Page 77 of The Devouring Time

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.