by S. M. Nolan
A startling possibility emerged; Reese's connection to Omega might rebound on them. Her loyalty had been shaky, it's dramatic reversal with a clear measure of desperation, but Omega's blackmail was now more important than ever.
Reese was still unstable, even if calm for a moment, and there was no telling what would happen if or when Omega came down on her. A part of Maggie wished she'd let Reese be—at least then she'd have known which way the proverbial cannon would be pointed.
25.
Translation
October 7th
4:00 AM
Lhasa Warehouse
Maggie tossed and turned on a cot across from Russell. He staved-off sleep to watch Thorne and Reese and scan the volumes. His head snapped toward Maggie's every movement before returning to the work at-hand.
Endless questions swam through him, infected his body with irreconcilable tension; Had Reese truly turned? Why? What kept her involved with Omega but was so easily defied? And what of Thorne? Would he follow, agree to help? If not, than what hope did they have to decipher the texts or find the device? Regardless, what about West's return?
One question led to another, then again until Russell verged on panic. He calmed himself with deep breaths that supplanted all but the most immediate, important thoughts. Two, specifically, arose: how to escape before West returned, and Omega's black-mail on Reese. What was strong enough to fear, but weak enough for Maggie to combat?
Reese's decision to help came too easily for his liking, but if genuine, would be crucial to their survival. Maggie and She-La believed her only loyal to herself. If so, what did she gain by helping them? What had she gained from Omega that they negated? If face-to-face with West, would they still be enough?
Russell reeled at the thoughts. He focused back on the book, ran the small device over a few pages before Thorne's exhausted movements redirected him. He wiped fatigue from his eyes as Reese's hands slid mechanically over the last, Chinese text. Russell was barely a quarter of the way through his book.
He heaved a breath, stood to stretch, and approached Thorne, “How long 'til West's back?”
Thorne's bloodshot eyes shifted sideways, “Could be days, could be minutes. Depends how hard it is to find the shit 'n how far he wants to take it.”
Russell glanced between them, “When was the last time you slept?”
Thorne contemplated the question with a breath between puckered lips, “40 hours. Maybe.”
“Sleep.”
“Doesn't work like that, buddy. If gorilla-man comes back—”
“He can deal with me. You're no use to me tired. Sleep.”
Thorne looked back at Reese. She closed her book, relaxed in her chair. “If you say so, boss. But if he comes back you'll probably have to kill him or he'll kill one of us.”
“Duly noted. Take a couple hours then get back to work.”
Thorne slid away from the desk, tossed his headphones aside to fall into the nearest cot. Russell's eyes darted to Maggie as she stirred. She wasn't sleeping, and he couldn't had he tried. If West returned, drugged and angry, Thorne's assessment would be brutally accurate. He couldn't risk letting his guard down. He stepped to Maggie's cot, sat carefully beside her.
“You awake?” She nodded weakly. “Wanna' step outside?”
She managed a shrug and rose to follow him outside.
“Where are we?” He asked in the cold air.
Maggie's brow furrowed with a yawn before she understood, “Reese said she'd help, but she's an unknown now. I almost wish I hadn't gotten to her. Whenever Omega's black-mail hits… We'll just see how she reacts. Thorne'll probably listen. He's just scared and without options. West…” She trailed off.
“Are you worried?”
“I'd be lying if I said no. I'm more concerned with where he is.”
“You think he'll renege on the deal?”
She nodded gravely, “The only question's whether he'll rely on Reese and who she'll help.”
“So, he will come back in force?” He asked, scanning the warehouses.
“Reese thinks so. Even that he's watching now, but what can we do?”
He tilted his head to one side, “I don't know, but we need the info in those journals. Thorne's the only one that can translate them. We can't leave until we know what's there.”
A silent devastation flickered between them; they'd gambled everything on the notion that the journals contained clues to the weapon's location. If they provided nothing, they were back at square one and uncomfortably close to the enemy.
“We need to talk about this.” She eyed him. “I'm worried this was a mistake.”
Maggie thought it over. Her decision to bring Reese and Thorne with was extreme even to her. To an onlooker, it was downright dangerous, stupid. The minor gleam buried beneath Reese's hatred had been enough to convince Maggie of her shifting loyalty, but Russell hadn't seen it. She doubted there was a way to explain it properly. In light of his ignorance, his concern was understandable.
“Russell, you've had my trust. Now I need yours. I know Reese isn't as irrational as she wants us to believe. And Thorne's said outright it's just business.”
“Maggie—”
“Please tell me what other options we have.” He looked away. She spoke desperately, “The Protectorate couldn't help if they were willing. At least this way there's a chance. Frankly, I'm not willing to abandon either of them if there's even the slightest hope they'll help. Sure, they've been trying to kill us, but isn't that just their job? Isn't that what a soldier does? Takes orders to kill, protect, regardless of feelings?”
He winced, “This is a little more complicated.”
Maggie hung her head back, righted it with a breath, “Look, we need to ensure West doesn't come back and kill us. They're the biggest asset towards that. We both know Reese wouldn't have taken that beating if she weren't forced to, and Thorne's visibly terrified of him. All I'm doing's giving them an out.”
“They really have no idea what's going on?” He asked in disbelief.
“Reese didn't, so I doubt Thorne does.”
“How can they not know what Omega was after?”
“They knew they were after a weapon, but were you always told the extent of your missions? Didn't you ever find yourself doing something just because it was ordered?”
“I see your point. I can at least believe the possibility they might help, but you have to convince me they're going to.”
“I can't do that, not yet. Reese…” She shook her head, shifted gears. “Omega doesn't value life. We've seen that. It's obvious to everyone, that no matter their aims, they're comfortable with using and killing people.”
“So it's probably obvious to Reese, who's only concerned with surviving.” He hesitated, “So she's been looking for an out?”
Maggie shrugged, “She's not entirely stable, but she's not stupid either. They've all been roped in by something. If Reese's hope overrides what they have, we shouldn't worry. I wish there were more Russell, but that's all I've got.”
He was ashamed to have ever questioned her judgment. When it came down to it, there was never a doubt she'd make dangerous decisions if given the chance. Unfortunately, she still wasn't wrong. Reese's questionable loyalty forced an unknown they could never fully plan for, but it was too late to change things. They'd begun to make their bed, now they had to finish to lie in it.
“Just keep working on Reese. We'll need her. Either Thorne will fall in line or we'll leave him.”
“And West?”
The man was a serious threat they all felt certain would betray them. They could only hope to escape with the data before he returned. If a confrontation arose, they would have to rely on Reese. Her knowledge and expertise would be invaluable, and if she sided against them, their chances of escape were nonexistent.
“Just keep focused on Reese,” he reiterated. “She's the key.”
Maggie nodded with droopy eyes, “I'll do what I can.”
He led her insi
de, laid beside her until she drifted into sleep. When he was certain she was out, he rose to watch the time. He gave Thorne and Reese three full hours, then woke them. The group settled back to work scanning the final Chinese volumes while Thorne wrote the Cuneiform program.
Russell finished a book, leaned beside Thorne to examine his work as he pointed to a screen, explained through intermittent yawns, “We use dictionaries to cross-reference the characters with established definitions. From there the program spits out a few translations based on them. We decide which is clearest and most relevant, then toss-out the others.” He shifted his weight in his chair to bounce something off Russell, “Problem is, Cuneiform's read right to left, so the program has to be adjusted to read it properly. With ideographic data like this its important to get the order right—it's the difference between blowing your mother, and your mother exhaled.”
Russell snorted, “Okay, so you have to revise the code.”
“Yes.” He sipped coffee. “I can do it easy, but inputting the changes is useless 'til we can identify the Cuneiform.”
“Why?”
Thorne pointed to a second screen to his left, at the top of the stack, “Here's a translation program I'm running. This won't help us understand the passages in the book, but it may help with a few characters. This dialect's so old only every few characters can be deciphered.”
“So we're missing parts?” He asked, lost in the screens.
“Right. That's where we hit the road block—your mother is now just your, and some unspecific reference to a thing. Until we figure out the other symbols, a full translation's impossible. To run one requires definitions of half or more characters since each symbol relies on the next for coherency. Now, we can infer some things once enough of a passage is established, but I can't write a program to do that until we have enough of the missing symbols.”
“So you're saying—”
“We'd be getting character translations, not contextual ones.”
“And we require the latter to understand the book,” he said, following again.
“Yep. That's the shits.”
Thorne leaned back to sip his coffee. Russell straightened, caught on something Maggie'd said.
Reese stepped up beside them, “So, what? We're screwed?”
“Looks like it, babe.”
“Maybe not,” Russell said. They looked to him for an explanation. “Maggie's convinced this dialect of Cuneiform's the first language humans used.”
“Yeah, that's the problem,” Thorne replied. “The basic idea of language is that a single word or character represents an idea. A sentence is a string of ideas to form a coherent thought. Same with programming. I write a sequence of ideas into a command or a full thought. Result; computer does what I tell it. In context, each idea's placed in a coherent space that influences the thought. For example, I write a command to add five and five. To create a coherent, cohesive thought, I have to know that two fives need to be added. If I say five and five add, you aren't sure what I mean or if that's my full thought. Where each idea's placed is more important than what idea's placed.”
Reese followed, “And since Cuneiform “thoughts” change based on idea placement, not knowing the missing characters makes them impossible to decipher.”
“Right.” Thorne continued with small gestures, “Without knowing where ideas break, or how, there's no way to decipher passages with a program. The computer can't spit out the few dozen possible ways of saying “add five and five.”
Russell's thoughts homed nearer to what Maggie had said, hoping it would spark Thorne's genius, “Okay, but Maggie seemed to think that the succeeding languages—like Old Chinese—were simply dialects of the Cuneiform.”
Reese looked at him skeptically, hands on her hips, “Like southern and northern Chinese?”
“Exactly, and because they're ideographic each character's the same at a basic level. Like… if I drew an A in English, and you drew one in Arabic, it would look different but the concept remains the same; A.”
“That's a really lovely thought,” Thorne said sarcastically. “A really lovely, insightful, and amusing thought—and fucking totally unhelpful.”
Reese caught on to Russell's idea, “Unless the Chinese translations can be partially substituted for the missing characters.”
Thorne froze, his body stunned as his mind ramped into overdrive. Russell saw the shift, “Can you do it?”
“Yeah… actually, I can,” he said, surprised by his own ability. “Give me a few hours, but start scanning the book.”
“Reese?” Russell asked, lifting the Cuneiform book from the desk.
“I'm not touching that damn thing,” Reese replied, her hands up. “Who knows what kind of bullshit will go down if I rip a page.”
He shrugged, opened the book as Reese closed her eyes to catch sleep until she was needed. Russell's hands shook. The scanner hovered over the first of the character lines. Either from exhaustion or hunger, his body was rebelling.
He fought it with a powerful determination; the faster he scanned, the faster Thorne could translate, and the better their chances of escape.
As the hours wore on, the characters became a blur through watery, tired eyes. With Maggie and the others now fully awake, he felt safe enough to sleep. He passed the book to Maggie without a word, stumbled to a cot.
Her face contorted with confusion. She shook it off, and sat down to scan the last page of the book with a glance to Russell. A moment later she'd finished.
Reese headed outside. Maggie followed into the Lhasa afternoon. Distant warehouse workers roused a cacophony that pervaded through the cold air, entwined with the whistling wind.
Maggie spoke as they stepped through the door, “We're done. I need to know for sure that you're willing to help.”
Reese's eye twitched. Her vision darted from Maggie to the warehouses, “It's up to that weasel Thorne.”
Maggie's brow furrowed at her evasion, caught a subtlety beneath it, “You doubt him?”
She flicked ash, exhaled a plume of smoke toward a distant warehouse, “Thorne's full of shit.” Maggie's brow intensified. Reese flicked hard at the butt-end of her cigarette, stretched her neck forward. “Look, he knows tech, I'll give him that, but he wants to be a rebel. He thinks being a smart-ass will get him out of anything.”
Maggie scanned the warehouses ahead, continued as cover, “He's a pain in the ass. Big deal.”
“Yeah.” Reese pulled at her shirt in the corner of Maggie's vision. “You saw what West can do.”
“So, he won't finish the translation?” Maggie asked, watching a group of people in black jumpsuits moving about a line of warehouses.
Reese gestured further right with her head, “No, he will, he'll just wait until West gets back.”
Maggie followed Reese's movements, caught sight of a second group of men in jumpsuits further down the line. They stood near a forklift, their blue suits clearly discernible from the others' black. In a blink, Maggie understood; West's surveillance had arrived.
Maggie gave a slight nod to acknowledge the difference. A lingering doubt forced from her mind, “I have to know this isn't some kind of game, Reese.”
She tensed an eye, her tone flat, “If it was, you'd be dead by now.”
Maggie examined her carefully. Reese's eye twitched once more. Her focus darted sideways.
Maggie inquired further, “Something wrong, Reese?”
She extinguished her cigarette, lit another to look ahead. It was clear she wasn't sure the extent of the surveillance. “Pull the knot out of your panties, I'm fine. My issues aren't yours, and we can't fix them with a couple conversations.”
“No. We can't,” Maggie replied, staring out at the landscape.
The ramshackle, sheet-metal buildings ahead were oddly abandoned despite the few men outside. Given the noisy equipment banging and beeping in the district beyond, it was a wonder she'd missed the obvious patrols.
It was foolish to believe their pro
blems hadn't been growing, but Maggie'd been banking on West being too drugged to watch them. Thus, she nearly made a fatal mistake; it was Omega's government contacts they should've been worried about. She suddenly doubted West would ever return. He had likely given orders to storm the warehouse as soon as it was confirmed Thorne had finished.
Reese stomped out her last cigarette, Maggie made a split-second decision. She turned back for the door. With a subtle nod she motioned Reese inside, “When do you think he'll be done?”
Reese stepped in, “It'll take at least the rest of the night.”
Maggie followed her in, scanned the inner-warehouse as they made there way through it. She saw no cameras or bugs, but the innards were massive. Stacks of boxes covered most vantage points. They couldn't risking speaking openly. She returned to the room, grabbed a notebook from beside Thorne, then pulled a twirling pen from his hand. He shrugged, returned to work. She motioned Reese to the bathroom, put her finger to her lips, and began to scrawl on the paper.
Audio?
Not sure.
Need a way out.
Reese replied with a sloppy script: Front door's all. Need to convince Thorne.
“How?” Maggie mouthed.
Reese pointed to herself then scrawled back, When?
Maggie thought; their best chance was moving as fast as possible, putting as much distance between them and West before he discovered their treachery.
“Now,” Maggie mouthed.
Reese nodded, left the bathroom. Maggie looked herself over in the mirror for a moment, exhausted and lost at what to do. She stared into her baggy, purple eyes with a sad sigh, reset her pony-tail. Reese stepped beside Thorne, tapped him on the shoulder.
“What?” He asked aloud.
West's watching us. You want out? Come with or die here when he finds out we're gone.
He eyed her scrawl, shot her a wild look, then swallowed hard. Reese re-appeared in the mirror behind Maggie, handed over the page with a fresh paragraph on it.
