Chapter three
Professor Willow was unbelievably old, he walked with the assistance of two wooden canes and had a small oxygen bottle slung over one shoulder a clear plastic mask over his nose and mouth.
He had been tall once, now he was stooped over with thinning white hair and thick lensed glasses. He did still have his faculties though, and a powerful voice, he stood in front of the spinning mass of silver wires studying it carefully, I heard him take a long deep breath from his oxygen bottle, an image of someone stoking a fire with a bellows came to mind.
"Von Stein Mueller algorithm I think... using the music as some kind of trapdoor function."
"Who's this Von Stein Mueller? Can we send for him?" I asked.
Willow looked at me raising an eyebrow.
"Very dead I'm afraid... thankfully... god I hated that prick," he said.
"What's a trapdoor function?" Gwen asked.
"Common way to do crypto... you combine two things in a special way, the special way becomes the key to decrypt it, like the product of multiplying two prime numbers, you can factor the product if you know one of primes and that they have been multiplied."
"Oh... so the music and the wires create something together."
"Yes... can I have a look at the mechanism? That is the simplest way to find the answer," Willow asked.
"Um... well there isn't one... it's magical," I said.
"Hmm... magic you say," Willow took another long breath of oxygen," quite simple then."
"Really?"
"Yes... yes... find the person who made it and start pulling fingernails."
"Hmm... really... what if we could say... hypothetically... resurrect this Stein Mueller character," I said cautiously.
Willow's face turned dark.
"I wouldn't resurrect that prick if the universe depended on it, besides it is doubtful he would be of any help... we already know the equation, a good cryptologist assumes his enemies will find his methods, they construct their algorithms so that it doesn't matter."
"Why did you hate him so much?" I asked, curious.
"He was responsible for the deaths of some friends of mine, plus he was an arrogant jerk."
"Can't we use a computer?" Gwen asked.
"It would take years to compute the solution, the music throws a wrench into things as well."
"We could um... make a super magic computer... right Kem?" Gwen said.
"That would take even longer," I said.
I only had a rudimentary knowledge of the way computers worked so I would have had to hire an engineering company to design it, which would be very dangerous, smart people tend to find out things they shouldn't.
"So what will you do?" Willow asked.
"I guess we will have to take your advice professor, start pulling fingernails."
Professor Willow turned and looked at me, a serious expression on his face.
"The person who made this... be careful," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"In the war, I spent months studying codes, cipher text... you start to get an insight into the people who created them. This thing...," he pointed to the wires," I get a bad feeling."
This was the last thing I needed, now I would have to go back into the past confront this crazy sorceress and try to get an answer to her puzzle.
I hated the past, everywhere there was death and disease and everything stunk. I also had two new apprentices to train, the first my lover Peter, the other a former FBI agent named Janet.
Janet and my former apprentice Shelley got along like oil and water, I was forever refereeing disputes between them.
I think Shelley felt threatened by Janet, worried that she would somehow displace her as my colleague.
Janet didn't help matters much, she was very clever and was used to being in charge of people, she had a hard time being told what to do.
The truth was there were simply too many women sorcerer's with not enough to do, I wanted to start a sorcery school and start training more people, but I needed instructors so I was rushing everyone's training.
Not a wise thing to do when teaching sorcery.
My lover Peter was also hopeless, he had learned only two spells in all the time we had known each other, an enchantment for moving large rocks and a copier spell. He had steadfastly resisted learning the principles and techniques for creating spells, even the stone moving spell had been written by someone else.
I loved him, so I put up with it, but I still wished he tried harder.
I knew that I could not take either Janet or Shelley with me to the past, one would immediately resent the other. I would have to take Peter, the only one of us who spoke absolutely no ancient Egyptian, something else he refused to learn.
Gwen and I had reached the section of the city that we were all currently living in, the buildings here were all repaired and there were lights lining the streets.
We walked into an impressive looking building complete with large columns and statues, it was part of the cities old university complex.
When we entered the large lobby I saw both Shelley and Janet standing opposite each other yelling, both had their index fingers fully cocked ready for pointing.
Janet was a tall attractive dark skinned woman in her forties, she had been an athlete in her youth and still had a fit and trim figure.
Shelley was much younger and shorter with pale freckled skin and long reddish blonde hair.
"God... can you both just shut up please!" I yelled.
They both put their fingers down, their angry expressions turning sulky.
"I gotta go for a while... with Peter... Shelley you're gonna have to take over Janet's training," I said.
"Where?" Shelley asked.
"Ancient Egypt, Gwen can fill you in, I'll use the transport room so you can follow me if you have too."
"Why aren't you taking me," Janet asked, an angry look on her face.
"I want to have some time alone with Peter, this is a perfect opportunity," I said, lying.
"Can't I just train on my own?"
"No... it's too dangerous... look you don't have to like each other to work together."
I noticed Shelley had smug look on her face.
Maybe getting away for a while wouldn't be so bad after all, I thought to myself.
"Gwen can you tell them what's going on, I'm gonna look for Peter," I said as I turned to leave.