NEAL STEPHENSON
403
He takes all the pieces that look to be part of the envelope and puts them into a separate pile. Then he assembles the remains of the tablet itself into a coherent group. It’s not obvious, yet, how to piece them together, and he doesn’t have time for jigsaw puzzles. So he goggles into his office, uses the computer to take an electronic snapshot of the fragments, and calls the Librarian.
“Yes, sir?”
“This hypercard contains a picture of a shattered clay tablet. Do you know of some software that would be good at piecing it back together?”
“One moment, sir,” the Librarian says. Then a hypercard appears in his hand. He gives it to Hiro. It contains a picture of an assembled tablet. “That’s how it looks, sir.”
“Can you read Sumerian?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you read this tablet out loud?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get ready to do it. And hold on a second.”
Hiro walks over to the base of the control tower. There’s a door there that gives him access to a stairwell. He climbs up to the control room, a strange mixture of Iron Age and high-tech. Juanita’s waiting there, surrounded by peacefully slumbering wireheads. She taps a microphone that is projecting from a communications panel at the end of a flexible gooseneck-the same mike that the en was speaking into.
“Live to the Raft,” she says. “Go for it.”
Hiro puts his computer into speakerphone mode and stands up next to the microphone. “Librapan, read it back,” he says.
And a string of syllables pours out of the speaker.
In the middle of it, Hiro glances up at Juanita. She’s standing in the far corner of the room with her fingers stuck in her ears.
Down at the base of the stairs, a wirehead begins to talk. Deep down inside the Enterprise, there’s more talking going on. And none of it makes any sense. It’s just a lot of babbling.
There’s an external catwalk on the control tower. Hiro goes out there and listens to the Raft. From all around them comes a dim roar, not of waves or wind, but of a million unchained human voices speaking in a confusion of tongues.
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