The Skywalkers: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 5)

by JC Ryan

  “All right. Let’s say we’re facing an annihilation event. A few of us scramble to the Rabbit Hole. We’ll need a way to survive, and a way to rebuild, with the idea that we’re going to be the ones who come out of the cataclysm alive. With the library, or I guess now it’s plural – libraries ‑ we preserve the technological advances that leaps us ahead of the first generations after all the previous Cycle’s cataclysms.

  We go from a precarious existence to an advanced society within just a few years, instead of thousands. But, to do it, we need the people who can access the information in the libraries. That means Raj, for the computers, and the translators. Then we need people to act on the information. That means Roy, at a minimum. Other scientists as well, if we can recruit them. We need infrastructure to support these people, and they aren’t going to be happy without their loved ones. So there you have it. The information, the people to extract and interpret it, and the people those people love.

  While we’re at it, we need a diverse assortment of breeding pairs.”

  Salome, shocked, stared at Luke. He stared back. “What? You can’t repopulate the earth with my generation. Roy and you, Raj and Sushma, you’ll be there because of who you are. Rebecca, which means JR, Daniel and Sarah because they already have a kid. But we’d better pick the rest with an eye not only to what they can contribute to survival, but also to their fertility status.”

  Salome threw her hands in the air. “All right, I get it. Let’s talk about something else.” There’d be more discussion along these lines, because it touched on the moral dilemma. They had room for one hundred, maybe half again more. Who lived, and who died, in the event of a disaster? She wasn’t willing to be the only one with a vote, even if Luke did seem to have an unarguable point.

  However, there were more immediate concerns, not the least of which was the very real expectation that someone would be coming for their prized assets sooner or later. If Salome had to guess, she’d guess sooner. Her first order of business was to enlist Raj to plan for an extra off-site backup of the libraries, somehow without alerting him yet in light of Daniel’s caveat to tell no one. Once they could bring Raj on board, his next task would be to plan for either quickly moving the hardware here at the Foundation, or destroying it so invaders couldn’t get their hands on it. Luke made a note to take it up with Daniel at the next Enigma meeting. Raj had to be brought in immediately.

  Clearly, they also needed to get started on turning the cave system in the Gallatin National Forest into a habitable ecosystem, with sustainable power, clean water and food, along with comfortable living quarters. And, it all had to be done in complete secrecy. If their activities were discovered, a huge PR problem for the Foundation was the least of their worries. It was true that the Foundation had an impeccable reputation with regard to the environment, so it would be bad. But neither of them knew what kind of penalties they’d face for defacing a national preserve.

  This brought up the subject of equipment, supplies and laborers to put it all together. Salome began to think of it as Medusa, with a thousand details writhing around her head like dangerous snakes. Any one of them could strike at any instant, and then all the secrecy would be gone in an instant. And if that happened, they might as well have made no plans in the first place. Because if whoever and whatever was behind the creeping virus in the world economy caught wind of it, they were all as good as dead anyway.

  “Luke, how many people can one doctor handle? Do we need to recruit someone to help Rebecca?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask.” He made another note for Daniel’s approval: bring Rebecca into the Enigma circle. “This is nuts. We should just gather the old group and let them all in on this. The reason we’ve all survived so far is we all have different strengths.”

  “Well, you said that’s what we’d need, when we started deciding on people. Let’s make a list of the ones who have to be there, and why. So Raj, because he’s the computer whiz, and Sushma and their kid, because you can’t expect Raj to leave them behind. That’s three.”

  “All right. Rebecca, obviously, which means JR. They’re young, healthy, Rebecca’s a doctor.”

  “Not that I’d leave him out, but what’s JR good for, except getting things down from high cabinets?”

  Luke guffawed. “Once upon a time, not much. But he’s pretty versatile. Besides, Rebecca wouldn’t go without him. Hey, I know. We’re going to need security. JR was Special Forces. I’ll bet he can recruit some old buddies.”

  “Good, write that down.”

  “We’ve got to have Sinclair. He’s got a wealth of language skills, plus the translators are used to his leadership. So, Martha. Hmm, they’re too old for the repopulation effort.”

  “Well, you can’t leave Martha behind. It would be wrong, and besides, Sinclair would drink himself to death without her. I know! She’s a gardener. I wonder if she knows anything about hydroponics?”

  “We’ll have to get her started learning.” Luke hesitated to bring it up, because he didn’t want to take the place of a young couple with the ability to help repopulate. But he couldn’t help mentioning that Sally was skilled in animal husbandry. He’d want her to survive, even if he had no place in the Rabbit Hole.

  And so the week went, with lists drawn up, estimates made, brainstorming about how to solve the logistics problems and more. Before they knew it, the next meeting was upon them.

  No sooner had Daniel released Salome and Luke after telling them to go ahead with the immediate steps they’d outlined, than the phone on his desk rang.

  “Daniel Rossler.”

  “Daniel, it’s John Brideaux. I just wanted to know how that expedition is coming.”

  At first, Daniel didn’t know how to answer, his head full of Enigma plans. He hesitated, then shook his head to reset his thinking. “Oh, yes, John. I have a meeting in just a few minutes with my expedition manager.”

  “That’s your brother, am I correct?” Brideaux asked.

  “Yes, JR. He’s proven to be a valuable resource on an expedition.”

  “Yes, I remember some of his exploits. Well, I just want you to know that I’m still ready, willing and able to get behind you on this, Daniel.”

  “John, I appreciate it. We’re still doing some research with the artifacts, before we really know what all is involved. But, I’ll be in touch as soon as I have the figures for your approval. And thank you, again, for all you’ve done for the Foundation.”

  Chapter 24 - Eight for an octave

  Roy was at a crossroads. Even if it worked, it might be a one-shot deal. Capture the data in that one shot or lose it forever. It was a decision he couldn't make alone. In the small conference room, with the same core group as the ones who'd first seen the box and its strange contents. Roy's first statement electrified the room.

  "With the help of a lab Salome found, I've identified the material these are made of, and I'm 99% certain that the colors we can see represent a form of data."

  Celebration broke out as Nicholas and Sinclair clapped each other on the back, JR and Daniel high-fived, and Salome hugged Roy. Raj was his usual conservative self, but he smiled. Roy's next statement quelled the enthusiasm.

  "Unfortunately, I've only got one idea about how to read it, and that's possibly destructive. Maybe even probably."

  Daniel stared at Roy in disbelief. "Do you mean to tell me that you can't capture the data without destroying the source?"

  Roy shook his head. "I can't say for certain. But it's very likely. That's why I haven't done it yet. Maybe there'll be scientific breakthroughs later that provide another way. I can't say. All I can say is that if you want this data now, you risk destroying the source, and you risk not capturing it as well. Basically, it involves forcing this material to give up its electrical charges and only then determining if they form any sort of pattern."

  Daniel was aghast, and Nicholas nearly apoplectic. "You can't do that!"

  Roy shrugged. What followed was pandemonium as the
arguments pro and con. JR argued that destroying the data was no worse than not having access to it at all, while his grandfather and brother shouted him down that it wasn't fair to later generations, who might figure it out without the risk of destruction. Roy sat in the center of the storm with a slightly curious look on his face, as if all he had at stake was a bet on who'd win the argument.

  Raj was the one who finally came up with something. "Roy, how many of the foils did you check for blank ones?"

  "Just two. I only needed one."

  "Go back and check the next two or three. See if there's a smaller area of color. Maybe this was all set up this way because whoever left this for us knew that the people who found it may not be sophisticated enough to have the means to read them, but could maybe figure it out."

  "You mean, like test data? Some foils with just a little on them, so we wouldn't be afraid to destroy them?"

  "It's worth a look, isn't it?"

  Daniel agreed, but told the others to wait while Roy fetched the box.

  Raj would never be able to say what caused him to have that hunch, but it proved correct. There were more than twenty foils with larger and larger circles of color in the center. Roy began with the one closest to what turned out to be ten blank foils, counting the one he'd used in the metallurgy lab. Its circle was barely larger than a nickel, Nicholas said. Roy had never seen one of the obsolete coins, so he had to take the old man's word for it. He thought it was ironic that nickel, the element, was one of the key components of the foil.

  The first attempt did in fact destroy the data. Roy adjusted the strength of the electromagnet and tried again. By his third attempt, he was able to capture the charge variables, but the circle disappeared. He handed his results over to Raj, and tried again. By the sixth attempt, he was sweating the idea he'd never be able to get what Raj needed without destroying the source, but that was the day Raj came to him with outstanding news.

  "It shows a pattern all right. It's binary. Once I was able to analyze what you got, it's all zeros and ones."

  "You're kidding! What are the odds that an ancient civilization and ours would devise the same system?"

  "I wouldn't have taken the bet, but I know what I see."

  Together they took the news to Daniel.

  "Roy, have you succeeded in doing any of this without destroying the source?"

  "Not yet. I've got fourteen more sample foils."

  "Work from the other end. Take the power down to as low as you can get it, and see if that destroys the source. If not, see if you get enough data to work with. Then take it back up if necessary. Let me know. I don't want to destroy the source if we don't have to."

  Roy tried it a seventh time. To his delight, the underlying metallic structure was unchanged--the data was still there in its original form. However, the recording of the charge variables was depressingly blank. An eighth, a ninth and a tenth try had the same effect. Then, on the eleventh, a faint image of the variables came through. He called Raj.

  "Hold your breath, buddy. This next test may be the one."

  Raj was on hand as Roy tried for the twelfth time, adjusting the power only the tiniest bit. It was while the machine was running that he slapped his forehead again. Why hadn't he tried again on the foils that hadn't given up their data the first time? He had ten extra tries that way. But, as Raj shouted that he had data, Roy pulled the foil out and realized that it looked exactly the same as it had before it went in. They'd identified the correct level of power. Now all that remained was for Raj to determine what, if anything, the binary code produced.

  At first, nothing Raj did to manipulate the code made sense. He tried at first dividing the ones and zeros into lengths of eight, like the bit strings he was used to. However, without a key to the language represented, the data meant nothing. Roy began working late into the night with Raj, throwing out more and more unlikely theories. Until the night he mentioned how funny it was that binary and music both used the number eight. Eight for a bit, eight for an octave. Raj decided to synthesize the data from the last test as sound instead of text. To his astonishment, though he should have been prepared for it, a very human-sounding voice came from the speakers, saying "ah, aa, eh, ee, oh, oo" and more.

  "What the heck?" said Roy.

  In the understatement of a decade, Raj answered, "I think we'd better get Sinclair."

  ***

  As it turned out, Martha told them Sinclair was in no condition to help them that night, since he'd been celebrating the Galway club victory at football that evening. When asked what football teams were playing in July, she just said GAA. With the certain knowledge that neither of them would be able to sleep, Roy and Raj went home, Roy determined to find out what the heck GAA was and Raj determined to wipe from his mind the thought of a grown man getting that excited over a game with a ball.

  The next morning, a fully-competent Sinclair arrived in Raj's office.

  "What's all the fuss?"

  "We're hoping you can tell us what this means, or what language it's in." Raj played the recording again and relished the look on Sinclair's face as his jaw dropped.

  "Faith and ..."

  "Yes, yes, yes, begorrah. What does this mean?" Raj demanded, well accustomed to Sinclair turning pure Gaelic when he was excited, and determined to forestall it so he could understand what Sinclair said next.

  "Why, it sounds to me like someone reciting the vowels of their alphabet. Did this come from those data foils? Where's the rest?"

  While Roy stabbed at the intercom to get Daniel there, Raj fed the rest of the code from the sample disk into the synthesizer. By the time Daniel got there, the speakers were going through the sounds as they'd come off a human tongue. "Buh, sss, duh, luh," and so on, including some that sounded like clicks, or someone choking on a 'k' sound. They all listened, fascinated, to the end of the data.

  "Now, where are the text symbols that go with it?" Sinclair asked.

  As it turned out, that was on the next foil. With the assumption that each symbol produced by a bit of code corresponded to the sound on the previous foil and in the same order, Raj soon had a chart of sorts, though the symbols didn't correspond to any alphabet, syllabary or anything else Sinclair recognized. However, they could pronounce the grouped strings of symbols, more or less. The clicks and choking were more difficult to accomplish. Sinclair said they were fricatives, glottal stops and some other words neither Roy nor Raj were familiar with.

  It was a start. What remained was to extract the data from each foil and translate it into the binary system. Roy and Raj would work as a team for that. When they had several gigs of data, Raj translated it into sound and symbols, turning the result over to the translation team. And there it got stuck.

  Chapter 25 - Good ear, Nicholas

  The box of foils was priceless, as far as Sinclair was concerned. Not only did it have a complete account of the history of the Eighth Cycle, it had clearly been prepared to be found by later cycles. The first foil had provided a pronunciation guide to what he was terming the alphabet of the language, consisting of a number of symbols they later discovered 'written' on the other foils. Moreover, there was a dictionary of syllables, both spoken and in visual form that combined the symbols, or letters, into words. With that, the translators could read a group of letters on the data foils and pronounce them aloud. Sinclair, as an administrator, was curious about the Eighth Cycle material, but beyond the first hint he'd given Roy and Raj, couldn't be involved in the attempts to translate it. He still had important work to do on the library they could read, the Tenth Cycle library.

  The translators likened it to teaching a child to read. First, they'd learn the sounds, a symbol or letter, represented, A, B, C and so on. Then, they'd learn how to pronounce groups of letters, then simple words, then more complex. What stymied them at first was discovering that the spoken words as read aloud from the data foils, weren't in any language familiar to any of the translators. After a recording of the first hundred words on th
e first full foil was circulated among them with no result, one of the group leads finally took it into his own hands to involve Sinclair, who didn't usually get involved in the actual translations anymore, unless one of his employees was having a hard time and his team or supervisor couldn't help.

  Sinclair was delighted to be asked, if the truth were known. He missed the hands-on work. Becoming an administrator was an honor, of course. But, like many people who loved their work and discovered it to be a luxury once they became an administrator, he missed the work itself. The challenge of puzzling out what ancient symbols were meant to convey was still one that fascinated him. Especially now that he was older, and needed the mental exercise to stay sharp.

  So, on the day when a group lead came to him and said, "None of us know this language," it was like having a holiday. He set aside the work he was doing.

  "Let's see what you've got, then."

  Instead of putting a piece of paper in front of him, his employee said, "Here, listen to this and see what you think."

  Expecting to hear some form of Sumerian or another language from that region, Sinclair was astonished to hear something entirely different. When the recording had finished, he was still puzzled.

  "It sounds vaguely familiar, but that's no language from the Tenth Cycle regions. I wonder if we've finally met one that bears no relationship to this cycle's ancient languages."

  "What would that mean, if it were true?" his employee asked.

  "It could mean we're screwed," Sinclair admitted. "Not really, but we'd have to build our understanding from the most basic of linguistic analysis tools. Could take a while. Can you leave this recording with me?"

  "Sure. Let me get a copy made, and I'll bring the original back to you."

  "That's fine," he agreed. He turned back to his paperwork, but was unable to concentrate with the mystery in his mind. Why did that language sound so familiar, yet be something he couldn't name? The answer came from an unlikely source.