Sorry – no post this week – been in hospital and not well – hopefully normal transmission will resume next week
Taroniah at Bay is at the editor – I was hoping we’d get it out this month but otherwise early August.
Kyron the Rescuer is being written.

Peter

He pulled up the image file of the two sets of two matching tablets. He had them organized with the Linear B tablets on the left and the Linear A ones on the right. Displayed that way, they certainly looked similar. He pointed to the two-word line. “That says one cow in Mycenean. On the right, it says one cow in Minoan. And yes, I have checked this on other tablets. Every time that word appears, it seems to mean one or single or other variations of one unit. The other appears as a multiple version on many tablets. The syntax of Linear A appears to be more Semitic than Greek, but with a Greek admixture. Sort of like comparing French and English. Anyway, every time that word appears on the Linear A tablets, it matches the Mycenean word for cows in a similar position on the matching Mycenean tablet.” He paused here to see how she would react.

Professor Rawlins studied the images on the screen and turned her head slightly to study Jason before returning her attention to the screen. “And is that all you have translated?”

Jason shook his head. “I, um, well, I got so engrossed in the whole thing I sort of translated pretty much all of them.”

She glanced up in startlement. “All ten?”

“Well, yeah. And then I did a whole lot of tablets that have been posted on the net. I could translate all of them, despite lacking the matching Mycenean tablets, which made it a lot harder, and there are still a bunch of words I can’t work out, but overall, yeah, I can translate pretty much any Linear A tablet to a fair extent.” He stood up straight and crossed his arms, waiting to be shot down.

The Professor raised her eyebrows and looked at the images on the screen.

“You have really translated both these tablets?”

“Yes, Professor. If you scroll further down the page, you will see a translation of both tablets.”

She studied his translation for a few moments before sitting back for a second, then turned to Jason.

“And you think you can translate pretty much any Linear A tablet?”

Oooh. She was going to test him. All right, in for a penny.

“Yes, Professor. Allowing for words that I have not previously met and for which the meaning cannot be derived by the context, of course. But essentially, yes.”

She leaned back, looked at him, shook her head, then turned to her computer. She called up some website and then some page and crooked her finger at him to come closer. On the screen was a tablet, yes, Linear A.

“Two different noted scholars have each published translations of this tablet. Unsurprisingly there are differences between the two. What can you see?”

Jason leaned forward, and the Professor moved aside. He looked around the desk.

“Can I borrow a piece of paper and a pen?” he asked. Professor Rawlins frowned but quickly produced a pen and then a paper pad from a drawer in her desk. Jason ran through the tablet silently, mouthing the words as he translated the tablet. There were only a few words that weren’t obvious, but he made a show of hesitating here and there and seemingly having to think about this word or that as he worked through the tablet. Finally, he finished and stood back. Professor Rawlins just looked at him for a minute.

Jason had met Chloe at several functions before and after the girl had graduated from high school, but Chloe had always seemed to regard him as some sort of local wildlife that came with her mother’s job rather than a fellow student. She shared the thin build of her mother, but whereas Professor Rawlins’s mix of button nose and high cheekbones gave her a pixy look, Chloe had indeterminate cheekbones, a beak of a nose, and large ears, presumably gifts from her father. Chloe was with her mother when Jason arrived, leaving the Professor’s office after Jason had knocked. Jason nodded to her, which she barely acknowledged, and then heard the Professor call him into her office, so he put Chloe from his thoughts and entered the room. Like nearly every Classics staff member whose office he had been in, the décor was wood shelves, a desk, a comfortable-looking chair the Professor used, and a pair of University issue chairs for visitors. He plonked himself down on one of these, resting his laptop on his lap.

“You know this is the first time you have ever asked me for a meeting. So far, I have always had to chase you for progress reports.” She smiled in a resigned sort of way. “So, what’s the problem?”

Jason shook his head. “No problem. Well, not really. I, well, I want to change my Thesis subject.”

She looked surprised. “What! This close to finishing?”

Jason shrugged. “I can still finish it if you think I should, but I have discovered something, and, well, I think it would make both a better thesis as well as being a lot more important to Classics research.” There, he had made the outrageous claim that should grab her attention.

She didn’t look impressed with his pronouncement, merely sitting back in her chair and staring at Jason for a moment, a slight frown sharpening her features, making her look more like an evil elf than a pixie.

 “You have made an important discovery?” She shook her head as he nodded. “Where and what?”

She sounded like this had better be good, or else! He flipped open his laptop and stood up.

“I think it would be easiest to show you.” He said before moving over and putting his laptop on her desk. “You know I was looking at those Linear B tablets they found and then those extra ones discovered below the first group which had been stored with a similar number of Linear A tablets?”

She nodded as she had been the one to point him in the direction of the new finds in the first place.

 “Well, they are certainly important in terms of the Mycenean invasion and occupation of Crete and the consequent end of the Minoan civilization. They appear to almost certainly date right from the period of the Mycenean takeover and the lower box, which had the two sets of tablets, clearly points to a continuation and replacement of the Minoan temple city administration by the incoming Myceneans. And if you want me to continue the Thesis as we originally planned, then that is no problem, and it will be finished much sooner than I expected due to that find. But well, look at this.”

Gizel and Karvon continue on their normal undercover galactic travels, in the process dealing with a stowaway and managing to upset the criminal Portia Cartel at the same time. Then, a friendly Imperial Security officer tracks them down to remind them that their wedding date is rapidly approaching. Oops. The Empress is most upset with Gizel’s belated return to Kimeria, yet despite terrorists and further threats from the Portia Cartel, they finally have their big day, followed by a honeymoon that could best be described as interesting!

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FD7KKSDH

otherwise find it at you local Amazon site

Better late than never

By the time he broke for a late lunch, his vocabulary and understanding of the Linear A language syntax was growing exponentially. After a break with the others in the Refectory, he returned to the study room with a new idea. He started pulling scans of other Linear A tablets off the internet and set about translating them as well. Hmm. Had he really just made a massive breakthrough? Everything he translated made sense, so he had to be getting the words right, didn’t he? He sat and pondered the matter for a few minutes leaning back in his chair and staring blankly at his computer screen.

He then sent an email to Professor Rawlins asking for an appointment to discuss his thesis. He returned to his study of random Linear A tablets from the net while getting increasingly fluent in the language. Or, at least, he thought he was. He supposed he could just be getting delusional and making it all up in his head. No, this was real. He considered the matter and decided that being too free and easy with the Minoan tablets would give away too much information that he would have difficulty explaining. He couldn’t very well tell everyone about Urasmian without getting locked up in the looney bin. Yes. A careful explanation based on comparing the two groups of tablets would explain his breakthrough perfectly well. Professor Rawlins got back to him about two hours later and offered a nine-thirty appointment time the following day. He accepted, then decided to call it quits for the day and headed home. The rain had stopped, of course, now that he wasn’t in any particular hurry.

He did enjoy having his parents back home, but at the same time, he found he sort of missed having the house to himself as well. Their holiday had really been the first time they had both been away together for more than just a weekend trip somewhere since his big sister had moved out last year. He sometimes wished he could afford to live on campus, but he had decided to leave his part-time job at Burger King when he began studying for his doctorate, so his finances were limited. His parents agreed with his choice to concentrate on his doctorate and were only too happy to support him, but the lack of a decent income still limited his options and his spending money! Plus, living at home would make it awkward if he finally met a girl who was interested in him. Living at home was seen as such a lame lifestyle for a guy.

Professor Rawlins was a forty-year-old thin woman who still kept herself in shape, unlike some of her male colleagues. She’d been married twice and was now dating an aging actor she’d met when some B-grade film had been made on the University campus involving an ancient Spartan Warrior coming back to life in the Twenty-First Century. It sounded lame even before seeing some no-name actors parading around campus like they were somebodies! Even the Professor thought the script sounded pretty awful! Her eldest child was a fresher at the college but was studying Law rather than Classics. The Professor seemed equally sad and elated at her eldest offspring’s choice of studies. The professor always seemed a little disappointed her daughter was not following in her footsteps but proud of her daughter for getting into Law School.

The Princess & The Gangsters should be out next month.

Taroniah at Bay is progressing.

Our new house is nearing completion requiring us to visit repeatedly (2 1/2 hours each way) so that is interrupting things and then the move is approaching – next month sometime I expect. Could be off the internet for some days which will hold things up.

Kyron the Rescuer follows Taroniah and then the New Federation Story The Kelad Onslaught.

Peter

Going on how up his window the glare was coming, the sun was well up by the time he finally woke up in the morning, yet he still felt exhausted from the mental gyrations of the day before. It took him some time and two cups of coffee before he was able to get his head working, and then he pulled open the laptop and started in on the files again. At some point, he listened to the recording he had on his phone of Urasmian casting the transport spell into the wooden broom handle the sorcerer had made into a wand or staff or something. He found a couple of words on the tablets that he was sure had also been used in the spell, and these gave him a better grasp of the pronunciation of the rest of the words. He quickly found that the more he compared the two groups of tablets and attempted to decipher the Linear A text, the easier it became.

He finally broke off studying just after one, absolutely famished and made a sandwich, at which point he suddenly remembered that today was the day he was supposed to pick up the parents from the airport. Shit! What time was their flight arriving? He had absolutely no recollection! He ran around doing a headless chook impersonation for a couple of minutes, checking the calendar on the fridge, the calendar on his phone, and the note file for odd stuff he kept on his phone, getting more frantic by the minute before remembering he had stored the details on his computer! Frantic mouse pointer stuff! Relief. Not till after five. Ha!

He refrained from returning to the Linear A study just in case he got too distracted, so he sat and watched a couple of re-runs of Time Team episodes before leaving fairly early for the airport, where he got a good parking place and waited patiently in the terminal near the exit gate until their plane arrived. He spotted them easily in the middle of the main press of passengers, and they soon spotted him in turn. Much parental joy followed, along with interrogation as to the state of the house as they collected their baggage and then headed home. No, he hadn’t held any wild parties. Sheesh. Even if he wanted to, he doubted he had enough friends to hold a tame party, let alone a wild one! All traces of Urasmian had been removed except the aluminum ends on the broom pole, which casting the transport spell had sort of welded in place, he had discovered. He had to admit that it made for an interesting effect, although he kept the matter to himself. If they asked about the pole, he’d say he had been working on a prop for an outfit to wear to a Con later in the year.

His folks had the rest of the week off, not having to return to their respective jobs till the following Monday, and he quickly found that having them around the house was too distracting for serious study, so he headed into college mid-morning the next day. The drive there was frustrating as it was pouring with rain which slowed all the traffic down. Why do people drive so much slower in the wet? Around corners and such, yeah, he could understand being careful, but on the main road in a straight line when the road was merely wet, not submerged? It sure was frustrating how cautious and slow many people became in the wet. And then there were the idiots that still sped and drove like maniacs. Fortunately, there were relatively few of those idiots out today. He finally reached the campus car park nearest his building and then had to hustle through the University grounds in the rain, eventually reaching the office or the study in a slightly damp state. After unloading his laptop from the plastic bag he grabbed in the garage to carry it in to keep the rain out, he settled down to work.

The way Urasmian pronounced the word Keftios meant it did sound sort of a bit like he was using ancient Greek, but it was much more guttural than Greek usually sounded. Ah, he thought, as he determined that that line meant five female goats and a male goat. Or so it appeared. The last line referred to five cups or pots of the type most authorities called tripods and six of another kind of cup, which was usually regarded as the name for the three-handed cups. The first line was obviously the person’s name who owned all these things. Urasmian’s Hellandios was indeed more like Mycenean Greek than Classical Greek, he decided. A bit like French is far more like Latin than it is the Germanic the Franks must have spoken originally. Clearly, history had run to a different path on Earth Fifty East, as he had started to call the planet Urasmian came from.

He stayed buried in his computer, studying the tablets, and he was only vaguely aware of the others leaving as the afternoon wore on. He began comparing the other tablets and looking for matching words or word groups and found more as the day turned into evening. Ah, this man had two chariots and five chariot wheels. He must have been a warrior. And six amphorae of wine. He began trying to pronounce the Linear A text using the Mycenean sounds for the symbols that matched but saying them in a much more guttural way. It sounded almost like the Keftios Urasmian had used for the transport spell. Almost. He could feel and see the Linear A language just there, sort of hanging in front of him but could still not quite grasp it. Damn!

Instead, a tap on his shoulder made him jump in fear and surprise, and he finished up on the floor as his chair overbalanced, leaving him looking up at an extremely apologetic security guard.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to startle you that much.” The fellow said, offering Jason a hand to help Jason scramble back up off the floor.

“Um. Yes. That’s all right. I was miles away.” His heart was still going at seemingly twice its normal rate!

“I could see that, sir. I spoke to you three times before touching you. It’s lockup time, sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

Jason looked around at the empty room and settled himself inwardly. “Huh?” Not the most intelligent sounding of responses. It must be nine o’clock already! What the…  He shook his head, trying to focus on the idea that it was nine o’clock already. “Oh. Sorry. Yes, of course. I’ll pack up straight away. Sorry.”

The guard smiled. “No problem, sir. I’ll just go check on the far end of the hall and lock up as I return. If that is all right?”

“Yes, yes. No problem. Sorry to hold you up. I’ll be out of here in a sec.”

He sat down after righting his chair, saved his image files before shutting down the laptop, and was gone before the guard returned. Damn! He thought to himself as he waited at the lift. He’d never become so immersed in anything that he could have that much time pass without realizing what was happening! By the time he exited the lift two floors below, his stomach was making sure he noticed that he had missed dinner! Ah, Mcdonalds! The best friend of students who study late.

He had often thought about asking the rather attractive French girl out and would have if it hadn’t been for her on-again, off-again sometime relationship with Dylan, whom Jason had never met. It appeared their relationship had turned serious. Not that he was ever likely to have persuaded her to go out with him even if she had been single. None of the other girls he’d asked out since beginning here at College had been interested enough to consider even a first date. At least the couple of girls he’d met through the online dating service he was on had at least gone on one date with him. Besides, he did not have enough time for a girlfriend. Really, he didn’t.

Chapter 5

Change in approach

Back at his desk, he quickly finished translating the other Linear B tablets, then spent a couple of hours checking his translation against the only extant published one of the lower group of tablets. He found a few differences between his translation and the published one, which wasn’t surprising given the vagaries of deciphering a three-thousand-year-old language. On re-checking the tablets, he decided that his interpretation of the text was correct in every case. There was nothing specific to base this on, but his conversations with Urasmian had given him a feel for Hellandios, which he thought was very similar to Mycenean. That ease of use and the understanding of what Urasmian was saying seemed to have carried over into reading the Mycenean tablets. He suspected that if he saw written Hellandios, it would also look like Mycenean. By the time he was finished, the afternoon was nearly over. He thought about heading home but then decided to have a coffee break and come back and look at the Linear A tablets before heading home for a late dinner.

Studying the Linear A tablets was strange after the Linear B ones, as they were so similar in appearance, although the Linear A ones were messier. He wondered if the letters had similar phonetics to the Mycenean ones and began sounding them out while comparing the two groups on the screen, two by two and two tablets deep, scrolling up and down. There was something about them, the sounds as he mouthed them, the shape of the text blocks. He paused and moved the images into a proper graphics program. He arranged the images of the tablets, so they were displayed side by side and by the shape of the text blocks, re-arranging the order and fiddling until he was happy. And he could almost make sense of them. Almost. Hmmm.

Then he noticed that Linear A Tablet four had a two-word block that seemed to match Linear B Tablet six. He re-arranged them again and compared these two. One cow was the Linear B two-word sentence. So, if that symbol was one and that was a cow, did those symbol combinations appear on any other Linear A tablets? And if the two tablets were recording the same information, what else could he decipher? While puzzling over the characters, he started running the spell Urasmian had used to travel home through his head. He had worked out that Keftu most likely referred to Crete, especially as it was similar to the Egyptian word for the island. With Keftios being both the name for the island’s people and the term for the language they spoke.

Is now available

Six hundred years ago, a nuclear war devastated the planet, particularly the northern hemisphere. The war started over gene modifications that gave some humans special powers. Areas of the southern hemisphere are now slowly recovering, and civilization has begun to rebound.

Ostraya, being the least damaged of the southern hemisphere areas, is also the most advanced along that road to recovery, but its population density is still far lower than it had been before the nuclear war. After centuries of poor treatment, those Ostrayans who inherited the gene modifications are finally starting to be accepted by mainstream society.

Then, Ostraya is invaded by the brutal, totalitarian forces from the Japanese part of the Triple Alliance that extends across thousands of worlds. The Japanese enforce their rule through the use of chips they place in people’s heads. These are attached to metal tendrils that spread throughout the brain of the person, allowing the gene-modified mentalists of the Alliance to control them. This is the story of that invasion.