James Rollins - The Judas Strain

“What is it?” Gray said, reaching his fingers out to examine what the light revealed.

By now, Seichan and Kowalski had joined them.

Vigor shifted the light, widening the beam to illustrate. “At first, I thought it was just decorative scrollwork. It covers all the walls.” He waved an arm to encompass the breadth of the chamber. “Every surface.”

“Then what the hell is it?” Kowalski muttered.

“Not hell, Mr. Kowalski,” Vigor said. “This is angelic.”

Vigor took the light and cupped it over a small fraction of the carved tapestry. “Look closer.”

Gray leaned to the wall, tracing with his fingers. Understanding dawned in the commander’s face. “It’s made up of angelic symbols, all jumbled together.”

Seichan joined Gray, following his fingers, nose to nose. “This is impossible. Didn’t you say angelic script was devised by someone in the sixteen-hundreds?”

Vigor nodded. “Johannes Trithemius.”

“How could it be here?” Gray asked.

“I don’t know,” Vigor said. “Maybe at some point the Vatican did send someone all the way to Cambodia to follow Marco’s trail like we did. Maybe they returned with etchings of this script, and Trithemius somehow got ahold of it. Devised his script from it. And if he knew Marco’s story of glowing angelic beings, it might be why he claimed the script was angelic.”

Gray turned to Vigor. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”

Vigor watched Gray step back, retreat a few more steps, his gaze fixed to the wall.

He sees it, too .

Vigor took a deep shuddering breath, trying to restrain what he suspected. “Trithemius claimed he gained knowledge of the script after weeks of fasting and deep meditative study. I think that’s exactly what happened.”

Seichan scoffed. “He just happened to dream all this up, a match to the ancient script here.”

Vigor nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Remember what I told you before, about how angelic script bears a striking resemblance to Hebrew. Trithemius even claimed his script was the purest distillation of the Hebrew alphabet.”

Seichan shrugged.

“What do you know about Jewish Kabbalah?” Vigor asked.

“Just that it’s some Jewish mystical study.”

“Exactly. Practitioners of Kabbalah search for mystical insight into the divine nature of the universe by studying the Hebrew Bible. They believe that divine wisdom lies buried in the very shapes and curves of the Hebrew alphabet. And that by meditating upon them, one can gain great insight into the universe, into who we are at the most basic level.”

Seichan shook her head. “Are you saying that this Trithemius fellow meditated and came up with this purer form of Hebrew? Stumbled upon a language — this same language—” She patted the wall. “A language that links to some great inner wisdom?”

Gray cleared his throat. “And I think inner is the key word here.” He waved Seichan to step back, to join him. “What do you see? Look at the whole pattern. Does it look familiar to you?”

Seichan stared for a single breath, then snapped, “I don’t know. What am I looking for?”

Gray sighed and stepped to the wall. He ran a finger along one of the cascades. “Look at the way it swirls down in spirals of broken helixes. Picture this section all by itself.”

Seichan squinted. “It looks almost biological.”

Gray nodded. “Follow the strands. Don’t they look like double helixes of DNA? Like a genetic map?”

Seichan remained doubtful. “Written in an angelic language?”

Gray stepped away, his eyes still on the wall. “Maybe. In fact, there was a scientific study that compared patterns in DNA code with patterns found in human languages. According to a Zipf ’s law — a statistical tool — all human languages show a specific pattern of repetitive word usage. Such as the frequency of the word the or a . Or the rarity of other words, like aardvark or elliptical . When you plot a graph comparing the popularity of words against the frequency of their usage, you get a straight line. And it’s the same whether English, Russian, or Chinese. All human languages produce the same linear pattern.”

“And DNA code?” Vigor asked, intrigued.

“It produced exactly the same pattern. Even in our junk DNA, which most scientists consider to be biological garbage. The study has been repeated and verified. For some reason, there is a language buried in our genetic code. We don’t know what it says. But—” Gray pointed at the wall. “That may be the written form of the language.”

Vigor ran a hand along the carving, breathless with awe. “It makes you wonder. Could Trithemius have tapped into that language during his meditations?” He straightened as another thought struck him. “And consider ancient Hebrew, how its characters are similar to angelic script. Could early written languages have somehow been derived from this, arising out of some inherent genetic memory? In fact, it makes you wonder if this language isn’t the Word of God, mapping out something greater in all of us.”

Vigor shifted his light, sweeping it to cover the breadth of the vast chamber. “But either way, all of this. All this angelic language. What is it telling us?”

“I think it’s a genetic blueprint,” Gray said.

“But a blueprint to what?” Seichan said.

“Probably a turtle,” Kowalski mumbled.

Vigor snorted at the man’s joke, but both Seichan and Gray reacted with surprise, glancing to the man with matching expressions of incredulity.

“What?” Vigor asked, sensing something important.

Gray stepped closer, dropping his voice. “I think he may be right.”

“I am?” Kowalski asked.

Gray expanded upon his theory of the cavern below. “The turtle’s shell represents the cave. But what about the turtle itself? According to the story, it represents an incarnation of Vishnu, an angelic being.” Gray waved to the wall. “And here is evidence of some strange biological process, some secret knowledge. Beyond merely a viral disease. I think the coding on the walls is some diary of that process. Possibly still incomplete.”

Vigor studied the wall, the blueprint.

Before they could contemplate it further, a commotion arose from above.

They shifted in a group back to the center. It looked as if the demolition team were close to finishing. Their leader had coiled all his charge wires and cinched them into an electronic detonator so they could blow it all from above.

Overhead, Vigor spotted a woman climbing down the ladder. It was difficult to discern her features through the glare of the sunlit shaft.

Still, Gray recognized her, stepping forward. “Lisa…?”

Farther above, near the lip to the shaft, Nasser appeared, accompanied by a frantic, half-naked woman. She fought forward, as if to throw herself into the pit, but she was restrained by the barrels of four rifles, kept at bay.

Vigor gaped up at her.

Dear God…

She glowed .

Her skin shone out from the shadows.

Impossible.

“Cover the eyes!” she screamed below, pointing an arm down into the pit. “Cover the eyes!”

Vigor could not comprehend what she was talking about.

Gray did. The commander swept from Vigor’s side, dragged up a tarp used by the demolition team, and tossed it over the sculpture’s eyes like a blindfold, cutting the flow of sunlight to the cavern below.