The majordomo greeted me at the door and guided me toward the peristyle garden. From that direction I could hear the sound of feminine voices in conversation. One of them said something, another laughed. Ordinarily I find such sounds pleasant, even soothing. But one of those voices sounded disturbingly familiar.
The two women were seated at a table next to a beautiful pool. One of them, naturally, was Callista. The other was Julia.
“Why, Senator!” Callista exclaimed, “I was not expecting you so early. How wonderful to have you and your lovely wife as my guests at the same time!”
“An unexpected pleasure indeed,” I said. “Julia, I am surprised you didn’t go out to see all those brawny, sweaty legionaries.”
“Oh, soldiers are such a common sight, even my uncle’s. But I couldn’t pass up a chance to meet the most learned lady in Rome. We have been having the most marvelous discussion on the work of Archimedes.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment.” During our stay in Alexandria, Julia had dragged me along to see every tiresome philosopher and scholar in that whole overeducated city. She had an enthusiasm for learning that entirely eluded me.
“Once I began to study your documents, Senator,” Callista said, “I found myself so enthralled that I quite forgot the time. Eventually, my servants tired of replenishing the lamps and forced me to go to bed. But I was up at dawn and right back to work.”
“I never expected such zeal and cannot adequately thank you,” I said. “So you now have them translated?”
“I am afraid not. But I have made an excellent beginning. And I’ve made the most interesting discovery!”
“How so?” I asked, trying to mask my disappointment. Such rapid success was far too much to hope for.
She took the pages from a small chest upon the table. “You recall that I was puzzled by the repetition of the letter delta?”
“Indeed, I do.”
“Well, I was in despair when I finally went to bed last night. But I must have been visited by a god while I slept because when I awoke this morning I knew what it meant. It is something quite unprecedented.” She had a look of almost daemonic enthusiasm.
“What might this have been?” I asked her.
“Nothing!”
I was stunned. “I fail to—”
“Let her explain, dear,” Julia said. “We’ve discussed a bit of this, and I want to hear more.”
I sat and a servant brought me a cup. “Please do,” I urged.
“I know that it sounds absurd, but that delta means nothing at all, and that is what is so exciting. You see, I noticed that the delta was always repeated after a string of other letters, three to eight or so, and that nowhere was a delta doubled. When I woke this morning I realized that whoever encoded these documents intended to simplify decoding by separating the words with the delta, rather the way that some people, when writing, leave a small space between individual words.”
“I see,” I said. “It seems simple enough.”
“It is deceptively simple. But the implications are astounding. It is the use of a symbol to mean nothing at all! I think this is quite unprecedented. There is a subset of philosophy involving the meaning of symbols. I intend to correspond with some philosophers I know to discuss the implications of this. I think it could have great applications in mathematics as well.”
“I daresay it could,” I said, trying to sound wise. I had no idea what the woman was babbling about. To this day I have no idea. A symbol for nothing?It was as ridiculous as the paradoxes of Zeno.
Julia spoke up. “Callista thinks this might have been the very concept Archimedes was working on when that horrible soldier killed him.”
“Well,” I said, “that sort of thing happens in a war. He shouldn’t have spoken rudely to the man. Callista, were you able to make any other headway on the letters?”
“I am almost certain that the language is common Latin. The length and arrangement of the words suggest this. I haven’t yet discovered the key to the letter substitution though. I had thought it would be simple, but now I am sure it is not. A mind subtle enough to invent this delta symbol probably devised something more complex.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but you might be giving him too much credit. He may have hit on the delta as a handy way to separate words without giving a consideration to the deeper implications.” Whatever on earth those might be, I thought.
“You could be right,” she said doubtfully. “Did you happen to see, where you found these documents, any books, poems, other writings?”
“Why?”