The Unearthing (26 page)

“How so, Elder?”

“Please,” Santino said, as they walked down the hallway and down to the street, “Don’t call me that. I’m not a Shaman. I was once, but that was a long time ago, as far as I’m concerned.” Abrams nodded.

“That answers my question, then.” The Rabbi said. They continued making their way in silence. They reached the street, mingling with tourists and pilgrims touring the sites and shrines of the Capital of Christianity.

“There’s actually a good place to get coffee not far from here,” Abrams said conversationally, “Unless you have a personal objection to coffee.” The last humorous barb brought another chuckle from Santino.

“I have no objections to coffee,” Santino said, “Coffee sounds just about right.”

“Good!” Abrams said, cheerfully, “I want you to tell me a little more about the Ship.”

♦♦♦

Colonel Margaret Bloom only said one thing to the pilot who took her from Albuquerque to Fort Arapaho:

“Take the scenic route.” And so they did. As they first made the approach to the Site, the pilot took them around the Ship in a figure-8 pattern which covered the span of the Ship. She had him do it twice. She’d never seen anything like it. Its immense size rivalled those of many cities she’d known. The bowl of the Ship was a small mountain rising from the dish. Certainly the height of the thing dwarfed any artificially made object that Bloom had ever seen. That it had flown was unbelievable. That it had come here from space was undeniable. The blue-glowing canyons and gold and black crests and valleys spread out below and around her, the Pyramid at the summit of the Ship catching the sun, reflecting it back across its surface. Were the Ship more highly polished, she thought, it would be blinding for kilometres in every direction. Bloom almost felt she could hear the Shipsong through the bulkheads of the plane and wished once more to have seen it from space after the Unearthing. As the plane began final approach to the airfield Bloom looked out at the Ship one last time and admitted to herself that she simply wanted the Ship. Mark had died to unlock its secrets. She would do everything in her power to make sure his death wasn’t in vain. She would make sure that the work he’d started would continue and that she would be part of that work. The Ship was a treasure trove that belonged to Humanity. Honour enough to be one of the first to glance upon its finery, to see the Ship unspoiled. To possess, even if only in memory, the merest fraction of it, to be forever part of the Ship’s history, lore and tale…that would be a gift from God. The plane touched down with a jolt, snapping her from her covetous idling.

“Welcome to Fort Arapaho, Colonel,” The pilot said.

“Thanks.” She said, absently. She was here. She had arrived.

♦♦♦

Sonia Aiziz got up from her desk, bending backwards to stretch. She’d been there all morning, poring over images of the Codex, as she had done all the previous day and the day before and the day before. She’d launched into the project the minute they’d returned from Echohawk’s funeral. She was fuelled by a new desire: to continue her mentor’s work, to unlock the Ship. But the Codex, their supposed key to the Ship, was turning out to be its strongest barrier yet. Across the room at his own workstation, Michael Andrews was also poring over images from the Codex. A scale reproduction of the tablet of runes and numeric icons and other symbols was plastered to the table between them.

They had made progress but achieved no breakthroughs. Aiziz was beginning to fear that they might never decipher what was here before them, evidently deliberately left, evidently meant to be understood. Worse was her fear that Mankind might
never
decipher the Codex; that the secrets of the Ship would be locked away another sixty million years, those mysteries outliving their species and perhaps any other intelligence that might ever arise on their world in the future. Such a tragedy she could not bear to fathom.

“You’re having more coffee?” Andrews asked her, not looking up from his console, spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

“Yes,” she said, “Don’t worry. I’m watching my intake.”

“Caffeine addiction happens fast,” He cautioned, “Don’t forget: Until a few years ago it was strictly regulated under the same laws that restricted and nearly banned tobacco products.”

“I was a teenager at the time and the ban was only in the West,” She said, “And Israel, of course. But the Arab world had no such compunctions against coffee. Nor tobacco.”

“Allah be praised,” He replied, “It would have made my tenure at the New University of Baghdad completely intolerable.”

“I didn’t know you taught in Baghdad.”

“Only for a year; the last year of prohibition.”

“Ah,” she said with a smile, deliberately pouring herself another cup, “They run you out of there as well?” Andrews smiled wryly. He’d lost the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge under circumstances not entirely dissimilar from those that had required him to leave Baghdad.

“In a manner of speaking,” he admitted. Further musings on the subject were cut short by the door chimes sounding.

“As long as I’m up,” Aiziz said with the slightest barb in her voice. Technically he was closer to the door, though he made no move to answer it. Andrews’ mouth turned up at the corners by a fraction but he remained focused on the screen of his console. Aiziz toggled the switch for the door screen and their caller’s image appeared. She let her in.

“Hello Doctor Cole,” She said.

“Hello Sonia. Michael,” Cole said, stepping inside, “I just stopped in to let you know that Colonel Bloom’s arrived. She’ll be involved with the military thing for an hour or so, logging in I suppose. Once she’s done there however, she’ll be sitting down with the Ship Survey Expedition.”

“What time?” Andrews queried.

“About fifteen hundred,” Cole replied, “I also wanted to ask both of you why you haven’t made your appointments with me regarding Professor Echohawk’s death?”

“Doctor Cole I grew up in Palestine during the war with Israel,” Aiziz said, “I’ve seen death many times, lost loved ones, friends and family both. I’m long past the point of being traumatized by violent death. To me a death is a death; each one is tragic, but no longer traumatic.”

“Nevertheless, the Ship Summit requires you both to sit down for evaluation after the Professor’s death.”

“
Thank
you, Doctor,” Andrews said, “We will make time for the evaluation soon enough.”

“We’ll see you at the meeting,” Aiziz interjected, “We’ll discuss it then. We really have to get back to work on the Codex, now.”

♦♦♦

“Good afternoon everyone,” Bloom said, “It’s good to see you all again, and under better circumstances.” She looked around the table. Peter and Sonia were the closest familiar faces here. Sonia had changed quite a bit since her time as Mark’s grad student. She was older, more confident. The other members of the Ship Survey Expedition sitting around her she could barely remember from the funeral. She took a breath and continued, switching on her workpad.

“I’m already up to speed insofar as your most recent briefing to the World Ship Summit; so let’s start with an update. Doctor...Kodo?”

“I’ve run samples on the valve that seals the lift tube,” Kodo said, referring to his own workpad, “It’s biological, all right. But I’ve never seen cell structure like it before. I’m still trying to identify all the cellular components.”

“Are you sure it’s a cell and not nanotech?” Bloom asked.

“It might prove to be,” Kodo said, “But everything would seem to point to cellular biology. You’re welcome to have a look.”

“Let me know when’s good for you,” Bloom said, “On to the inscription. What have we got, so far?”

“We’ve identified an anomalous set of characters in among the numeric glyphs.” Andrews said, “The quarter-to-three quarter runes reversed, with the negative space inverted.”

“It is possible that these new symbols are indicative that the Builders used a base-ten, or decimal number system,” Aiziz added, “We’re still doing the sequencing. We’ll know for certain later on.”

“We have also identified symbols which we believe are calculation values,” Andrews said, “Once we know what numeric system we’re working with, we’ll know exactly what each symbol means. It looks like there are enough to run the whole gamut: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, sine, cosine, exponent, equals, does not equal, less than, greater than…several more.”

“And on the linguistic side?”

“I’ve positively identified forty-seven base runic symbols and twenty-five others that seem to belong to subsets of each of the base symbols,” Aiziz said, “Others, I can’t yet classify. Still no clues yet as to what the symbols mean but there are glyph and rune combinations that would seem indicate that the mathematics will create some form of corollary.”

“How much of a corollary?” Bloom asked, “We might be able to understand concrete concepts, but what about the abstracts? Communication of ideas relies on abstract concepts. Can we learn their conversational language armed only with the knowledge of their scientific language?”

“In this instance mathematics is the key,” Aiziz said, “The concrete concepts they will explain to us will include things like measurement, temperature, the periodic table and other constants that can be likewise expressed numerically. These constants will open the way to teach us their abstracts.”

“How so?”

“Let us assume we have working concepts for their periodic table and mathematic sets,” Aiziz said, leaning forward, “Combinations of their temperature sets and the periodic table could yield concepts like liquid, solid and vapour.”

“How long will it take to decipher the message on the Codex?” Bloom asked.

“That…we do not know,” Andrews replied, “We’re analyzing the alien glyphs, trying to establish beyond any doubt what numeric system the aliens who built the Ship had favoured. The problem is with the sequencing. Base ten works well for certain sets of numerics on the Codex, but not with others.”

He keyed up a diagram that appeared on the main wall of their boardroom.

“Using base ten,” Andrews explained, “We’ve identified mathematical sets on the Codex represented by a handful of runes that appear only in conjunction with the numbers. Simple equations on the Codex became evident once this was accomplished. But there are several false equations in the mix; equations that make no sense in base ten mathematics. Some of those false equations become true if we switch to a base five mathematic set, but others still remain false. Then there’s the textual half of the Codex; long lines of runic text accompanied by a handful of numeric glyphs. The glyphs are invariably arranged into mathematical equations, but those equations aren’t similar to either congruent or incongruent equations on the numeric half. There seems to be no pattern to placement of the equations, either. There are considerably more true statements than false, but there are far too many false statements for them to be ignored altogether.” Andrews paused making sure what he had said was understood by all.

“We’ve identified what we believe was the alien’s representation for the periodic table of elements, but we won’t be able to confirm that until we know for certain that base ten is the numerical system we’re dealing with.”

“We’re at an impasse until we’ve catalogued and classified every symbol on the Codex,” Aiziz concluded, “And then we’ll have to determine how each symbol works in context with other symbols. We don’t know if the runes represent whole words, concepts or phonetic values. The numeric runes will determine much, but there will be much more that we will have to determine on our own.”

“You had less to work with when you and Mark deciphered the Quipu Sonia,” Bloom said, “Right now you have a primer and the eager resources of the world’s linguists, scholars and mathematicians at your disposal. Keep in mind, though: Out of all of them you’re the one sitting here.”

Bloom consulted her workpad a moment and continued with the meeting.

“On the Engineering side,” she said, “I’ve studied Doctor Scott’s notes, but until I go down to the Ship, there’s nothing I can yet bring to the table. Tomorrow, when we make our return excursion I might be able to lend a little more insight. Doctor Cole, you’ll be reporting to me privately regarding crew health, later on today.”

“I still haven’t received your own evaluations from the Pentagon, Colonel,” Cole said, “I may ask to run my own health and psych profiles on you.”

“It won’t come to that,” Bloom said dryly, “Peter: You’re running operations. Any problems I should be aware of? Anything we need that we’re not getting?”

“Nothing like that,” He said, “The biggest problem I’ve had has been sorting the information sent from the different scientific analysis groups working for us. Our secure message spar receives something like a thousand linxes an hour. I don’t have enough people on-site to go through them all.”

“What would you need to control the volume of traffic?” Bloom asked. Paulson hesitated. He needed James; James was the hacker, not him.

“Right now, I only have thirty operators, working in two eight hour shifts and using the standard heavy-traffic downlink processors built into their consoles,” Paulson said. “I need Twenty-five operators working
per
shift around the clock. And a Dexo CR-490 or equivalent context-recognition processor connected directly to the message spar’s baseline. Without that half my people have to work filtering all the crap from the hard research, which’ll mean we’ll be hampered on what we gain from external research. We’ve changed the spar ident three times already, so that won’t keep the trolls, cranks and amateur alien experts from hitting us.”