by David Walton
“I skimmed what they sent,” she said. “There are acoustical graphs of Johurá whistle language covering a range of their vocabulary. Maybe not enough to understand everything, but hopefully something. Have you sorted through any of the other South American indecipherables to see if they use the same code?”
I was embarrassed that it hadn’t occurred to me.
“Well,” she said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us tonight.”
After an hour of working with her, I thought Melody Muniz was possibly the most brilliant person I had ever met. Her field of expertise was in cognitive computing, which, from what I could gather, meant using insights from the way the human brain was organized to invent new ways of processing data with computers. It was a cross between neurology and computer science, and her explanations of the methods she was using left my mind spinning. It occurred to me that her group might retain its funding not just because of the occasional message it managed to decipher, but because of the groundbreaking research being done by some of its team members.
She put together a program to recognize the basic pattern of the whistle message and set it churning through the thousands of indecipherables to find the ones that matched.
“The problem with computers,” she said, “is that they can’t forget things. They can’t generalize. You recognize my face, not because you have an exact mapping of it in three-dimensions, but because you unconsciously forget all the parts that don’t matter and hang on to those tiny bits that do. You couldn’t articulate what it is about my face that makes it unique, but your brain knows.”
“So forgetting things is good,” I said, thinking about my father.
“It’s one of the human brain’s chief strengths,” she said. “There was a man, a research subject, years ago, who couldn’t forget anything. Literally anything. He could memorize pages and pages of random numbers, just by reading them once, and then years later—years!—recall them perfectly. He remembered every word that was ever spoken to him in his entire life, along with the date and place and situation. And it was a terrible handicap.”
“How is that a handicap?” I asked, amazed.
“He couldn’t generalize. You could show him a page with an easy pattern—numbers increasing by threes, for instance. And he couldn’t see it. He could recite every number of the page in order, but he couldn’t recognize the pattern.
“He had a terrible time with faces, because they were never exactly the same. Seen from a different angle, or with a different expression, or in shadow, they looked different to him. His brain couldn’t boil it down to those few, essential, defining characteristics that would allow him to distinguish your face from mine, regardless of the circumstance.”
“Still,” I said. “Forgetting too much can be a handicap, too.”
She sighed and nodded. “I’m sorry about your father. We lost him too early. He had a lot to contribute.”
“You knew my father?” I was surprised. Of course, they would have been at the NSA for a lot of the same years, but Fort Meade was a gigantic place. I had assumed that no one I was working with would remember him.
“Yes, I knew him,” she said wistfully, in a tone of voice that implied more.
“I never met you, though,” I said. “Did you ever visit the house?”
She looked sad. “No. I didn’t know him all that well. Just by reputation, as a colleague. A talented one.”
A thought struck me. “That’s not why you offered me a job, is it? Because of my father?”
She shrugged. “It was what I first noticed about your resume. But that wouldn’t have been enough, by itself. I need people who can think outside of the box, and you seemed to be that sort of person. Like him.”
It made sense, then. Her willingness to make me an offer, despite my lack of a degree, and then sticking out her neck to defend me when I was arrested. It was because of my father.
While her search program was running, we worked on deciphering the whistle message. With the data from SIL, we could match graphs of the frequency distribution of certain whistled “words” with their meanings. It was tedious and far from comprehensive, but it worked. Sort of. A little past eleven o’clock, we had a rough English translation.
MANY BOW SHOT [indecipherable]
THE CROOKED HEADS UPRIVER COME
“Hmm,” Melody said.
I sighed. “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
“We’re probably missing some nuances. We’re going to need linguistic help before this is over, if we can get it. In the meantime, we’ll do the best we can.”
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how this language is being used as a code at all. This is a primitive group of people. They hunt and fish and canoe on the river. They don’t have computers or cell phones, or even electricity or running water. The concepts that can even be expressed in their language are very limited. They can’t do math; they don’t even have words for numbers higher than two! So who is using this code to communicate? Not the Johurá, that’s for sure.”
“Surely there are tribespeople who leave the tribe,” she said. “Sail down the river, learn Portuguese, join a different community.”
“I guess there must be. But how many? Five? We’re talking about a people group of four hundred members here. All of the characteristics that make this difficult for us to translate—its difficulty, its rareness—would make any kind of widespread use as a code impossible. I suppose the Ligados could have two wandering Johurá, and are using them to communicate between two locations.”
Before going home, we checked the results of Melody’s program. Thousands of indecipherables, most of them recent, had been flagged as probable whistle messages. “Incredible,” Melody said. “You may have found the motherlode. We’ll have to get Shaunessy in on this tomorrow.”
“Why Shaunessy?” I asked.
“Programming skills,” she said. “I’ve got the cognitive theory, and I can muddle about, but for any serious Java work, we need somebody with the right experience. This is far too much to translate by hand, and we’re going to need a specially written program to do most of the translation for us, preferably one that can distribute the work over hundreds of servers to get it done fast. Shaunessy’s the master at that kind of thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
But I didn’t see her in the morning. Her office was empty, and when I finally asked, Andrew said she was taking a personal day. “But I saw her late last night, and she didn’t say anything about that,” I said.
Andrew just shrugged. “She called this morning. Personal day. She’ll be back in tomorrow.”
I did my best to explain to Shaunessy what Melody and I had discovered the night before, and what Melody wanted her to do. We worked on it together, me showing her how to match up the frequency distributions in the SIL material to the whistled words in the messages, and her whipping up some software to automate the translation.
“I’m amazed by you guys,” I said. “You, Andrew, everybody. Knocking out sophisticated software like it’s as easy as breathing. It’s awesome to be here.”
Shaunessy gave me a lopsided smile. “As long as you pay proper homage, we may deign to grant you the occasional boon.”
I grinned. I liked her better without the chip on her shoulder. “I live to sit in the dust at your feet,” I said. “But seriously. This team kicks ass.”
“Seriously back at you. Nice job on this one.” She shook her head. “Whistle language. That’s something else.”
Despite the supposed personal day, Melody did show up in the office just after lunch. I peeked into her office and found her rummaging through papers in her safe.
“Not now, Neil,” she said. “I’m not really here.”
“Is everything okay?”
“It’s nothing. A personal crisis. There’s just one thing I need to do, and then I’m leaving again.”
“If there’s anything I can do to help . . .”
“There’s nothing, but thank you.”
“Will you be in tomorrow?”
“Yes. I hope so. I think I will.”
I backed out of her office, troubled, but knowing it was none of my concern. She wasn’t a friend, not really, and I had no business pushing my nose into her life.
I went back to my cubicle. “Melody seems out of sorts,” I said. “Did something happen?”
Shaunessy shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably something we’re not cleared for.”
“Seemed more like a personal thing,” I said.
“In which case, none of our business. She’ll tell us if she wants us to know.”
I knew Shaunessy was right. But I had trouble letting it go. A genetic deficiency, as I said. So I logged on to the unclassified network and searched for her name on Google. It wasn’t hard to piece together her personal information: husband, deceased, of a stroke two years before. Two children: one son in the Navy and one daughter married with three kids of her own. Member of Women in Technology International. And then I saw it. A news article from that day’s Washington Post that referenced Emily Muniz, Melody’s oldest granddaughter.
The article was titled “Steroids for School. Why Smart Kids Are Turning to Drugs.” It described a brand-new drug flooding the illegal market called Neuritol, which was supposed to enhance brain function and memory. It apparently went a step beyond classic nootropic supplements like Piracetam or Aniracetam, both in terms of the clarity of the enhancement experience and the potentially harmful side effects. Emily Muniz had bought the drug from another high schooler, packaged in a repurposed albuterol inhaler, and then had been admitted to Baltimore Washington Medical Center when she lost consciousness during a math test. As of the writing of the article—early that morning—her survival was still uncertain.
I checked Melody’s office, but she was gone. Back at my desk, I stared at the screen, the words drifting out of focus. Shaunessy had been right. Now I knew what was going on, but there was nothing I could do about it. Annoyed at myself and feeling guilty for my nosiness, I threw myself back into my work. Shaunessy’s software was running well now, leaving me plenty of semi-translated messages to sift through.
VILLAGE WITH STRONG DAUGHTER HOUSES FOR MANY GUNS IN TWO DAYS GIVES [indecipherable] WHEN RAIN BEGINS
[indecipherable] COMING TO HUNT WITH [indecipherable] AFTER THE CHILDREN DOGS ANTS COCKROACHES PALM STICKS LEAVE RIVER TO TRADE NAMES WITH JUNGLE SPIRIT AND DRINK MUCH WHISKEY
They still weren’t making much sense, but I hoped that with more volume, we would start to get enough context that some kind of meaning would become clear. If not, we would have to find one of the few linguists who understood the language and work out some kind of temporary security clearance to allow them to translate the messages.
Around dinnertime, Shaunessy opened up a container and the sharp smell of Thai food wafted through the office. “Smells delicious,” I said. “Where did you get that?”
“I ordered it from the cafeteria. They deliver.”
“Wow. You can do that?”
“Sure. They can’t really have you ordering pizza or whatever from outside the complex. There are thousands of people living here, though, and thousands more working late. The solution is in-house takeout.” She held up the container. “The guy who makes it was a CIA informant in Thailand for a decade before they pulled him out.”
Twenty minutes later, I was digging into my own container of Chicken Kao Phad.
“So what’s it like to be following in your father’s footsteps?” Shaunessy asked. “All those years, he couldn’t tell you the secret things he did at his job, and now you work here, too.”
“It’s bittersweet, actually,” I said. “I always wanted to be like my dad. But he has Alzheimer’s. He’ll never really know.”
“Wow, that’s rough. I’m sorry.”
“He was my hero, especially after my mom left. Paul always took Mom’s side. He went the academic route, got a doctorate—he even works at the University of Maryland, just like Mom did.”
“She was a professor, then? Your mom?”
“Astrophysicist. She still teaches some classes at UMD, though she cut her hours way back to help take care of Dad.”
Shaunessy used a napkin to wipe a stray piece of noodle off her chin. “I thought you said they were separated.”
“Yeah.” I waved a hand vaguely. “It’s complicated.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”
“No, it doesn’t matter. It’s old news. My dad was stationed in Brazil when I was five and Paul was six. Mom had her career, teaching high-energy astrophysics, doing research into neutron stars and black holes. She didn’t want to leave the US.”
“And your dad just went without her?”
“That’s what Paul would say, but it wasn’t like that. Originally, she was going to come along. They made all the plans for relocating together. When it came to handing in her notice, though, she couldn’t do it. She said she just had some things to finish up for the summer, and then she’d join us. Only she never did.” I shrugged. “She might tell the story differently, though. I don’t know.”
“How much do you remember?”
“Oh, I remember it all, at least what I could see and understand at the time. Five years old is old enough to hold onto something like that. I hated her for a while. And I hated Paul for defending her.”
“How long were you in Brazil?”
I stirred my rice. “You saw my resume. Ten years, near enough. Only, about three years in, suddenly Mom showed up in Brazil. She had worked out some kind of co-research arrangement with Pico dos Dias, a big observatory in Minas Gerais, more than a twelve-hour drive from Brasília. She visited every other weekend for three years, and then she was gone again, back to the States.”
“Sounds pretty rough,” Shaunessy said.
I looked for a trashcan to toss my empty food container. Some kind of green initiative in the NSA had swapped all the normal office trashcans for divided ones with a large compartment for recyclables and a tiny one for other trash. The foam carton didn’t fit, so I broke it up into tiny pieces and inserted them one by one.
“So your mom takes care of your dad now?” Shaunessy asked.
“She does a lot of it. We all pitch in, though I’ve been helping a lot less since I started working here.” I felt a twinge of guilt at that. Before I started at the NSA, I had spent more time with him than anyone. “Have you ever known someone with Alzheimer’s?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“It’s like going through early childhood again, but backward,” I said. “I don’t just mean losing mental function. Alzheimer’s actually follows the same myelinization paths in reverse, eroding your brain centers in the reverse order that they develop in early childhood. You lose the ability to form long-term memory first—one of the last things you develop as a child. Then you start losing vocabulary and sentence structure. You can’t handle finances or pick appropriate clothes to wear. You lose the ability to use the bathroom or walk or speak at all. By the end, you can’t even smile or hold up your head. It’s like reverting back to infancy.” I found there were tears standing in my eyes. “And there’s nothing that anybody can do to stop it.”
I was the only one still at work late that evening when Melody returned to the office. “How’s the whistle translation going?” she asked. She looked tired and worn.
“Fine,” I said. “Lots of translated words, not much understanding.”
“I found a linguist,” Melody said. “Katherine Wyatt, a retired Christian missionary. She and her husband were the first outsiders to crack the Johurá language, almost forty years ago. I’m flying her in from Massachusetts tomorrow.”
I was amazed. Her granddaughter might be dying, and she still found the time to track down a linguist who was probably the only person in the United States who could translate our messages. And made travel arrangements.
I hesitated before speaking. “I’m sorry about
Emily,” I said.
Melody seemed to physically collapse in on herself. Her professional demeanor crumpled, and she sank into Shaunessy’s chair. “I don’t know what she was thinking,” she said.
“It’s tough sometimes, being a kid. Trying to measure up.”
“It’s my fault, really,” Melody said.
“Yours?” It seemed unlikely. I didn’t think Melody was out buying her granddaughter illegal drugs.
“I pushed her mother too hard into science and math. She dropped out of college instead and did her own thing. But now she’s pushing her own kids the same way. Emily’s bright, gets top grades, and her mom wants her to go to an Ivy League school. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.
Melody nodded once. “I think so. I was just at the hospital, and they say she’s going to pull through.”
“Good news,” I said.
Melody shook her head and didn’t answer.
“You should get some sleep,” I said.
I made it home before eight o’clock—the earliest that week—and joined my dad and Paul for a game of Scrabble. Halfway through the game, my dad fell asleep in his chair, and Paul and I finished up without him. As usual since his return from Brazil, Paul trounced me. I would have said I was losing my touch, but the truth was, I thought I was playing as well as I ever had. It didn’t stop Paul from beating me every time.
“You wouldn’t believe the breakthroughs I’m making at the lab,” Paul said. “We’re talking Nobel Prize–level discoveries.”
I laughed, not sure how seriously to take him. “Has there ever been a Nobel Prize awarded for fungus?”
“Sure. 1945. Sir Alexander Fleming. For penicillin.”
“Penicillin is a fungus?”
“Of course. It’s a mold. Molds are fungi.”
“I see. So you’re working on the next penicillin.”