That's structural. It should be able to support the wall being open."
"Was it added in after?"
"Uh... maybe? Lizzie would probably need to do some tests before we could be sure. But I don't see anything that would indicate that it's not original." Pallas rolled back carefully, peering back over her shoulder to be sure she wouldn't hit any loose rocks. Once they'd reached the main roads and were off the gravel she'd opted to retun her chair to its more standard configuration. It was quieter this way, and less unsettling to the other workers. The main avenue here had been incredibly smooth when it was built, and had been cleared sufficiently that she could maneuver her chair here without help, but odd bits of debreis still littered the ground at unpredictable intervals. Once she had a little distance she pivoted again to gaze at the tower, drinking in its dazzling heights. "What about the words there? I kinda assumed they would explain it. That's why you're here, right?"
Gloria scowled, stepping back a few paces so she could fit the whole of the arch in her view. Letters had been etched deep into the stone, a long sentence ghosting over the wall that should have been a doorway. "I... might know a couple of the words. This bit here," she said, pointing to a word around chest height, "means like... exterior? And this one here," she went up on her tip toes to point, then found she needed to jump to reach the word in question. The doorway was big, bigger than the tunnels back home that trains ran through, which only made it more mysterious that it was impassible. "This bit is about a passage, or like a doorway, or sometimes a transformation?"
"Hmm," Florence said. She leaned casually against one of the walls, staring up at the monolyth. "Can you read it for us?"
"Ooh!" Lizzie had been working on chipping off a small piece of the stone wall into her bag, but perked up at that, turning a wide smile on Gloria. "Can you? You have such a lovely reading voice."
Gloria felt herself begin to blush and quickly turned away so the others wouldn't see. She nodded, stepped back a few more paces to fit the whole thing in view better, and began carefully reading off the large script written there.
"bɪˈɡɪn ˈsteɪtmənt. ðɪs ɡeɪt əz dɪˈfaɪnd baɪ ðɪs sɛt əv ˌkɛrəktəˈrɪstɪks ənd ðɪs juˈnik neɪm. ðɪs ɡeɪt həz ðiz ˈspeɪʃəl ˈprɑpərtiz."
This was a fairly standard clause, she knew. She hadn't quite cracked the meaning but she found variations of it on most of the inscriptions. She spoke slowly and carefully, determined not to stutter or stumble over her words. She'd read for Lizzie countless times, but hadn't really read in Dynagloss for the others before. There was a little ember of hope in her, that Florence might be suitibly impressed. Certainly Gloria had been impressed by her work, when they'd all stopped on the trail and watched a chunk of surface stone get blasted away to reveal the ashy layers underneath. Florence was powerufl.
" ðɪs ɡeɪt əz ˈæŋkərd baɪ ðiz koʊˈɔrdənəts. ðɪs ɡeɪt ˈoʊpənz ˈɪntə ən ˈaʊtˈsaɪd ðət əz mɔr ˈaʊtˈsaɪd ðən ˈɛniˌθɪŋ kən bi. ðɪs ɡeɪt kəˈnɛkts tə ði ˈʌðər saɪd. ðə kəˈnɛkʃən əz ˈsteɪbəl ənd sɪˈkjʊr."
Gloria felt powerful too, as she spoke. She flexed her fingers at her side and furrowed her brow. No, not just powerful. Tingling. Strange. She'd always been nervous performing in front of anyone, something that had caused her quite a few embarassments at the academy and which had not been lessened at all by her time in the field. She'd agreed to read passages in the evenings largely to face that fear, and had thought herself quite improved, if not quite cured. But now her palms felt sweaty, and her head felt light, as if she'd been hanging upside down for some time. She clasped her hands together and discretely felt out her pulse in her wrist, but found it to be steady. It was all the symptoms of nerves without the nerves themselves.
"ˈɛnərʤiz ənd qualia ər ˈeɪbəl tə muv ˈfrili əˈkrɔs ðə ɡeɪt. soʊ ɪt ɪz."
As the last syllable left Gloria's lips she felt a powerful wave course through her, dizziness and nausea and then light, searing powerful light that seemed to grow in the roof of her mouth and shred outwards through her body. The wall before her, also, was awash in blinding light. She thought she heard screams, but they were distant, muffled by the blinding pain that permeated her whole body. She tried to scream herself but her tongue felt sluggish and her throat convulsed such that no air could make it past. Her body felt distant. And then her thoughts felt distant, and then there was nothing of her left to feel any way at all.
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Lizzie had watched Gloria fondly as she read, wondering dreamily about the pretty shape of the linguist's lips as she spoke. She was therefore well situated to see the light that erupted from Gloria's mouth as she finished her recitation. Blinding white, it spread like porcelain cracks across Gloria's skin. Lizzie reeled back in shock and let out a shriek. The light shivered across Gloria's body, broke the woman up into blazing chunks which shifted and separated and began to turn horribly inside out. Lizzie lifted her hands as if to cover her eyes but found she couldn't quite bare to look away. She expected... well, none of this was expected at all, but from the way the pieces of Gloria were moving, Lizzie quite expected to see blood and gore and horror. She'd been witness to a disaster the year before where a mistimed dynamite ignition had blown a man's arm clean off. She knew more than she'd ever like about what the brutal insides of a person could look like. But as Gloria shuddered and her chunks separated Lizzie saw nothing of the sort. In fact, as each horrible piece of the woman rotated away Lizzie found nothing at all between them. No blood or sinew or bone. Not even the back side of the pieces themselves. It was as if the jungle behind them was a painted backdrop, and the pieces of Gloria were folding themselves neatly away behind that backdrop until they disappeared completely and were gone.
Besides her Pallas was shaking, pupils shrunk to terrified pinpricks. She turned away unceremoniously and threw up onto the smooth ground.
Slowly Lizzie realized that she was screaming and shut her mouth. Where Gloria had stood a moment before was nothing at all. The ground looked undisturbed. The thick smells of the dig site, sweat and jungle mud and gunpowder, wafted through the air. Her hands felt clammy. And to the side, a ways down the path, Florence was still screaming. Lizzie felt stunned and a little annoyed. Florence was backpeddling, scrambling away from her. Lizzie stared at her, confused. Florence pointed. For a moment Lizzie thought she was pointing at her, but no, Florence's finger traced a line somewhere over her shoulder. Feeling numb, and then suddenly afraid, Lizzie turned to look behind her at the spire.
The wall that had once filled that archway, and which had moments ago been covered in ancient text, was gone. Sparks of light still sizzled around the edges of the hole. The space inside was massive, larger than it should be considering the size of the tower outside, and the circular wall of that great room was rimmed in more great arches just like this one. Lizzie felt stunned, but then that made sense considering the circumstances. She closed her eyes and pictured the tower as she knew it, with its one prominent archway. She opened her eyes again and slowly stepped closer to the door. Five great arches graced the room inside, including the one she peered through, but only hers seemed to hold the jungle behind it. She saw through one a great expanse of yellow sand. Through another, a soft green meadow that made her heart ache for home. There was a hubbub like a great crowd here, and -- finally Lizzie spotted what Florence had been so frightened by, and for the second time in as many minutes she felt a shriek bubble up her throat. One great arch looked out onto a field of darkness, and out of it swarmed the largest bugs that Lizzie had ever seen.