Chapter 3
"This code is quite amazing." Hank McCoy watched the translation process over Gambit's shoulder.
"Ought ta be. T'ieves been working on it f' three hundred years."
"Really? Given the highly mathematical nature, I would have thought it was newer than that."
Gambit gave him an odd look. "Mat'ematical? It's jus' words."
Hank chuckled. "Yes, words. But manipulated through matrix inversions in two languages. Well, except for these arbitrary conversions. You just have these memorized?"
"Oui." Gambit finished the translation square he was working on and filled in another portion of the message.
Bishop watched him silently. He didn't understand the math Hank was talking about either, but he knew something about codes. And this one was pretty complicated, at least for deciphering by hand. Not that he really cared about the code itself. He was just trying to distract himself while he waited to find out what message the Witness had planted in his head. It could all be over in a couple of minutes, if the message was the warning he hoped it would be. Could he have been wrong all along, and Gambit had survived the attack on the X-men for some other reason? Or would this perhaps be a part of the trap?
A sound from Gambit brought his attention back to the present. It might have been a laugh but Gambit's expression was dark. He was staring at the results of another round of translation.
"Problems?" Hank asked.
"No. It's jus' -- No." The piece of paper slid from between his fingers.
Hank picked up the sheet. "Is this finished?"
This time Gambit did laugh, but it was a broken sound. "Oui, it's done. I even signed it."
Hank looked at the page to see what had upset Gambit so greatly. His eyebrows arched as he read, but he did not comment.
"Hank?" Professor Xavier watched them from the far side of the table. The other X-men were gathering from the farther corners of the study, sensing that the job was done. "Will you read the message, please?"
"Ahem. Of course, Professor." Hank glanced up at the assembled X-men. "It's pretty short. Here goes." He looked back down at the paper in his hands. "'This is the beginning. Build the code. Gambit.'"
"That's it?" The professor's gaze shifted between Hank and Gambit.
"I'm afraid so," Hank answered. Gambit said nothing.
"But who killed the X-men?!" Bishop slammed his fists down on the table with the sound of a thunderclap.
Gambit looked up slowly. "You de one wit all de secrets in y' head, Bishop. You tell me."
Bishop paused, taken aback. The Professor gave him an appraising stare. "I think that might be a very good idea."
#
After absorbing much of Remy's knowledge of his guild's code, it did not take Professor Xavier long to begin identifying coded phrases that were recorded in Bishop's memory. They were all odd statements that the Witness had uttered over the years, things that Bishop had simply attributed to the whims of a madman. The "hunters in the parade" catch phrase was indeed the beginning. It was the first coded phrase, chronologically, in Bishop's life.
Remy was not involved in the long sessions of memory searching. Bishop had flatly refused when the professor suggested that he would be the best person to help with the search. Unhappily, Bishop had let the professor sift through his mind, but only him. Even Jean did not participate. Remy couldn't blame him. The though of someone going through his mind like that gave him shivers. Instead, he and Hank had the onerous task of translating everything the professor handed them. To their dismay, everything after that first message was gibberish.
"Any progress?" Xavier asked one evening after nearly two weeks had passed.
"Sure, Professor." Remy leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "Now we got two pages o' garbage. Couple days ago we only got de one."
"Gambit, please." The Professor rubbed at his temples. He looked tired. Remy felt a stab of regret. He was probably just as frustrated as the rest of them.
Hank took off his glasses and began to clean them with the corner of his jacket. "The original message said to 'build the code'." He remarked without looking up. "I think there must be something we missed. 'Building' would imply a creative act of some sort, which we have not done. All we have done is used an existing code."
He put his glasses back on. "I think we've been doing the wrong translation."
"Translation's right," Remy protested.
"That's not what I meant."
"But I think Gambit has a valid point," the professor interjected before an argument could start. "I am only working on an instinct here, but I do believe we're supposed to be using the thieves' code."
"Den why don' it make any sense?" Remy stared at the papers on the table in front of him. Not that he needed to-- the lines were etched into his memory. Lately, they'd become a regular component of his nightmares.
"Perhaps we need to do a second translation?" Hank, too, looked at the familiar lines. "But I've already put what we have through the best cipher program I know of, and it didn't come up with squat."
"May I?"
Remy shrugged and slid the papers over to the Professor. He studied them for a while. The first two lines read:
raans edun satshi
coordnun 12 (ramal 3 ? % (ii nod (6)
Eventually, he sighed and sat back. "Well, I don't have any inspirations."
Hank grinned. "It's kind of catchy if you put it to music." He began to sing "raans edun satshi" to the tune of "Three Blind Mice".
Remy chuckled despite himself, but the professor only stared at Hank. Then he grabbed up the pages of text and started scanning them at a furious pace.
"Professor?"
Charles Xavier looked up and smiled. "This is in Shi'ar. Or some of it is, at least. I didn't recognize the words because they're spelled out phonetically with English characters instead of Shi'ar."
"Fascinating." Hank went to stand behind the professor so that he, too, could see the pages.
"So what's it mean?" Remy asked them from across the table.
"Well, 'raans edun satshi' means 'begin construct'."
Hank slapped his furry forehead with an equally furry palm. "Of course! It's a computer code." He pointed a finger at Remy. "You, my Cajun friend, are frighteningly devious."
"Huh?" Remy was lost.
"Look, when any of us uses the Shi'ar computers, we use the English interface because no one knows Shi'ar well enough to program in it. But what's stored in Bishop's brain is a Shi'ar code-- in Shi'ar-- only it's spelled out with English characters instead. So all we have to do is rewrite this and whatever else there is with Shi'ar letters and feed it to the computer. Then voila!" Henry was grinning toothily.
"So we got de answer?"
"Dear boy, it's all but in the bag."
