eruditorum.org (Societas Eruditorum)
followed by a mailing address: a P.O. Box in Leipzig, Germany.
After that a few contact numbers are listed. All of them have the Seattle area code. But the three-digit exchanges, after the area code, look familiar to Randy, and he recognizes them as gateways into a forwarding service, popular among the highly mobile, that will bounce your voice mail, faxes, etc. to wherever you happen to be at the moment. Avi, for example, uses it all the time.
Scrolling down, Randy finds:
Record last updated on 18-Nov-98.
Record created on 1-Mar-90.
The '90' jumps out. That's a prehistoric date by Internet standards. It means that Societas Eruditorum was way ahead of the game. Especially for a group based in Leipzig, which was part of East Germany until about then.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.SF.LAUNDRY.ORG
followed by the dotted quad for laundry.org, which is a packet anonymizer used by many Secret Admirers to render their communications untraceable.
It all adds up to nothing, yet Randy can't get away with assuming that this message came from a bored sixteen-year-old. He should probably make some token response. But he's afraid that it'll turn out to be a come-on for some kind of business proposition: probably some mangy high-tech company that's looking for capital.
In the latest version of the business plan, there is probably some explanation of why Epiphyte(2) is building the Crypt. Randy can simply cut and paste it into an e-mail reply to [email protected]. It'll be something vaporous and shareholder-pleasing, and therefore kind of alienating. With any luck it will discourage this person from pestering him anymore. Randy double-clicks on Ordo's eyeball/pyramid icon, and it opens up a little text window on the screen, where he is invited to type commands. Ordo's also got a lovely graphical user interface, but Randy scorns it. No menus or buttons for him. He types
>decrypt epiphyteBizPlan.5.4.ordo
The computer responds
verify your identity: enter the pass phrase or 'bio' to opt for biometric verification.
Before Ordo will decrypt the file, it needs to have the private key: all 4096 bits of it. The key is stored on Randy's hard disk. But bad guys can break into hotel rooms and read the contents of hard disks, so the key itself has been encrypted. In order to decrypt it, Ordo needs the key to the key, which (in Cantrell's one concession to user-friendliness) is a pass phrase: a string of words, easier to remember than 4096 binary digits. But it has to be a long phrase or else it's too easy to break.
The last time Randy changed his pass phrase, he was reading another World War II memoir. He types:
>with hoarse shouts of 'banzai!' the drunken Nips swarmed out of their trenches, their swords and bayonets flashing in the beams of our searchlights
and hits the 'return' key. Ordo responds:
incorrect pass phrase
reenter the pass phrase or 'bio' to use biometric verification.
Randy curses and tries it a few more times, with slight changes in punctuation. Nothing works.
In desperation and out of curiosity, he tries:
bio
and the software responds:
unable to locate biometric configuration file. Talk to Cantrell :-/
Which is of course not a normal part of the software. Ordo does not come with biometric verification, nor do its error messages refer to John Cantrell, or anyone else, by name. Cantrell has apparently written a plug-in module, a little add-on, and distributed it to his friends in Epiphyte(2).
'Fine,' Randy says, picks up his phone, and dials John Cantrell's room number. This being a brand-new, modern hotel, he gets a voice mail box in which John has actually bothered to record an informative greeting.
'This is John Cantrell of Novus Ordo Seclorum and Epiphyte Corporations. For those of you who have reached me using my universal phone number and consequently have no idea where I am: I am in the Hotel Foote Mansion in the Sultanate of Kinakuta-please consult a quality atlas. It is four o'clock in the afternoon, Thursday March twenty-first. I'm probably down in the Bomb and Grapnel.'
The Bomb and Grapnel is the pirate-themed hotel bar, which is not as cheesy as it sounds. It is decorated with (among other museum-grade memorabilia) several brass cannons that seem authentic. John Cantrell is seated at a corner table, looking as at home here as a man in a black cowboy hat possibly can. His laptop is open on the table next to a rum drink that has been served up in a soup tureen. A two-foot-long straw connects it to Cantrell's mouth. He sucks and types. Watching incredulously is a cadre of tough-looking Chinese businessmen sitting at the bar; when they see Randy coming in, carrying his own laptop, they buzz up.
Cantrell looks up and grins-something he cannot do without looking fiendish. He and Randy shake hands triumphantly. Even though they've only been riding around on 747s, they feel like Stanley and Livingstone.
'Nice tan,' Cantrell says puckishly, all but twirling his mustache. Randy's caught off guard, starts and stops talking twice, finally shakes his head in defeat. Both men laugh.
'I got the tan on boats,' Randy says, 'not by the hotel pool. The last couple of weeks, I've been putting out fires all over the place.'
'Nothing that'll impact shareholder value, I hope,' Cantrell deadpans.
Randy says, 'You're looking encouragingly pale.'
'Everything's fine on my end,' Cantrell says. 'It's like I predicted-lots of Secret Admirers want to work on a real data haven.'
Randy orders a Guinness and says, 'You also predicted that a lot of those people would turn out to be squirrelly and undisciplined.'
'Didn't hire those,' Cantrell says. 'And with Eb to handle the weird stuff, we've been able to roll right over the few speed bumps we've encountered.'
'Have you seen the Crypt?'
Cantrell raises an eyebrow and shoots him a flawless imitation of a paranoid glance. 'It's like that NORAD command bunker in Colorado Springs,' he says.
'Yeah!' Randy laughs. 'Cheyenne Mountain.'
'It's too big,' Cantrell announces. He knows Randy is thinking the same thing.
So Randy decides to play devil's advocate. 'But the sultan does everything big. There are big paintings of him in the big airport.'
Cantrell shakes his head. 'The Information Ministry is a serious project. The sultan didn't just make it up. His technocrats conceived it.'
'I'm told Avi did a little bit of deft turkey-baster work ...'
'Whatever. But the people behind it, like Mohammed Pragasu, are all Stanford B-School types. Oxford and Sorbonne graduates. It's been engineered to the doorstops by Germans. That cave is not a monument to the sultan.'
'No, it's not a vanity project,' Randy agrees, thinking of the chilly machine room that Tom Howard is building a thousand feet below the cloud forest.
'So there must be some
'Maybe it's in the business plan?' ventures Randy.
Cantrell shrugs; he hasn't read it either. 'The last one I read cover-to-cover was Plan One. A year ago,' admits Randy.
'That was a good business plan,' Cantrell says.[11]
Randy changes the subject. 'I forgot my pass phrase. Need to do that biometric thing with you.'
