The Cthulhu Encryption

by Brian Stableford

  As I have said before, the mid-1840s was a time of rivalries, when intellectual battle-lines were being drawn and forces readying themselves for conflict. Bellicosity of every kind was in the Parisian air just then, even though it was to be more than a year before actual barricades went up in the streets and political Revolution reared its hoary head yet again, condemning Louis-Philippe’s juste milieu to the dustbin of history.

  In such times as that, essentially petty disputes can sometimes become exaggerated, to such an extent that when one looks back at them ten for twelve years later—as I am doing now—it is not easy to see what all the fuss was about. Fundamentally, Leuret and Chapelain were on the same side, allies in the same long war of attrition, but they could not quite see eye to eye in matters of tactics and strategy. They were not supposed to discuss their patients in front of laymen—even expert laymen like Dupin—but there was a loophole in that particular barricade when the patients in question had public reputations and could be discussed in their public roles. Leuret had to know that Honoré de Balzac was Chapelain’s patient, and that Chapelain had treated other notable writers in the past, just as Chapelain knew full well that Leuret had looked after Victor Hugo’s brother when he was at Charenton, and must have met the great man on numerous occasions—but that did not prevent them from discussing the great men’s published works, nor from incorporating a certain subtext into their discussion.

  “I am aware of the prevailing opinion,” Leuret said, “that Notre-Dame de Paris and La Peau de Chagrin are literary masterpieces, and I do not dissent from it, in terms of pure artistry. I will even concede that their employment of hallucination as a theme is full of interest from the viewpoint of psychological science—but that is because they are, in a sense, pathological, and hence dangerous. They do not merely use hallucination as a theme or a device; they are, in themselves, hallucinatory, and thus unhealthy, for their readers as well as their writers.”

  “There is a sense in which all novels are hallucinatory,” Chapelain replied, “even the stubbornly naturalistic novels that Monsieur Balzac began to write when he had laid his Swedenborgian fascinations to rest. But I dispute that literary fantasies, even if they are blatantly and unrepentantly fantastic, are unhealthy. Quite the opposite, in fact; I believe that the two works you cite are more conducive to mental health than injurious to it, not because of their careful moralizing component, but because of the way they engage with and exercise the reader’s emotions. The ability to identify with others, to stand imaginatively in their shoes and empathize with their standpoint and feelings, is the key to self-understanding as well as social understanding, and novels help us to do that, not merely by providing a training in the art but by offering us hypothetical identifications that the narrow routines of contemporary social life cannot offer.”

  “I agree that all novels are essentially hallucinatory,” Leuret said, “even those that strive for the utmost naturalism—but their seductiveness is, or at least can be, a dangerous trap. To encourage people to empathize with unreal individuals, even when those individuals are not fanciful or insane, is to encourage a dangerous kind of fantasy. And you must admit, I think, that very many of the characters in novels, however naturalistic they are supposed to be, would be reckoned insane by any competent physician. Do you really believe that it is good for readers to be encouraged to stand in the shoes of madmen and madwomen, as Monsieur Balzac and Monsieur Hugo routinely invite them to do? My own view is that such identification is essentially perilous.”

  Dupin intervened at this point—but not to deflect the conversation on to safer ground or pour oil on troubled waters. “Do you agree, Dr. Leuret,” he asked, “with the common opinion that genius and madness are closely allied?”

  “Very much so,” Leuret replied, as Dupin must have known that he would, having read the Fragmens. “Indeed, I must confess that I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague Dr. Lélut, who considers that genius is but a species of madness, and that many men we consider great, from Socrates onwards, owe their reputations to their hallucinations.”

  “Which proves, does it not,” Chapelain put in, “that hallucinations can be virtuous as well as dangerous—that they have played a key role in human intellectual progress.”

  “That is to simplify the argument unreasonably,” Leuret countered. “The reality is that a man can be capable of solid reasoning as well as hallucination. Consider Isaac Newton, for instance—a man who was very obviously mad, but also a fine logician and mathematician. In the end, his madness got the better of him completely, and he spent the later years of his life trying to indentify and solve ciphers that he believed to be encrypted in the text of Bible, but in his early days, while he was still struggling for sanity, he produced arguments from evidence and mathematical proofs whose objective competence is indubitable. Think what Newton might have achieved, Dr. Chapelain, if only he could have received effective treatment for the madness that ultimately claimed him!”

  “You consider logic and mathematics the antithesis of hallucination, then, Dr. Leuret?” Dupin asked.

  “Absolutely,” said Leuret. “They are provable, and indubitable; they provide us with our firmest grip on the substance of reality. But they are powerful to the exact extent that they are applied to secure, reliable and conscientious observation of the world as it is: the orbits of planets, the behaviour of falling objects, the deflections of rays of light by prisms and lenses. When logic is earnestly applied to false premises—figments of the imagination—the process leads, inexorably, from fancy to further fancy, elaborating extraordinary patterns of delusion that can confuse and ultimately swamp an entire mind, dragging it down into the depths of unalloyed insanity. That is the kind of tragedy that I try, every day, to prevent—but as you saw today, I am fighting against a veritable tide, whose sheer mass of numbers makes even tiny victories inordinately difficult to achieve.”

  “But if Newton and Socrates were mad,” Chapelain interjected, “And owed their genius and greatness in part to their madness, does that not prove that madness can, if only occasionally, be virtuous?”

  “I can only repeat what I said before,” Leuret retorted. “Imagine what they might have achieved had their sanity been unalloyed with hallucination! If only they could have been cured….”

  He seemed enthused by the idea that he might one day have a Socrates or a Newton in his care, to whose flights of fancy he might put a stop. But was not that, in itself, a fantasy, dangerous by his own definition to the balance of his mind?

  “You think, therefore, that it was wrong of me to pander to Mademoiselle Leurys’ seeming delusions this afternoon?” Dupin said, somewhat careless of convention, as ever.

  Leuret did not seem upset by Dupin’s originality; he was something of a Revolutionary himself. “I fear, Monsieur Dupin,” he said, sententiously, “that I do—I was disappointed in you, I must confess, although I suppose I might have anticipated it, since I had taken Dr. Chapelain to task the day before, for doing exactly the same thing, and he brought you to Bicêtre. I know that the lady is dying, and that it really does not matter in the great scheme of things whether she dies sane or deluded, but there is a principle at stake, and I fear that I can sometimes be overzealous in defending it. I hope you will pardon me for saying so, but I do not think that you are doing the lady any good by bringing her here, even if she will be more comfortable than she could ever be on the ward, if you intend to encourage her fantasies…and I certainly do not think that you are doing yourselves any good.”

  “You have no need to apologize, Dr. Leuret,” Dupin assured him, “for I can agree with you wholeheartedly that it would be better by far if she were be to die sane—but I fear that we do not have that choice. Perhaps the world would be a better place if there were no hallucination in it, and we were all able to be the kind of scientists that Monsieur Comte would like us to be, using mathematics and scrupulous logic to deal with reliable facts gleaned from careful observation—but the fact is that we do
not live in such a world, and cannot be people of that kind, no matter how hard we try. We have no choice but to deal with hallucination, and must try to do so wisely. For that reason, I do agree with what Dr. Chapelain says—that the genius of men like Balzac and Hugo is an invaluable resource for men like us.”

  I did not feel able, even within the scope of my duties as host, to rein in Leuret or Chapelain, but I did think it my duty to exercise some diplomatic restraint over my friend, so I hastened to put in: “But Monsieur Balzac is more than a little mad, is he not? I’ve only seen Hugo at a distance, but if rumor can be credited, and the evidence of Notre-Dame de Paris can be trusted, there more than a little madness in his genius too.”

  “Dr. Leuret agrees with Dr. Lélut that all poets are mad,” Chapelain put in, a trifle mischievously. “He thinks the same of all mesmerists, too. Indeed, were he to examine his conscience thoroughly, I think he might be forced to the judgment that there is not a single sane man in all Paris—including himself.”

  “That is not true, Dr. Chapelain,” Leuret replied, in a thoroughly dignified manner, “although I will concede that the vast majority of the sane are those who do not trouble themselves overmuch with the intellectual and moral conundrums that tax men like ourselves—and I will also confess that I sometimes thank God that I am not a genius.”

  “I’m no genius myself,” Chapelain replied, in a more conciliatory tone, “but I will confess that I have difficulty thanking God for it.”

  All three of us looked at Dupin then, although I doubt that any of us was looking for a confession of lack of genius. “Oh,” he said, blithely, “I have no hope of denying, in company like this, that I am mad. Were I to make a claim of sanity, the explanation I promised Dr. Leuret would surely convince him otherwise, and probably Chapelain too. My friend, of course, already knows full well that I am mad.”

  I shook my head, more in sorrow than anger. “I must confess,” I said, “that I cannot see the harm in reading fantastic novels, and even less in listening to nursery tales of magic and chivalry. Such pastimes are delightful, in spite of all the violence and ugliness to which such tales repeatedly play host. Even the insane can surely take as much solace from fairy tales as from dance or music, and I cannot believe that they pose any danger at all to the sane. Hallucinations are not contagious, in the way that measles and smallpox are.”

  “But they are contagious,” Leuret insisted. “Not merely in the wards of Bicêtre, but in the drawing-rooms of Paris—they spread like wildfire. You might think that you are safe from their contagion if you refuse belief, insisting that they are only stories—but they get into your head, and once there, they alter our thoughts and feelings, for the worse rather than the better. They may seem harmless, but their corruption is all the more insidious in consequence.”

  No one call him mad for saying that, although I cannot vouch for anyone’s private thoughts.

  “Dr. Leuret is right, of course,” Dupin said. “Legends are contagious, for they are designed to be. And he is right too, to suggest that we underestimate the extent to which they influence our thinking, even when we withhold our belief. When Isaac Newton became convinced that there were cryptograms in Biblical legend, however, and that the whole world is one vast cryptogram, in which all the secrets of Creation lie hidden, he was not entirely wrong. Legend is a species of encryption…although I really ought to explain what I mean by encryption….”

  “Indeed you ought,” my friend, “I said, for you have promised to do exactly that, in order to explain to us exactly what the Cthulhu encryption is, and why it might be important that it is engraved in Mademoiselle Leonys’ flesh…if, indeed, it is. But it is time now for us to move from the dining-room to the smoking-room, into a very different atmosphere.”

  There were nods all round; all the three of them were enthusiastic to develop the discussion in a more concrete fashion

  Even as we stood up from the table, however, the doorbell rang.

  Reflexively, I made as if to go and answer it, but Dupin actually put out a hand to stop me, and his grip on my arm was firmer than mere politeness would have required. I heard him mutter: “So soon!” too quietly for the other guests to have heard.

  Somewhat to my surprise, as we all paused expectantly, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs; it was Madame Lacuzon, not either of the Bihans, who was going to answer the bell.

  I was not sorry about that; as I had told Dupin, I was sure that the Devil himself would not get past that fearsome woman, if she were able to look him in the face.

  We all paused, as if petrified, listening for the sound of voices. We heard them, but the front door was too far away for us to make out exactly what was being said, or to have any chance of recognizing the voice of whoever was arguing with Madame Lacuzon.

  In the end, I think we all emitted a sigh of restrained relief when, after a long and seemingly pregnant silence, the door closed again. A few second later, Madame Lacuzon appeared in the doorway, bowed politely to the assembled company, and then came to me to hand me a folded piece of paper. Then, without saying a word, she withdrew and went back upstairs to resume her vigil.

  I unfolded the note and read it.

  Dupin’s dragon will not let me in, it read. It is absolutely imperative that I speak to you, whether Dupin forbids it or not. I will wait in one of the chapels in Saint-Sulpice, all night if necessary. Come when you can. It is a matter of life and death—yours, mine and Dupin’s. In this, we are on the same side. Do not fail me.

  Saint-Germain

  Dupin was looking at me curiously, but I did not hand him the note. I knew well enough what his reaction would be to any approach from Saint-Germain, and I strongly suspected that he might indeed forbid me to go to meet him—but I wanted to make up my own mind about that, and I had never been convinced that the President of the Harmonic Philosophical Society was my enemy, even if he was something of a charlatan and a crook. For that reason, I folded the note again and put it in my pocket, muttering: “Nothing urgent—it can wait until later.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ENCRYPTION

  “You will forgive me, I hope,” Dupin said, “if my explanation seems rambling, and a trifle disparate, at least to begin with, but this is a complicated matter.” He gathered himself then, holding his pipe just so and sucking on the stem. Then he blew out a cloud of smoke, as if to symbolize the expulsion of thought and fancy that he was about to undertake,

  I had gone to open the window slightly, in the hope of clearing the air by some small but substantial margin—but then I spoiled the effect by poking the fire and throwing on another log, which crackled and hissed as its sap seethed and its bark went up in flames.

  “When Dr. Chapelain first showed me the cryptogram yesterday,” Dupin continued, “my initial reaction was to dismiss it as a matter of no significance, having seen many such scribbles before. I was disinclined to believe that it was a genuine cryptogram, even in the trivial sense that construes encryption as a process of converting information from a readily comprehensible format to an incomprehensible one, by means of a substitution cipher—a process that can as easily be applied to a laundry list as to a message from a political spy or directions to a hidden treasure. Such mundane uses have been common since the days when Athens and Sparta employed spies to report on one another’s political intentions by means of scytales, and became rife in such periods of turmoil as the Latin decadence, when early Christians used symbolic and numerological codes to communicate information that might have facilitated persecution if understood by their enemies.

  “Before that, however, the Pythagoreans construed the entire world as a vast cryptogram in need of deciphering, and they were the ones who devised the ancestral term whose double meaning has been carried forward ever since by the word in question. The literal meaning of encryption is, of course, to put in a crypt, to entomb. The Pythagoreans believed that the great cryptogram of nature did, indeed, contain much that had been deliberately buried and conce
aled. Exactly why this had been done they were not certain, but they were in no doubt that various encryptions had been carried out in the immemorial past, and naturally attributed the work to the gods. Most encryptions, they assumed, had been done for virtuous reasons, in order to prepare the world for the advent of humankind. The legend inevitably arose, as a corollary of this assumption, that a particular individual had taken on the role of sweeping the world clear of forces that would have been inimical to humans, entombing them all by means of magic formulae of encryption. That legend, transfigured within new religious contexts, became the myth of Solomon imprisoning the demons and setting his seal upon their prisons—a seal which might be reversed by the right incantatory key.”

  “A key whose use implied the ability to make a pact with the demon thus released?” Leuret queried.

  “Some Christian conjurors seem to have believed that,” Dupin agreed, nodding his head, “although many legends of that sort warn against potential treachery. Arabic folklore, too, is profoundly uncertain about the controllability of liberated djinn, and their likely generosity—but I doubt any encrypted entities of that sort have ever been properly liberated….”

  “As opposed to improperly liberated?” I could not resist putting in—but that only elicited a frown from the pedant.

  “There may well be degrees of liberation,” he said. “Physical liberation into the world of matter is one thing; liberation in the realm of dreams, hallucination and madness might be possible without that. Indeed, if there are figurative windows in the metaphorical cells where the entities are encrypted, that is the realm on which they look out—and if the entities in the metaphorical tombs can still walk the earth in any measure at all, it is as ghosts and phantoms that they do so, haunting the minds of their privileged seers.”