Work Text:
It is 1914. War has come, devouring wave after wave of soldiers as the blood spills further across the map. Egypt has not yet been touched by the violence, but it is only a matter of time. This conflict will be a global one. The stones are not safe.
When Billy sees the creatures emerge from the spacecraft, his world becomes much smaller, the universe bigger. He reacts the only way he can: by drawing. The spiked, brassy armour, and insectoid features he captures with his pencil, but their rolling gait, sheer bulk and overwhelming strangeness are beyond a mere sketch.
He finds the pistol. He finds the professor. Dead.
There is confusion and panic and he just doesn't understand what he sees, doesn't believe what he sees. His mentor, his friend, is there, but he's gone, and the priest is defending the creatures, the monsters that killed the professor and looted the temple, and shots are fired and the walls are moving.
The craft has gone and the dust has settled. Billy does not, cannot, listen to the priest's attempts at explanation. He sends the gaggle of children away with the request that men and transport be arranged for packing up the camp tomorrow. The priest leaves with them, knuckles white as he grips a small golden key.
Billy sits outside in the sand and sunlight to mourn.
The last thing he does before leaving is place a memorial stone for the professor by the eastern face of the temple. On it he chisels a name and a date, framed by the ideograms for earth, air, fire and water.
It is 1917. Billy has spent the past three years wandering the Nile river Valley, offering his illustrative skills to the many archaeological teams unearthing wonders in the sand. He has sketched tomb floorplans, lavish sarcophagus decorations, endless lines of pictographic script. Burial chambers, life stories, trinkets and treasures. Dusty, rocky vistas pitted with dark vaulted openings, around which mill men struck with wonder and curiosity and greed. And yet of all the offerings of Egypt he records with his pencil, none stick in his mind quite like that simple carving of four elements gathered around a fifth, and the eruption of divine light.
He returns to the Mondoshawans' temple, two days' journey south of Abydos.
With a mirror propped up by his heavy canvas bag to illuminate the antechamber, he sits cross-legged with his sketchbook, outlining those familiar shapes once more. The mirror slips and he almost calls out Aziz, light! but of course the boy is not there. Neither is the professor, which is something of a relief. The desert is full of tombs, full of the dead. Full of ghosts. The only whisper of Professor Pacoli's presence in the temple is in Billy's memories; a peaceful, restful afterlife, unlike the ancients of this land who are disturbed with every excavation, invoked by every hieroglyph translation.
It is close to nightfall when the priest arrives. He offers Billy a goatskin canteen of water as a greeting. Billy accepts wordlessly and tops up the metal mug sitting by his booted foot. He takes a swig, unaware of the treachery of the priest's proffered drink the last time they met.
"I had to come back," he says, distractedly tracing over and over his rendering of the planetary alignment, emphasising the geometric features. "The snake thing, the ultimate evil, the divine light - I can't stop thinking about it all."
"Lord forgive me, I should have killed you." The priest sighs and lowers his eyes. "But there had been too much bloodshed already that day. To protect life. A sad irony."
Billy leafs through the sheets of paper in his lap, all covered in illustrations of the temple wall carvings. "Please, Father. I want to understand. Tell me about this," he gestures at the images. "Tell me about the fifth element."
It is 1921. He is not an ordained priest, and has no wish to be one, but Billy is allowed access to all the knowledge of the order and proves a diligent scholar. He learns alongside the priest's apprentice, who is charged with safekeeping of the temple key when the time comes. It will be sooner rather than later; the priest's beard grows increasingly whiter and his once piercing eyes weaken.
The apprentice is a timid but bright Italian boy, whose linguistic skill and keen insight help him quickly pick up the musical syllables of the divine language and decipher new subtleties to interpretations of the temple carvings. Billy is slow to learn the new tongue, but records his studies methodically with careful text and finely detailed drawings.
It is 1924. The apprentice is now the priest, and his predecessor is commemorated with a carved stone next to the professor's. The key, on a long, fine chain, hangs around a new neck.
The order's records are a hodgepodge collection of disordered manuscripts and cryptic scribbled fragments. The apprentice is content to rely on the oral tradition, the teachings passed down the line of priests through the years as it has been done for centuries, but Billy fears information may be lost too easily this way. Already the specifics of how to open the stones have faded from retellings of the ritual. Something so significant, so absolutely crucial to life and light and survival, cannot be put at risk by misheard whispers and fallible memories.
Billy gathers his papers. Stacks of fluttering drawings and the coded accompanying notes, the divine language made lowly and imperfect by phonetic representation in Billy's American-English syllables.
He knows the book will take years to tackle, chapter after chapter of accurate and exhaustive documentation of all the Mondoshawan knowledge gifted to humans. Time not important, he thinks with a small smile, only life important.
He puts pencil to paper, one of many, many pages to come. A figure takes shape: a figure in the centre of a stone room, head thrown back, screaming white light to the heavens.
It is 1958. A third memorial stone is set in the sand by the eastern temple wall. It is not engraved, not marked with a name, because the one who sculpted the letters and delicate lines of the elements of the previous stones is the one the memorial honours. He leaves a more fitting legacy, though. Along with the shining temple key, there is now a heavy book to be bequeathed from priest to successive priest
It is 2263. The climax of a five thousand year cycle is a few hours away. Father Vito Cornelius prepares for a meeting with Galactic President Lindberg. The priests of his order have kept a secret safe and alive for millennia; he must now tell the tale of the five elements and the divine weapon to ensure the Mondoshawans safe passage to Earth, to Egypt and their temple. The last thing he picks up before he and his apprentice David leave the apartment is a large, leather-bound book. The thick pages are yellowed, but careful preservation over two centuries has kept the book in remarkable condition despite its age.
Cornelius flips to the dramatic illustration he will show the president. Earth, air, fire, water, and a perfect being, drawn with perfect strokes.