Decipher (18 page)

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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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But when Abdullah Al-Mamun first arrived at the pyramids, he found monuments that were covered in gleaming white limestone casing stones that were so precisely constructed that the joins were barely visible. The casing was covered in hieroglyphs, which Manetho, the Egyptian priest who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek for Ptolemy I around 300 B.C.E., proclaimed was the work of Thoth. Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, among other things, was said to have inscribed the 36,525 books of wisdom upon the Great Pyramid. A number which happened to be exactly the same as the number of primitive inches in the designed perimeter of the Great Pyramid. And the same figure as the length of the year. 365:25 days.
“Many ancient civilizations proclaimed writing was a divine gift,” Scott added as the fax machine at last kicked into gear. “In Sumerian tradition the god Nabû, the biblical Nebo, invented writing and believed in the creative power of the divine word. In Chinese legend the four-eyed dragon god brought writing. And there were elitist scribal castes in Egyptian, Chinese and Mayan societies. But in Egypt the language of hieroglyphs was so well thought out and constructed, and appeared virtually from nowhere, that many linguists feel it was probably the invention of just one person.”
In the end it was just one person, the Egyptian god Thoth,
who spoke to them. From beyond the grave—from the black and white image being slowly inked out in hieroglyphs on a roll of silver fax paper. It took Scott a moment to translate. When he did, it just compounded the mystery:
I am Thoth, the lord of right and truth,
Who judges right and truth for the gods,
The judge of words in their essence,
Whose words triumph over violence.
Was this the place that Pharaoh Cheops had sought? The hidden chamber containing the Books of Thoth? Repository of the sacred knowledge and the key to the language of the gods?
Buried somewhere deep behind that granite stone plug were answers, Scott was certain.
Alchemy, from the Greek word “Kemi,” meaning Egypt.
As a linguistic anthropologist Richard Scott had come into contact with a bewildering variety of branches of science. But never before chemistry. He waited expectantly as Hackett waded through the chemical analysis results of the C60 crystal.
November stuffed a new filter in the coffee machine, and ate a sandwich in the small enclosed kitchenette that stood over to one side, well away from the powerful laser equipment that was still slicing through chunks of Carbon 60 crystal, cutting it into smaller pieces for atomic examination by NMRS.
What was clear was that true Carbon 60 was yellowish-brown. This stuff was blue. Why?
“It's not pure.” Hackett flipped another page, studying the numbers with a razor-sharp eye.
“It's not?” Pearce said, inspecting the sandwiches on the tray next to November with an equally sharp eye. He could just see them through the glass door to the kitchenette.
Hackett acknowledged one of the odd-looking chemists as he wandered past. They were called the “soot” community: Hawkes, Liu, Ridley and Morgan. The four organic chemists who worked for Rola Corp. published regularly in
The American Carbon Society.
These people lived and breathed carbon. They came from places like MIT and Rice University's Quantum Institute in Texas—the same place where Kroto and Smalley first created C60 in 1985.
They talked in constant scientific gibberish. But carbon marked exactly the point where chemistry and physics met. Hackett quickly cut them down to size.
“These aren't simple impurities we're talking about here,” he said. “We're talking about specific. carbon compounds that have been deliberately created within the structure of the crystal. We're talking about a sophistication that's beyond our current capabilities. There are graphite veins. Diamond. There are, uh—ribidium fullerenes, a super-conductive material.” He was mumbling now, lost in the science. “Ribidium fused with C60—that's, let me see, Rb2CsC60. Usually it degrades in air. Works at temperatures in the region of 30 Kelvins. Nitrogen is a liquid at 18 Kelvins. That's minus 225 degrees Celsius.”
“How come the ribidium fullerenes survived?” November asked, depositing her empty plate back inside the kitchen.
“It's coated in diamond. It's not exposed to the air, so it's super-conductive.”
“Does that explain why I get a tingly feeling when I touch this stuff?” Scott asked dryly. “Or am I just pleased to see it?”
“C60,” Hackett told him, “is photo-conductive. It passes electricity when exposed to light. It's perfect for light switches in the next generation of light computers. It's probably reacting to all the lighting in the lab, and since you're earthed by virtue of standing on the floor … Hey, maybe we should get you a safety mat. This is incredible.” He waved the paper sheet. “The atoms in this stuff are arranged with a distinct pattern in their energy states.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Hackett said happily, “but it's linked to light computers again. C60 is arranged in such a way that it allows electrons to go around corners.”
“And that's good?”
“It's quick.” He tapped his finger on the paper. “Maybe I should call Michela.”
Scott had no idea who Michela was. But he looked around anyway: “Where's Ralph?”
Pearce scratched his rear, headed for the sandwiches and pointed skywards. “Upstairs with Dower. Planning out the expedition,” he said as Scott grabbed a cloth and a black magic marker and cleaned the large white wipeboard next to the coffee machine. Figures and notes disappeared in an instant.
“Nobody wanted this, did they?” Scott murmured to nobody in particular.
“Not anymore,” Hackett told him, referring back to the spectroscopy results. “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy works at very low radio frequencies. It doesn't bend, stretch, spin or tumble molecules to get information. It deals with single atoms
within
a molecule and it does it because an atom is affected by what its neighbor's doing. And in being affected, it reveals its true identity. NMRS can determine exactly what atom is in a molecule, and what other atoms are in relation to it.”
“I see,” November responded. But it wasn't all that clear that she did see.
“The key,” Hackett added, “is the atomic nuclei property called ‘spin.' The ‘spin' of the nuclei has a number of energy states. Each one's given a nuclear spin quantum number. NMRS detects the transitions between states by holding a sample in a magnetic field. But the problem with carbon is—its nuclear spin quantum number is zero. It exhibits no energy transitions.”
“Then how can you detect it?”
“Well, there's an exception to the rule. There always is. Carbon 13 is a specific isotope of carbon, kind of like ordinary carbon's strange uncle, and it shows a transition between energy states. It has an NSQN of one half. Anyone attempting to build C60 would need to use carbon in its isotope C13 form to be able to control what they were doing. This C60 …
is
Carbon 13”
“Makes sense,” Scott agreed.
“You understand what I'm describing?”
“Sure,” Scott said. “Isotope—from the Greek, meaning ‘equal place.' Carbon 13 is just like any other type of carbon. It's still carbon.”
“The point,” Hackett explained impatiently, “is that whoever made this C60 first had to make the right type of carbon. That means a sophisticated manufacturing plant. That means this stuff was not naturally occurring. It means it was never mined, it was constructed.”
“Neat,” November commented, less than enthusiastic.
“Neat …?
Neat
? This isn't neat, this is monumental! The fact these rocks are covered in writing and were found a mile below ground, underwater, and an integral part of a structure doesn't just tell me they're from an advanced civilization,” Hackett expounded excitedly. “What we are dealing with here is not some lost civilization on a par with, say, the Romans or the Egyptians. We're talking about a civilization that understood quantum physics and molecular engineering. We're talking about a civilization that was far in advance of our own—and was destroyed. That is a frightening, terrible prospect.”
He had taken a look inside the giant NMR spectrometer. The sample chamber was the size of a jeep, with huge powerful magnets that had an adjustable field. Coils were arranged in such a way as to expose the C60 to radio-frequency radiation. And it had detectors that looked like fists of compacted metal, which registered the results of the electro-magnetic bombardment.
“To be able to understand this stuff,” Hackett announced, “we have to use equipment that is right at the very pinnacle of man's scientific achievement. This Carbon 60 was not created by accident.”
“And God said:
Let there be light,
” Pearce announced in a passable impression of the Creator.
Scott thought about that a moment. “Language,” he said. “To be able to say:
Let there be light,
God had to invent language.
Then
light arrived. In the beginning was the
Word.
”
Hackett was utterly baffled. “What are you talking about?”
“Light—and language. It's the first thing the Bible even
talks about. It's the first thing a lot of ancient myths talk about. And what have we got here? The sun—and the language of Atlantis. The earliest known language.” Scott sighed as he shifted his attention back to the rocks. “That's assuming whoever designed this language wanted it to be understood by people in the future.”
The others didn't seem to get it.
Scott explained: “Thomas A. Sebeok was commissioned by the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, in 1984, to answer a question posed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
“Which was what?”
“Several key desert areas were selected for the burial of nuclear waste which would remain radioactive for the next ten thousand years. The sort of time-scale we're talking about here, since Plato said Atlantis was destroyed around 9500 B.C.E. So the problem was, on the off chance we returned to barbarism—how would we warn our future selves, or visiting aliens, of the danger zone? Sebeok immediately discarded tape-decks and verbal communication as a warning—anything that required energy to work. He also rejected any form of ideogram based on today's conventions. Y'know, it's like, we see a little man or a woman on a door, and we
know
it's a toilet. But in ten thousand years the chances are we'll know it's a person—but we'll be wondering what the hell they're doing.”
“So he came up with a better language?” Pearce asked.
“Not even remotely. Language changes over time, and a massive disaster might destroy current society, so he opted for the adoption of myth and taboo to be fed into human culture.”
“What?”
“Religion,” Scott said succinctly. “Language is useless on its own, but social taboos will work even in a future barbaric state. The solution was to create some kind of priesthood of nuclear scientists, anthropologists, linguists and psychologists that would keep alive the knowledge of danger by creating myths and legends. And would perpetuate itself by co-opting new members along the way …”
“Do you realize what you just said?” Pearce remarked, agitated.
“I've got some idea, yes,” Scott replied.
“The earliest known civilizations that created language, created some of the most complicated languages ever known. And each language was controlled by the priesthood. The Chinese, the Mayans, the Babylonians … the Egyptians. The priesthood has always been in charge of the written word.”
 
“My problem is determining how
these
people thought,” Scott told them all. “If I can't, this language remains as mysterious and indecipherable as the script from the Indus Valley. The way in which language is structured says a lot about how a civilization thinks. Like, how does it arrange colors? Light to dark? Red to violet? We use semantically opposed ideas. Love versus hate. High versus low. In Swahili they group items into characteristics that reflect their properties, like length. Or it may be entirely different. These characters right here could be part of a holistic language.”
“A what?”
“Take our language—the word ‘dogs,' for example. The ‘s' means it's plural. Nothing more. ‘S,' in and of itself, isn't plural. ‘Sorrow' doesn't mean there are lots of ‘orrows'; ‘d' is not a part of a dog, like its leg. God is completely different but uses the same letters. A log and God are not different types of dog. God is dog, backward. But God is not a dog facing the other way. Yet
this
language could use logic like that. So the entire idea of ‘dogness' is complete in one symbol. So it's a perfect logogram,” he explained. “Some languages are a precise reflection of people's speech” He grabbed a pen and paper. “But if this is anything like English then it'll be a complete mess. I mean, how do you explain why ‘sh' can be written ‘ce' as in
ocean
, ‘ti' as in
nation
and ‘ss' as in
issue
? But we also use logograms for numbers and function signs. We write seven as 7, not as ///////. Though we also write it as S-E-V-E-N.
“But if you look at the Linear B writing from Mycenaean Greece, they used syllable signs—so each syllable had a sign. Hence, ‘fa,' ‘mi' and ‘ly' would mean ‘family.'”
He stood back a moment, eyed the crystals arranged on the table. “Language family,” he said. “That's it. Maybe I need to figure out what language family it's related to.”
“What are you doing?” Hackett asked, watching Scott map out flow charts on the board now with colored markers. “Hunting for the complex adaptive system in action?” He sat with his feet up on the table and tossing a chunk of the rock into the air like a baseball as the epigraphist went to work.
Scott set out a series of boxes, scrawled various names in them to the obvious puzzlement of November. He drew the final box with something approaching an artistic flourish.
“Ch … Chukchi-what?” November asked, running a finger under one of the more bizarre names on the board.
“Chukchi-Kamchatkan,” Scott said. “It's a language family. Certain languages have similarities and are grouped into what are called language families. They tend to keep a similar structure at their root, but over time languages change, develop and adapt in many subtle ways.”
“As languages are improved and refined,” November assumed.
“No, not really,” Hackett disagreed quietly yet authoritatively.
It was enough to pique Scott's curiosity. He stopped what he was doing on the board and eyed the physicist squarely. “You're right. But why do you think you're right?”

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