Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve

This is the third day Sifna89 has returned to Salo University, and it is still raining.It is a world of contrast to the dry desert environment of the Sajikan Peninsula.Since it hadn't rained for a long time, she was very surprised. She didn't expect the rain to fall from the sky. In Sajikan, every drop of water is precious.Its use requires extremely precise calculations, and everything that can be reused must be reused.But when we got here, the rain poured down from the sky, like pouring from a huge reservoir that would never dry up.A strong desire welled up in Sifna's heart. She really wanted to take off her clothes and run across the huge green lawn on the campus, let the heavy rain pour over her body, and let the precious trickle of rain flow continuously all over her body. The dust stained on the hellish desert was thoroughly washed away.

This is exactly what they want to see!Sifna89, an indifferent, detached, and romantic female professor of archeology, actually runs naked in the rain!If it's just to appreciate the shock of everyone in the university when running, peeking out the window from the window is worth doing. However, it is impossible to do so.Not her usual style, Sifna thought. There is simply too much to do.Without wasting any time, she got to work.Although most of the artefacts excavated from the Bekelimot archaeological site were transported by cargo ship and arrived after several weeks, there was still much work involved in tabulation, drawing, analysis of stratigraphic photographs taken by Balik, preparation of soil samples for the spectroscopic laboratory many things.

Then, I have to discuss with Mudlin 505 from the Department of Ancient Literature to interpret the words on Dr. Tom's soil slips. Tom Bo Tujian is the essence of cultural relics!It was an important discovery she made in the past year and a half!This might be what she was thinking.Of course, everything depends on whether someone can interpret them. In short, she will hurry up and let Mudlin interpret them as soon as possible.In any case, the soil tablets are a fascinating thing, perhaps of far greater practical significance, and have the potential to significantly change the results of the prehistoric world.That's why she didn't let the cargo ships transport them, but brought them back from Sajikan herself.

There is a knock on the door. "Sifna, Sifna, are you home?" "Come in, Barrick." The broad-shouldered stratigrapher was soaking wet. "This rain is annoying, annoying," he murmured, shaking off the rain, "you can't believe how much it rains, just the time it takes to get here from Ulan Library across the Quadrangle I got soaked like this!" "I love the rain," Sifna said, "and wish it never stopped. All these months, baking in the desert all day... with sand in my eyes and throat, unbearably hot and thirsty... …No, Barrick, just let it go!"

"But what I see is that you shut yourself indoors, in your beautiful dry office, looking out the window to enjoy the rain, everything is so leisurely... You are playing with your simple things again, aren't you?" He was alluding to the six lumpy, scarred clods of red dirt overlapping the desk.Sifna divided them into two groups according to rectangles and squares, with three rectangles on the bottom and three squares on top. "Aren't they beautiful?" Sifna said cheerfully. "I can't disturb them. I stare at them, and it seems that, if I look at them for a long time, they will suddenly become more understandable."

Balik leaned over to take a look, shook his head and said, "I think they are all chicken feet." "Come on! I've seen obvious word forms," ​​Sifna said, "and I'm completely clueless about ancient script. Look, here, see these six characters? They're here again. Still There are these three places, which are protruded by kneading." "Has Mudlin seen them?" "Not yet, I'll ask him to come over later." "Do you know that someone told us about our discovery? It's the original site of Tombo City that overlapped several layers."

Sifna looked at Barik in surprise. "What? Who is it?" "A student," Balik said. "I'm not sure who it was... Alice thinks it's Sten, I guess it's Vellolan. I see it as inevitable, don't you?" "I warned them not to tell anyone..." "Yes. But they are children, Sifna, they are only 19 years old, and this is the first discovery they have participated in! And this discovery is particularly exciting... Seven unknown prehistoric cities Overlapping, going back to a prehistoric year, God only knows..." "It's nine, Barrick."

"Seven and nine are not small numbers. But I think it's seven." Balik said with a smile. "I know you think that. You're wrong... who said that? I mean someone in the department." "It's Hilico and Blankin, I heard them say that in the department lounge this morning. They were skeptical, I must tell you, and a little passionate. None of them believed there was any city out there that Bequerimot is older, let alone nine, or seven, or any other number." "They didn't see the photos, they didn't see the record charts, they didn't see the soil slips. They didn't see anything, so how could they express their opinions?" Sifna's eyes flashed with anger, "What do they know? They used to Ever set foot in the Sajikan Peninsula? Ever visited Berkelimot as a tourist? How dare you express your opinion on an excavation that has neither been made public nor formally discussed in the Department of Archeology!"

"Sifna..." "I want to severely criticize both of them, and Welloran and Sten are no exception. They should know how to keep their mouths shut! They should know what kind of punishment is given to leaking secrets, even verbally! I will give them some points Brilliant look. I'm going to call the two of them here and find out who leaked this to Hilico and Blankin. If anyone thinks he or she is going to get a Ph.D. at this university... ..." "Come on, Sifna." Balik said reassuringly, "It's useless." "It's useless! My secret has been leaked, could it be..."

"No one has leaked anything about you. It can only be a rumor until you make it official. As for Velora and Sten, we don't know who leaked the secret. Even if someone leaks, please remember that you was young." "Yes," Sifna said, "three geological generations ago." "Don't be stupid. You are younger than me, and I don't dare to pretend to be old, you know?" Sifna nodded indifferently, looking out the window.Suddenly, the rain wasn't so pleasant.Everything outside had grown dark and disturbing. "Also, I heard that our discovery has not been published yet, and it has been controversial..."

"There must be controversy, Sifna. What we found on that hill will definitely touch everyone's research direction... Not only our department, but also history, philosophy, and even theology will be affected. For sure , They will definitely fight with reason to protect the historical view of civilization development they have established. If someone proposes a radical new concept that threatens what you believe in, will you sit idly by? Be realistic, Sifna .We had to know from the start that this was going to cause a huge stir." "I didn't expect this to happen so quickly. I didn't even have a little preparation, and I didn't even have time to unpack my luggage." "That's a real problem. You don't have time to catch your breath, and you get caught up in complications so quickly... Look, I have a good idea. We can take a short vacation before we devote ourselves to academic research .why don't we get away from the rainy weather here and go out together for a short vacation? Go up north to Choller to see the centennial fair, what do you think? I just talked to Schelling yesterday...you know what, he just came from there Come back, he said..." She looked at Barrick suspiciously. "what?" "I said, go on vacation, you and me." "Aren't you courting me, Barrick?" "I think you could say that. Isn't it believable? We're not strangers at all. We've known each other since graduate school. We spent another year and a half together in the desert, come back." "Together? At the same excavation site, yes. You live in your tent and I live in mine. We have nothing to do with each other. But now, it's a bit unexpected..." Balik, who has always been calm, seemed a little annoying and impatient. "I'm not asking you to marry me, Sifna, I'm just suggesting that you spend five or six days, take a short vacation, go to Jole to see the Centennial Expo, bask in the sun, and get out of the tent in the desert completely Come out and enjoy a real Holiday Inn, quiet dinner and beautiful wine..." He turned his palms to her in an angry gesture, "You make me feel like a silly schoolboy, Sev Na." "You acted like a schoolboy," she said. "We have a good working relationship, Barrick, let's keep it going, okay?" He was about to answer, obviously wanting to speak nicely, but his lips seemed to be clamped by pliers. The two looked at each other for a while, looking very unnatural. It was as if ten clocks were running in Sifna's mind.Everything was so unexpected and unsatisfactory... The other members of the department's attitude towards Tombo's discovery had already troubled her, and now Barrick jumped out again and proposed this stupid idea to her To seduce.What temptation?This is clearly an attempt to establish a romantic relationship with her.Look at his expression of surprise when he was rejected. She didn't know if once or twice he had misunderstood him, given him a hint, and had an unfounded feeling. No no, she didn't believe it ever happened.She had no interest in taking a vacation to the North Country, drinking with Barrick or anyone else in a restaurant with romantic lights.As long as she can work, she is content.For more than twenty years, or since she was a teenager, men have been courting her, saying how beautiful, how perfect, and how charming she is.But in her view, all this is just to please her.Instead of praising her for being beautiful and charming, it is better to call her ugly and disgusting.But she doesn't care, she was, is, and will never be interested in it.But at this moment, when the two of them were going to arrange and study the large amount of materials unearthed in Berkelimot side by side, this annoying Barrick created this embarrassment between the two of them. There was another knock on the door.She is very grateful for that. "who is it?" "Mudlin 505." A trembling voice answered. "Please come in." "I have to go," Barik said. "Don't go, he's here to see the slips. They're your slips as well as mine, aren't they?" "Sifna, I'm sorry if..." "Forget it, don't take it to heart." Mudlin staggered in. He was a frail, haggard old man, about seventy-seven or eighteen years old.Although he was far past the age of retirement, he still stayed in the department as a non-teaching staff member and continued to engage in ancient prose research.His mild gray-green eyes, which had spent a lifetime poring over old and faded manuscripts, were full of tears behind high lenses.However, Sifna knew that behind the tears were those sharp eyes that she had never seen before. To say the least, no ancient inscription could escape his eyes. "So here are those famous Tujian Luo," Mudlin said, "you know, I couldn't wait to see it since you told me about it." But he didn't study them right away, " Can you give me a little background on that?" "This is a top-notch photo taken by Balik," Sifna said, handing over the magnified photo, "This is Tombo Mound, the garbage dump south of the main Bekerimot excavation site. This is what it looked like after the sandstorm tore it open. We dug a ditch from here...to here, and then...we turned it all over. Can you see this black line?" "Charcoal?" Mudlin asked. "That's right. This is a burnt line, and the whole city was destroyed by the fire. Now look down, at this place, we see the second foundation and the traces of the second fire. If we look down Here... here..." Mudlin looked at the photo carefully for a while. "What did you get out of it? Residential addresses overlapping eight layers?" "Seven floors." Balik blurted out. "I think it's nine floors." Sifna said briefly, "but I admit it's hard to tell. It goes all the way to the bottom of the hill. It can only be explained by chemical analysis and spectroscopic experiments. But there are One thing is obvious, there have been many fires here, and the Tombo people have built on it again and again." "But the age of the site is unbelievable, if it turns out to be true!" Mudlin said. "I'd guess the occupation period here is at least five thousand years, maybe longer, maybe ten thousand or fifteen thousand years. It can't be understood until the bottom layer has been fully excavated, and this work has Wait until the next expedition is completed, or the next one." "Five thousand years? Is that what you said? Is it possible?" "It is built and built again, and it will take at least five thousand years to repeat the construction again and again." "But nothing that we've unearthed so far isn't that old," said Mudlin, with a look of astonishment on his face. "Beckerimot is less than two thousand years old, isn't it? And we see it as a The oldest known human settlement on the planet Kalgesh." "Oldest known settlement," Sifna said, "that is to say, there is no place older than that? Or much older? Mudlin, this picture gives you a definite answer. This It is a site that is older than Beklimot... On its topmost floor, there are the same relics as Beklimot. From the top floor down, there is a long extension. The site of Beklimot is closer to the present , and the Tombo site, which existed before Berkelimot, has been burned again and again, and then built again and again, and it must have gone through hundreds of generations." "So it's a very unfortunate place," Mudlin sensed. "It's hard to be loved by God, isn't it?" "Finally, the residents finally understand why they are always burned." Balik continued. Sifna nodded. "Yes, at last they believed it to be a devastated place. Instead of rebuilding on it after the last fire, they moved not far away and built Bequerimot. But before that, they It must have lived on Tombo for a long, long time, and its architectural style can still be recognized on the upper two floors of the original site... Do you see, this is the megalithic architectural style of Berkelimot in the middle period; the following one The first layer is the cross style of Bekrimot in the early days; the leftovers of the third layer are already unclear; the fourth layer is more strange and very primitive; the fifth layer is slightly simpler than the complicated fourth layer .Further down, it is more primitive. The layers are intertwined in a messy manner, and it is difficult to distinguish the upper and lower cities. But each layer has a charcoal line of fire to separate it from the previous layer. We are I think so. And these soil slips..." "Yes, these soil slips." Mudlin said, his voice trembling with excitement. "The set of squares was found on the third floor. The three rectangular ones are from the fifth floor. I don't know what they mean. Of course, I'm no expert in ancient Chinese." "Great," Balik said, "If Tujian has a certain description of the destruction and reconstruction of Tombo City, then..." Sifna shot him a savage look. "Great? Barrick, I really hope you didn't have that whimsical idea of ​​being self-righteous and unable to get what you want!" "I'm sorry, Sifna," he said coldly, "forgive my abruptness." Mudlin paid no attention to their quarrel.He stood by Sifna's desk, lowered his head and looked at the square soil slips for a while, and then continued to look at the rectangular soil slips. Finally the ancient literature scholar said: "It's amazing! It's really amazing!" "Can you read them?" Sifna asked. The old man giggled. "Read? Of course not. Do you want a miracle? I see the phrase here." "Yes, I saw it too." Sifna said. "I can recognize almost every letter, except for the earlier ones ... they are made of an alphabet with which we are completely unfamiliar, much like writing made up of syllables, the alphabet is made up of many letters .but the square clay slips seem to be written in the early form of the Bekrimot alphabet. See, this is a quhas, I can almost guarantee that this one seems to be a distorted tifjak...tifjak, what do you see? ...Sifna, I want to study them. With my lighting, my camera, my scanner. Can I take them with me?" "Take it away?" she said, as if to borrow some of her fingers. "Only then can I interpret them." "You think you can decipher them?" Balik asked. "I don't make any guarantees. But if this is tifjak and that is quhas, then I'll be able to figure out how the other letters came down to become the Bekrimot alphabet. That way, at least it can be translated into bekrimot The corresponding letters in the Rimote language system. Whether you can read the letters and understand its meaning is still hard to say. I don't know how far the research on the rectangular soil tablets can go, unless you have found a bilingual system , offer me some access to this much older alphabet. But let me try, Sifna, let me try." "Okay, you can take it away." Carefully, she gathered all the slips and put them in the box she had brought them back from Sajkan.It hurt her to have it taken away.But Mudlin was right, there was nothing he could do with the naked eye, he had to do laboratory analysis on them. She looked regretfully at the ancient writer holding the precious box tightly in his arms, and staggered out of the room.Now it was just her and Barrick in the room again. "Sifna... As for what I just said..." "I said forget it, and I've forgotten. I want to work now, do you mind, Barrick?"