Lindsay Buroker - Torrent

Something like that. Will you let me know what the computer says? We’ve got a mystery up here.

No shit.

“You know, linguists aren’t nearly as articulate as you’d think,” I said.

“I like your lakes.” Simon was in his own world.

“How so?” I asked.

“Undeveloped land over the aquifer. It’s nearby too. Your Verde Watershed includes a lot of national parks too-couldn’t you see some awesome caves hiding under those red rocks in Sedona? — but I’m going to put my program to work on the local stuff first. Eleriss and Jakatra moved up the street to the Best Western, not to Sedona or Flagstaff or anywhere else in Northern Arizona.”

I nodded. “They specifically said it was in this area.”

My phone beeped again. It’s not Klingon. I checked.

I showed Simon the screen, figuring it would amuse him.

All he said was, “ I could have told you that.”

I returned the text: As odd as the two speakers are, I don’t think they’re Trekkies. They thought they were alone and didn’t know we were recording them, so I’m sure they were using their native language. As soon as I sent the message, I wondered if I should admit to our spying tendencies to a university professor. I was on the verge of explaining that they’d been trespassing in our van when Wilkons responded.

Understood. The computer program will run it against all of the known languages on Earth, dead and living. I just thought I’d check popular fictional ones.

A familiar Jag rolled up and stopped next to the curb. The utter availability of parking in downtown Prescott was notable. I wondered how much these “bear” maulings would hurt the tourist industry.

I stood, glad to have an excuse to remove my rump from the cold cement. If Simon had noticed his would-be girlfriend drive up, or me putting my laptop aside to stand, he didn’t show it. He was chewing on his lip and staring intently at something.

“Hey, Temi.” I waved and my stomach gurgled an even more enthusiastic greeting when it noted the canvas grocery bag in her hand.

She strode up the walkway, her limp barely noticeable, her face grim, but she nodded at my greeting. “There are army vehicles all over town.”

“National Guard, I think. We saw them come down this street.”

“The police have barricades up by that hotel and coffee shop we visited,” Temi said.

“Not surprising. Did you hear about the carnage there last night?”

She nodded. “I didn’t hear about any men in black leather being among the dead. When you were researching, did you…?”

“They’ve moved their motorcycles to the Best Western, so I’m sure they’re fine.”

“Oh, that’s only a couple of blocks away from our motel, isn’t it?” She gazed up the street.

“Don’t remind me,” I said. “Anything promising in that bag?”

“Not much.” Temi handed it to me. “There were only two people working at New Frontiers. These are yesterday’s leftovers.”

I pulled out several wedges of salmon, an entirely-too-healthy-sounding kale salad, and some promising cranberry coconut bars. “Looks a lot better than our usual breakfast. Yo, Simon, you want some salmon?”

He blinked and looked up. “Oh, Artemis. Hi. Uhm.” He waved shyly.

I dropped containers of salmon and coconut bars in his lap, knowing he wouldn’t touch the greens unless his mother was here-or he thought it would impress Temi. He’d already returned his focus to the screen, though, and didn’t notice.

Temi considered the brick front of the library building. “When you spoke of coming here to do research, I imagined you inside, at tables with books around you.”

“Yes, me too,” I said. “We’re still hoping someone might show up to unlock the door.”

Temi sat at the bottom of the steps and opened the containers holding her food. I contemplating returning to my research-Simon seemed to have the cave hunt in hand, but I wanted to look for information on the coin Eleriss had given us. I wished I knew of an archaeological equivalent of that DNA sequencer Autumn had mentioned. It’d be great if we could scan a picture of the coin and run it through some software that would spit out an identification of the civilization and era it had come from. As it was, I’d have to post pictures to some archaeology forums and see if anyone had any ideas. That could wait though; I didn’t have a scanner, so it’d take a trip to one of the shipping stores that had computers.

Breakfast in hand, I sat at the bottom of the steps with Temi, leaving Simon, his fingers flying again, in his spot against the doors. Another convoy of National Guard vehicles passed us by, and I wondered if we’d soon see troops marching through the streets with rifles.

“Your friend said she’d call when she’s ready to be picked up,” Temi said after we’d finished eating. “It sounded like she’ll be able to access a lab right away.”

“That’s good. I’ve got someone working on the language program, so-” My phone beeped. “That might be him now.”

The text message was indeed from Professor Wilkons. No matches. It’s weirder than Basque.

“Hm.” I typed in, What about single-word matches? If there aren’t any full language matches, might there at least be some shared words?

We’ll see. I have the computer running a deeper analysis.

Thank you.

I put the phone down and chomped on my salmon. I’d never been a fish lover, but I felt a vague sense of duty to my body to eat it and the salad before diving into the dessert bar.

“Basque?” Temi asked. She’d been peering over my shoulder as I texted. “That’s a Spanish language, right?”

“Not exactly. The Basque region is located mostly in Spain-it’s up around the border shared with France, but it’s a language isolate that doesn’t have anything in common with the Indo-European romance languages surrounding it. It’s not like any other languages, really. There are a lot of interesting hypotheses by linguists, trying to link it to more distant languages-all contested though. One of my school friends did a paper on the idea that the Basques are descended from the Neanderthals, because it’s widely known that they lived in Western Europe. She had some modern information on blood types and DNA analysis, speaking of all that stuff, to back it up. It was an interesting paper.”

Temi turned toward the street, her face thoughtful. “You guys have a wide breadth of knowledge. Is there anything that would be useful for me to study? To assist with research?”

“Actually, we have extremely specialized knowledge that’s not at all useful outside of our business.” I smirked. “That’s what a degree in a specific field gets you. If you want to study something, that’s fine, but do it because you’re interested in it, not because of us. All this monster stuff is outside of the realm of our usual work. Most people who do antiquing as a source of income don’t have a formal education in a related field. They pick it up as they go and learn what people will pay for and what they won’t. I’m still learning myself when it comes to that.”

“I wonder…”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’m sure it’s a dumb idea.”

I thought of the idea she’d proposed that Autumn had shot down. I didn’t want her to think we wouldn’t value any contributions she might have. “You know, a lot of breakthroughs and innovations come from individuals who don’t have a background in the field. Sometimes the experts in an industry have this sort of myopic thinking where they’re so influenced by their peers and mentors, who were trained by their peers and mentors, that they can’t see the problems from a fresh angle. Whereas an outsider can bring that fresh perspective, especially in this day and age when there’s so much information available to anyone who wants to research it.”