Vienna (22 page)

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“And the pattern to this?”

“The gaps between groups are divisible by seven. But it doesn't always work. Some two-letter combinations break the relationship.”

“What does it mean?”

Vienna stood as if she'd been kicked. “I don't know! I hate codes! They hurt and you don't care. You use me and then make fun of me when I can't help. Bog off!” She stepped around Justine, headed for the bedroom in full stomp. Her face already drenched in tears.

I ignored the signs.

“Vienna, stop.” Justine's voice was as calm as she could make it. Vienna froze, resolutely not looking back. Justine walked to face her and then put her arms around the girl.

“I didn't mean to hurt you. I wasn't thinking.” She brushed her fingers through Vienna's hair. “We have a flight to Iceland this evening. You need to shower and start packing. Okay?”

“What about the letters?” Her voice stuttered by shallow breaths.

“I have a few ideas.”

“You think it's my period.”

“No. I think your mind works too fast and sometimes it fills your head with too much information. I think it's very scary when it happens.”

“Are you leaving me?”

“Only if you aren't ready to take off this evening. You better get going.”

The girl stood still.

“Vienna?”

“Sometimes I see how stupid this is, yeah? All this sobbing and carrying on like a child. A part of me hates it—screams at me for it. But that only makes me cry more. It's the only way I know to make things stop. It takes all my energy to cry so I can't hang on to whatever is happening. It lets me break away.” She sniffled. “And you were right anyway because that's just an excuse and I'm trapped inside myself just like you said.”

Justine inhaled. “I feel the same way sometimes—more times than you would believe. I just keep it hidden.”

“You aren't going to tell me to find other ways to make it stop? All the doctors tell me I should do other things.”

“If you need to cry, then cry. But if we keep talking like this, then I'll be crying too and that won't get us anywhere.”

Vienna nodded and with a deep breath walked to the bathroom. After she was gone, Justine collapsed into the chair in front of her Sony. Several minutes after hearing the water come on, she was still staring at the washed-out sky.

Carrying on like a child.

Justine shook her head. There were more important issues at hand. At least, they should be more important. Top of the list was whether or not Lord Davy could be trusted.

Start at the beginning, in Budapest. The manikin there had been vandalized, “Gisella” crossed out and “Lina” added. Young David Bell scrawling his love for Lina Zahler. The same Lina Zahler who, according to Vienna, was connected to the assassination of the empress of Austria.

Justine Googled the name and came up with a solitary hit, found inside a history book published in 1911. She skimmed dense paragraphs covering the Long Depression. Europe's masses falling to poverty while royalty toured the countryside in gilded coaches. Bejeweled knights, soon to be buried in the stinking trenches of World War I. The golden age of cloaks-and-daggers. Radical newspapers printed on clandestine presses; hushed meetings in dark cellars; chemical formulae for poisons and explosives passed in furtive handshakes. There was an element of romance to it—until words became action.

Luigi Lucheni rising from Parma slums to bury a shiv in the chest of the empress of Austria. “I hope I have killed her! Long live anarchy! Long live the revolution!”

Lina Zahler, who had supplied the knife, vanished as quickly as she appeared.

Secret societies and coded messages. Had Sinoro come across a relic from Zahler's world? What would Lord Davy make of it?

“Let's see which way you jump,” Justine whispered.

She entered Lord Davy's e-mail address, and added a prayer.

I suspect for Vienna love may never be more than mimicking what she thinks it should be. I know it can bring her happiness, but that's not your deepest concern is it? I can't answer that yet, being as confused as she is.

Meantime, we came across a code in one of Vienna's memory books. It's from the turn of the last century, written by an anarchist. It looks like a block of random letters to me, but Vienna sees a pattern: groups of letters (usually three) repeated in multiples of seven. Does this suggest anything to you?

We are headed to Reykjavík early this evening. Vienna seems content with this, though her crying spells have not decreased and may in fact be increasing.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

and miles to go before I sleep.

Yankee Invader

She wondered if she'd read the man correctly. Poetry with alpha males could be dicey. After a second's hesitation, she sent the note off.

Her inbox, once filled with invitations and praise, had turned into a reservoir of spam. Only one entry of any interest; a Thailand firm that made custom cases for high-end gaming computers. Hot Dragon. The website link showed Deco streamlines in high-gloss car enamel. The lowest price was 1600 euros. Apparently there was a demand for such things and apparently Justine Am's fall from grace was a marketable otaku meme
.
She would discuss it with James.

She was still looking over reviews of Hot Dragon when the Sony gave an e-mail beep. A reply from Lord Davy. The speed with which he'd replied was unsettling.

As you know, there are numerous behavioral and cognitive therapies that might help, but I would spare Vienna something she considers disgraceful. Then there are physiological treatments. The list is long and tiresome: methyphenidate, dextroamphetamine, and clonidine, for focus; mipramine and amoxapine for depression; fluoxetine and peroxetine for compulsive behavior. Some seemed to help, but they left her not herself. So you are now the sole drug and therapy.

Given the choice between unwarranted crying and the automaton haze left by the drugs, I would opt for the former. I trust female intuition can separate true anguish from habitual weeping. I have begun to consider this an advantage over a more traditional relationship. Forgive me if that sounds calculated.

The code is a strange question, not because it poses any issues, but because codes always sent her on one of her downward spirals. It is almost certainly a Vigenère cipher. The uneducated long considered such systems unbreakable, but as Vienna has demonstrated, it is nothing of the sort.

Encipherment begins with the selection of a keyword. In your case, the keyword is seven letters long. Given the source, I suspect it will be something inspiring to the radical mind. Next a Vigenère Square is constructed. This is a stack of twenty-six staggered alphabets. You can find examples on the Web. Encryption entails repeating the key word over the plain text. If the key word is “dissent” and the message to encrypt is “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers” then our rebel would write:

DIS
SENTDISSENTDISSENTDISSENT
DIS
SENTDIS

the
firstthingwedoletskillall
the
lawyers

Encrypting the first letter, “t” is a matter of going across the top row of your Vigenère Square until you hit the “T” column, and then descending until you hit the row beginning with “D.” The letter that appears at this intersection is the encrypted result. By luck, “the” appears twice under the same “D-I-S” of the keyword. It will be encoded in identical letters with a gap of twenty-eight letters between. Since the keyword is seven letters long, such repetitions will appear in multiples of seven.

Occam's razor suggests at least one of your three-letter groups is “the.” With more letters you will be able to guess the keyword, at which point you possess the solution.

As for your fears, if I may answer your great Frost with a poet of our own:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

Lord Wanker

The cipher explanation was clear as fog, but at least Justine had been right about the poetry. She found an entry for Vigenère ciphers on Wikipedia, complete with a square of alphabets and a description that unraveled Davy's hasty explanation. The algebra-heavy text made Justine wonder how Davy knew so much about codes.

“I'm packed.” Vienna stood in the doorway, her eyes swollen. Justine hadn't heard the girl so much as squeak a floorboard. Vienna looked self-consciously down at her clothes. “Why are you staring at me?” she asked.

The cipher was essentially mathematical.
She'll tear it apart if we can get past her fear.
“I'm not staring at you. I'm staring at the teacher's edition to a math problem.”

“What?”

“I sometimes used teacher's editions to cheat on homework when I was in high school. I found them at the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Come here.” Vienna stepped to her and Justine fussed over her clothing and hair. Vienna's face grew cloudy.

“None of that,” Justine said. “This is one of my joys.”

“Making sure your doll doesn't look stupid?”

“I don't want you to embarrass me.”

Vienna's eyes went wide.

“Hush,” Justine said. “If you always assign me evil intentions, I'll never escape them. Now, what rule of human behavior were we on?”

“One jillion,” Vienna said in her flat persona.

“Then rule one jillion and one is: people in relationships often find excuses to touch their partners. I find the sensation reassuring. Does it bother you?”

Vienna's long pause was expected. “Why would one of the world's most beautiful women need reassuring over anything? You always get me to do what you want anyway.”

Justine leaned over to Vienna's ear and whispered, “That's lesson one jillion and two. People surprise you all the time.”

Vienna's eyes moved across unseen words. “Touch may increase oxytocin in humans, particularly females, and may increase feelings of trust and generosity.”

“There you go.”
Feel the words instead of speaking them.

“Oxytocin was first synthesized by Vincent du Vigneaud, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1955.”

Justine closed her eyes and gathered Vienna into her arms. The girl made no response, her lips giving silent voice to endless streams of words.

“We have to get going,” Justine whispered.

They met James Hargrave for supper. He would not be joining them in Iceland.

“You have everything under control,” he said, “and I need to get back to being an agent. Easier to do in New York than Reykjavík. I do have twenty-three other clients.”

“When are you leaving?” Vienna asked.

“Tonight. Red eye to JFK on a triple seven.”

“At least we don't have to put up with your suitcases,” Justine said.

“Suitcases?” Vienna asked.

“Metal, hacked together from a Vietnam-era portable first aid station.”

“That's balmy.”

“Welcome to the world of fashion,” Justine said.

“It's a guy thing.” James smiled. “But they do raise eyebrows with security.” He folded his arms on the table.

Justine read his black and silver watch: 6:04. Twenty-six minutes before they had to leave for the airport.

Justine closed her eyes against sudden disorientation. The watch's geometry was wrong; there was no other way to put it. It didn't fit reality.

Was Vienna's sickness contagious after all?
Is this the price of my sins?

Justine blinked her eyes open. Girard-Perregaux / Manufacture. The minute hand approaching the “1.” The hour hand pointing almost straight down, through the inset travel chronometer and matching the hour hand there. The left-side timer set at zero. The hands were on time and perfectly arranged.

What did that even mean, that the geometry was wrong?

She has stolen me from myself.

 

18

Iceland

Iceland was tethered to jet stream clouds, indigo and umber layers pearl-smooth in the lengthening shadow of the world. Fifty minutes from Keflavík. Vienna sat on the window side of the first-class section of a British Airways Airbus. The sea below was finished in icy blues. The colors turned her mind inward, walking lonely places she didn't want to see. Presents under the tree and the lights all wrong.

She burrowed deeper under the thick blanket the steward had supplied. She should have started her period, but the cramps had eased and nothing had happened and now it seemed she would miss it, leaving her worried and somehow stretched out.

How had she known?

Justine sat in the next seat, bent over her laptop. Vienna saw the American was working on Mr. Sinoro's code. She wanted to be too tired to care what Justine was doing.