Cryptonomicon

Randy doesn't know what to make of the Wing business. It puts him in mind of Doug Shaftoe's yarns. Maybe Wing is looking for the Primary, and maybe Enoch Root is too, and maybe the Primary is what Old Man Comstock was trying to find by decrypting the Arethusa messages. Maybe, in other words, the location of the Primary is sitting on Randy's hard drive right now, and Root's worried that Randy, like an idiot, is going to give it away.

How'd he arrange to get into a cell next to Randy's? Presumably the Church's internal lines of communication are first-rate. Root could have known for a few days that Randy was in the clink. Time enough to hatch a plan.

"How'd you end up here, then?" Randy asks.

"We decided to raise a bit of a stink ourselves."

"We being the Church?"

"What do you mean by the Church? If you are asking me whether the Pontifex Maximus and the College of Cardinals put on their pointy bifurcated hats and sat down together in Rome and drew up plans for a stink, the answer is no. If by 'church' you mean the local community in my neighborhood, almost all of whom happen to be devout Catholics, then yes."

"So the community protested, or something, and you were the ring leader."

"I was an example."

"An example?"

"It frequently does not occur to these people to challenge the powers that be. When someone actually does, they always find it incredibly novel, and derive much entertainment from it. That was my role. I had been making a stink about Mr. Wing for quite some time."

Randy can almost guess what the next two letters are going to be, but he has to keep working through the algorithm or the deck will get out of whack. He generates a 23 and then a 47 which, modulo 26, is 21, and subtracting the 23 and the 21 from the next two ciphertext letters K and J (again, modulo 26) gives him N and O as expected. So he has "DONO" deciphered. And continuing to work through it, one letter at a time, the cards getting a little sweaty in his hands now, he eventually gets DONOTUSEP and finally loses his place while trying to generate the last keystream letter. So now the deck is out of whack and completely unrecoverable, reminding him that he'd better be careful next time. But he can guess that this message must be: DO NOT USE PC. Enoch is worried that Randy did not anticipate Van Eck phreaking.

"So. There was a demonstration. You blocked a road or something?"

"We blocked roads, we lay down in front of bulldozers. Some people slashed a few tires. The locals put their ingenuity to work, and things got a bit out of hand. Mr. Wing's dear friends in the government took offense and called out the Army. Seventeen people were arrested. Unreasonably high bail was set for them as a punitive measure--if these people can't get out of jail they can't make money and their families suffer terribly. I could get bailed out if I wanted to, but have elected to stay behind bars as a gesture of solidarity."

It all seems like a plausible enough cover story to Randy. "But I'm guessing that a lot of people in the government are appalled by the fact that they have thrown a saint into jail," he says, "and so they have moved you here, to the high-prestige luxury jail with private cells."

"Once again your understanding of the local culture is conspicuous," Enoch Root says. He shifts position on the bed and his crucifix swings back and forth ponderously. He also has a medallion around his neck with something startling written on it.

"Do you have some occult symbol there?" Randy asks, squinting.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I can make out the word 'occult' on your medallion there."

"It says ignoti et quasi occulti,which means 'unknown and partly hidden' or words to that effect," says Enoch Root. "It is the motto of a society to which I belong. You must know that the word 'occult' does not intrinsically have anything to do with Satanic rituals and drinking blood and all of that. It--"

"I was trained as an astronomer," Randy says. "So I learned all about occultation--the concealment of one body behind another, as during an eclipse."

"Oh. Well, then, I'll shut up."

"In fact, I know more than you might think about occultation," Randy says. It might seem like he's beating a dead horse, except that he catches the eye of Enoch Root while he's saying it, and gives a significant sidelong glance at his computer. Root processes this for a moment and then nods.

"Who's the lady in the middle? The Virgin Mary?" Randy asks.

Root fingers the medallion without looking at it, and says, "Reasonable guess. But wrong. It's Athena."

"The Greek goddess?"

"Yes."

"How do you square that with Christianity?"

"When I phoned you the other day, how did you know it was me?"

"I don't know. I just recognized you."

"Recognized me? What does that mean? You didn't recognize my voice."

"Is this some roundabout way of answering my question about Athena worship v. Christianity?"