‘Not yet,’ said Eddie. ‘Looking forward to it, though. I want to drive too fast down that twisty street, and see where all those great car chases were filmed - Bullitt, The Rock . . .’
‘There’s more to San Francisco than car chases,’ Nina chided, sensing Boyce was unhappy at hearing his community reduced to a backdrop for Hollywood blockbusters. ‘We’ll be visiting places that are actually interesting too.’
‘Happy to hear it.’ The mayor turned to his companions. ‘Anyway, if I may, I’d like you to meet some very special guests.’
He made the introductions; the VIPs were a mix of leaders of impeccably liberal special interest groups, entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and foreign businesspeople, being wooed by the mayor in the hope they would bring jobs to California in general, and San Francisco in particular. ‘And this is Pramesh Khoil and his wife Vanita,’ he said of the final couple. ‘Mr Khoil owns some of the fastest-growing technology and telecoms companies in India - and is also the inventor of the Qexia search engine.’
‘Oh, Qexia? “Just ask”, right?’ said Nina, repeating the slogan from Qexia’s TV commercials as she shook hands. On the surface, Khoil was extremely unassuming, round face as smooth as a sea-worn pebble behind wire-rimmed glasses, and tending towards a plumpness that his tailored Nehru jacket could not hide. Even had she not been wearing heels for the occasion he would only have been fractionally taller than her. She guessed him to be in his early forties. ‘You invented Qexia? A friend recommended it to me - I use it almost all the time now.’
‘We will become the world’s top search engine within two years,’ said Khoil matter-of-factly. His English was very precise but oddly accentless, flat and vaguely robotic. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Dr Wilde.’
‘We were hoping to discuss the exhibits,’ said Vanita. Unlike her husband, she had a distinct, melodious accent, and was considerably more striking, wearing a traditional Indian sari of exquisitely decorated silk and bedecked in jewellery, most prominently a pair of large golden earrings. She was about the same age as Khoil and undeniably beautiful, but in a sharp, birdlike way, her nose thin and angular.
‘Just ask, to coin a phrase! Dr Sharpe and I will be happy to answer any questions,’ Nina said, addressing the group.
As she’d expected, the majority of questions were about the crown. But the Khoils were more interested in another artefact. ‘The Talonor Codex,’ said Khoil, bending for a closer look. ‘How much of it has been translated?’
‘About ninety per cent, so far,’ said Nina. ‘Dr Sharpe has been in charge of the translation work. The last ten per cent is the tricky part, but our knowledge of the Atlantean language is growing all the time.’
‘Have you considered using crowd-sourcing to speed up the process?’
Nina was surprised by the question. ‘Er, not really. It’s not how we work.’
He regarded her owlishly. ‘Dispersing the project throughout a network would be quicker than concentrating it amongst a few people. Aggregating a larger number of results would also reduce the probability of individual error. My company can provide suitable software - for a very reasonable fee.’
‘Archaeology isn’t really like computer science,’ said Nina. ‘Besides, we want to keep the translation work in-house for security reasons. The Codex describes a lot of places visited by Talonor, which are all potential sites of great archaeological importance. If we made it publicly available too soon, they could be raided before we had a chance to examine them.’
‘But some pages have already been made available online by the IHA.’
‘That was my predecessor’s decision, not mine,’ said Nina, acid in her voice at the thought. ‘One I reversed as soon as I was appointed director. I rate science higher than publicity.’
‘Both have their place. And you are no stranger to publicity yourself.’
‘Not always intentionally, I can assure you. But that’s why we chose to display these particular pages of the Codex.’ Nina indicated the scribed metal sheets. ‘Pictures of them had already been released.’
‘But it is these pages that caught my interest.’ For the first time, a hint of emotion - excitement - came into Khoil’s mechanical voice as he pointed out the bottom half of the second page. ‘This text here - it is not Atlantean, but Vedic Sanskrit.’ He looked at Nina. ‘The language of ancient India.’
‘Yes, I know. It was in use up to about six hundred BC, when it was replaced by Classical Sanskrit, but nobody was sure how long it had been used before that - until now, anyway. Atlantis sank around nine thousand BC, so for Talonor to have encountered the language it must have existed before then.’
‘And so must Indian civilisation.’ Khoil circled the display case to examine the impression in the book’s thick cover. ‘A civilisation based on the teachings of the Vedas . . . which are still followed today. Making Hinduism the world’s oldest surviving religion.’ He smiled, the expression oddly out of place on his placid face. ‘And increasing the likelihood of one of its schools being the only true religion, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I try not to get involved in religious debates,’ Nina said firmly. The conflict between archaeological discoveries and dogma had almost got her killed on more than one occasion.
Khoil put his face almost against the glass as he peered intently at the indentation. Standing nearby with Vanita, Eddie felt compelled to break the silence. ‘So, Mrs Khoil,’ he said, ‘how did you meet your husband?’ She gave him a dismissive look, not interested in small talk. He took that as a challenge. ‘What first attracted you to the billionaire Pramesh Khoil?’
Vanita bared her teeth in response to the little joke. ‘Do you think I’m some kind of gold-digger?’ she snapped.
‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ said Eddie hastily. ‘It was just—’
‘I got my doctorate in psychology before Pramesh even started his company! Did you assume that because I’m a woman I’m some passive and subservient adjunct to my husband?’
‘No, I think he assumed that everybody appreciates his, uh, distinctive sense of humour,’ Nina said quickly. The mayor was looking horrified that a faux pas had been committed on his watch. ‘There wasn’t any offence intended.’
Eddie nodded. ‘Yeah. If I’m trying to offend someone, I don’t muck about.’
‘Honey, not helping,’ Nina said through gritted teeth. She turned back to Vanita. ‘We’re both very sorry for any misunderstanding.’
The Indian woman maintained a tight-lipped silence, but her husband spoke up instead. ‘We accept your apology, Dr Wilde. Now, we were discussing the Talonor Codex. Are you sure the IHA would not be interested in using my company’s software to assist with the translation work?’
He wasn’t just a genius programmer, but also a determined salesman, Nina thought. ‘No, but thank you for the offer. As I said, only a few people have access to the full text for security reasons.’
‘You misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that you give it to strangers. No, I am offering the services of Qexia.’
‘I’m not a computer expert,’ Rowan said, puzzled, ‘but I don’t see how putting the text into a search engine would help with the translation.’
‘It is more than just a search tool. It is a system of analytical algorithms, a deductive computer.’ Khoil was becoming impassioned again. ‘When you use Qexia to find information on a particular subject, you see not a list, but a “cloud” of interlinked results, yes? The relative importance of each result is not decided solely by a count of its connections to other web pages, like some inferior search engines.’ He glanced at one of the Silicon Valley bigwigs, who scowled. ‘Qexia analyses each page, finds connections to other pages through deductive logic based on its profile of the user. It can apply the same principles to translation. The more data it has, the better the results. Give it all the information you have on the Atlantean language, and it will provide a full and accurate translation.’