I sat in Alpha’s guest chair while the woman carefully scrutinized the photos of the Egyptian tomb. While the detailed recordings from the room monitors would later prove it based on her eye movements, I had no doubt that she was “reading” the curious epigraphic symbols painted on the tomb wall.
The woman’s heart was in her throat. No matter who Alpha was, or where she came from, she wasn’t so foreign or dissociative as to be inhuman. Whatever she was reading was tearing her apart.
“What language is it?” I asked softly.
She took a moment to compose herself, then lifted her startling blue eyes to mine. “In your tongue? The translation ‘world talk’ would be, yes?”
“World talk?”
“Terrarum colloquium.” Her accent was curious.
“Like a lingua franca?”
“Tongue franca? This I do not know.” She seemed completely baffled.
“Tell me about the tomb.”
Her expression fell. “Fluvium. Lost. Inlaqueit. Um, marooned.”
“You’ve learned English well.”
“Hard language. Not so hard as Ch’olan or Yukatek.”
“I don’t know those languages.”
The smile she gave me reeked of bitterness and a bit of pity. “You know very little, Medicus. Your world, I think, all pereo est. Lost.”
“You’ve been making adjustments to your machine.” I pointed at the doohickey. “What do you call it?”
“Amusement.”
“What does it do?”
She rattled off an incomprehensible explanation in whatever her own language was, ending with a mocking smile on her perfect lips. “Now you know.”
“Can you tell me in English?”
A faint twinkle came to her eyes, as though my question fostered the sort of indulgence she’d give a child. “Tell? No. Inartes evigilo.”
She reached for her tablet, flipped to a new page, and in the exact middle, drew a dot. “It is,” she said, pointing to the dot as if willing me to understand. Then, bracing the tablet she took a second Sharpie, and holding the pens at an angle from each other, drew horizontal lines out from the dot. “Same but different in time?”
She cocked her head to see if I got it. “Physicus? Yes?” Then added, “You call quantum mechanic.” She made a face. “Um, entangled. Now, watch.”
With curious dexterity she made the pen tips wiggle up and down to leave mimicking waves on the paper. “Different but same, yes? What term in English you have?” A slight frown. “Say . . . how?” And she indicated the paper.
I frowned at the drawing, trying to make sense of it. “Different but same?”
For the first time, her expression eased, anticipation in her expression. Her fingers, where they grasped the pen, fluttered as if to draw me along.
“Sorry, but I don’t get it.” At the smug retreat of her gaze, I said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get there. Meanwhile, tell me about the tomb. What made you so excited?”
She pulled out the photo of the wall diagram. “Need, how you say, amplificare. Make more for doohickey.” She used my word for the gadget on her desk.
“And what will it do?”
“All will come perspicuous. Um . . .” She frowned, lifting her right hand and spreading the fingers wide. Then she interlaced the fingers of her left between them.
“Sorry. I still don’t understand.”
As I watched, the aloof and superior persona fell into place. “Make more energy for doohickey. Then you understand everything.”
“And the tomb?”
“First energy for doohickey, then you discover all. Who I am. Where I from.”
God, what I’d give for those answers.