He knew at once that she was the guard placed over him—an extremely attractive guard who would keep the general informed as to his progress. But a known factor was always better than an unknown one. He offered her his hand, and she took it quickly.
"Glad to have you, Pat," he said. "But until I can decode Hardwick's notes from what little I've learned of them, there won't be much to do."
He'd decided that it was a reasonable job, and one which would take up enough time for him to orient himself. After that... his mind skidded off the subject.
She pointed to the work table by the machine where the notes lay spread out. "I've been systematizing it already. If you can supply half a dozen keys, the computer should be able to translate the rest."
It rocked him for a second. He hadn't thought of the possibility, and it meant an end to stalling, long before he could be ready. But there was nothing he could do about it. He picked up the notes, and began pointing out the few phrases he had learned, together with the only clear memory he seemed to have of his time with Hardwick.
"The last page covers the final test," he told her. "Hardwick had some cockroaches and mosquitoes left over from an experiment with various vermin, and he put them in a glass case. I stood at one side with the screen he'd made on me, and he stood on the other. Apparently he figured the things could sense the human aura, and the roaches should move toward my absence of one, the mosquitoes toward him for food. But there was no statistical evidence of its success."
She began feeding information to the machine, and reeling out the results, checking with him. At first, he begrudged the work, but then he found his interest quickening in the puzzle and its untangling. She was good at the work, though she found it hard to believe that the cult-inspired nonsense could be a correct translation.
He began trying to anticipate the problems of her programming, and to scan the results, cross-checking to reduce errors from his own confusion.
Finally she nodded. "That's it, Bill. The computer can cross-check the rest itself. All I've got to do is cut the notes on a tape, and feed them in. Why don't you go to lunch while I'm doing it? Dad has you scheduled for his table, down in the GHQ basement cafeteria."
"What about you?" he asked.