Notes from the Grey Tower

Chapter 2

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Andemon has a pretty smile, and I have no resistance at all.

I spent a week studying that note, sitting in the library with a loaf of bread in my mouth, looking at the note upside down, upside down, and sideways, but they were still just scraps of paper full of stars and moons. Extremely irritable.

I remember when I was very young, I lived with my parents in a flat in London. On winter nights, my father and mother are always used to doing calculations with a notebook and a pen in front of the fireplace, just like other families are used to reading newspapers in front of a warm fire. Suddenly one day they sent me and several large boxes of notebooks and books to my uncle's farm in Bedford. Mother kissed my forehead over and over again, promising to take me back when the situation was better. My father just patted my head and reassured her that I was a little man now and would take care of myself. That was the last time I saw them, at a London train station.

Three months later, my uncle received a letter from London saying that the flat where we lived had caught fire, and both my father and mother had survived.

My uncle is actually kind to me. Although he doesn't teach me, he never let me go hungry. He strictly opposed my learning mathematics, but the more he forbade me, the more he wanted to try. When I was very young, I often hid behind the big wooden box in the storage room, curled up against the wall of the box, peeked at my mother's notebook, and wrote and drew on the floor with a half-length pencil. One day my uncle went into the storage room to get an axe, and found that the entire floor was covered with numbers, plus signs, minus signs and semicolons densely packed like earthworms. He beat me up and sent me to the local public school the next day.

I ended up at King's College Cambridge.

When I was a child, I didn't understand that the things in my mother's notebook were called code deciphering. I just thought it was a very interesting number-letter game, and I was tireless and happy.

Yes, passwords are games. One group tries to hide something, another group tries to find it. When I want to tell you a secret, I process the secret in a way that only the two of us know and pass it on to you. After you get the information, restore the information according to the agreed method. The processed information is called plaintext, the decrypted information is called ciphertext, and the decryption method we agreed on is called a key.

For example, if I want to tell Andrew I love you, I will not directly write I LOVE YOU in plaintext, but in hknudxnt form of ciphertext, that is, each letter is shifted four digits in alphabetical order, and I It becomes H, L becomes K... When Andrew took this seemingly meaningless note and moved each letter four places forward in alphabetical order, he was able to restore my mean. This is the cipher used by Caesar the Great to pass on secrets to his generals, the classic Caesar cipher.

This is in the case of knowing that the key is "shifted by four digits", the password can be easily restored. However, under normal circumstances, decryptors do not have the enemy's key. They directly use the ciphertext to guess the encryption method of the other party, and then try to crack the password. This is what I do now, looking at a piece of paper full of stars and moons and guessing what the hell they mean.

Ciphers are inseparable from mathematics, and decryptors often have genius mathematical minds. They must find out the implicit connection from thousands of plaintexts to decipher the ciphertext information.

It is said that cryptographic geniuses are perverts among the mathematical elite, and ordinary mathematical problems can no longer arouse their interest, so they set foot in the field of decryption.

It was only later that I learned that Andemon was a pervert among perverts.

Edgar came to the library to look for me three times and brought me the newspapers of the past few days. The Czechs want independence, and Germany is always ready to move, but what does this have to do with me? All I care about is my Andramon.

On the last weekend afternoon, there were almost no people in the library, and the air was filled with the sweet fragrance of apple blossoms. I lay down on the oak table and fell asleep. I felt someone sitting down next to me, taking my calculation book and flipping through it. When I opened my eyes suddenly, I saw Andemon bent his eyes and looked at me.

He drew lines on my draft with a red ink pen: "How did you convert all the graphics into letters?"

I leaned on the table and squinted at him, and said in a naughty way: "Baby, if you come closer, I will tell you."

Then I reached over and grabbed his tie, leaned in and kissed him.

At that moment, I felt Anderson froze, and he let me kiss for a minute without any defense. The spring breeze was very comfortable, and Andemon's shirt smelled of privet leaves. Fortunately, there was almost no one in the corner where we sat, because the next second he threw me on the table, and my wrist hurt like it was about to break. His face was very close to mine, and he studied me carefully for a while, then straightened up.

Andemon still had such a nice smile. He picked up my calculation draft, tore it up piece by piece, and the pieces of paper scattered on the ground as soon as he let go.

"I suddenly changed my doctrine, Alan," he said. "I decided not to leave it to you to crack."

I played too much, so I had no choice but to stand up and say, "I really like you."

I followed him and explained: "My dear, listen to me, it does look like stars and moons in the blink of an eye, but have you noticed? Some stars have three corners, and some even have seven corners. Almost every star has three corners. The number and angle of the corners are different, but the shape of the moon is the same. If a star represents a letter, it is almost impossible for a paragraph to be completely free of repeated letters. I therefore think it was written in a modified Bacon cipher. "

Andemon stopped, and raised his eyebrows with interest: "Oh?"

I said, "Actually, the different drawing methods of the stars have no special meaning, they are just to confuse us. I guess the murderer encrypted it like this—"

The killer uses stars for lowercase letters and moons for uppercase letters.

He first compiled a table of random passwords.

For example, any combination of three lowercase letters represents A (such as ddd), any combination of two lowercase letters and one uppercase letter (such as ssT) represents B, and so on. If the murderer wanted to write AB, he could write dddssT, or wasiuR.

Then he replaced the lowercase letters with various types of stars, and the uppercase letters with moons.

I met his green eyes and shrugged: "That's it, so what we see is full of stars and moons."

"You solved it?"

"No," I sighed, "I barely used the frequency analysis method to change it into letters, but the converted things are meaningless, and I don't know what went wrong."

"Leave the rest to me." Andmon nodded, and he gave me a warning look: "Alan, don't think about this anymore."

Andmond thought it would be safe if he tore up the note, but whoever looked at the note for seven days should have memorized it by now.

I finally stopped Andemon at the church. King's College has its own church with a high dome, and gorgeous stained glass pouring down from the open and dark place, making the hall dappled with light. He knelt in front of the statue of Jesus, with a beautiful face, his eyes closed tightly, his slightly golden eyelashes covered his eyelids like butterfly wings, trembling slightly. His expression seemed to be in pain, but his back was straight.

I don't know what he's suffering from, and I want to put my hand on his shoulder. As soon as he raised his hand, someone grabbed his shoulder from behind and fell back. In a few moments I was lying on the cold floor, punched hard in the stomach.

It is rare to see uniformed officers in Cambridgeshire, with dark blue uniforms, bright and crisp boots, and cold blue eyes under the brim of the low-pressure hat. He looked down at me condescendingly, and was about to punch me a second time, but Andmon grabbed his hand from behind.

"Let go, Peter. This is my student." Andemon's voice was very soft, but somehow stern. He looked at me and smiled: "Although he never regarded himself as a student."

I got up from the ground and straightened my back as much as possible: "I want to talk to Professor Wesson alone."

Andremon made a gesture, and the man went to the church door and stood there. I asked him, "You have military connections? I never knew."

"There are a lot of things you don't know." He smiled and said, "Alan, you came just in time, and I was just about to say goodbye to you. I'm leaving Cambridge and going to the institute in Plimpton Manor outside London. Don't look at me like that Me, I'm just continuing with my academic research."

"You're working for the army." I looked into his eyes, and my voice was a little hurried: "I have deciphered the password. My thinking is correct, but the other party still added three secrets after converting it into letters. It's not some newspaper code sent by the murderer—"

Andemont put his index finger on his lips and made a "shh..." gesture.

I can recite it more fluently than textbooks: "Your Excellency should hurry to London, obtain the five-day British military exercise from General F, and hand it to the young eagle." I leaned on the church pillars and shook my arms and legs: "Honey, this It's an espionage report, who is the young eagle?"

Andmon's green eyes stared at me calmly, then sighed: "Allen, I just wanted to try you. You shouldn't have tempted me just when I changed my mind."

"I asked you to give up declassification out of respect for your deceased parents."