Dr Jane Harris had been around. Both in a literal and figurative sense. She felt like she had seen all an archaeological site had to offer. The good, like the shared sense of purpose, the drinking and singing (where local laws allowed it), the joy of a find.
The bad, like the dust, the heat, the frequent inability for local tradesmen to accept that a woman was in charge of the operation. An equipment failure, like this that had dropped her into the antechamber of the tomb they were exploring This though, this was new. The alter was 7000 years old, give or take, based on the carbon dating they had done from the finds in the outer areas. So was the air she was breathing in theory. She had a small rebreather on her belt, just in case. There was no cause to use it though. The air, while not fresh, didn’t have that same musty, dead smell, that air trapped for millennia usually had. It smelt, if she wasn’t mistaken, of onions.
Her torch beam, swung about drunkenly as she walked, and picked out the edges of the room. Larger than the imaging had suggested, but not outside tolerance, and certainly no other entrances or exits for the air. Jane decided she needed to stop and get some more even light on the situation so she pulled out a cracked a few glow sticks. Tossing them around the chamber, a green light flowed over her and everything around her. As the illumination hit the altar in front of her, it glistened.
Jane snapped off her torch and grabbed her camera. It was well designed for low light, and her team could adjust for the green in the edit, so even in these circumstances, she could get good photos. A jewelled or gilded altar would be a really interesting find. Altars in this era were usually functional. Places where everyday events, like ritual sacrifices, were carried out, with the worship and the glorification done elsewhere.
It didn’t look fancy, as she approached and she was studying it so intently, she didn’t notice a small step on the way up to it. Jane tripped suddenly and managed to catch herself before she hit the altar. Or so she thought. By her hand was a small pool of blood.
“Shit”, she said out loud. Contaminating a 7000-year-old altar with her own DNA was not a strong look. She tried not to think about the huge grin that would be on the face of her dig foreman when she told him she had fallen over.
She checked herself all over and found no cut, or graze anywhere. Perhaps she had a head injury and was concussed and just couldn’t spot the obvious flow of blood from her scalp. No, she thought, I’m clear-headed, logical. This is not my blood. Which was impossible, obviously. And so we are back to the head injury, she thought. Except that the altar was plain and functional as she expected. The blood had been what was glistening in the light. So, it had been there before she had even reached it.
“This is not my blood”, she said. It sounded even stupider out loud.
“No, sorry”, said a voice from behind her. “It’s mine, I’m afraid.”
Jane forced herself not to spin around. Her parents didn’t raise a flighty young woman. She took a deep breath and turned around slowly.
A small man stood there, holding a knife and an onion. He indicated a bandage on the hand with the vegetable. “I’ve not really got a flat surface, so accidents happen.”
“What?”, said Jane.
“Sorry”, said the man. “Is my English not great? I’ve only learned that one in the last 60 years or so. I thought that’s what’s you spoke? We can do other ones if you like?” He thought for a moment.
“Keidomtukh brikhta. Dakhee vat?”, he said.
“Spay van, merci”, said Jane without thinking.
The man lit up and launched into a torrent of Aramaic, that Jane could not keep up with at all.
“Sorry”, she said. “Can we go back to English?”
The man looked disappointed for a moment. “Aramaic was always my favourite of the new languages. Such a shame no-one seems to speak it anymore.” He brightened. “Still good chance to practice my English. That one seems like a real up and comer.”
“Who are you, and what are you doing ruining my dig site?”, Jane asked, trying to regain some sense of control.
“I am Alan”, said Alan.
“Alan?”
“Well, it's easier than trying to teach you the language in which you could say my true name. I thought that would be easier.” He smiled reassuringly.
“What are you doing down here?”
“Making dinner”, said Alan.
“No, I mean why are you here?”
“Why are any of us here?” Alan raised an eyebrow, like he’d posed a deep question. “That was one of the questions I would always challenge my priests with. It was a lot more poetic in my language though. English is so direct. Quicker though, so I guess that’s good.”
Jane felt a wave of familiar anger bubbling up. She did not react well to being given the runaround.
“Listen, Alan, or whatever your name isn’t. I’ve worked really fucking hard to get the funding for this dig. Its been my life for nearly 4 years. I’ve had an equipment failure, I’ve fallen a fair way, and I am not in the mood to be pissed about with. How long have you been contaminating this place with your ‘cooking’?”
“About 6500 years”, said Alan. “Ish. I lost count a bit somewhere I think. It's easier now, as I can pop out and get a paper and see what the date is, but for a few thousand years there was nothing nearby and I can only go about 1000 cubits away from here.”
Jane stared at him.
“Hello?”
“You’re insane”, she said eventually. “I’m standing next to an altar covered in blood, talking to a crazy man with a knife.”
Alan looked at the knife. “Oh, how rude of me!”, he said. The knife blinked out of existence. “I don’t think I’m insane, but it is hard to tell. That’s one of the main things about being crazy. You don’t think you’re crazy. Maybe you are the crazy one! It really is only a small splash of blood though.”
“How did you do that?”, Jane asked. “Where did the knife go?”
“It didn’t go anywhere. I just removed it.”
“Are you a god?”, Jane asked, feeling like a confused child again. She hated that feeling. It was one of the reasons she had studied so hard. She wanted to the one in the know. She started to feel sick. This conversation was making her head hurt.
“I’ve been called that, yes. And sorry again about the blood. I know breathing and bleeding and stuff is a bit showy, but I always preferred to be a god of the people, not one of the aloof all powerful types.”
Jane felt her vision close in. Her head span, and she crumpled forward. Alan tried to catch her, but he wasn’t fast enough. This time she did hit her head.
