The Silk Code

by Paul Levinson

  “Thank you—”

  “Gentlemen,” Mallory interrupted. “Do you think you could forego the seder until after our meeting?”

  Pedro laughed. “See? Anti-Semitism rears its head everywhere! Michael—Spain, the Amish, the Jewish experience—all of this is relevant to our problem, you see.”

  “How is Spain relevant?” Mallory asked.

  “How is Spain relevant? Why, some of the last of the Neanderthals—under thirty thousand years old—have been found there. Some of the most beautiful Cro-Magnon cave painting—the ceiling of Altamira—is in Spain. And Spain is of course next door to France, which has Chauvet and Lascaux and—”

  “OK, I get the picture, pardon the pun.” Mallory sat down, and bade me to do the same. “And this has some relevance to the Tocharian manuscripts you’re translating?”

  “You see,” Pedro said softly, “we’re all connected. We’re all of us stories of persecution of one people by another, and what the persecuted did to survive. The Tocharian documents speak of such a conflict, a fearful conflict, between two or more kinds of people. I’m convinced the documents were written to try to warn us—the future—of something. But I can’t quite figure out what that is, because the language is so allegorical, you see. The writer—I’m pretty sure the documents I’m now trying to translate were produced by the same person—was struggling to explain something. Perhaps it was something he—or she—did not, could not, completely understand. Perhaps the writer just retreated to metaphor to cover up what was not understood—that’s a common enough practice in our current intellectual world. I just can’t tell as yet.”

  “When exactly were these manuscripts—the ones you’re translating now—discovered?” I asked. “Not in the last few years?”

  “Oh no,” Pedro replied. “Mummies and artifacts have been recently recovered. But these manuscripts have been known since the 1890s. Marc Aurel Stein brought many back to Europe from the Tarim Basin in the early years of the twentieth century. They just have not been translated—properly—until now.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Well, that would just be conjecture on my part,” Pedro said.

  “My favorite kind of discourse,” I said, sincerely.

  “Well, you see, the texts that I am working on now were early on labeled as magical texts—because of their references to singers, spells of the flute, et cetera. So not much attention was paid to them. And when they were examined at all, the early translators took them totally as metaphor—the battles were contests between good and evil in the soul, you see, not out here really in the world.”

  “But you think differently,” I said.

  “Well, yes,” Pedro said. “People are dying of strange illnesses now—the Tocharian manuscript speaks of an illness in the blood.”

  “Is there any further possible mention in the Tocharian manuscripts of Neanderthals? I know there was a reference to ‘brutes’ in your translation.”

  Pedro shook his head. “Nothing as explicit as we might like—there of course are lots of modern people who might be referred to as brutes. But the frequent references to brutes and singers as the same race are intriguing. We think Neanderthals may have had flutes. Conceivably, they sang. And if Bickerton et al. are right that language began in song, well…”

  “Pretty tenuous connection,” I said.

  “We have anything better to work on?” Mallory asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “Who are the contestants in this battle?” I asked Pedro. “The brute singers—let’s say they are Neanderthals, for the sake of argument—and who on the other side? Early Cro-Magnons?”

  “Presumably,” Pedro said.

  “So, our Tocharian author is an historian, describing an ancient battle that he—or she—knew about. How? By oral tradition?” I asked.

  “No,” Pedro shook his head. “I don’t think it’s quite that either.”

  “How then?” I asked.

  “Well, I can’t be sure, but from what I can tell about the verb tenses in the text—and we’re pretty sure about these kinds of tenses—it seems that the author was writing in the current tense.”

  My face must have creased in doubt.

  Mallory’s smiled. “And now we get to the denouement,” he said, with relish.

  “Just a second,” I said. “You’re saying the manuscripts are really thirty thousand years old? That would be news to me, and one hell of a discovery!”

  “No,” Pedro said. “These manuscripts date from about A.D. 750, give or take the usual couple of years.”

  “Then—”

  “Right,” Mallory said. “He’s saying that, if the singing brutes are indeed Neanderthals, and the text is indeed reportage not fanciful allegory, then what they are describing is some sort of extermination of Neanderthals in A.D. 750.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I joined Pedro the next day at the restaurant by the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Mallory had a place at our table too, but he was on the phone.

  “It’s a tourist trap, I know,” I said, apologetically, and looked at the roast beef on the menu.

  Pedro shrugged. “Sometimes the tourists are right. They visit our Silk Museum in droves—keeps my little town well employed.”

  My ears perked up. “Silk Museum?”

  “Oh yes,” Pedro said. “The Silk Museum in Macclesfield—the little market town, oh, about seventy kilometers out of Manchester. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”

  “Well, I’ve heard of Manchester, of course—”

  Pedro gave me a smile. “Macclesfield’s been a center of silk production since the Napoleonic era—we don’t like to call it that here, but that’s what it was, of course. People worked like slaves on the Jacquard Looms. The Luddites hated those looms. But the looms did keep the people alive, after all. I’ve always agreed with Hayek that of course the industrialists were responsible for the proletariat, because those workers wouldn’t have been alive at all were it not for the industrialists and the standard of living they created. Karl Marx never considered that! Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Well—”

  “Precisely! And now of course it’s all done differently—silk is manufactured with power looms and such like—and so they’ve made a Museum in Macclesfield, to commemorate the Jacquard Loom and the prosperity it first brought to our area. Incredible device, that Jacquard Loom. Jacquard of course was not the only person who invented it. Monsieur Falcon came up with the perforated cards, and Jacques de Vaucanson—you know, the inventor of the mechanical duck that digested and evacuated—pardon me, I shouldn’t be talking this way over dinner—”

  “No, no, please continue,” I said. “What was that about perforated cards?”

  “The cards? Well, you see a code is punched into them—like an early computer—and that code controls the weaving of the silk, you see. I’m sure Charles Babbage—”

  Mallory appeared, grave, furious. “Would you excuse us for a moment,” he said to Pedro, and beckoned me to join him.

  “Yes, of course,” Pedro said.

  I wanted to talk to Pedro more, but Mallory looked in no mood to be denied. He whispered rapidly in my ear as we walked away from the table. “They tried to kill Amanda—she’s all right now—but they tried to kill her! I’m sure of it!”

  “What happened?” I put my hand on his shoulder, tried to calm him.

  “I don’t know exactly. We had a listening device implanted in her skin—even she didn’t know it—to pick up all of her conversation—”

  “You’re a real piece of work,” I said. “What did you do, have Q slip it into her when she was in the dentist’s office?”

  “Never mind about that,” Mallory half shouted, half whispered. “The point is that the device recorded everything that she said, everything that was said to her, but not when she was on the phone—it wasn’t strong enough to pick up what was said to her on the phone, wasn’t intended for that. But it relayed everything it did pick up to nearby cellular devices, which in
turn forwarded it all to the British consulate in New York, and then back here—”

  “Jeez, the KGB had nothing on you people—”

  “—and we just got the latest from the relay. She was at the hotel and received a phone call from someone, then went her room—and then, wham, she’s out cold for at least fifteen minutes, apparently. I hear her thump on the floor, and no one makes a sound until someone, obviously a security guard, starts saying, ‘Are you all right Miss?’ What the hell happened to her?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t think for a second that she’d fainted. “Same thing that happened to Lum, Moses…but she’s alive?”

  “Yeah,” Mallory said. “She’s fine. But I haven’t a clue why, or what happened to her. That person who rang her must have tripped it off…”

  “Well, it’s a step in the right direction that she’s OK,” I said. “If it was an attempt on her life, then maybe we finally did something right, whatever it was.”

  Mallory cursed. “This is getting way out of control—way out of control.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s been out of control for a long time. If anything, we may be getting closer to what’s going on.”

  “What, did Pedro tell you something useful about the Tocharian manuscripts?”

  “Yeah, that,” I said, “and maybe also something useful about silk. And if someone tried to kill Amanda, that means that maybe she touched a nerve with one of her interviews. That could narrow down the field considerably.”

  “You were on hand for the Antonescu interview, but not the Amish,” Mallory said. “I’ve been telling you all along that I didn’t feel comfortable about those Anabaptist farmers—”

  “I heard the whole Amish interview too,” I said. “Nothing untoward there either.”

  “But, Amanda told me it was just she and—”

  “I know,” I said. “I wasn’t with her in Pennsylvania. But we have tape recorders too you know—”

  Mallory just shook his head. “She’ll be in my office tomorrow morning for the debriefing. Be there at nine sharp, please.”

  MALLORY’S SECRETARY SHOWED me in.

  Amanda was on the couch, her eyes closed.

  A tall gaunt man in a grey suit was sitting on a chair next to her.

  Mallory saw me, held up a finger to his lips, and motioned me to a seat. “Good,” he whispered. “You’re here. Just about ready to get started. Soames has put her in a light trance—best chance we have of finding out what happened.”

  Mallory looked at Soames. “Is she ready?”

  Soames nodded. He looked intently at Amanda’s closed eyes, and spoke softly. “Tell us what happened in the hotel room, after you rang off with Michael. Tell us everything you were thinking, everything that happened, and your reaction to it.” His tone was gentle but insistent.

  Amanda spoke right up. “First things first,” she said, talking as much to herself as anyone else, “even though the BBC is paying for the call, and my room at the Hilton. I wanted to stay at the Plaza for my night over in New York, after the interview in Pennsylvania, but the Plaza was way over budget. Well, better the Hilton than the Holiday Inn—some man groped my hiney in the pool there, the last time I was in the States. Anyway… I’ll call the Beeb later, after I’ve had a proper dinner.”

  “OK,” Soames said. “What happened next? Had you already ordered up your dinner?”

  Amanda nodded. I could see her eyes moving under her lids, as if she were viewing the story she was relating. “Yes. Room service should be here already. What’s keeping them?”

  “Please continue,” Soames said. “What happened next?”

  “Knock, knock, knock on the door! I look at my face in the mirror. ‘Room service,’ a man’s voice says. A nice deep voice. I look through the peephole. Not as attractive as the voice, but not bad.”

  “Does he look at all familiar? Like anyone you have ever seen before?”

  Amanda shook her head.

  “You sure?” Soames prodded.

  “I never saw him before,” Amanda said.

  “Very good, then,” Soames said, and looked meaningfully at Mallory. “And what happened next?”

  “I open the door. ‘Thank you for bringing the dinner up here on such short notice.’ The man enters with the tray, and sets it up between the end of my queen-size bed and the dresser.

  “Sometimes I daydream about what would happen in a situation like this if I answered the door totally starkers—totally nude. I worked on an hilarious BBC documentary a few years back about how hotel people are trained. A man entering a room with a woman inside is supposed to look only at her eyes—‘remember, the eyes only, the eyes only’—the training makes a point of emphasizing that any glance at the body of a female occupant, whether clothed or not, was strictly verboten…”

  “I see.” Soames betrayed the slightest smile. “Please say what happened next.”

  “The man is smiling at me, looking at my entire body. You fail the course. I thank him, and put a dollar bill into his hand. He nods, says, ‘Thank you,’ and leaves without looking at the bill. Well, he gets points for that.”

  “OK,” Soames said. “And did you eat your dinner?”

  Amanda frowned. “Not all of it. The steak is medium rare. It looks pretty good. I’m cutting it—but damn, the phone is ringing. Why can’t they leave me alone for a few minutes? I put a piece in my mouth anyway—I’m too hungry not to. I’m answering the phone with my mouth full. Too bad!”

  “OK, tell us about the conversation now. As exactly as you can.”

  “I say, ‘Yes?… Well, hullo! Of course I do! Right now?… OK, sure, just give me a few minutes… Sure, the coffee shop would be fine.’”

  “Whom are you talking to, Amanda? This is very important.”

  Amanda furrowed her brow, then her whole face scrunched up, in an exaggerated pantomime of thinking.

  Then she shook her head slowly. “I don’t know,” she said, in a very small voice. “I can’t remember.”

  Mallory leaned over and whispered to me. “Whatever it was that happened to her seems to have knocked out this part of her memory—the doctors think that maybe it was the trauma of the experience.”

  “Selective amnesia,” Soames agreed. “It’s not uncommon with this sort of thing—the victim blots out the proximate trigger of the offending event. Less painful that way. Sometimes a persistent hypnotherapist can retrieve it, often not.”

  Mallory sighed. “All right,” he said, “have her continue.”

  Soames nodded, and so instructed Amanda.

  “I gobbled down about half the steak,” she said. “I’m very keen for this meeting, but there’s no point having it serenaded by my growling stomach. Mmmm…that’s good. I should slip out of my blue jeans into something a tad more elegant. Maybe I should call Michael again, and tell him about this meeting? No. Time for that later. I’ve kept this appointment waiting long enough.”

  Mallory cursed quietly.

  “OK, Amanda,” Soames said. “Now please tell me, exactly, everything that happened, everything you saw.”

  “I’m in the elevator,” Amanda said, “down to the first floor. It’s a long corridor to the coffee shop. There’s grey-carpet all around. I’m walking as fast as I can—Ouch! Something bit me in the back of my thigh. It hurts. I feel sick. I’m very tired. If I could just lay down on the floor… Ah, that feels good, so good… But the carpet hurts my face… I’m scared, please help me, someone! But I can’t remember how to talk. I’m scared…” Her face was a sea of fidgets and flinches.

  Soames leaned over to Mallory. “I should bring her out of this now.”

  “Just a bit more,” Mallory said.

  Soames hesitated, then nodded. “OK,” he said soothingly to Amanda. “Don’t worry, you’re OK. You’re perfectly fine, really. Can you tell us what happened next?”

  Amanda nodded, slowly. “Someone’s turning me over. He’s pressing his head against my chest. He stinks of whiskey! ‘Thank God! She’s st
ill breathing,’ he says. ‘Last thing the hotel needs is some high-priced hooker keeling over and dying in the corridor like this.’ There’s another man standing there, too. ‘Call EMS,’ he says. I’m so frightened…” Amanda started whimpering.

  “All right, take her out of it,” Mallory said, his jaw twitching in anger and frustration.

  “I have a pretty good idea what happened,” I said. “Amanda was very lucky.”

  “YOU SLEEP NOW,” Soames said to Amanda. “Sleep deeply, and peacefully. You need your rest. Everything’s OK. When you wake up, in a little while, you’ll feel very good…”

  Amanda’s lips parted, her face regained its beauty, and her body relaxed into full unconsciousness on the couch…

  Mallory motioned Soames and me to follow him into an adjoining room.

  “Right,” Mallory said to me when we all were seated. “So tell us what you think happened.”

  I told them about Amanda’s interview with Lapp, and how it had gotten around to “preventions”—the Amish equivalent of inoculations against illnesses and “insults” to the body.

  “Lapp gave her a ‘silk phosphate,’ before she left Lancaster,” I explained. “‘Tastiest way I know of getting some of those blocking agents into your body,’ he said. Amanda said it was a sweet milky seltzer—”

  “You reckon that caused her to pass out in the hotel corridor, hours later?” Mallory asked.

  “Just the opposite,” I said. “I think that someone got some poison into her body with a needle, whatever—that ‘bite’ that she said she felt on the back of her leg—and the Amish phosphate saved her life. Its compounds blocked the poison—the way Lapp was explaining it—and rendered it harmless.”

  “I’m a great believer in homeopathic remedies,” Soames offered, “but I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered anything quite like that.”

  “I’m still not clear why you’re so sure the Amish drink was the remedy and not the problem,” Mallory said.