Janis Rollwagen flicked back her red-tinted hair and turned a piercing stare on Wang, Lingenfelter, and Beech.
“What about Kwok’s background? If he had so little interest in quantum computing, what made us trust him?”
“His undergraduate degrees were in physics and electrical engineering,” Wang replied, trying not to sound defensive, but not quite managing it. “He has genius-level mathematical aptitude. Chess expert, crossword-puzzle addict—like a lot of cryptanalysts, actually. What made him particularly valuable, though, was that he switched to European intellectual history for his graduate studies. He published extensively on sixteenth-century cryptographic and artificial memory systems, which perfectly suited him to work on the Forrest documents.”
“He also came very highly recommended by the Tetragrammaton program,” Beech said. “They’ve been watching him a long time. They vouched for him as a security asset.”
At the mention of Tetragrammaton, a scowl flickered over Rollwagen’s face just long enough for Brescoll to notice it. He sympathized. He had never much trusted that bunch, either. Tetra’s people were so secretive they made NSA look like a battalion of nudists parade-drilling through Times Square.
“There’s more, I presume?” Rollwagen said.
Wang, Lingenfelter, and Beech scrambled to restart the holo-cast. They heard more philosophizing, this time about a “universal memory palace” and “the creation of the divine AI.”
“The ‘memory palace’ is probably a reference to the Forrest Documents,” Beech said again, pausing the intercepted holographic broadcast. “Specifically to what they say about Matteo Ricci’s work in China, which was a part of Kwok’s investigation.”
“There’s something I still don’t understand, Dr. Beech,” Rollwagen said, tapping the table with her finger, and none too lightly. “Why do you think these four hundred-year-old code systems would have any relevance to China today? Or to the CIA, or to us here at NSA? Or to anybody in the intelligence and security community?”
Beech looked at both Lingenfelter and Wang, but it was Wang who replied, dimming the intercepted holo-cast as he brought up his own material.
“We’ve anticipated that question, I think. If everyone will put on their glasses, there beside you on the table, I think I can explain.”
With a grunt Brescoll joined the others in putting on the glasses. Captions and diagrams appeared in his field of vision, illustrating points as Wang spoke and tapped keys on his laptop.
“Many theorists have argued that certain mnemonics, or memory-aid systems, are ‘forgotten forebears’ or ‘secret origins’ of modern computing,” he said. “Artificial memory systems go back at least to the ancient Greeks. Usually the mnemonic art involved mentally creating a series of imagined spaces—a ‘memory palace’ or ‘memory theater’—and placing scenes or items in those imaginary spaces in a certain order. When the creator of the palace ‘walked’ through that imaginary space again, he could recall and recover the words or information represented by the iconic scene or object.”
Watching classical and Renaissance depictions of people and buildings appear and disappear on his AR specs, Brescoll was struck by how little difference there really was between memory palaces and contemporary virtual realities.
“Raymond Lull’s thirteenth-century memory tech, however,” Wang continued, “consisted of a complex, abstract system of wheels within wheels. The rims of the wheels were inscribed with letters representing the qualities of God, which organized all knowledge. Shifting the positions of the various wheels created endless combinations of concepts.”
“It was actually built, then?” Brescoll asked, looking at the extensive illustrations, diagrams, and descriptions Wang flashed before them.
“That, I can’t say with any certainty,” Wang replied. “I don’t know whether medieval mechanical engineering was quite up to the task. Even if it only existed as a ‘mental machine,’ Lull’s system of combinatorial wheels was nonetheless a forerunner of symbolic logic. It influenced Leibniz’s development of the calculus. It also anticipated Babbage’s nineteenth-century difference engine.”
As Brescoll watched, Lull’s abstract wheels became mathematical formulas, and then a concrete system of wheels and gears.
“Giordano Bruno’s magical memory charts in his Shadow of Ideas combined Lull’s wheels-within-wheels with Bruno’s own multilayered iconography of star-daemons. Bruno’s systematic projection of numerological and cryptographical techniques resulted in a system of such immense hermetic and Kabbalistic complexity that it transformed the memory palace into a sort of magical machinery. The mystical, abstract space generated by these magical memory machines resulted in what was essentially a Renaissance cyberspace, a complex interface that both mirrored the vastness of divine wisdom and pumped up the magician-sysop’s mind toward a divine altered state.”
“‘Magician-sysop’?” Brescoll asked. “Isn’t that pushing it a bit?”
Wang shrugged.
“Several of our analysts have argued that any sufficiently dense and rigorous information system takes on a kind of self-organizing coherence which resonates with other systems of similar symbolic complexity—be they mysticonumerological or quantum cryptographic. Or even with the ‘mind of God,’ in Bruno’s case.”
“The computer and cyberspace,” Beech put in, “and the whole of the infosphere, fulfill the late medieval and early modern dream of readily retrievable encyclopedic memory. The same impetus led to the creation of the first secret services, which also emerged in the sixteenth century. The everything-all-at-once of quantum DNA computing would have been a dream come true for sixteenth-century philosophers and memory-magicians.”
Director Rollwagen removed her AR glasses and shook her head. Everyone else took that as a sign and followed suit.
“You haven’t convinced me this isn’t all crackpottery,” Rollwagen said, “but I’ll suspend judgment long enough to evaluate how much damage Kwok may be doing. Regardless of whatever he may know about ‘magical mystery memory tours,’ it’s his knowledge of cryptography and cryptanalysis that we need to worry about.”
Beech brightened and restarted the holo-cast. Brescoll watched as the world fell apart in stronger storm and quake, and the newcomer tempted his other self to eat some kind of disk, despite the fact that the woman appeared intent on shooting him.
With that, the recording ended.
“That’s all we have,” said Steve Wang, clicking off the projection system, “and apparently everything that was sent out. There’s a lot of noise over what the Kwok doppleganger says, but we’re trying to filter that down and recover what we can. We can’t say with certainty whether this material was ‘broadcast’ by Kwok himself. His equipment records indicate his laptop system and his ’trodeshades are wirelessly connected by extreme short-range feed. Someone close at hand, with signals-intelligence expertise, could have snagged the signals, then sent them anywhere and everywhere.”
“We can’t, therefore, say much about the ultimate source of this material,” Bree Lingenfelter said. “We’ve been unable to contact Kwok since it went, um, public.”
“There’s a problem here, all right,” Director Rollwagen said, nodding to herself. Her gaze shifted from one to the other among them. “If we are to judge from the crypto-religious nonsense we’ve just seen, your operative in China may have come unglued. We don’t know if he’s in cahoots with the Chinese. They may already be using him.”
“It’s possible that, if they haven’t linked up with him,” Brescoll said, “or turned him yet, they may want to terminate him—they may even have done so already. Especially if he stumbled onto something the Chinese have put a great deal of time and effort into, in what you three have called their Bletchley Parks.”
“Even if he isn’t dead, and hasn’t already linked up with them,” Rollwagen noted, “there’s all sorts of classified material he might yet be able to spill. I don’t think I need to remind you that our military development an
d application of far-submicroscopic devices violates the Inner Space Treaty—to which both we and the Chinese are signatories. I’m well aware that agreement is honored more in the breach than the observance, but the fact of its existence still stands.”
With that, she rested her gaze on the deputy director. Brescoll cleared his throat. He glanced at Baldwin Beech, who nodded, wagging his bearded chin and waving his stylishly clunky glasses in one hand. That nod—self-assured, or just plain arrogant?
Beech was a particularly strident voice in the ongoing internal war against the “militarization” of NSA. As far as he was concerned, NSA’s primary emphasis should be on providing information to civilian diplomats, strategists, and policy makers at State. Never mind that NSA reported to the secretary of defense.
In fact, Brescoll himself favored the civilian course, on the grounds that NSA’s efforts better lent themselves to big-picture strategizing than to the minutiae of the battlefield. Beech, however, advocated for it in an annoyingly elitist fashion—simply because he seemed to feel it was more “intellectual.”
Brescoll had never completely trusted Beech. Too buddy-buddy with Tetragrammaton, for a start. And there always seemed to be a hint of condescension in the Good Doctor’s voice.
“We need to take steps appropriate to the seriousness of the situation,” Brescoll said carefully, “yet by the least-obvious approach. We need to get somebody on the ground where Kwok is based, and pronto.”
“If you need to pull Kwok,” the director asked, “do you have a backup? An understudy?”
The deputy director paused. Both Kwok and his backup—Benjamin Cho—were Beech’s boys. Still, Brescoll had liked Cho well enough when they’d briefly met during the hiring process. Cho shared Brescoll’s own appreciation of the outdoors—maybe not so much the love of hunting, but at least the fishing, and especially a shared understanding of how wilderness can “preserve the soul,” as Thoreau put it. Unlike his effete mentor Beech, Cho seemed straightforward and down-to-earth.
Then again, that might count against Cho in the world in which he would now be required to move.
“Yes, we do,” Jim Brescoll said at last. “Benjamin Cho. He’s an associate professor of computer science—or ‘computational processes,’ as they call it at Berkeley. Currently on sabbatical. Professor Beech selected him.”
“Good,” Director Rollwagen said, straightening the edges of her briefing sheets in preparation for going on about her business. “In lieu of other solutions, I suggest we pinpoint Kwok’s location and get Cho in there, posthaste. And do it quietly. Someone who can zombify that much of the computer grid, and break into channels the way Kwok has, probably has the ability to eavesdrop wherever and however he wants. I have a meeting scheduled with Dave Hawkins and the president this morning. I hope I won’t have to bring this up.”
Brescoll nodded. Hawkins, the national security advisor, was a shrewd political survivor. He frowned inwardly at the mention of the president, however. Commander in chief or no, the man struck him, personally, as yet another in a long line of spoiled rich-kid screwups selected to sit in the Oval Office.
But then, when you’ve got a trampoline full of money under you, he supposed, it’s always easier to land on your feet, no matter how bad the bounce.
He noticed that Wang, Lingenfelter, and Beech were all looking to him and waiting. Dammit, what do they want from me? he thought. This was their program. Nevertheless, despite all the “new openness” and use of academic “outside experts” being fostered by the State Department and CIA, he would bet that, if the shit hit the fan—if the Chinese had killed Kwok or, even worse, turned him—State wouldn’t be taking the heat. Nor would his three eager beavers.
“Yes, Director” was all Brescoll could find to say. But even as the meeting broke up, he was formulating how best to restrict Benjamin Cho’s need-to-know. Not so much out of mistrust of Cho, as out of fear at what others might do with him and his knowledge—in addition to Kwok’s—if they managed to get hold of him.
Walking back to his office, Brescoll hoped the director wasn’t expecting any immediate miracles. Investigation and intelligence didn’t tend to yield prompt gratification. That was why evil took so long to separate out from good, and why he expected this investigation would require quite some time—especially his time—before any breakthroughs were made.
Meanwhile, maybe the fundamental law of bureaucratic weather—“What blows up must calm down”—would come into play. But he wasn’t putting money on it.
FEARSOME ABSURDITY
BENCH LAKE
In the early morning light, ten and a half thousand feet up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the surface of Bench Lake was a liquid mirror. The water’s surface flawlessly reflected the tan trunks and green branches of the pines on its islands and along its shoreline—except the southeast side. Too steep for trees, the terrain there descended a thousand feet from bare-cragged ridgetop to scree-skirted lakeshore.
Beyond the forest to the southwest stood the eroded gray pyramid of Arrow Peak, soaring to just shy of thirteen thousand feet and plunging an equivalent depth into that parallel universe beneath the watery sky-blue mirror of the lake.
Standing and stretching beside his tent, Ben Cho realized he didn’t have much difficulty believing in that parallel universe. As a child he’d conversed with imaginary friends from that faerie cosmos next door—especially whenever his mother’s smother-love became too much to bear. He shook his head, trying not to remember.
“Bench Lake, resting on a true bench high above the canyon of the South Fork Kings River, offers good campsites that are well off the beaten track.” That was how the tour books and cyberguides invariably described this locale. How little justice that description did to this heart-opening place! Especially on a clear, moonless night like the one just past, when a second heaven of stars appeared twinkling in the lake’s depths. Or now, when the morning air was still, and nothing dappled the water’s surface but a few chill insects zigzagging above it, and meandering trout below.
Of all the places he’d seen in this world, this was his favorite. It had been Reyna’s favorite, too. He knew there were many places called Bench Lake, but this one, situated between Taboose Pass and Pinchot Pass, was the only one that mattered to him now, because it had mattered so much to his wife.
Just a year ago, on the fault-block granite of the ridge that cupped the lake’s western side, Reyna had busied herself taking photos while he lay on his back. First she sighted east, shooting toward the lake, their camp beside it, and the island across from the tent. Then west, over the canyon of the South Fork Kings River, to the brute stone sublime of the Cartridge Lakes country. Then north to Mount Ruskin and Vennacher Needle and Upper Basin. Then shot after shot of the afternoon’s storm clouds breaking and shifting and coloring in sunset light over Marion Peak, and Ruskin again, and the Needle.
“Why so many shots?” Ben asked her, lounging on the crack-seamed granite as Reyna continued to snap away.
“Because there’s a pattern to all of it,” she said, brushing her dark blond hair away from her face and framing another shot. “To all of Nature. You can almost see it if you look at it long enough. You can see that everything worked, until people came along.”
He sat up at that.
“What do you mean?”
“We just don’t work well with Nature. Haven’t, from the beginning. It’s right there in the Bible. Adam was the first gardener, and he got fired.”
Ben laughed.
“Since I’m the one who does all the gardening at home,” he said, “I don’t know whether or not I should feel offended. But since you’re the one with formal training in photography, I guess I’ll let you keep taking the pictures on our trips.”
“You’ll let me? Hah! That’s why you appear so much more often in our photos than I do.”
Ben inhaled deeply of this morning’s air, cool and pine-scented, then exhaled in a long sigh. He wished he had more pictures of her, n
ow. Before him, the blue and gray tent, the same one he had shared with Reyna such a short time ago, stood pitched again on the western shore of the lake. That shore was a swim of perhaps fifty yards to the lake’s broadest and westernmost pine-flagged island.
Not long after he had arrived and pitched camp early yesterday afternoon, he swam through that water cold as death—cold enough to remind him that he was still alive.
He’d needed that reminder. Swimming to the island, carrying Reyna’s ashes in a waterproof urn, he needed a shocking chill to break through his own internal numbness. He’d clambered out on the rocky shore of the island, goosefleshed in the afternoon wind, naked but for a pair of swimming trunks. A shivering man clasping a grail of ashes, he stood in a landscape reduced to essentials: lake punctuated by islands of stone. Stone islands punctuated by clusters of trees. Bare mountain peaks islanded in seas of conifer forest. Sky punctuated by islands of cloud.
Having brought the ashes dry through the water, he had unscrewed the urn’s lid. He recited from memory three lines from a poem Reyna loved:
“Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.”
He treasured a few private memories of her face and her voice and her form. He remembered how they used to joke about what they could have ever told their kids about how Daddy had proposed to Mommy, since that event had actually taken place in bed.
In their personal mathematics of marriage and family, however, two had become one but one had never become three—or more. They had chosen not to have children, and now they never would.
He said a few private prayers, until he found his love and his loss too deep to express. Then, with all the fearsome absurdity of life against death and ceremony against meaninglessness, he scattered upon the waters of Bench Lake the same contents he had a moment before so carefully carried through those waters. The ashes, blown by the afternoon winds, made a gray film on the wave-raveled surface, drifting and spreading before sinking into the icy, light-riddled depths.
The Labyrinth Key Page 4