LILLIAN
Lillian's Home, 10 June 2174, Friday
I drove back from New Houma with more questions than answers. Henri Knightly liked to hide things. But secrets have a way of popping out.
The biggest secret, of course, was the whereabouts of his daughter. New Houma might be the perfect hiding place. It was close to Covington, Yemaya, and the Dome, but not too close. And it was pretty much disconnected from the rest of civilization. A tight-knit community of water people could protect the daughter from strangers. Sylvie's daughter Sootima would be about the right age. If she were Henri's daughter, it would mean MawMaw was lying. People often lie to protect what's important and vulnerable. I made a mental note to pursue that thread.
Another clue I wanted to follow was the connection with MawMaw's dead child. There was something about the incident with Henri that kept poking at the back of my brain.
I fixed supper, played a few games, and put the kids to bed, thinking about how trauma affects children. I wondered whether the visceral impact of seeing a childhood friend pulled underwater by a gator would make someone like Knightly want to memorialize the event. And I knew Henri was big on memorials.
With this idea in mind, I tried using "Phillip" as a key on the encrypted bit string.
Nothing.
But maybe the spelling wasn't right. I tried "Philip," with one "l."
Bingo!
A portion of the bit string next to the first poem converted into text:
Beware how crocodiles guard the place
Where proud tech still shows a face
And where the black bird flees the flock
To say where memories can unlock
A token song patterns the mode
Where fingers glide to open the code
And free the secrets we are needing
To give the dead a way of seeing
There were 233 non-blank characters in the poem, which seemed a measure of its authenticity. The cryptogram wasn't so much a treasure map as a part of a scavenger hunt. The text appeared to point to the one place where crocodiles and tech coexisted—the Dome. There was something there that could give access to memories.
I now had more information to pass on to Debra, but I wasn't sure of its significance. At any rate, it looked like I found a path that LESA may not be following. I had to protect it at all costs. We might be getting close.
DU LIEST GERADE
The Pieces of My Self
Science FictionA hunt for treasure becomes a search for self. Lillian Fray, an adjunct professor at a community college, is asked to solve a puzzle involving a cryptogram and the link to a dead billionaire's sentient avatar. Her quest is fraught with racial politi...
