Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 605
She held the riot picture up, squinting at it. It was too
dim in here; she closed her eyes to view the inscape version in
better light.
Above the word PHOTOS were the bottom serifs of
some other letters. She couldn’t prove it, but the missing word
could very well be WALTHER.
"Serling, who took this group photo?"
"Lawrence Pakin. He was the man in charge of the
Winds’ psycholinguistics."
"What records do we have about him?"
"There is very little about him personally. He left behind
a very large library of writings. Some of it is encrypted, but I
have the rest if you’d like to--"
"Wait! Some is encrypted? How?"
"Using primitive but effective trapdoor functions. The
public-key method he used makes it prohibitive to crack the
code using brute force. Since we never discovered the key--"
"Did any of the thalience people use similar codes?"
"Most groups at that time did, Ms Mounce."
"Has anybody ever tried using one of the thalience keys
to open Pakin’s records?"
"I have no record of that. They assumed..." The
serling’s voice changed. "We assumed it was Pakin’s personal
code. There is nothing linking him to the thalience
movement."
The serling’s new voice was that of the Archipelagic
Government. It must have been listening in. Marya was now
talking to the oldest, most powerful human-based god in the
galaxy. Unfazed, she asked, "Have you got any of the keys of
the Hamburg thalience conspirators?"
"Yes. I assume you want to apply them to Pakin’s files
and see what we get?"