by Hanuš Seiner
I felt waves of irony wash over me along with the pulsing fields. Unbelievable. In all those years of guiding my clients into the ships, not one had been diagnosed with Faraday disease. The acidity of their skin had been closely scrutinized. But Janita avoided her medical examination because of the virus. It was funny, in a way, but I couldn’t laugh.
This platform was our final station, no matter what gift Janita carried on her body. The coils mocked us with their persistent buzzing.
Tuesday, September 4, 2192
Unbelievable! I held a longer conversation with Arvin today and I’m still feeling fazed from what I learned. On one hand, I cannot believe it. But nevertheless … it could mean a giant step in our understanding of the Vaían civilization.
Arvin says that the language and writing itself are the basis of Vaían ciphering. Human linguists and cryptologists have always been amazed by the Vaían Elders’ ability to spontaneously create texts with several simultaneous meanings. According to Arvin, they had no choice! The Vaían language has a self-ciphering tendency, he says; it’s a closed algebra, a self-contained universe of texts. Whatever is written in it necessarily has several meanings. The Vaían didn’t create texts containing multiple meanings. They wrote one and then searched for the cipher keys using simple algorithms. Have they created all of their cipher culture unintentionally, built on texts originating simultaneously with others? Is the virus also one simple code, whose other functions the Vaían discovered by applying more and more cipher keys? Is the basic trigrammaton cycle just a minimalistic approximation of the real functionality of the written Vaían?
Arvin confided to me that the government stopped financing his research because he did not get closer to communicating with the Vaían technology. Instead, he rose higher and higher in the abstract plane of the theory of symbolic languages. His obsession with the possibility that Vaían could be self-ciphering made him return to Europa in search of the guerrilla army cryptologists. He was looking for people able to write fully in Vaían, and explored how, with the growth of a text, other ones also evolve, how the number of meanings and keys increases, how the cipher key and deciphered text itself both change with rewrites of the original text. It’s simple up to five letters, he explained to me. Pentagrammatons still result in a comprehensible cycle. If the author is well versed in it, he should be able to imagine the sentences parallel with those he’s writing at the time, he can intentionally compose with more meanings. The breakthrough comes with hexagrammatons. The sequence of cipher keys doesn’t close, it grows through the alphabet like a spiral, like a snail’s shell. For any longer text we write in Vaían, Arvin claims, there exists at least one hexagrammaton. If we find it, we can decipher the text into a new meaning. Suddenly we’re faced with two texts, different from each other, and must choose which branch to continue along. There is no ciphering back to the original and the cycle is not closed, so if we choose to continue writing the new branch, we cannot return to the old one. In other words, we cannot find out how the original text evolves if we’re writing the new one. At any moment, we can find another key for deciphering the new text; the number of meanings therefore grows constantly, up to infinity.
Later: The notion that I’m writing another meaningful text simultaneously with this diary scares me. Should I discover it and continue it? What can it be about? I’ve torn ten blank pages from my notepad and started copying my diary so far. I’ll try to give the pages to Arvin tomorrow. I’ve broken my only pencil into two halves. Whatever awaits me on the other side of my own notes, I won’t face it alone.
* * *
I opened my eyes. Janita was kneeling by my mattress, blanket wrapped around her naked body.
“Are you asleep?”
I stared at her, unable to speak.
Her tired eyes shone red-white from a face transformed into a swirl of ornaments and thin lines. The viral labyrinth followed the outlines of her cheekbones and jaw, extended its distorted fingers to her nape, coiling around her neck like a hungry constrictor. The expanded virus gave Janita a demonic appearance. The flowing code resembled dancing flames, the sharp lines of symbols on her cheeks were like war paint.
“You don’t need to explain to me,” she continued when she saw I was awake. “I know I can go no further. I’ve known it for several hours, but it took me some time to accept it.”
“But why…” I managed.
“I lied to you, but only in part. My father really does live down there in the Destroyer. And I really do want to give him something. Something I carry in my viral code, something my friends on Europa wrote into it. A hexagrammaton. You saw it. It walked your body when I was asleep.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me when I let him grow from the incubant into his full beauty.”
Into beauty. Facing what the virus transformed Janita into, my understanding for the Jovian tumbled down. It was fascinating, true, but also unbelievably, overwhelmingly repulsive. Janita must have been mad.
“I cannot deliver the hexagrammaton to my father or anyone else from the crew,” she said quietly, and suddenly I knew with a horrifying certainty what she’d say next. She did: “But you can.”
I didn’t speak. My silence bore neither agreement nor refusal; just waiting.
“Have you ever thought what it would be like if you had reconciled with your wife and stayed on Ganymede? You were a successful young diplomat. Everyone thought of you as the future ambassador. If you truly became him, whose side would you choose? You’ve seen the poverty the Jovians lived in. You’ve seen both moons extend their hands for the merest crumbs from the tables of the inner planets. You’ve seen us eat junk from Earth and drink waste from Mars. Only five weeks remained. If you had stayed on Ganymede just five weeks longer, you’d have seen another Jupiter. No longer a stinking periphery of the system. The arrival of Vaían ships changed everything. Suddenly we were at the center of human future. The inner planets started revolving around Jupiter. You could have been their representative in the Republic. Do you understand all that you missed?”
“Janita … that’s all the past.”
She shook her ghostly head. “Thanks to people like you, the past still remains in our reach. What draws you to the ships? Why have you chosen a profession that enables you to enter them? Why have you listened to me? Why have you not denounced me? For me and my friends on Europa, you are the ambassador of Earth in the Republic. The real Jupiter lies not behind the belt, but right here on Earth, buried under clay and rock. We trust you. I trust you.”
Her sesame seed eyes were hypnotizing me.
“Maybe what you say is true. But I don’t want to be a…”
“Martyr?” she finished. “Are you asking for meaning? Don’t you realize what would change if you deliver the hexagrammaton to the ship? In eleven years, the engines will deplete and their power over the crew will fade. The virus will weaken and allow my father and fifty other people to reach the Earth’s surface again. They can climb up the throat as defeated men, used, humiliated. Or they can emerge enriched and return to the Jovian moons bearing a new hope. As Vaían Elders. Do you understand? Fifty beaten dogs change nothing. Fifty Vaían Elders can change everything. Even your past.”
The silence between us lasted for an agonizing moment.
Janita leaned closer. Her face, scarred with the virus, stopped just next to mine.
“Devil’s martyr,” she breathed, and it sounded like a question.
“Devil’s martyr,” I whispered, and it sounded like an answer.
Then she pressed her forehead, covered with sweat, to my brow. Our fingers intertwined and our lips met.
Wednesday, September 5, 2192
I almost cannot write anymore. I’ve been copying the last lines of my diary just by sheer force of will. I managed to give the papers and half the pencil to Arvin during breakfast.
I feel as if the whole prison just disappeared. The whole universe disappeared. There is only the text and the two of us: A s
cientist whose hunger for knowledge drove him into prison, and a former ambassador from Earth to The Free Republic of Europa and Ganymede, sentenced for treason.
I cannot wait for tomorrow. I hope I don’t disappear before then, too.
5.
I descended only so far as to disappear safely out of Janita’s sight.
Then my will left my body, evaporated like a cloud of smoke in the dimness of the throat. My arms and legs refused my commands. I toppled to a protruding rim of a coil. The buzzing resonated through my whole body.
I felt emptiness. Darkness. Compared to the moment of the transmission of the virus, my whole life had been just an unceasing emptiness and darkness. Janita merged with me, revealed her nature transformed by the virus to me. No carrier ever spoke of an infection or control by the virus; now I finally understood why. I’d been blessed, urged to join something far bigger than I was, bigger than Janita, The Destroyer of Seven Villages, Earth, Jupiter, the revolution. I received a gift. At first it felt like jumping into deep, freezing water. My heart gave a few arrhythmic kicks; a spasm seized my body. But then seeds of a new structure started emerging from the cold. Like the Milky Way come alive, they spread through my mind. The most important thing in your life, Janita had said some time ago. No, I countered now, the most intimate thing in my life. But the galaxy of the virus in my mind also contained its black holes.
I’d rest a little, I decided. Five, ten minutes before I continued.
A small snail crawled around my head, leaving a path of slime behind. Its dark shell was malformed by the fields, distorted like a bull’s horn.
Everything was wrong. The viral incubant swirled amid my hair roots. I was descending into a world trapped in dimness and stillness, a world buried alive. Why? Because of a chimera, a dream, an unborn child fated to wait eleven more years in its womb. I could either become a part of this grim world, or deliver the hexagrammaton and return through the throat bearing the uncompiled virus; to the guards’ rifles, the unforgiving gazes of the judges, the dissection tables of government labs.
Janita would be facing certain death. In a few hours, she would run out of the depolarization solution and nothing would prevent the charging of her body anymore. When the voltage went above critical, her tissue would discharge. She’d burn like a faulty electron tube in an old radio.
Over and over again, I’d been asking myself what I cared about, and couldn’t answer. Once already, I’d run from someone I had loved. Once before, the Jovian moons had invested their hopes in me. And once before, I had disappointed them. Now I could choose which I would repeat. Janita was wrong; I’d been no ambassador of Earth on Jupiter, not even the one buried in the cones. That part of me that perhaps had the courage to be him had stayed on Ganymede with my wife. Only a coward had returned to Earth, Mr. Path of Least Resistance, Mr. I Don’t Look for Trouble.
A communication cable climbed the wall just beside where I sat; a bundle of ceramic fibers functioning as ultrasound waveguides. No electromagnetic signals could escape the throat’s shielding and potential traps. Mechanical pulses in the ultrasound could.
The small silvery connector slid into my hand. It felt like someone else had risen, extended his arm, and let the piezoelectric interface of the connector latch onto the fibers.
The display brightened and flickered alarmingly under the attacks of the fields.
JANITA PALTEV WORKS FOR EUROPAN RESISTANCE SHE IS INFECTED BY VAIAN VIRUS ALSO INFECTED ME WE ARE BOTH IN DANGER SEND A RESCUE TEAM
So much ruination in the limit of a hundred and fifty characters. Martyrs are not good diplomats. And diplomats are not good martyrs.
Saturday, September 8, 2192
Finally! It took Arvin three whole days to find the cipher key. I couldn’t write a word in the meantime. Now I’m looking at the papers scribbled by Arvin and holding my breath. Arvin deciphered the first paragraph of my diary to test the key. I had written this almost two weeks ago: “I finally succeeded in cadging some writing accessories from the guards. For the first time after more than a year of trying, they didn’t dismiss me with a touch pad limited to Earth alphabets. I received a plain pencil like I haven’t seen since childhood, and a thick pad with lined paper. It smells of glue and ancient times. I kept leafing through its empty pages and smelling it all afternoon. Now I’ve finally decided to start writing.”
After applying the hexagrammaton, the text changes into: “Threads of rain drummed relentlessly on the car’s roof. Streams running down the windows merged and went separate ways again. The air suffocated with water and the smell of wet earth. I stopped where the muddied road met a tall razor wire fence. I almost couldn’t see the gate in the thick rain; if it weren’t for the guard’s booth, it would have seemed that the fence crossed the road ruthlessly and gave no one from the outside a chance to reach the peak of the towering cone.” What can it mean?
I’m tearing other blank pages and starting to draw cipher tables. The pain in my hand has eased but I’m afraid it will soon return in all its strength.
Later: I’ve gone mad. There is no other explanation. I’m going through the text slowly and my confusion grows. I’m reading some story about a girl from Europa who travels into one of the buried ships to visit her father. The narrator is a federal agent providing the visit. His thoughts are alien to me but his choice of words, his way of speaking seems so familiar! As if I’ve written the text. That’s beyond my imagination. But I have! Everything is going in circles. Deep slumber, obsidian snail, seven villages at the bases of seven cones.
As if, beyond the looking glass of the cipher, I’ve been writing about what could have been if I had not stayed on Ganymede until the Vaían arrived. What could have happened if I left my wife during our biggest crisis and ran to Earth like a coward.
As if, beside my reality, another one existed, separated only by the cipher key. Is that possible?
I cannot go on any longer today. I hope to understand more tomorrow.
* * *
A soft, short thud, like a hand slapping a table. No one from the crew heard it, but it did not escape the engines. They let it enter everyone’s minds.
The captain stood in the infirmary’s door and looked at the white blanket covering the body with the same confusion as everyone else. Suddenly the crew was everywhere, emerging from the dark insides of ship and clustering around its captain.
“She must have fallen from high up,” the doctor said. “The left half of her body is completely shattered. A part of her skin is burnt from when she flew quickly through the fluctuating field.”
The girl who landed on the hatch separating the throat from the airlock might have been about twenty-two. Europan, the doctor said. A carrier.
She hasn’t come alone, the engines sang. Look what she has brought.
The virus on Janita’s body was dying silently along with the diminishing biomagnetic field. The symbols were fading, lines breaking. The medical probes lifted the black shell of the hexagrammaton gently and copied it with the greatest caution into the ship’s systems.
The crew obeyed the engines’ requests and formed an uneasy crowd. In the middle of it stood Corporal Paltev. He didn’t see the body up close, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have recognized Janita. Only somewhere in the deep corners of his subconscious, a thought emerged: My daughter would be the same age now. He learned the truth many years later. But not that Janita hesitated for a long time as she saw through her tired eyes the black coveralls of the rescue team’s soldiers, approaching by the rope ladders. The jump wasn’t so much a jump as a fall. A flight. She stood on the edge of the platform, her arms spread and breath held. The blanket slid off her and had torn a few symbols of the virus along with it. Janita fell with her eyes open, and so she glimpsed—maybe a second after her bare feet abandoned the cold platform—a man sitting on the rim of a coil. And though it could have been only a slight, hardly noticeable moment, Janita was sure their eyes had met.
* * *
“We
don’t know what may happen. But we must try,” the captain said as she leaned her head to the soft cradle of the scripting interface. Fifty crewmen followed her movement. One after another, they received the encapsulated cipher key inside their viruses, as if they each knelt by the bier with Janita’s covered body during a funeral ceremony. Instead of flowers, bouquets of surgical steel decorated the room. But everyone who accepted the hexagrammaton seemed suddenly younger. They stopped slouching. They still talked quietly, but passionately now. All of a sudden, they had something to tell each other, though they could communicate through the engines’ minds. Their hands shook with surprise and expectation, the unrest of the calm before the storm.
Like when sunbeams melt the ice in the arriving spring, the crew hurried through all corridors to the command room. The engines shared their excitement and emitted trills of enthusiasm. The beast of a compilation panel was waking up from its hibernation under the captain’s hands.
Compatibility control in progress, the engines told them.
They were all looking at each other; confused, full of joy. The hexagrammaton interrupted the grueling stillness of their days.
Compilation ready.
The captain pressed her lips together. At first she wanted to talk to her crew, lift their mood, but now she saw it wasn’t necessary. “Captain affirming compilation.”
Just a second, two, five before the half-forgotten feeling of tingling arrived. The virus changed its structure, the incubant once again expanded through whole bodies, but according to a new key. At the same time, the engines’ virus also changed. Their song wavered, the melodies merged and tones lifted. All the gazes were firmly fixed on the captain.
And then? Slowly, creepingly came what they feared most: emptiness, disappointment. Nothing. The compilation slid into the path paved by the one before. No merging of all the minds. No new control over the engines. Deep silence fell in the room. It lasted for long, arduous minutes. Even the still engines respected it. The fifty members of the crew withdrew into their shells of despair, one after another lowered their gaze to the ground.