Betrayal - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 5

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 begining. 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 that 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."