James Rollins - Deep Fathom

Karen coughed in surprise and backed up a step, retreating.

The man called out to them in Japanese.

Half turning into the flashlight’s glare, Karen answered in the same language.

As the light was turned aside, Jack saw it was one of the security men from the building. “What did he want?” he asked as the guard swung away.

Karen turned to him. “Miyuki warned him to watch out for us. She has news.” Karen led the way up the steps. Her voice grew excited, drowning away the passion from a moment ago. “Let’s go!”

Jack followed, both disappointed and relieved. It was ridiculous to start anything with this woman, especially since he was leaving in two days. Not that he had any rule against one-night stands. Though his heart was guarded, he had physical needs like any other man, and seldom had problems finding a willing partner during port calls. But in this case he knew any brief dalliance with Karen would hardly satisfy him. In fact, it would make matters worse.

He climbed the steps and passed through the doorway. Maybe for all concerned, he thought, it was best to leave their passions at the bottom of the stairs.

Across the lobby, Karen waved to him from beside the elevator bay. He stretched his stride to reach her just as the doors opened. With the guard escorting them, neither one spoke. Each stood in a cocoon of privacy.

When the doors whooshed open, they hurried down the hall. As they neared the door to the lab, it cracked open and Miyuki gestured them to hurry, saying, “It worked! Come see! I have all the glyphs catalogued.”

“All of them?” Karen said.

Jack understood her surprise. It had taken them hours to reach number forty in a list of discrepancies that numbered over three hundred. How had the computer scientist accomplished so much in so little time?

Miyuki didn’t respond. Instead, when they had accompanied her into the lab and to her computer station, she pointed to the screen. Symbols were flashing past. “Gabriel is rechecking his data,” Miyuki said. “It will take another hour to double-check everything for accuracy, then he’ll try decoding the various inscriptions.”

Karen just stood there shaking her head. “How? How did you do it?”

“As I mentioned before, Gabriel is an artificial intelligence program. He can learn from experience. While you were at dinner I had him study the first forty pairs of glyphs and incorporate why the three of us rejected or accepted various symbols as unique or not, then apply those parameters to the remaining couple hundred.” Grinning, Miyuki said, “He was able to do it! He learned from our examples!”

“But he’s a computer,” Karen said. Jack noticed how she whispered these words as if somehow afraid of hurting Gabriel’s feelings. “How can we trust that his decisions were correct?”

Instead of her words dampening Miyuki’s glee, she grew more excited. “Because after completing this exercise, he’s been able to expand his rudimentary understanding of these people’s lunar calendar and dating system.”

“What do you mean?” Karen asked, still skeptical. “What has he learned?”

“Buried in the text are hidden references to a specific site in the Pacific.”

“What site? I don’t understand.”

“I’ll let Gabriel explain, because frankly even I have trouble understanding it.” Miyuki glanced to the side, speaking to their invisible partner. “Gabriel, please explain your calculations.”

“Yes, Professor Nakano. From the celestial map and my understanding of their lunar calendar, I discovered a reference to a specific location, triangulated by the position of the moon, the sun, and the north star in the text.”

Jack was stunned by this revelation. “And you’re able to do this even though you can’t translate the language yet?”

“It’s all astronomy and mathematics,” Miyuki explained. “Numbers and the movement of the stars are really a cosmic language. Such information is the easiest to translate since it is a relative constant across cultures. In fact, when archaeologists first attempted to decipher the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, the first thing they understood were the Egyptians’ mathematics and celestial designations.” Miyuki pointed to the scrolling glyphs. “The same is true here.”

“So what did you find?” Karen asked, impatient.

“In the pyramid’s inscription,” Miyuki said, “there are two references. Each mentions the same site in the Pacific. Gabriel, bring up the map on the second monitor, and highlight the location for us.”

A map of the Pacific appeared on the small screen. Jack had a flash of déjà vu. It reminded him of a similar discussion aboard his own ship, when George had related the mysteries of the Dragon’s Triangle. Jack assumed the mysterious site from the inscription was going to be the location of the crystal pillar — but instead a small red blinking dot bloomed farther south on the map, just north of the equator.

“Gabriel, zoom in on the location. Three hundred times normal.”

The map swelled, sweeping deep into the South Pacific. Islands, once so tiny they could not be seen, grew in size until names could be read: Satawal, Chuuk, Pulusuk, Mortlock. They were all islands of Micronesia. The red dot was positioned at the southeastern tip of one of them.

It was Pohnpei, the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Karen sat up straighter. “Gabriel, can you pinpoint the location in any finer detail?”

Though Jack had known Karen less than a day, he sensed that she was on to something.

The other islands of Micronesia faded off the screen as the outline of Pohnpei filled the monitor. Individual villages and towns grew clearer. The blinking red marker hovered near the island’s southeast coastline.

Jack leaned toward the screen. He could just make out a name written beside the red marker. “What does that say?”

Karen remained stiff in her seat. She was hardly looking at the screen. “It’s Nan Madol.”

Jack glanced over at her. “A village?”

“Ruins,” she answered. “One of the most spectacular set of megalithic ruins in all the South Pacific. The site covers eleven square miles of coastline, an engineering marvel of canals and basalt buildings.” She turned toward him. “To this day no one knows for sure who built them.”

Jack sat back and nodded to the neighboring screen, where the glyphs continued to scroll. “Maybe now we do.”

“I have to know more!” Karen said, grabbing Miyuki’s sleeve.

The computer scientist frowned. “I’m sorry. That’s all I have. After Gabriel double-checks his own work, it’ll still take at least a day to begin any significant decoding. With these new additions, the total number of individual glyphs is now over five hundred, and the list of compound glyphs has grown into the range of ten thousand. This is no easy language.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Karen asked, breathless.

“Try me late tomorrow afternoon,” Miyuki said. “I might — and I repeat might —have something then.”

“A whole day,” Karen groaned. “What am I going to do for a whole day?”

Jack knew the anthropologist needed something on which to focus her energy. “How about your promise to me?”

Karen’s brows bunched up, not understanding.

“The ancient city off the coast of Chatan. You promised to tour me through there.”

She brightened, but not for the reason Jack had hoped. “You’re right. If the ruins of Nan Madol are referenced, some other clues may still be hidden out at Chatan. It’s worth investigating again.”

“And this time out, you’ll have better company than me,” Miyuki added. “A strong man to guard your back.”