The Cthulhu Encryption

by Brian Stableford

  The other voice laughed too. Then the shadow came toward us—but before the candlelight could fall on the face and show me the stranger’s features, he knelt down and put his fingers out to touch the striven footpads.

  “They’ll live,” he said, after a moment or two. “The shoggoths have gone—but what on earth were they doing here? If they wanted the medallion, they could have stolen it a hundred years ago, as soon as Levasseur took it…but they are surely not capable of wanting anything at all. The emergence of the encryption in Ysolde’s flesh must have attracted their attention, perhaps as a matador’s cape draws a bull.”

  “They intended to possess us,” I blurted out.

  “Did they?” the mysterious stranger replied. “Well, perhaps they did. In that case, I really did just save your lives, for I doubt that sensitive men like you could have come though that experience unscathed, even if these two can wake up with nothing worse than a headache—and a broken nose, in one instance.”

  “I fear that you’ll have to give him the medallion, my friend,” Saint-Germain told me. “I have no strength left with which to fight him, and you’ve just seen that he’s a magician of unusual power. He’s been after it for a long time.”

  “I can be patient a little longer,” the shadow murmured, still keeping his features out of the pool of candlelight, although he had risen to his feet again. “It’s probably best that Ysolde regains possession of it as soon as possible, if she’s in need of protection. Saint-Germain was right to hand it over, albeit that he did so for the wrong reasons…and he might even be correct in thinking that Dupin can decipher the cryptogram. It’s a stern test, but I’ll be very glad indeed if he can pass it.”

  “Who are you?” was all I could think of to say, having found the rest of his speech incomprehensible.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Saint-Germain was quick to say. “You two have never met, have you? This is the famous Breton bibliotaph, Monsieur Oberon Breisz. Not his given name, of course.”

  “Neither of us is wearing his given name tonight, Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said the newcomer, silkily, “but we are who we are, are we not?”

  “Oberon Breisz,” I repeated, dazedly.

  “Indeed,” said the newcomer—and now he did move forward a little further, so that I could see his features. They seemed rather ordinary, save for their leatheriness. Had he been sun-tanned, I might have taken him for a sailor, but he was very pale…almost pale enough for me to believe that he was a denizen of some uncanny underworld, rather than a mere book-collector.

  Except that he could not be a mere book-collector, since he knew a spell that could send shoggoths back where they came from, and clearly knew more about Ysolde than a mere reader should have done.

  What on Earth is going on? I wondered. It was probably a silly question. Whatever was going on, it was not going on entirely on Earth. We might all be lost in a hallucination of some sort, but, one way or another, this business extended into the dream-dimensions, perhaps deeply.

  “Thank you for your intervention, Monsieur Breisz,” I said. “Although I cannot be certain, now, what would have happened had you not arrived, I was terrified. But how did you come to be here?”

  “I followed you from your house,” he said. “I hoped that you might give Monsieur Dupin a message for me. I would rather have delivered it myself, but when I saw the witch answer your door…I’ve encountered her before, when I tried to call on Monsieur Dupin at home. I could have forced my way past her, but I did not think Monsieur Dupin would approve of that, so I told myself to be patient. I am a very patient man, by custom and habit…perhaps a little too patient, if events have now begun to move quickly.”

  “What message?” I asked, a trifle foolishly.

  “Will you tell him that if Ysolde wants to come home, she is more than welcome,” Oberon Breisz said, earnestly. “Will you tell him that he is more than welcome in my Underworld too, and that the time has come for him to remember who he really is, and resume his study of the Necronomicon.”

  “Do you expect him to understand what that means?” I asked.

  “Perhaps he will,” the bibliotaph said. “If not, he will see it as a puzzle to be solved—and that will intrigue him all the more, will it not?”

  And with that, he turned on his heel and marched swiftly away, disappearing into the shadows almost as if by magic. After what had just happened, I could not have been excessively surprised if he really had disappeared by magical means.

  Saint-Germain was less impressed. “What a clown!” he exclaimed. “He’s a good magician, no doubt about it—but surely not as great as he thinks he is, if I’m any judge. Independent scholars always go mad. That’s the strength of the Society, you see—it keeps its members in balance. Dupin should join us soon, lest he go the same way. Mind you, if Breisz really does have a copy of the Necronomicon, it would be worth Dupin’s while to accept his invitation. If that’s where he found the spell he used to get rid of the shoggoths…but we ought to get out of here. If we’re found with them, there’ll be questions asked—and that bump on your head will make it obvious that you broke this fellow’s nose. No one will blame you, as I’ll give evidence that he was trying to rob you, but still…you know what sergents de ville are like.”

  I looked down at the unconscious footpads, who seemed very commonplace villains now that they had been disenchanted. Then I felt my forehead, were there was indeed a fluid bump that was bound to give way to a visible bruise.

  “Come on,” Saint-Germain urged, as he picked up the two parts of his swordstick and reunited them. “Recover your cane and let’s be off—you need to get home. I’ll walk you to the corner of your street, just in case. You have a message to deliver now, as well as the amulet. The plot’s thickening, and no mistake—I’m deeply intrigued myself. Don’t forget to impress upon Dupin that he’s in my debt now, and that the merest glance at the medallion will incur an obligation.”

  I was completely out of my depth, and not only because my head had begun to ache as a result of my intemperate assault on the pickpocket. I was glad that Saint-Germain walked me home, for I would have been frightened without his presence. I was even glad to see Madame Lacuzon open the door; I felt that I had a better sense now of the true value of her protective presence.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PYRATES

  I had not thought that I had been absent for more than an hour, and had not been conscious of any bells chiming the hours, but when I checked my watch I found that it was past two. Leuret and Chapelain had both gone and Dupin was alone in the smoking-room. He seemed to be extremely weary, and was certainly not his usual incisive self. Ysolde Leonys had apparently gone to sleep again, although Dupin’s concierge went to sit with her again as soon as she had let me in.

  “I take it that the session was not a success,” I said, as I sat down heavily in my armchair. The normality of the cushions seemed very welcoming, and I was glad of their familiarity.

  “It was not,” Dupin confirmed. “This time, she really did wake up fully, to all the agony of her condition. She was in great distress. Chapelain had to dose her with laudanum, and still had difficulty persuading her to go sleep again. There was no possibility of asking her any questions. Leuret did not seem overly disappointed about that. I fear that his opinion of me has gone down, and that he now thinks me even madder than Victor Hugo. What have you done to your head, my friend? That’s quite a bump.”

  “I had a slight contretemps with a pickpocket. He came off worse than I did.”

  “I’ve glad that you’ve got safely home. I’ll ask Madame Bihan for some hot water, so that we can bathe it.”

  “Don’t bother,” I told him. “It’s nothing. It might have been a great deal worse, if Oberon Breisz had not come to our rescue.”

  That caught his attention, as I had known that it would. He forgot all about the bump on my head and the possibility that it might need attention. I had the rare satisfaction of seeing his eye
s grow wider, with patent astonishment. “I only ever heard his surname,” he murmured.

  “It’s not a coincidence,” I said. “He asked me to give you a message.”

  “What message?” Dupin demanded.

  “He says that if Ysolde wants to come home, she’s more than welcome,” I repeated, “and that you’re more than welcome to visit his Underworld too. He says that it’s time for you to remember who you really are, and to resume your study of the Necronomicon. Do you have the slightest idea what he means by that?”

  Dupin shook his head in wonderment. “I’ve never seen a copy of the Necronomicon. I’m truly sorry that I didn’t go with you, now—but I was so eager to discover what Chapelain might find out…and now it will have to wait until tomorrow anyway. We can’t hope to decipher the puzzle until then.”

  “According to Saint-German,” I said, “Oberon Breisz is a magician—but also something of a clown. I suspect that his judgment may be faulty, at least in the latter instance. At any rate, Breisz could certainly have taken this, had he wanted to, when the pickpocket had failed—but he didn’t want to. He and Saint-Germain both seem strangely content for you to have it, at least temporarily. Saint-Germain was very insistent, though, that you’ll be in his debt if you so much as look at it.”

  As I was speaking I took the linen parcel out of my pocket and handed it to Dupin, who took it without hesitation. “What is it?” he said, as he began to unwrap it.

  “The Levasseur medallion,” I said, bluntly.

  If I had astonished him before, I had electrified him now. He actually started—but he completed unwrapping the wooden disk, and then stared at it in wonderment for two full minutes, turning it over and over, in silence. I could see the array of forty-nine tiny characters carved on the obverse, which seemed sinister now that I knew their possible significance, but might have been hardly noticeable to an ignorant observer.

  “Is it the same cryptogram?” I asked, finally, to check Saint-Germain’s assurance that it was not.

  “No,” he said, “it’s a different one, but in the same script. With twice as much text, however, I’ll have a much better chance of deciphering both.”

  “Do you really want to decipher the whole of the Cthulhu encryption?” I asked. “Is it even safe to try?”

  He reflected for a moment, and then said: “Yes—but it probably isn’t safe…especially if Saint-Germain wants me to do it. Whatever he told you will be a lie, of course, but did he tell you why he wants me to have it?”

  “He said that it was a counter-spell, and that you’d need it if you succeeded in deciphering the last line of the other. Breisz, on the other hand, said that Ysolde ought to have it, because she might need protection. If the monsters that came after me as soon as I accepted it return, we might all need protection…but you’ll have to figure out how to use it first.”

  His avid eyes were soaking up the strange array of symbols, squinting in order to make them out in the lamplight, but the mention of monsters snatched him back from his contemplation.

  “What monsters?” he asked.

  “Shoggoths,” I said, succinctly, being in no mood for preliminary confessions of not-quite-certainty.

  “You’ve seen the star-spawn?” he said, with more envy than horror in his tone. Then he made a further attempt to pull himself together. “Tell me exactly what happened,” he said. “Every tiny detail.”

  I did the best I could, although my description of the two phantom monsters that had attempted to steal the medallion was inevitably vague.

  When I had finished, he shook his head. “This needs further thought,” he said, “But not now. I need a clear head. I need sleep—and so do you. Chapelain will come as soon as he can in the morning, and we must make every effort to capitalize on his expertise. This is far more complicated than I had anticipated.”

  My head was still aching, and I had probably never been in greater need of sleep, but I could not help saying: “Ysolde will not want to go back to Oberon, will she? She will want to stay with her beloved Tristan, now that she has found him again after so many years.”

  No matter how exhausted he might be, Dupin’s inner pedant never became drowsy. “I am not Tristan de Léonais,” he said, “nor is that poor woman upstairs in my bed the Queen of any Underworld. Nor is the person who is calling himself Oberon Breisz the King of any Underworld. He is probably not even a Breton. Perhaps he is a magician, with some skill in encryption and decryption…and perhaps he believes that he has been disinterred himself, like Saint-Germain…if Saint-German’s assertions can be taken seriously. Whatever part Breisz is playing, though, I shall be glad to match wits with him. Now go to bed, my friend, and sleep. Tomorrow, we really must make progress in solving this puzzle.”

  I did as I was told, but I slept very badly, and not entirely because my head was aching. I dreamed, inevitably, about cephalopods and dragons, magicians chanting incantations of forty-nine incomprehensible syllables, and the Comte de Saint-Germain—who, in my dream. had not aged a day since they day that Olivier Levasseur was hanged in 1730, even though he had been buried in the interim, and still reeked of grave-dirt.

  Even so, I did feel better in the morning, and even better when I had eaten breakfast. When I enquired about Dupin, Madame Bihan told me that he had been up for two hours already, poring intently over “a bit of wood and some bits of paper” in the smoking-room. Now, though, he had gone to sit with “the lady.”

  I was not unduly surprised that Dupin had risen before me; although he was a common mortal, and became tired when overstressed, he did not require much sleep to repair him, and often contrived to be an early riser as well as a night-owl, when he felt a sense of urgency.

  “I’m very sorry for all this inconvenience, Madame Bihan,” I said.

  She seemed surprised. I thought at first that it was because, after a life in service, she was unused to having her employers apologize to her, but her reply suggested otherwise. “It is a matter of life and death, sir,” she aid. “Antoine and I will not be found wanting, in such circumstances. Amélie has explained to us what is at stake.”

  It took me several seconds to realize that Amélie must be Madame Lacuzon’s forename. “Really?” I said, wondering now much, and exactly what, Dupin had told the old gorgon.

  “Don’t be afraid, sir,” Madam Bihan said, in a tone that was almost maternal. “She’s a wise woman. Everyone is frightened of her, and rightly so, but she’s not of the Devil’s party. She has seen the Devil, in her time, but she sent him packing.”

  I knew that wise woman was a euphemism for witch, and I was not surprised to hear that suggestion being made, yet again, of Dupin’s intimidating concierge.

  “She sent Oberon Breisz packing as well as the Devil, it seems,” I observed.

  “She protects Monsieur Dupin,” thee wise woman’s cousin proclaimed, loyally—and adopted a more confidential tone to add: “He is a great and good man, she says…but he does not always know what is good for him.”

  I finished my coffee in haste and immediately went up to Dupin’s old bedroom. The curtains were drawn to keep out the daylight, but there was a nightlight burning on the bedside table, and Dupin had obviously continued his intense study of the two cryptograms by means of its wan light, in spite of its unsuitability. When I came in, though, he laid two pieces of paper on the coverlet, where the wooden disk already lay, and looked up, blinking. He had evidently made a copy of the tiny symbols on the disk, magnifying them to the same degree as Leuret’s sketch, and had been studying the ninety-eight symbols in careful juxtaposition.

  I took hold of a chair and pushed it into a position beside his own, although I had to remove a book that was lying on the cushion before I sat down. I placed the book on the coverlet beside the medallion and the pieces of paper, after glancing at its title. It was a recent reprint of Captain Johnson’s General History of the Pyrates, in English. I presumed that Dupin had brought it up, as it certainly did not seem to be the kind of readi
ng-matter that Madame Lacuzon or Madame Bihan would have chosen.

  “Madame Bihan just confirmed that Oberon Breisz has tried to see you at your apartment,” I told him, in a conscientious whisper, “but that Madame Lacuzon would not let him in. She seems to think, as Breisz did, that your concierge is a witch, who has appointed herself your guardian angel since sending the Devil packing.”

  “Madame Lacuzon does have that conviction,” Dupin admitted, also moderating his voice, although he would not condescend to whisper, “and she does not always tell me when she sends someone away. I never scold her for it, because her judgment is usually sound.”

  “You mean that her madness generally works to your advantage?” I said.

  “She is not mad,” he told me, sternly. “Indeed, she is he sanest person I know.”

  I was slightly hurt by the absence of an exception made for me, but I did not scold him for it. Instead, I asked: “How is Mademoiselle Leonys?”

  “A little better, I think,” he said, “although still under the influence of the laudanum. She was probably in dire need of deep sleep, after what must have seemed a hellish week in the pandemonium of Bicêtre, but a good bed can work wonders. Hopefully, by the time that Chapelain gets here, she’ll be as ready as she ever will be to by obedient to his mesmeric authority, and to tell us what she knows. I hope so.” His gaze strayed back to the medallion, as if magnetically attracted to it.

  “You should not try to study characters as tiny as those in this dim light,” I told him, “or even the copies you have made. Ordinary print is not much better.”

  “My eyes are excellent,” he assured me. “I really do believe that I might be able to work out the pronunciation of the unknown characters, given time—and I can’t help feeling that the matter is urgent. As for the History of the Pyrates, it’s set in comfortably large type—although I’ve only glanced at it, to refresh my memory, in case there was any information about John Taylor that had slipped my mind.”