Chapter 44

The Hotel Dust had a comforting familiarity, and the woman (I stared at her until I was certain) behind the reception desk barely glanced in our direction as we crossed the lobby.

Drakeforth opened the door to our room and we set the box down on the bed.

“Goat, you should take a shower.” I pointed towards the bath­room door.

Goat indicated the door and raised an eyebrow. I nodded and waved him in that direction. He opened the door, peered inside, and looked back at me with a question writ large on his face.

“Yes, shower. Come back when you and your…clothes are clean.”

When he had gone, Drakeforth handed me the computer out of the box. “This is for you. I’ll have a look at the sheet.”

Celerytron computers use empathically empowered techn­ology. That meant the new desktop PCs at the museum, and this notebook, were recently imported.

I stared at the screen as the machine booted up. The familiar GEC heart and lightning bolt logo glowing in high-definition.

“Godden Energy Corporation provided the technology to the Knotstick Order. New computers and a whole lot of information in return for the steady supply of double-e flux.”

“Where does Professor Bombilate fit in to all of this?” Drake­forth asked.

“Currently, he probably fits between half a dozen cities and innumerable home appliances. Prior to his being converted to double-e flux, he was the man holding it all together.”

“An idea is a fragile thing,” Drakeforth said. “Bombilate nur­tured the idea of an idea. He gave it to the Pathians and they ran with it. He made something as perfect and delicate as a soap bubble. This—” He carefully unfolded the shroud, “—is an original idea. A moment in time, preserved forever. The perfect distillation of a thought.”

“It’s lines and circles and some kind of numbers?” I peered at the sheet.

“Arthur’s first revelation. He never intended it as the found­ation of an entire religion. He just thought many thoughts that were too big and exciting for him to contain.”

“He sounds like an interesting person,” I said.

“Arthur was just a man. No smarter or more socially adept than the rest of us. He made cringe-worthy mistakes and some remarkable leaps of logic. If he hadn’t recorded the core principles of his theory of relatives on this linen sheet, he would have been as forgotten as a thousand other prophets who lived at the same time.”

“Strange how things work out,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the most valuable religious artefact in the world.

“It’s only strange when they work out. Can you log in to that?” Drakeforth asked.

“It’s not the default user name and password. This system has been used and carefully configured.” I rested my fingertips on the keyboard, feeling the hum of empathic energy glowing in the circuit boards and memory chips.

After a minute, Drakeforth cleared his throat.

“Something you need?” I asked, without opening my eyes.

“Access to this computer?” Drakeforth said.

I flexed my fingers and sat back. “You’re welcome to try it yourself.”

“User name, Bombilate?”

I keyed it in. “Now the password?”

Drakeforth thought for a moment. “We are talking about a very clever man. His password could be long and complex, or it could be as simple as Bombilate.”

“Right,” I smirked, and typed Bombilate into the password field and pressed Enter. The computer whirred and the login screen cleared.

“What happened?” Drakeforth asked.

“We logged in,” I said, swallowing my astonishment.

Drakeforth shrugged as if it were nothing, and went back to studying the Shroud of Tureen. I found the encrypted file and transferred the other section from the tablet to the notebook.

The two pieces fit together like the world’s simplest jigsaw puzzle, except it was still encrypted with a specific code key. I sighed and typed in Bombilate. The computer didn’t quite laugh at me, but I felt like it should.

“What would Professor Bombilate use as an encryption key…?”

“Have you tried using his name, but with a zero and a one instead of the ‘o’ and the ‘i’?” Drakeforth asked. He was on his hands and knees, his nose almost touching the grey fabric of the shroud.

“An encryption key needs to be something impossible to guess, but easy to remember. It’s like any code: once you know the key, you can unlock the entire message.”

“What would be the hardest thing to ever guess?” Drakeforth murmured his attention clearly on the sheet.

“A random sequence of numbers and letters,” I replied.

“Arthur’s formulae is the basis of some key concepts of quantum physics. Most of the work was done by more secular minds after his death, but he got people talking and thinking and, most importantly, doing some serious math.”

“I’m not sure even a mathematician could crack this,” I said.

“Arthur’s Theory of Relatives came about because he realised that nothing exists unless it is perceived. He had a friend, a woman named Magnesia. She didn’t know if her mother was alive or dead. Arthur concluded that she was neither alive nor dead, as long as Magnesia didn’t know.”

“That would have been weird for anyone who actually met the poor woman,” I said.

“Arthur understood that probability meant she could be both; in the Universe that Magnesia occupied, her mother could live forever, provided her daughter’s perception was never altered to create a reality where she had deceased.”

“Which helps us with the encryption key how, exactly?” I waited with my hands hovering over the keyboard. The answer felt close, and I itched to type it in.

“The key both exists and doesn’t exist. It is in a state of flux. Until it is observed, it can be both up and down. Left and right, porcine and equine.”

I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “The secret is to accept that you cannot know the key without destroying it.”

“It’s a start,” Drakeforth agreed.

“It sure is…” I pressed the Enter key and the file started to unpack into a readable format.

While the secret Professor Bombilate had died for unpacked itself, Drakeforth found a way to secure the ancient Shroud of Tureen to the hotel room wall. We stood together, studying the faded marks and lines. Over the centuries, lines had formed along the fold marks. The meaning of the symbols lost in the creases had caused more deaths and claims of heresy than any other aspect of Arthurianism.

“You could solve a lot of arguments by simply telling people what it actually says,” I said.

“I wrote it down with the expectation that people would accept the truth and it wouldn’t be open to interpretation.”

“People never accept anything, and everything is open to interpretation,” I replied.

“You can see why I find them all so annoying.”

“It’s understandable,” I agreed.

The bathroom door opened and a cloud of dust wafted out. A man walked into the room carrying an armload of cologne scent on his skin.

“Goat…?” I stared.

“Goat,” he agreed. His eyes were furtive, skipping over the floor and the walls before landing on the Shroud of Tureen hanging from the wall.

“Tree…” he whispered.

“Shroud,” I corrected automatically. “Goat, you look different.”

The calcified lump of facial hair had been scraped off his face, his hair was clean, trimmed, and combed back. He had a deep tan and wore a towel.

“Tree…” Goat came closer, the towel forgotten as he reached out and almost touched the sheet.

“I should find him some pants,” Drakeforth said. He went to his suitcase and retrieved clothes for Goat.

The notebook beeped, confirming that the file reconstruction was complete. I went to the computer and started reading. In the background, Drakeforth struggled to get Goat dressed.