Turing's Delirium

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  It was my idea. Like in Bletchley Park ... Linguists. Mathematicians. Crossword puzzle experts. Chess players ... People who would use their intellect. Who knew about logic. Like Turing ... Who would have imagined. He looked like he was the brightest. He ended up being the brightest. And the most useful ... He had a good memory. And. That's all that interested him. He wanted to be a human computer. Pure logic ... Or at least that's what it seemed like to me...

  I remember the cigarette in the hard visage. His gray overcoat. Against the now limitless storm cloud in that park. But I didn't know how prodigious his memory might be, and even that was nothing compared to me. Who was Memory itself. Of cryptanalysis. Of cryptography. Or are they the same?

  At that time I was studying Latin ... I studied during my free time. Between interviews. He was impressed by the books in my briefcase. Lhomond's De Viris Illustribus... Quicherat's Thesaurus. Julius Caesar's commentaries. That great cryptographer ... An odd-numbered volume of Pliny's Naturalis Historia.

  He was more impressed by my anecdotes about the profession for which I wanted to recruit him ... Running through centuries as if they were afternoons ... Speaking of details as if I had been there. As if I were immortal...

  What's certain is that he didn't know. Maybe deep down inside we all know that we're immortal ... Sooner or later. Every man will do everything there is to do and know everything there is to know.

  Nothing impressed him as much as my tale of 1586. Of my participation in Walsingham's trap for Mary Queen of Scots ... At that time I was Thomas Phelippes. In the midst of the storm ... Both absorbed. I told the future Turing about Phelippes. As if Phelippes were someone else ... But Turing could sense that I knew Phelippes too well. He could sense Phelippes. Would have liked to have been Phelippes ... I told him. What I wouldn't give to have been him. To participate. Somehow. In history...

  Electric ant. Having come to Rio Fugitivo who knows why. Tempus fugit...

  Mary had been accused of conspiring against her cousin Elizabeth. Queen of England ... Mary wanted the throne of England for herself. She had escaped from Scotland ... She was a Catholic queen and the Protestant nobles had organized a revolt against her. They put her in jail. Forced her to abdicate ... A year later Mary escaped from prison. She wanted to regain the throne, but the troops loyal to her were defeated at Langside. Near Glasgow...

  Facts and more facts. Dates and more dates. Names and more names. Everything can be ciphered in a code. History can be ciphered ... Perhaps our lives are no more than a message in code awaiting its decoder ... It's one way to understand such loss.

  The guard has left the window open. Or maybe it was the nurse. A warm breeze blows into the room ... Caressing me. The birds are singing in the trees ... Like they used to sing in the green valley. The one I remember.

  What valley? What period in my life? The medieval towers. A hummingbird suspended in the air. Seconds. That seem like minutes. Time doesn't pass ... It passes. But it doesn't.

  The weather is about to change. It'll rain soon. That's how it's been every day lately.

  Mary found refuge in England. Elizabeth was Protestant and afraid of Mary ... The Catholic English saw Mary as their queen. Not Elizabeth. So Elizabeth decided to keep her under house arrest for twenty years. Poor Mary. They say she was very beautiful ... Intelligent ... Unlucky ... I remember the black velvet dress she wore the day she was executed. The charm of her accent. Her gentle manners. She was no longer the same. Her skin had aged. Her continual illnesses ... Religion and its wars. The loss of the throne...

  The future Turing listened to me with his mouth agape. Hanging on my every word in the persistent rain ... Perhaps he was seduced by the surface layer. Perhaps he was searching for the messages that were hidden behind the story ... Those who take up codes never stop searching. They are alert to the messages that others wish to send. They are alert to the world. Alert to their own messages ... Messages that someone inside might be sending without their knowledge. Suspecting themselves ... No one ever said that this profession attracted balanced individuals. The unhealthy pathology of the cryptanalyst. The paranoid pathology of the cryptanalyst.

  He who lives by the code dies by the code.

  Once twenty years of house arrest had passed. Sir Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth's minister ... Who had created a secret police force with fifty-three agents across the European continent. Machiavellian ... If the word weren't so overused. But time marches on and everything becomes overused ... Infiltrated Mary's inner circle. He placed one of his men as Mary's messenger.

  One of Mary's followers. Babington. Just twenty-four years of age. Conceived of an ambitious plan. To free her ... Then murder Elizabeth so that a rebellion by Catholic Englishmen would put Mary on the throne of England. Mary sent coded messages to her followers ... The messenger ... Before delivering the letters. Copied them and gave them to Walsingham. Sir Francis had an experienced cryptologist in his employ. Phelippes. Sir Francis knew that kingdoms are not won or lost by weapons alone. You also have to know how to read secret messages.

  Decipher them ... Decode them ... Dismantle them...

  You have to know how to read the words hidden behind the words. That's what I want for you. Future Turing ... To help me keep this government in power. With so many conspirators around. We need the military and the paramilitary. People trained to kill ... But we also need cryptologists ... People trained to think. Or to decipher the thinking of others ... The ideas hidden in the mist of words ... It was raining. I could see that my speech was convincing. I could see that the future Turing would never leave my side.

  I spit up blood. I sleep with my eyes open. I shake during the night. My body is rebelling ... Can immortals die? Did I come to Rio Fugitivo to die?

  I must have done something terrible to have been sent to this country. After having been in the great centers of civilization... Deciding the fate of the planet. I wind up on the periphery of the periphery ... But you don't argue. You do what you have to do. And I did it well ... I did it well ... I can continue on my way in peace. This country has an admirable secret service ... There is democracy today. But whoever wants to could try to remain in power ... The infrastructure is solid. Whoever wants to tell secrets behind the government's back. Has his days numbered...

  And meanwhile. I spit up blood.

  I'd like to know how it was that I thought what I thought. How it was that I decided what I decided. It's very hard to imagine how you thought.

  You chase your own tail.

  The letters between Babington and Mary were ciphered using an index that consisted of twenty-one symbols corresponding to the letters of the alphabet ... Except for j, v, and w. And thirty-six more symbols that represented words or phrases. And. For. With. Your Name. Send. Myne. Et cetera. Unfortunately for them ... Walsingham believed in the importance of cryptanalysis. Ever since he came across a book by Girolamo Cardano ... That great mathematician and cryptographer ... Author of the first book on the theory of probabilities. Creator of a steganographic device arid of the first autokey system...

  Walsingham had a school for code decipherers in London. Any self-respecting government should have had one at their disposal ... Phelippes was his cipher secretary. This I told the future Turing ... I was his cipher secretary. He was short. Bearded. His face pocked by measles ... His vision poor. He was about thirty years old. A linguist. He knew French. Italian. Spanish. German ... He was already a famous cryptanalyst in Europe. Phelippes. I told the future Turing as the storm rained down ... It was difficult for me to speak in the third person. But that's the way my life was. That's the way my life is. First and third person at the same time. Always.

  The messages between Babington and Mary could be deciphered using a simple analysis of frequencies ... Babington and Mary. Confident that they were using a secure system of communication. Spoke with increasing frankness about their plans to assassinate Elizabeth ... The message on July 17,1586, sealed Mary's fate. It spoke of the design ... She was w
orried about being freed before or at the same time that Elizabeth was killed. She was afraid that her captors would kill her. Walsingham had what he wanted. But he wanted more ... To tear the conspiracy out by its roots ... He asked Phelippes. He asked me ... To forge Mary's handwriting and ask Babington to give her the names of the other conspirators...

  Phelippes was a great forger. He could forge anyone's handwriting. I was a great forger. I could forge anyone's handwriting ... So I did. That's how they fell. Poor Babington and Mary ... If they had communicated without codes. They would have been more discreet ... But they lived at a time when cryptanalysis was advancing more quickly than cryptography ... A magic time in which decipherers surpassed encrypters. My kingdom for an analysis of frequencies.

  On February 8, 1587. Mary. Queen of Scots ... Was executed. Decapitated. In the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle ... All of this I told the future Turing in the midst of the storm ... The city shrouded in mist. Like the messages. We wound up drenched ... Huge raindrops running down our faces. Our pants were soaked. Our shoes were waterlogged. It didn't matter ... The future Turing saw himself as a Phelippes.

  He saw himself as I saw myself. As I have always seen myself ... I, who have no beginning and do not know if I will have an end. He saw himself helping to disarm a conspiracy ... Forming part of history. The secret possessor of secrets ... He saw that he could be more than he was. He saw that deciphering codes was not a game ... Lives were at stake. The destinies of countries. Of kingdoms. A correct deciphering would abolish chance...

  He's been with me ever since. Never abandoning me. Electric ant ... Connected to tubes that keep it alive. Connected to tubes that keep me alive. Or would my heart continue to beat even if there were no tubes?

  Chapter 11

  YOU WALK into the living room, a glass of whiskey in your hand, the ice rattling in the amber liquid. You sit down on the green velvet sofa and turn on the television, anxious to delay your encounter with Ruth in the bedroom. It's a strange game without any winners. She does the same thing, closeting herself in the study preparing for classes, correcting exams, reading the biographies of scientists and spies. There are nights when the bedroom remains empty until the early morning. Sometimes you sleep on the sofa, cursing Ruth out loud, insults that you will have forgotten by morning, while she, plagued by insomnia, her body immune to sleeping pills, invents work to fill the time.

  The whiskey no longer burns your throat but slides down naturally, as tends to happen as the evening wears on, after the first few glasses. You become lost in thought, counting the vertical brown stripes on the sofa.

  The announcer with a trimmed beard on the main news channel is announcing the attack that was perpetrated by the Resistance and turns the story over to a reporter at the entrance to the Presidential Palace. The virus has swept through government computers, and none of its Web sites have been left untouched (nor was GlobaLux safe from the attack). Images of the graffiti on the sites are broadcast: photos of Montenegro with a noose around his neck, insults about the technocrats who are governing the country without understanding it. The secretary of state has declared a state of emergency. The Workers' Union and well-known civic and indigenous leaders have expressed their solidarity with the hackers. The Coalition is continuing its preparations for the blockade of Rio Fugitivo tomorrow. You can picture the young cryptanalysts and software code experts at the Black Chamber, high on adrenaline, in search of the clues that will lead them to the perpetrators. They will call soon, and you will have to go back to the office. They need your experience to trace the history of the evasive Resistance, to find coincidences in the encrypted code, the sometimes invisible signature that the murderer leaves behind on the body, the fingerprints left at the scene of the crime. They need the memory of the archives, which is not entirely artificial yet but soon will be. Ramírez-Graham has ordered that all documents be scanned and digitized—drawer after drawer of papers. In the end, all of the papers stored in the basement will be transferred to the hard drive of some minuscule computer.

  Ruth appears in the doorway wearing a cream-colored flowered robe, a cigarette in her hand. She seems nervous. You turn off the television.

  "Have you heard the news?"

  "Yes, unfortunately. I'll probably have to go back to the office."

  "Flavia's in Playground, as usual. We really have to limit her time. The bill last month was far too high."

  "Yes, something will have to be done. Just be patient—it's her last month of classes."

  "Oh, I'll speak to her. She's got you wrapped around her little finger. You start out fine, raising your voice, sounding firm, until she looks straight at you and you melt."

  "There's nothing wrong with being kind."

  "And what exactly do you win by being kind? It's as if she's living in a hotel. She comes out of her room only to eat. To speak to her, you practically have to e-mail her. Or phone her. I read somewhere that it's not good to let your children have computers in their room. Who knows what they can access."

  You wish you were with Carla, letting her rest her head on your chest and fall asleep in your arms. The unmistakable expertise of her tongue can't compete with the vulnerability that hides behind the aggressive façade. You picture the marks on her forearm, fascinated. You've tried to help her, even paying for her to check into rehab; she didn't last long, just three days. The first night she got out, a silly argument pushed her over the edge and soon she was throwing glasses and cans of Cuba Libre at the wall, insulting you as if she didn't know you. You would like to do more than you already have, but you know that addiction, any kind of addiction, winds up capturing whoever dares approach it.

  "I was at the doctor's today. I've been getting nosebleeds, all the time."

  "Really? I wonder why."

  "Worry, maybe. Anxiety. Or something worse. My mom died of cancer. Well, she killed herself before the cancer could. I guess that's what worries me."

  "You think a few drops of blood mean you have cancer? Let's not overdo it..."

  Her face has aged. When you first met, her complexion was so smooth that a geisha in her prime would have envied her. Now her skin is losing its elasticity; it is a mask that no longer fits her skull. So many years have passed since the day you were introduced, in the cafeteria at the university. If you hadn't come in out of the rain that afternoon, into that smoke-filled room, and if you hadn't run into a friend who was chatting with Ruth...

  "What're you thinking about?"

  There she is, sitting next to you on the sofa, the woman who had shared her passion for cryptography. That woman who snored as if she had the hiccups, whose skin smelled of moisturizers, was the person responsible for the course your life had taken. And to think that when you met her, you were studying biology...

  "Someone found a way into my private e-mail account this morning. They sent me an easily decipherable code. I spent the whole day worrying about the message, when I really should have been worrying about how they accessed my account. Who? And why?"

  "Maybe they chose you for a particular reason. What did the message say?"

  "That I'm a murderer. That my hands are stained with blood."

  "Aren't they?"

  "They aren't."

  "Then you've nothing to worry about."

  That tone of voice ... When Montenegro returned to power in 1997, Ruth asked you to resign. Despite the fact that he returned by democratic means, she had only seen Montenegro as he had once been: a pathetic dictator. She had never been able to separate, as you had, the work from the ends that had been achieved by means of it: the defense of governments with doubtful morals. So scrupulous, so attuned to ethical questions, she had threatened to leave you more than once if you didn't resign. And yet she was weak; you didn't do what she asked and she is still with you.

  "I'm not worried," you say, somewhat agitated. "I've never shot anyone. I've never even touched anyone. I never left my office."

  "The same old argument. Only the one who pulls the
trigger is guilty."

  She stands up, stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray, and leaves the living room. She's angry. Should you have been more sensitive when she mentioned her nosebleeds? She is such a hypochondriac that you don't know what to take seriously anymore. If she has a headache, it's a fatal tumor. If she cuts her leg, it'll become infected and she'll lose it to gangrene. Ruth has become rigid over the years, has lost her soft edges. What a contrast to those endless nights spent at her house when she would tell you, passionately, about the code that had saved Greece from being conquered by Xerxes; when she taught you, using pads of tracing paper that quickly ran out, to decipher monoalphabetic and polyalphabetic substitution codes, to understand them using ADFGVX, Mayfair, and Purple. To others, you were a couple of bores; to the both of you, those were the nights when magic happened, when you fell in love.

  One hundred sixty-nine brown vertical stripes. Had they chosen that number intentionally?

  You need to go to the bathroom. Damn bladder rules your life! You have to get up at least three times during the night. Ruth always thought it was strange that you could function during the day after such a fitful night. But you have never needed much sleep. She used to; there was a time when her sleep was so deep that you could go in and out of the room, turn the light on, root through drawers, and she wouldn't even stir. Now her frequent insomnia gives her nothing but grief, puts her in a bad mood during the day.

  Those nights when you were young, when you would visit her at her house, not only had you fallen in love with her, but you had realized that you wanted to be a cryptanalyst. Ruth had discovered cryptanalysis when she was a child; she and her father would send secret messages in crossword puzzles that they wrote themselves. One day a question about the origin of what they were doing led her to an encyclopedia, then to the public library, and, later, to become obsessed with the topic. She had mastered the history and theory of cryptology, she could even decipher complex codes (although it might take her hours), but she lacked the intuition that, combined with technique, was needed to find the key that would unlock the secret message. You had an abundance of intuition, at least in this area. You even gave yourself over wholeheartedly to mathematics, a science for which you had a certain ability but that didn't necessarily attract you. This much is certain—you never wanted to become a cryptanalyst of algorithms sitting in front of a computer. It didn't take you long to become the student who surpassed the teacher. Still, there were no territorial jealousies. Ruth preferred theory to practice, the colorful anecdotes that allowed her to build arguments as solid as they were unusual regarding the course of world history. The laboratory for you, she would say, and someday I'll write the book.