The Source - Michael Cordy [12]
A low murmur rippled through the audience, like wind through a field of barley. Text from the Voynich flashed up on the screen behind Lauren. She continued, 'With my assistant Zeb's help I've now translated all of the manuscript, except the astrology section. I won't present a verbatim transcript until I've completed it.' She glanced meaningfully at Knight. 'Having been asked to share a synopsis of its contents, however, I can tell you that I found no code.' The audience's murmuring grew to a buzz and people were scribbling notes. 'I'm now convinced that Voynichese is a synthetic language. Those linguists among you will know that there are two types: a posterior language, which is based on existing languages, the most famous example being Esperanto, and a priori language, which is created from scratch. The latter is virtually impossible to translate without knowledge of the creator's rules of grammar and vocabulary, which in this case we don't have. Luckily for us, however, Voynichese appears to be of the posterior variety: a blend of two ancient languages, which have then been transliterated into the unique symbols we see in the text.'
A hand shot up from the audience. 'Which two languages?'
The priest's fingers were working at a string of rosary beads.
Lauren shook her head. 'I'm not prepared to reveal the root languages until I've completed the translation. Then I'll make a full announcement and publish all my supporting work.'
'Are you sure there's no code in the text?' asked a woman at the front.
The priest's fingers moved faster on the beads.
'With Zeb's computer models, we realized early on that a code was unlikely,' Lauren said. 'Given the age of the document and the intractable nature of the text, any code would have had to be a polyalphabetic cipher. But our entropy analyses, which looked at the pattern of symbols in the text, showed that it was too regular, too much like a proper language, to be a code.'
The priest's hand shot up. 'Dr Kelly, before you share with us how you translated the Voynich, perhaps you could tell us what your translation has revealed?' His English was perfect but held the faint trace of an Italian accent.
Lauren nodded. 'First, let me apologize to all those who, like me, hoped the manuscript contained some secret. Contrary to certain claims, the Voynich Cipher wasn't written by the medieval monk Roger Bacon and, sadly, it's not an ancient Cathar text, a wizard's treatise on alchemy, a mystic's vision, a message from God, written in the language of angels, or any of the other fanciful things many believed.'
There were audible sighs of disappointment.
'The Voynich is simply the story of a mythic quest in the classic tradition, an allegory of man's greed that shows a prescient awareness of today's environmental concerns. I've purposely translated it without trying to reproduce the archaic language of the time to highlight the sense. It tells of a scholar priest who accompanies a troop of soldiers into a vast jungle in search of Eldorado – the fabled city of gold. His mission is to chronicle their adventure and to claim the souls of the conquered for his church. The gruelling quest decimates the soldiers, leaving them lost in the middle of the forest. Just as they abandon hope, they stumble across a garden filled with strange plants and inhabited by even stranger nymphlike women and other bizarre creatures. It turns out to be both an Eden – and Hell. They find wonders and miracles there, but something terrible too. Only the scholar priest lives to tell the tale.'
As Lauren recounted the story in more detail she used the screen to punctuate her narrative with disturbing illustrations from the manuscript. The audience listened politely. Her synopsis was only a theory until she published and her full findings were accepted. The priest, however, appeared transfixed, his sharp features expressing a blend of incredulity, wonder