Chapter 10

"What do you think?" Maggie murmured, collecting a minute sample of dust from the surface of the amorphous stone tablet. "Ogham? Some Incan variation on a quipu?"

"It's neither of those," Solomon sighed, leaning over the tablet and staring at it as if his eyes could bore right through it and find the hidden truth within. "There are no knot markings. You can't have a quipu without knots. And some of these symbols have too many lines to be Ogham. Most of them in fact."

"It's futhark," Cal called from the computer. He had taken his turn at the viewing while Juliet, with her smaller fingers, scanned the inside of the box.

"No need to swear, I'm sure you'll figure it out," grinned Nikko, sitting by the bookcase and passing a stress ball from hand to hand.

Cal rolled his eyes. "Second shelf, five from the right," he droned, pointing and watching as Nikko retreived a weighty tome declaring itself to be a study of pre-Christian European writing systems.

"Futhark, futhark..." Nikko thumbed through the index, then through the pages. "Runic alphabets. Various forms. No surviving examples from before third century AD. Presence of the 'a' 'e' rune, and study of proto-Germanic languages, suggests it originated in the first century before Christ." Nikko looked up. "That narrows it down a bit, but there's still a bunch of different runes it could be, and it doesn't help us at all with the tally marks!"

"There a picture in there?" Cal rubbed a hand across his forehead. "Should be just over the page from the start of the chapter. Bring it over."

Nikko turned the page, found the picture and shrugged. Nevertheless he got to his feet and deposited the book carefully onto the table. The computer pinged and Cal and Juliet joined the other three. Cal was holding a print of one inner wall of the box.

"Okay, so 'futhark' basically is to runes what 'alphabet' is to Greek letters," Cal began, pointing at the top line of runes on the page. "Only instead of reading the first two symbols for the name - alpha, beta - you read the first six." He pointed out each symbol in turn. "They read 'f', 'u', 'th', 'a', 'r', 'k'."

"The sound we would write as 't' 'h' today was one letter to them, the thorn," Juliet provided from the other side of the table.

"Now a lot of the runes don't change much," Cal continued, "but this one here," he pointed to a pair of lines like opposing arrowheads clearly visible on the printed image, "it's only found in the oldest kind."

"And when all the runes were written together," said Juliet, half to herself, "they were written in three lines of eight called aettir. Every letter in the same place..."

"Allowing them to also write in a coded form..." Cal continued.

"Just like the one on the tablet!" Juliet finished. "They're both written in futhark!"

"Why bother, if you're going to go scribbling the cipher on the walls of the box anyway?" Nikko shrugged.

"Who knows: in case they were separated perhaps?" Maggie supplied.

"Isn't that like asking why write a note in a standard substitution cipher when everyone that might read it speaks English?" Solomon looked over at his son. "You have to know that it actually is a code before you can try to decode it. The fact that we know the cipher used is simply a matter of a couple of thousand years worth of research."

"But we can translate it?" Nikko asked, just, his raised hands seemed to say, for clarification.

"We'll have to translate it more than once to get it back to plain English," said Cal, "but yes: we can translate it. Juliet can start working on converting the runes to our alphabet while I convert the 'tally marks' to runes and then to letters. Once we've got them readable, though, we'll still have to translate them to English and I don't think this is going to be a language I'm fluent in!"

"Just work out what dialect we've got and I'll find us a friendly expert," said the professor, placing a hand on Cal's shoulder. "Keep me posted."

Nikko watched his father stride away, heading back to his lab and his own projects no doubt. Maggie was with him, the sampling equipment and the precious samples it had collected in the case she carried.

"These runes," he said, pointing at the picture in Cal's hand. "Where are they from?"

"Northern Europe," said Juliet. "They probably started around the Germany area and radiated outward as people spread out."

"They're most commonly associated with the Norse peoples," said Cal, "but that covers all the Scandinavian countries. Each one developed their own 'dialect' of runes. It's the same with the Anglo-Saxons. The original, elder futhark runes only contained twenty four symbols. By the time the Anglo-Saxons were through with it, it contained thirty three!"

"And these are the original runes?" Nikko asked.

"They certainly seem to be," Cal shrugged. "We'll only be sure once we get them fully translated."

"And that'll happen much faster without distractions!" Juliet raised an eyebrow at Nikko in a hint that it was time to leave.

"So, I guess Tony won't be dropping by any time soon, then?" Nikko shot back, his face betraying his attempt not to smirk. He was rewarded with a roll of the eyes as his ex-tutor turned her back on him without a word."

"Anybody ever tell you how much you resemble a murder weapon, genius?" Cal frowned.

"Like a top of the range hunting rifle, because I'm right on target!" Nikko smirked, there was no point trying to hide it now.

"I was thinking more a blunt instrument!" Cal waved a hand at the doorway. "Go be useful."

"I'm being useful here!" Nikko complained, although his tone was light and he was already halfway to the door before the reference book left Cal's hand.

XXXX

"Stop worrying!" Tony hissed into his cellphone. "They might be able to change a few things, but they can't overhaul their entire security system in two days! By that time we'll be ready and it'll be too late!"

There was a pause while the person on the other end of the phone spoke. Tony's fist was balled up so tightly that his knuckles were white and his well-manicured fingernails cutting into his palm.

"I know that. Do you really think I'd leave anything like that to chance. You know my reputation!"

Another pause. This one longer. Tony opened his mouth to cut in a few times, but never quite made it past the first syllable. Finally there was silence. Tony pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it in disgust. He threw it down into an armchair and turned to punch the wall. A hand caught his arm just before the punch connected.

"I thought you were on top of that," said a smooth feminine voice. "You should get a punchbag or stress ball or something."

"I had one," Tony muttered, rubbing his now open fist. "It got mislaid somewhere today."

"Careless," the voice continued. "You're losing your touch, or at least your..."

"I'm perfectly capable of carrying out the job I have been hired to do and you know it."

"Maybe," the voice sniffed. "But nobody is irreplaceable, Anthony."