Now Dr. Klein became greatly excited over the hundreds of inscriptions on the still-standing walls of Gdoz. These appeared to be all in the Hrata Pictographic writing. Dr. Klein dashed from one to another, exclaiming over them and bemoaning the fact that the day was too far gone to start photographing them.
"If we can only find a bilingual inscription," he cried, "we shall rank with Champollion and Rawlinson! Where is this library, Kamzhik?"
The Kteremian led us down one overgrown street after another, scrambling over or skirting around the great blocks of stone that had fallen into the street from the buildings flanking it. At length he halted before a big building half of which still stood, though its stones were fire-blackened. Then he led us inside. We trod softly as if the vibration of our footsteps might bring down the teetery remains of the structure upon our heads.
Here and there we saw a few charred and crumbling remains of the wooden stacks projecting up out of the thick dust, from which the books had long since vanished. We understood that those that had not been destroyed at the time of the sack were all taken away as loot, then or later. A few of these still exist, either the originals or copies, but all are written in the Skhoji script which had then replaced the much more difficult pictographic signary, and none sheds any very clear light upon the history of the Hrata Empire.
"Well?" said Klein, dancing in his eagerness.
"Is over this way," said Kamzhik, and led us to where a pile of rubble in one corner had been pulled apart to expose a genuine Hrata book.
As you probably know, Kteremian books take the form of a codex with all sheets bound together, as with all Terran books of the present day, but the binding is across the top instead of at the side. Therefore one reads such a book by flipping the pages upwards as if it were a stenographic pad.
The present book was large but thin, with covers of thin ftse-bark about 25 by 35 centimeters. Across the front of the cover were written a number of characters in the Skhopi script. Klein explained:
"A periodical. That word in the large characters in qazhov, 'existence', and the legend below it is a date in the old Hrata sacred calendar. This is evidently a copy of a magazine; the Hrata had them, you know."
With trembling hands Klein raised the cover. Inside there was only one sheet of zahalov-parchment, all the others having been torn out at some remote time. Over Klein's shoulder I could see that this sheet was covered on its upper side with Skhoji writing. Klein raised the page to look at the back.
The back bore, as Kamzhik had promised, pictures—but not, obviously, characters in the Hrata Pictographic script. I do not believe that Kamzhik deliberately misled us in this matter; he simply did not know the difference. Instead there was a cluster of illustrations in the center of the page, and a border of Skhoji characters around it. Klein stared, turned the book this way and that, and then went back to the first side of that one page. His hands trembled violently and he spoke in a strangled voice:
"My Barney, shall I read it to you, this one? It is part of a story, and the text on this page begins as follows: "Rákaslun tsese háda lig doznyi khyesil nyey shí... He clasped her to his feathery bosom with his brawny arms and affectionately nibbled her ear with his great pink incisors. She trembled with ecstasy. But then a frown clouded her broad clear forehead and she drew back modestly. 'But Vzdal, dear, ' she breathed, 'what about your other wife? ' It goes on and on like that! Herrgott!"
I asked: "What about the back?"
"Do you want to know what the back is?" shouted Klein, the veins standing out on his forehead."The text around the margin reads: 'Use Prvnyi's excellent soap! Cleans cleaner! Cleans whiter! No more back-breaking toil for Mother! Buy from Prvnyi! ' And these woodcuts in the middle show a female Kteremian employing the soap to cleanse her offspring, house, and other properties! Soap! Soap! Soap!"
Dr. Klein's voice rose to a scream as he flung the remains of the book from him. Knowing his reverence for relics of antiquity I was astounded, and then alarmed as he burst into a fit of maniacal laughter, rolling about in the deep dust of the floor.
"Help me tie him up!" I cried to Kamzhik."It's a madman he is!"
But the native refused to take any part in securing my unfortunate colleague. After all he had only my word that I was the sane one of the pair, and he saw no reason for getting involved in a dispute between other worldlings. I therefore was compelled to complete this distasteful task myself. I received a black eye in the process, for Dr. Klein proved deceptively strong and agile in close combat.
After a nightmarish return journey, during which I came perilously near to losing my scientific objectivity altogether, J delivered my colleague to competent medical care, under which he is now well on the road to recovery. The Hratan magazine is in the British Museum awaiting Dr. Klein's eventual attention, though it seems improbable that the study of its one remaining sheet will shed much significant light upon the multifarious problems of Hratan history. Certainly it offers no hope of ever serving as a means of translating the mystery of the Hrata Pictographic writing.
This is the story of the Klein-O'Gorman expedition. It is, as you see, a quite unspectacular one, although unworthy of the lurid surmises and rumors that the unprincipled gossip-mongers have circulated in recent months. I trust, therefore, that this clarification will terminate the proliferation of these scurrilous and vicious canards once and for all.