The Atlantis Stone

CHAPTER 13

Selena rubbed her tired eyes. The pictures she'd taken of the tablet were displayed on her computer monitor, where she could zoom in on parts of the inscription with ease. She'd been at it for hours.

Some words had been easy, similar to the version of Linear A she was used to. Not that anything about Linear A was easy, even with the translation key she and Nick had discovered in Tibet. Selena had concluded that the stone was inscribed with a script predating Linear A. She'd decided to call it Linear D. There was already a Linear A, B and C. Linear C had been supplanted by early Greek.

Linear D taxed all of her considerable linguistic skills. Without the hieroglyphics inscribed on the Egyptian column, she wouldn't have gotten far. She could read and understand most of those. The hieroglyphics had helped her make sense of the Linear D on the pillar, but the pillar was only a warm-up for the French tablet.

Translation required much more than understanding symbols and words. The structure of the language was still confusing to her. It didn't help to know what a word meant if she couldn't put it in context with what went before or came after. Trying to understand the meaning of words without understanding how they related to each other was like listening to random radio signals from the universe, hoping to hear a message from another galaxy. The message might be there, but without comprehensible structure and context it was just static.

It was after two in the morning. She knew she'd get no more done tonight. The last time she'd seen Nick had been an hour ago when he'd looked in on her and told her he was going to bed. Selena yawned and decided he'd had the right idea. She turned out the light in the study and went into the master bedroom.

Nick lay naked on his back, the covers thrown onto the floor. He was making quick, erratic movements, muttering in his sleep. His body glistened with sweat.

He's having one of his nightmares, she thought. They've come back since Germany.

She was about to wake him when he shouted and sat up, sending a pillow flying.

"Nick. Wake up. It's all right, you're home."

She was careful to keep her distance. Sometimes he swung out wildly when he was having one of his dreams. Before they'd gotten married the nightmares had come close to driving them apart.

"Nick," she said again.

"What?" He opened his eyes, saw Selena standing nearby. "Oh."

"Afghanistan again?" she asked.

In Afghanistan Nick had almost been killed by a grenade thrown by a child. He'd shot the boy as the grenade was in the air. The boy's face haunted his worst dreams.

Nick rubbed his eyes. "Yeah. Only it was in Germany at the same time. In that café."

The café was where Ronnie and Lamont had been wounded. It had been a close call all around.

"Maybe you should make an appointment with Milton."

She meant the therapist Nick had seen a while back. Milton had served in Afghanistan and lost an arm to an IED. Nick respected him. He'd helped Nick work with the PTSD that sometimes froze him in place.

"Yeah. Maybe." He got out of bed. "I'm going to take a shower."

She watched him walk to the bathroom.

No point in going to bed now.

Selena was wide awake and Nick wouldn't go back to sleep tonight. She headed to the kitchen and turned on the lights, got out cups and started coffee. Nick would want some and she needed a jolt of energy.

It was while she waited for the coffee that the key to understanding the inscription on the tablet came to her. The coffee forgotten, she went back into her study, rebooted the computer and looked again at the pictures.

Yes! That's what I was missing.

Three hours later she'd finished the translation.