How were they ever going to be able to learn the language?

The spaceport diagram came up several more times; they ignored it.

Jill groaned, rubbing her eyes. “What we really need is something like Hammurabi’s code—a key that would help us decipher their math symbols. Do you think there’s any chance they might have developed something like that for their space program?”

Nate started to answer when paper emerged from an unnoticed slot in the computer’s side. It slid to the table’s surface and another followed. Nate shot Jill a confused look and picked up the page. She studied it over his shoulder.

“Holy shit,” Nate breathed. “It’s a code breaker!”

“Let me see.” Jill was sure he was having her on. She tried to take the page from him but he refused to give it up. They ended up leaning over it together, their heads jockeying for space.

On one side of the page, in very small print, was a simple series of lines. Next to them was a character of the alien script. The lines went from one line to two lines to three, increasing in neat rows.

“Those are their number symbols!” Nate said, putting his finger on the alien script next to the lines. “That’s the symbol for ‘one,’ then ‘two,’ three, four, five… Christ!”

Jill turned the page slightly toward herself. She didn’t want to allow herself to hope, forced herself to look at the lines again and again. The computer, meanwhile, continued to print pages. She and Nate pored over them. By the fourth page the ideograms were describing the symbols for addition and subtraction, and from there it grew increasingly complex. It would take days, if not months, to figure out some of the ideograms. But she had no doubt that they could decipher them, eventually. The ideograms were very well designed.

“Jill,” Nate said, his voice strained, “you asked for it and it printed it.”

“You must have pushed something.”

“Yeah,” Nate snorted, “I knew how to do it all along. I was just holding back.” He looked around the room, paranoid, as if expecting an alien Allen Funt to reveal himself.

“Maybe it was an idiot detector,” Jill suggested, her heart beating fast. “Like… I don’t know, a help screen that comes up when you clearly don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so.” Nate snuck a look under the tables. “Because the thing is, even if the computer understands speech, which is no biggie, how would it be able to understand our language?”

“I don’t know.” Jill felt uneasy herself and then got annoyed for feeling that way. “Look, what are we complaining for? This is the best thing that could have happened. We should be drinking champagne!”

Nate gave her a funny look and got up. He scratched his head. “Well—it is incredible luck, even if it’s damned weird.”

“Absolutely.”

He gave her a rough congratulatory hug and moved away before she could return it. “Um—I’ll be back. I need to take a quick break.”

“ ‘Kay.” Jill smiled at him, already focused on the next ideogram.

She lost track of time after that. She had never been particularly emotional, and her surprise over their discovery was quickly replaced by exaltation, and that was quickly replaced by an unobtrusive satisfaction and a determination to get down to work. She identified the symbols for multiplication and division and the notation for exponentials. Her butt was killing her, straddling these ridiculous banana-split chairs. It was going quite numb. She didn’t care. With some impatience she skipped past more ideograms looking for complex equations.

It might be here, she thought. It just might. But when she finally did locate what she thought were longer equations, she realized it would take weeks to painfully translate each one, symbol by symbol by symbol. She put the papers aside and got up, stretching her tired back. Nate had not returned, which was strange in itself. She walked back and forth to get the pins and needles out, glanced at the computer.

She dismissed the idea when it first occurred to her, but a moment later it was back. And as silly as it was, it was worth a shot. So she turned to the computer, a bit shamefaced, and began to talk to it.

Nate came in a few minutes later. He snuck up on her and leapt out wearing huge black goggles that covered most of his face. “Booga-booga!”

Jill screamed bloody murder. She lectured him halfheartedly about the dangers of heart attacks or serious injury here, where there were no hospitals, but she could not deflate his good mood or her own.

“I found that blinking room on the spaceport diagram,” Nate said, pulling off the goggles. “It’s a supply room. Supercool. There are all kinds of alien spacesuits, helmets, these sunglasses, I think like pagers or signaling devices—a ton of stuff. I have no idea what most of it is. I got a handful of these…” He fished in his pocket, brought out little metal capsules. He shook them. “Thought you might have an idea—”

“Nate?” Jill interrupted.

“Huh?”

She handed him a piece of paper.

It took him a minute. He referred back to the code, where Jill marked down what she’d deciphered of the symbols. He grew serious. “God, Jill, this is your equation.”

“I know.”

“How did you get this?”

“From the computer.” Jill said evasively. “But look at this…” She pointed at the page. “This is an equation for the one-minus-one wave—at least it’s supposed to be. But the numbers are wrong.”

Nate studied it, eyes narrowed. After a moment he stepped back so abruptly that he banged into the row of tables behind them. The blood drained from his face.

“Nate?” For a moment Jill thought he’d been poisoned or invaded by some alien parasite, that something had happened to him when he’d been out of the room, so extreme was his physical response. But he was staring in horror at the page.

“The equation for the one-minus-one…”

“What?”

“Don’t you see?” He looked up, his eyes feverish. “This wave function assumes a wave with seventy percent crest and thirty percent trough. Kobinski was right, Jill! We’re not just on another planet. We’re not even in our own universe anymore.”

16.4. Thirty-Seventy Aharon Handalman

Kobinski did not show his face again until the first day of Festival. Aharon was seated in a chair when he came in. A nurse was finishing dressing him, putting hard sandals on his still-heavy feet. The Fiorian robe she had given him was smelly and uncomfortable, not to mention a little immodest, since he wore nothing underneath.

Aharon kept his mouth shut at the sight of the golden mask. He had wished so hard for the man’s return, now he had nothing to say. He was angry at Kobinski, his host, for leaving him alone and vulnerable for so long. He was in awe of Kobinski, the kabbalist, whose work in the past few days had taken the blasted and empty plain of Aharon’s soul and had whispered to it, had started something new growing there. That man, the kabbalist, the mystic, the writer of the manuscript, seemed to have no part of this being before him, and Aharon decided it was better, for his own sanity if for no other reason, to divorce the two here and now. He needed the manuscript like a drowning man needed a life raft. He could not risk being disappointed in its author.

The king of Gehenna waited until the nurse had finished, then sent her and Tevach from the room. He was dressed in a purple robe decorated with gold thread. His belt was hammered gold; his mask sparkled cruelly. But when he took it off, Aharon could see that underneath all that savage finery the human being sweat.

“I should explain what you will see today.”

“That would be helpful.” Aharon clenched his hands in his lap.

“This is Fiore’s largest sacred holiday. There will be idols, speeches, religious trappings. The Fiori religion emphasizes…” Kobinski hesitated. “…They’re extremely stringent against those who question the faith. Their belief system is absolutely rigid. After all, that’s why they’re here.”