Volodimir Vladko - Descendants of the Scythians

“Wasn’t it you who were so displeased with the discovery of only the parchment and nothing else in the chest?” Lida said, also in a low voice.

Artem only shrugged his shoulders: there had been absolutely no way of guessing what was written on the parchment, had there? Lida added mockingly to drive the point home:

“Take care, by the way, not to let Dmitro Borisovich hear you. He’s already given you the once-over for your ‘dreams of gold,’ hasn’t he?”

The young man kept silent.

Dmitro Borisovich was almost finished copying the text, when Ivan Semenovich cried out in alarm, pointing at the parchment:

“Look, look, Dmitro Borisovich, what’s going on? The parchment’s changing color!”

“It’s gone darker! Yes, it has!” Lida cried out in her turn.

“It’s getting brown at the edges!”

Dmitro Borisovich, startled, leaned over the parchment to examine it closer. Its original appearance was indeed changing. The center was still light in color but on all sides, it had gone tawny, with the edges dark brown. Right before everyone’s eyes, this dark brown color was slowly expanding toward the center as though some dark liquid were spreading over the surface. Closer to the edges, it was impossible already to make out the letters, as they had merged with the dark background.

Dmitro Borisovich banged the table with his fist in fury. What a disgrace! What a crime against science! How could he, an archeologist of no small experience, have failed to foresee such an eventuality? Why hadn’t he thought about it? The ancient parchment, kept in an airtight metal box, had been well-preserved, out of contact with dampness and fresh air. Now the parchment had begun actively absorbing vapor from the air, and some rapid chemical reaction had started. The decay, delayed for hundreds of years, was doing its ruinous work rapidly and inexorably, and there was nothing that could stop it now.

Only he, Dmitro Borisovich, was to blame for it, and no one else! He should have taken some appropriate measures; he should have treated it with chemicals to give it the necessary resistance; or at least he should have put it between two sheets of glass, closing the edges with putty which would have stopped the air from getting to the parchment. It was a standard procedure; he had done it many times before… Besides, he knew so many other ways of preserving brittle and fragile ancient manuscripts!

“Condemn me, my friends, berate me, I’m guilty!” Dmitro Borisovich cried out in despair. “The ill-advised eagerness that made me hurry with the premature unrolling is to blame. I got carried away, that was the cause of the disaster… Oh, my God, what have I done! I’m burning with shame, I’m…”

His anguish cut him short; everybody saw that he’d never forgive himself for his own rashness.

“But, Dmitro Borisovich, you’ve photographed the parchment both before and after it was unrolled, from so many angles… the photographs’ll show everything… besides, you’ve copied down the text,” Lida tried to console him. But the heartbroken man only shook his head.

The parchment meanwhile had gone dark brown throughout; on the dark brown rectangle, boldly standing out against the background of the table, not a single word could be made out. It even seemed to have collapsed somehow, spreading closer to the surface of the table, almost sticking to the white paper. The thought of what would happen to the mysterious piece of parchment next flashed through the minds of both Artem and Dmitro Borisovich simultaneously.

“Maybe it should be removed to a safer place,” said Artem uncertainly.

“Yes, I think we should do so, at least for now… though I’m afraid it’s a little too late!” the archeologist replied plaintively. “There’s a piece of paper underneath the parchment. Let’s try to put it the way it is into a suitcase or something. The thing is not to touch the parchment itself. Artem, fetch an empty suitcase, will you?”

In a minute, the suitcase was placed open on the table. Dmitro Borisovich and Lida took the paper with the parchment on it by the corners, and very carefully began lifting it…

“Watch it! Don’t breathe on it!”

But lo and behold! The stunned onlookers saw a small piece tear away from the parchment and soar into the air like a black piece of ash, disintegrating as it went down. One of the bits lit on Lida’s hand, and she did not even feel it touch her skin, so small and almost weightless it was. In a few moments, only two or three tiny brown pieces were left to be seen on the sheet of paper that Dmitro Borisovich and Lida were still holding. This was all that was left of the parchment that had been found in the bronze chest — a couple of small pieces of brownish gossamery substance.

Only one little piece the size of a postage stamp was still floating in the air. A draft was carrying it toward the door, and all the eyes followed it. The flake floated right to the door, turned over and disintegrated…

“Well, my friends, how long are you going to keep holding that empty sheet of paper?” the voice of Ivan Semenovich rang out. He was wearing a broad smile. “Of course, it’s too bad our parchment has ceased to exist, but nothing can be done about it. After all, we still have the photographs, and they’ll be of some help, right? Don’t grieve over the loss so heartbrokenly, Dmitro Borisovich! Besides, you’ve copied down the text, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have,” the archeologist said gloomily. “I can’t be sure I’ve not made mistakes, though. The photographs.are our last hope.”

“Can you read and translate what’s written here? We’re dying to know what it says in some detail,” Ivan Semenovich said, feeling encouraging stares of Artem and Lida directed at him.

“I think I can.”

“That’s good, since, to the best of my knowledge, you’re the only person among us who can read ancient Greek. Let’s sit down and try to make out what it says. The text must be of extreme interest. It mentions gold, doesn’t it? If so, it concerns geology as well as your archeology.”

“How fast… how fast it disintegrated…” Dmitro Borisovich muttered as he sat down at the table. He pulled his handkerchierf out of his pocket and wiped his eyeglasses, misted over with perspiration. He put them back on and picked up the notebook with the text he had copied down. Lida was looking furtively over his shoulder. Artem chose to sit close to the chest, examining the tangled and intricate design on its top. They were reminiscent of some ornament, only not a single motif, not a single group of lines was repeated anywhere.

“I can’t say everything is absolutely clear to me as yet,” Dmitro Borisovich began, looking attentively at his notes. “As I’ve told you the text’s written in ancient Greek, but liberally mixed with another language, in all probability one of the Iranian group. But it is rather clear in general. Someone who wrote this parchment in the remote past… My, how fast it has disintegrated! How terribly fast! Right in front of otir eyes it turned to ashes… You all saw it happen…”

“Dmitro Borisovich, you’ve promised to translate what’s written here, and not to keep on bemoaning the sad fate of the parchment,” said the geologist, putting his hand on the grieving man’s shoulder.

“Yes, yes… It’s so painful to think about. Now, back to what I was saying: someone in ancient times wrote this parchment. Considering the fact that it has disintegrated so quickly, turned to ashes so to say before our very eyes…”

“Oh, Dmitro Borisovich, there you go again!”

“No, this time it’s to the point. Considering this fact, I can tentatively date the parchment as being at least twenty five hundred years old. In other words, the writer was a contemporary of the ancient Scythians. No doubt about it. But I must admit that the text does not make any mention of Scythians. Which makes it a little more difficult to attribute the document to some particular people… But of course we’ll make a joint effort to determine what’s what in due time. Here it says in my somewhat free thanslation with… er… some guesswork due to the words not known to me, since they’ve been borrowed from a language other than ancient Greek. So here it goes!”