Decipher, p.38
Decipher, page 38
Roebuck shrugged. “That makes sense.”
“So, do you have any idea what might be the key to decoding this little, uh, quandary?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Professor,” Roebuck scoffed. “That’s for you to figure out. Maybe the key’s a law of physics, or mathematics. Some kind of constant as a frame of reference. Maybe it’s a physical manifestation. I just know a little about encryption. In the 1970s, which is way before my time, they had this Data Encryption Standard, DES—a product block cipher. It used sixteen rounds of substitutions and transpositions in a cascade, encrypted in sixty-four-bit binary encoded plaintext, controlled by a fifty-four-bit key—producing a sixty-four-bit ciphertext.”
“What?”
“Basically you needed a DES chip to encode or decode the text. Or incredible software. But there was just one key and you needed the key to decode it. It falls into the wrong hands and the whole thing is useless to security agencies. By the 1990s we had this asymmetric, two-key cryptosystem. With the encryption system in the public domain, but the second key, the decryption key remaining a secret. Again it’s computer based. The point is, the whole thing rests on an algorithm that encodes and decodes. Perhaps this number stream here is an algorithm, kind of a key.”
“It’s not an algorithm,” Hackett explained. “Believe me, I tried.”
“That still doesn’t stop it being a key,” Roebuck replied eagerly. “Those numbers have to mean something or why put them there?”
“Are you saying,” Scott probed, sitting up and taking note, “that maybe there are several keys to unlocking this thing?”
“Well, yeah, why not?” Roebuck said matter-of-factly. “If this is a warning from the past, or they wanted to contact people in the future, people with technical capabilities, they’d try to reach out on every level. At least, that’s what I’d do.
“It might be an attempt at a universal language, in order to cross time and racial boundaries. This may have to have been invented. Hell, the key to it could be down to something as simple as the shape of the damn building it was standing in. The design of the pattern here plays on the human eye’s ability to detect patterns. The spiral and the arch seem particularly important to these people.”
That stung. Sharply. An invented language. Scott had considered that possibility. Why had he not pursued it further?
Matheson was on his feet. Something was clicking into place. He sat down with the others and put his lap-top to one side. “What if Roebuck’s right? What if they made their megalithic constructions in such a way that they were intended to impart a message to us?”
Sarah was intrigued. “The design of the building as a key?”
“In Giza, above ground, the design of the Pyramids and the Sphinx correspond to how the ancient sky looked in 10,500 B.C. Like a mirror. Roughly the time we talked about for the first flood. I think maybe the tunnels underneath have a message too.”
Scott was nodding. “The Egyptian Hermetic dictum was: ‘as above, so below.’ But a message in the design of the stonework?”
Matheson pulled out a pen and a notebook. “These people are masters of sound—correct? All things sonic and the physics of wave propagation.” The others nodded. “So what does a sound wave look like?” He drew a squiggle across the page.
“So what would one of the Giza tunnels look like if you drew it from its side? It’s a spiral, remember? Sarah, you were standing in a sound wave set in stone.”
“Wait a minute.” Sarah was skeptical. “A sound wave—are you sure? What’s the wavelength on audible sound waves?”
“Anything from two centimeters all the way up to twenty meters,” Hackett replied without even having to think about it.
“How do you measure a wave’s length?” November asked.
“A wave has a peak and a trough,” Matheson explained. “Y’know, like a real wave in the ocean. The wave’s length is measured by determining the distance between two peaks.”
“Couldn’t the wave in the tunnel equally be a representation of a light wave?”
“Absolutely not,” Hackett replied dismissively. “The wavelength of visible light is 0.00000055 meters. That’s ridiculously small. Radio waves are on the same kind of scale.”
“Not all of ’em,” Roebuck corrected.
Sarah shuffled forward. “So what is the wavelength of the spiral in the tunnels?”
“Exactly ten meters,” Matheson confirmed, “according to your data. That’s the longest wavelength divided by the shortest: twenty divided by two. The exact middle ground of audible wavelengths. And the Atlantis glyphs only appear on the spiral Carbon 60 strip, which we already know can produce standing waves in liquids because of the quasicrystals … My God, that’s it! That’s it!” He was sketching furiously on his notepad again. “That’s how the network—works! That’s how these five sites are linked. The tunnels that go out from them go down into the water table. If they go all the way out to the coast then all five sites are linked through the oceans.
“Sound travels at 340 meters per second in the air—but 1,500 meters per second in the water. At extreme depths there’s a layer of water that has a temperature and pressure differential to the ocean above it. It’s what whales use to communicate over vast distances at incredible speeds. Increasing pressure increases the speed of sound. This layer of water traps the sound so it has no choice but to travel great distances.”
“Why?”
Matheson eyeballed Roebuck consciously. “Excuse me?”
“Why?” the Lieutenant asked again. “I mean, I’m sure you’re correct. Our submarines regularly pick up acoustic signals in the oceans they can’t explain. I’m sure this network of yours exists. My only question is: why does it exist?”
Matheson sat back on his haunches, exchanging a look with the rest of the team as Sarah told him: “Lieutenant, we’ve all been asking that same question since day one.”
“Lieutenant Roebuck?” November said tentatively. “We’re not at radio silence or anything, are we?”
“No,” the marine confirmed. “Command wants the Chinese to know we’re here.”
“Then why doesn’t Ralph give you the map references where these five sites are and you could contact a few submarines. See if they can’t pick this network up in the water?”
“November,” Matheson scoffed mildly. “We still don’t know where these other two sites might be. We’re still waiting on confirmation from Gant.”
“You’re a smart man, Ralph,” she smiled. “Can’t you best-guess it?”
Gant had his arms folded tightly across his chest as Roebuck took him through the charts at the rear of the cockpit, illuminated under a snake lamp.
“There’s the Connecticut and the Jimmy Carter in the North Atlantic.”
“Seawolf Class?”
“Uh, yes, sir. Jackson says he’ll give us the Virginia in the South Atlantic for two hours.”
“That’s all they’re asking for anyway, right?”
Roebuck confirmed that with an apologetic nod. His ass was on the line here backing this plan. Taking so many submarines out of the patrol loop for two hours at once was an incredible risk.
“The Louisville, the Olympia, the Charlotte and the Jefferson City are all on patrol somewhere in the Pacific. Fleet Commander won’t say where but he assures me they can sweep pretty much the entire area Ralph asked us to check. They’re the older Los Angeles Class. And the Trepang’s in the Indian Ocean.”
“The Trepang? That old Sturgeon Class training ship?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Damn, I remember that boat. Jesus, she must be damn near forty or fifty years old by now.”
“They say they’re up to the job. We also got a Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine, the Kentucky. And the Dolphin’s standing by.”
The USS Dolphin AGSS-555, was one of a kind of research submarine used by both the navy and civilian agencies alike. She had an unmatched world depth record for operational submarines. And right now she was right under the Arctic ice cap, just southwest of the North Pole, looking for a sunken site. She was already part of this wild-goose chase so it didn’t make much difference calling her in.
“Ten ships,” Gant concluded. “That’s a lot of ships. Dower’s gonna be pissed tryin’ to get this authorized. I’ll call it through,” he said.
“What time shall I tell ’em to expect an answer, sir?” Roebuck indicated the team back in the belly of the plane.
“Two hours,” he replied. “Which means we’ll be on the ground.”
Roebuck headed back as the pilot up ahead called for the Major’s attention. Out through the windows a vista of low cloud cover was rearing up at them, at speed.
“It looks like some extreme weather out there. You want us to avoid it, we can avoid it.”
“Negative,” Gant sighed, handing the sheet of information Roebuck had given him to the young communications engineer, Joe Dodson. “We don’t have the time.”
“Understood.”
Dodson gave the sheet of information the once-over. A moth-eaten photograph of some odd design. A sheet of paper stapled to the top with rows of numbers and some familiar-looking squiggles underneath, while scrawled in pen next to them were a set of coordinates, oceanic depth ranges and acoustic frequencies to be transmitted to each of the ten submarines for them to institute a search.
“Uh, Major?” Dodson asked innocently, trying to get the marine’s attention while he discussed the weather situation with the pilots. “You want me to work out these little wave files and send them over too?”
Gant misheard the man and asked him to repeat what he’d just said. Dodson ran his fingers along the series of Atlantis glyphs but hadn’t even remotely registered they were letters to an alphabet.
“These little waves. You want me to match ’em in the computer and tell the subs what frequency they are?”
Gant didn’t say anything. Just grabbed the young man by the scruff of his collar and yanked him to his feet.
“Tell him what you told me.”
Scott looked up startled as the young airman standing in front of him wiped at his nose like a schoolkid hauled in front of the teacher.
“All I said was these little symbols look like wave files; did he want me to work out the frequencies and send the information onto the submarines? I thought it was important.”
Gant jabbed his finger at Scott eagerly. But it looked more like a threat. “Does this help you?”
But all Scott could manage was to let his jaw flap open and closed like a goldfish. Hackett took control. “What do you mean by wave files?”
“On a computer,” Dodson explained, exasperated, “when you record an audio signal you can display it any number of ways. Like a wavy line, or a series of spikes. Things like clicks produce very small wave files because the sound is so short. That’s what these look like. Tiny snatches of sound displayed as a wave across the top and the corresponding spike data across the bottom, simply turned on its side. That’s all I meant.”
Scott grabbed up one of the photographs again. Stared at it. Jesus. Could it be? Sarah scooted up to take a look too. They eyed each other. Everyone was waiting on Scott’s response. If this was a plausible theory to work from it could only go ahead on his say-so. Scott leaped to his feet, frantic.
“Somebody grab a computer with a microphone, quick! These aren’t just phonetic symbols! They don’t represent sounds! They are sounds!” He confronted Dodson. “Kid, you’re a fucking genius. Let me shake your hand. What’s your name?”
“Uh, Joe,” the communications engineer replied, taken aback. “Joe Dodson.”
“Joe? Good to meet you, Joe. Short for anything, Joe?”
“Yeah, Joseph.” Scott started laughing as Matheson set up his computer. “What’s so funny?”
“Joseph,” Scott said. “That’s what’s funny. In the Old Testament, Joseph and his coat of many colors was made Vizier to the Pharaoh and given the name Zaphenath-Paneah!” Dodson looked blank. “Which in Hebrew means: ‘Decoder of the Code’!”
RETRIEVAL STAGE 2
“Do it again,” Pearce urged, scowling at no one in particular as the background noise ruined the take. He adjusted his headphones as Sarah moved the microphone back.
“Okay, okay,” she agreed irritably, taking a drag on her cigarette first. “Buh … buh …”
It was like someone was throwing bricks at the outer skin of the aircraft, listening to the constant shakes, rattles and metallic groans as the airframe fought the elements. Sarah took another breath and tried to match her vocal sounds to the Atlantis glyphs. They had decided each glyph must represent a human vocal sound. And after some trial and error had actually gotten some of Sarah’s sounds to match up with the glyphs. Each time she spoke the computer analyzed the shape of the sound wave and compared it to each glyph. It was slow going. But at least it was going.
Scott paced back and forth impatiently, deep in thought. String enough of these sounds together and theoretically they were going to start forming sentences. But what language was it going to turn out to be? One thing was certain, it wasn’t going to be English.
At this stage of text retrieval Scott should be seeing repeated components, ascertaining groups of glyphs that seemed to repeat within the text. By now he should be determining what these repeated groups might be. Conjunctions, for example, like the word “and.”
But there were no repeated components. Whatever text Scott studied, be it a stream of glyphs from Giza or a segment from the node photographs, nothing made sense. All he seemed to find was a random stream. So unless this ancient race spoke in a vocabulary that consisted of exceptionally long words, all they were going to get was a random stream of noises.
Frustration was such an undervalued word.
Hackett folded his arms as he, Matheson and November sounded out the anthropologist’s dilemma. “In a syllabic script,” Scott explained, “vowels stand alone only at the beginning of a word. After that they’re always paired with a preceding consonant. Consonants are never on their own. It’s a statistical godsend. But I’m not detecting that here. It’s also gonna be a matter of time before I determine whether voicing is marked in the bilabial and palato-velar stops.”
“Huh?”
“In some languages like Linear B the same glyphs used to represent the sounds pi, pa and po, are also used for bi, ba and bo. It’s more economical. Most cultures, with the exception of maybe Chinese, are as economic with their writing as possible. Maximum information delivered with minimum effort. But a collection of sounds … ?”
“Richard,” Matheson urged. “What’s the problem here?”
“The problem?” Scott seemed almost amused. “What I do for an occupation is play three-dimensional mindgames. Word puzzles. My expectations may be all wrong. How this language is written may bear no relation to how it is pronounced. I may simply not be able to understand a spoken word of it.”
And then he realized. Sarah was looking up at him and smiling.
“We’re ready,” she said tantalizingly. “All matched and ready. Wanna hear?”
Scott handed Pearce the “sentence” he wanted translated. “Those five sites by the way?” Pearce told him. “No match. They remain a mystery, so we got fifty-five glyphs that visually match. Just so you know.” He punched in the glyphs and waited for the computer to string them into an extended audio file.
It was disjointed, and odd hearing it in Sarah’s voice. It was: “Dee—juh—kho—meh …”
Which in English meant: “Pure gibberish …” Scott proclaimed, hanging his head in exasperation, his worst fears confirmed. “Pure and utter gibberish.”
DROP ZONE
Gant strode purposefully up the metal gangway and crouched down by the navigation array. Across from him, communications engineer Joseph Dodson waited for his orders, and at Gant’s instigation keyed his console at the rear of the cockpit once more and broadcast a message on all known Chinese channels. But he did so, this time, in English. The whole flight he’d been broadcasting this message, to no avail. Perhaps his Chinese simply wasn’t good enough.
“This is the United States Marine Corps speaking on behalf of the United Nations. We have been asked to transport a United Nations Inspection Team to the Antarctic region known to contain a Chinese military installation. We request safe passage to deliver this inspection team. Over. I repeat, delivery of this United Nations Inspection Team requires safe passage and your immediate acknowledgment is required. Over!”
Dodson, a thin young man, sat back in his chair and wiped away the sweat beading across his top lip. He turned to Gant looking somewhat pale. “Shall I keep trying, sir?”
Gant was about to answer when suddenly from up ahead an alarm sounded and red warning lights flashed across the board. The co-pilot in the front left seat inclined his head back. “Major, Chinese anti-aircraft systems just locked onto us. Shall I take evasive action?”
Gant was on his feet, thinking quickly. “Negative, negative. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize this mission. You start doing fancy military maneuvers and they’re gonna know we’re up to something. Just fly straight and true.”
The co-pilot watched his captain struggle with the controls as he fought the buffeting of severe winds and stuck his hands on the yoke to help out. “We’ll try our best, sir,” was all he said.
The dark-haired communications engineer scratched at his five o’clock shadow nervously. “I could try ’em again, sir. The Chinese, I could—”
And then came the familiar whistle and whine of an untuned radio message trying to get through. Dodson’s fingers flew across the keys as he zeroed in on the communique.
“Put it on speakers,” Gant ordered. “I want everyone to hear this.”
Around the green metallic skin of the aircraft, and in and out of the ribs of the fuselage it echoed, the tinny voice of a distant Chinese officer with a mercilessly terrible English accent, cutting in over the din of the torrential ice storm that pounded the outer body like a hail of bullets.
