bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2010) — Summer 2010 // Été 2010, pp. 44–48
Leaning out the office window, I watched the park gates. A seven-foot gorilla was grinding a barrel organ while a little man in a bellboy’s rig turned somersaults. “It’s strange when the normal gets distorted,” I mused to Effie, “like seeing your own father in a zoot suit.” Effie replied, “My father almost invented the zoot suit. Mom says he was that close when he had one of his attacks – Projectile Hyper-Acute Rylean Category Error – and got a pork chop sandwich with a drape shape and a reet pleat.”
I never know what to say.
A bald man in orange robes stepped out of a taxi and walked into our building. “Must be the new client,” said Effie. When Ilooked back, the organ grinder was gone.
The Buddhist monk soon sat crosslegged on the footrest. “My name is Yi Xing and I have a small flaw in my biography. I was born in China in the year 683 and died in 727. Despite that, I am here at the request of the August Personage of Jade. We have misplaced something and you are good at finding the lost.”
It was clearly going to be one of those days. But we needed the money.
“So, Mr. Yi,” I said, “what’s lost?” “A star,” he replied. “Specifically, one of the seven in the constellation you call the Big Dipper. We believe it’s here.” I said carefully, “I think the astronomy boys would have noticed it was gone. And the mayor sure as hell would have complained if a flaming ball of gas a million miles across had shown up on Main Street.” The mayor is a flaming gasbag himself, but no star.
“I am not expressing myself well,” apologized the monk. “Being dead for that long… you know how it is.” I nodded like I had any idea what this fruitcake was talking about. “Let me start again. Stars have an ultimate reality. They project their images, like Platonic shadows on the cave walls, and people see the images rather than the real stars. The image-stars are even given different names by different cultures.”
“Enter a certain el-Amr Fuad, Wahabbit hunter and Zoroastrian sorcerer of ill repute. Some centuries ago, he ran afoul of the Jade Emperor and was punished. The punishment spell made it impossible for him to communicate in any language but his own, Parsi. This may seem mild, but was not, for most spells are spoken in exotic or vanished tongues. So his powers were greatly limited. Until recently, when advanced computerization made instant electronic interpretation possible and partially restored his strength, allowing him a certain number of spells.”
“But Fuad wanted it all. So he stole one of the real stars from the Dipper, sending the Emperor a ransom note pinned to a comet. Li Gao was tied up, so the Emperor called on me, an astronomer in past lite. Fortunately, it takes a while before change in a real star affects its images, which is why no-one here has noticed yet. Now a real star is not really a giant flaming ball of gas. In fact, it has no material essence at all, and can be disguised as anything. Using the I Ching, we found that Fuad took the star, which the Chinese know as Yao Guang and you call Ursa major 5, disguised it as a human being, suppressed its memories, and hid it in plain sight in this city. Can you help us find him? We have about 24 hours.”
I didn’t know where to start. “This burg has three million citizens. The star could be anywhere. What you’re asking can’t be done.” “We do have one clue. This star has a weakness for games of chance. The best way to keep it quiet would be to distract it with gambling. As for the odds, evil spells all have an inherent condition – there has to be a way to thwart them. How do you think so many heroes, not widely known for brains, manage to kill the dragons, thread the maze and rescue the girl in the middle of a lava hailstorm while riding a unicycle along a silk thread stretched over the Three Gorges? Because there must always be a loophole if you look hard enough.”
I had to get this philosophy lecture back on track. “How do you plan to pay? Tang dynasty scrip isn’t worth much these days.” The monk held up a finger and vanished. I stared at the footrest. He popped back, holding a small carving. “Will this do?” Effie was on it in a flash, fixing a loupe in his eye. “A white jade dragon, probably nephrite from the Khotan mines, played out centuries ago. Priceless.” That would keep me in rye for a month or so. And the disappearing act made his story more credible. A bit. So I took the plunge. “Hmm. You think there’s a tie-in to gambling? That’s illegal inside city limits. And we’re talking a star, so its probably a swanky, high-stakes operation. Well, if anyone knows a place like that…”
An hour later, we were in a pawnshop near the waterfront, across the counter from the best fence in town, Hairy Harry January. “So you ask me about a joint with lots of money changing hands, maybe not too straight up, strange things happening, too many questions can maybe get your face re-arranged. And yet you do not speak of City Council. Well, after the unlamented Moses Moribundo passes on, one of his casinos – the Ochre Ocarina, I am thinking
– goes on the block to a new guy with the moniker Dr. Rictus. He renames it the Café Acheron, paints the walls red with flames and makes all the staff dress up weird. Lots of gambling – you can bet your life, though I never hear anyone does. It’s over to the East Side, across from the old Public Library. Now before you go, maybe you need a war-surplus chocolate grenade, only used once? No? Priced to clear!” The Café Acheron was everything Harry warned us. Waiters dressed as demons out of Aladdin, and a bunch of heavies even Scarface wouldn’t hire. Effie and I went to the bar, while the monk studied some murals of a really unpleasant afterlife. A tamiliar face appeared around my navel. It was the little man I last saw doing acrobatics for a gorilla. He grabbed Effie’s hand and pulled us into a booth in the shadows. “Effie,” he whispered, ’it’s me, your father.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Effie replied, “Dad is six foot five and would never wear brown shoes with a blue check suit.” The little man replied, “But who else would wear a pork chop sandwich? I had a PHARCE attack a few days ago, right after I told some mooch that I was a bit short this week. It’ll wear off, but right now it’s great for sussing the lowlife.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Effie. His father replied, “Doc Rictus hired me to keep an eye out for this holy man he was expecting. I spotted him entering your building this morning but had to go on break – the gorilla has a very strict union
– and you’d blown by the time we got back. So what did he want?” “What did who want?” asked Yi Xing, coming up silently behind us. The little guy whirled, his jaw dropping, and pulled a shiv. I jumped in before someone got perforated. “Your Holiness, we were just talking about you. This gentleman is – what name are you using these days?” “Steppin’ Razor – don’t you watch my size,” said a mechanical voice from the wall beside me, as a fiery panel slid back to reveal a wiry gent with tanned skin, long dark braided hair and a wireless headset clamped over his face. He said, “Mr. Dikk, please call me Ric. Yi Xing, how good to see you again, I was hoping you’d drop in.” The monk bowed in courteous fashion and murmured, “the pleasure is all yours, Fuad.” Just what the plot needed, I thought, a Persian techno-magus reggae freak with an alias jones. Of all the djinn joints in all the towns in all the world, I had to walk into his. It was strange. When el-Amr spoke, the way his lips moved did not match what we heard. “I expect you’re here to rescue the wandering star, so the Jade Emperor won’t have to pay up. Well, you’ve come to the right place, but you’ll never succeed.” In the pause that followed, I said, “Aren’t you supposed to go ’Bwah ha ha’ at this point?” “Trite! Passé! Besides, this stupid headset really mangles the subtle stuff. But since you’ve taken the trouble to find me, why don’t you let me show you the set-up.”
We passed through a dim archway and down a long flight of stairs. At the bottom, Fuad used a skeleton key to open a black door, revealing a large room carved into bedrock and crossed halfway down its length by a dark steaming river. I wouldn’t have stuck so much as a toe in that water if Veronica Lake, naked, had asked me to join her. “A branch of the real Acheron, the river at the border of Hades,” said Fuad, “Can’t cross it without paying the boatman his fare.” He gestured at an ebony gondola on the far side, a hooded figure standing in its stern. “Unfortunately for you, all the available oboloi are already in the pot.”
At the far end of the room stood a large green baize table with six figures seated around it, frozen in front of a layout for five-card stud poker. Big piles of chips looking oddly metallic and tarnished. “All cards dealt,” Effie’s father said, “just before the showdown.”
“Now here’s the real deal, boys,” said el-Amr. “One of those players is your missing star, coked to the gills. The other five are zombies. In about, oh, half an hour, the floor tips up and anyone still in that part of the room slides into the river. Ouch, painful. Terminal, in fact. Even stars can go nova. And the world finds out a star is missing. Mass panic and madness among astrologers. Unless the Jade Emperor folds, in which case your friend returns to heaven. I regain the power to conquer the world. And I get to laugh insanely as often as I want, without having this device turn it into a demand for a liver donut.”
“Oh, theoretically, you might find the loophole. You’d need to know the name the star is using as a player. And you’d need the release code – a combination of eight letters and numbers – that will break the paralysis spell. Any of the players can pick up an obol and pay the boatman, if you speak the right release sequence and call their name, but it works only once, so you’d better be sure you call the right one.”
“Just one thing,” said Yi Xing quietly. “What is this picture on the wall?” Fuad looked impatient. “That’s just a souvenir of the weirdest deal they ever saw here – four five-card hands, all red cards plus a joker. Meaningless, I assure you.” “Ah,” replied the monk as he wrote down the sequence:
34 44 54 6974 AY 84 69 AY Joker 2Y 3Y 5Y QY KY 2Y JY 104 74 AY
As I watched him, I saw a dim light. “That’s the only decoration in this huge room, it’s completely out of place. So it must be part of the loophole. But what does it mean?” The little man scratched his head “I’m sure you’ll get it, Dikk. It’s in the cards.” Something sounded like a silent gong and Effie looked up, startled. “Dad, that’s the PHARCE signal. What did you do?” “He reinforced the loophole,” snarled Fuad.
Effie mused, “When I was a kid in my first Laura Ashleys, I had this friend named Liebnitz, who was always playing with ciphers. I remember one used a deck of cards. Cards come in two colours, red and black, and 13 values, 2 through 10 plus jack, queen, king and ace. That’s 26 combinations of colour and value – black queen, red four and so on. And there are 26 letters in the alphabet. So a natural cipher, a one-to-one correspondence. F’Il bet that the cards in the painting will spell out one of the clues we need.”
I said, “You’re right. And I’ll bet that the other clue is spelled out by the hands on the table. But how can we read them – they’re too far away. And how do we figure out the cipher? Since the messages are spelled out in poker hands, the letters are broken up into blocks of five regardless of word length.”
Effie turned to his father, “Dad, remember when we lived in Baraboo, you taught me acrobatics? Especially the back-flip? That river is too wide to jump, but with you this size, I bet I could flip you over there. You could come back on the boat. What do you think?” The little man looked uneasy. “Don’t know, son. That could put me in real hot water. What if you slip the flip?” El-Amr just couldn’t resist. “Steppin’ Razor not so dangerous now, eh?” Effie’s father glared, squared his shoulders, turned to his son and said, “Ready when you are, boy.”
Back to the river, Effie cupped his hands and bent over. The little man ran frantically at him, while Fuad snickered. At the last moment, Effie caught his father’s raised foot, straightened up and threw him hard over his head. Not beautiful, but it did the job. Effie then tripped over his Balmain skirt. Fuad cursed and started weaving a spell. Just as it released, Effie staggered into him and, instead of the major demons probably planned 1, the little man found himself plagued by a dozen blue pixies about three inches tall. Evading them, he scurried around the table and hollered out his findings. I took the best notes I could:
1) The table is round, with six players spaced evenly around it, numbers and nameplates in front of each. Position #1 is the dealer and then clockwise around to #6.
2) The play is with two full decks and two jokers.
3) Soren “Kattegat Fats” Kierkegaard in seat #2 had the best hand, a flush.
4) The man in #6 drew the six of spades and the ace of diamonds, in that order, as his last two cards; his first and third cards were both red sixes.
5) The man across from the dealer was Max (“the Mechanic”’) Mikonos; the seven of spades and the three of clubs were his first and last cards, respectively.
6) The only woman player and the man on her left hand were both dealt jokers as their last card.
7) One of the men is bluffing with a bust hand: his second through fifth cards are the nine of clubs, the eight of hearts, a red jack and the ten of diamonds in that order, but his first card is an ace.
8) The man in seat 5 has Donald Corleone beside him on one side and a man with a pair of black jacks (his second and fourth cards) on the other.
9) WAC Bennett Nash has two pairs – nines of spades as his second and fifth cards, the queen of diamonds as his third and the queen of clubs as his fourth; the first four cards of the man immediately on his right hand are the six, seven, ace and jack of diamonds, in that order.
10) Heather Duprix and Riordan O’Riley (who is two seats counter-clockwise of her) both drew an ace of hearts (her fourth card and his first) and a jack of hearts (her second card and his fourth).
11) One player has a four of diamonds and a two of diamonds as first and third cards respectively; a second player with a seat three times that of the first one’s drew the five of spades as his first card.
12) Two men with even-numbered seats both drew a jack of clubs as their second card and the six of hearts as their third.
Meanwhile, Yi Xing casually strolled around the room, circling the sorcerer. Eventually he retreated to the corner and started writing. When the little man finished, he picked up an obol from the poker table and skipped into the boat, which a reluctant Charon poled back to our side. Fuad took the boat back and started building magical defences around the table.
The monk and I exchanged notes while Effie and his father hugged. Yi Xing said, “With el-Amr distracted, I picked up enough from his brainwaves to get this information on the cipher pattern:
1) The joker is always N, but N can also be a black nine.
2) All other letters have a unique one-to-one cipher link.
3) All vowels (including Y) are red, except I.
4) CLINK is all black, while RHYTHM is all red
5) C/D/F/H/K/Q/R/Z are all cards with prime numbers, four in each colour.
6) I/M/O/P/U/W are all face cards, three in each colour.
7) A/N/X/Y are all cards with perfect square numbers, two in each colour.
8) E is a red ace, while J is a black one.
9) Q/Z/X are black cards with consecutive ascending numbers, in that order.
10) B is a red ten, while V is the ten of clubs.
11) G and S are cards with the same cubic number, one in each colour.
12) D and Fare red cards with consecutive ascending numbers, in that order.
13) So are H/S/Y.
14) 0 and Ware female.
15) C and H have the same number.
16) U and I have the same face card value.
17) M is the king of hearts.
We set to work. Neither puzzle was all that hard to solve. Using the cipher links that I worked out, we read off the six hands on the table (#1 to 6, first card to fifth) that Yi Xing had reconstructed and then the four hands in the picture. But in neither case were the name or the release code obvious.
“I assume that the five-letter word at the beginning of one of the phrases, and the five-letter word at the end of the other, mean something to somebody. But not to me,” I said. “Time for a little dharma, ,” replied the monk, pulling out a BlackBerry. “I didn’t know Tang Dynasty Buddhists used computers,” I told him. “Who do you think developed Lotus software?” he replied. With the help of the Internet, we soon had answers. “I told you earlier that stars had several names,” recalled the monk. We read out the revealed name and alphameric string. One of players stood up, shook as if to clear the cobwebs and looked at us over the river. “You again, Yi Xing. I should have known. “ A smile so bright I had to slip on my shades. Then the star turned to face the sorcerer, eyes flaring red.
El-Amr Fuad blanched, bleated and levitated destructively through the ceiling. Classy exit in its way. Effie and I chose the more conventional route up the stairs and chased him across the street into the library. It took me a while to talk our way in. Around the vast building were maybe 20 staffers re-shelving books. Yi Xing had told me el-Amr was a master of disguise, so he could be any of them.
We split up. I had no luck. After a while, though, I heard a familiar cursing and turned to see Effie hauling the Persian in by his ear, a smiling monk trailing behind. “So, Yi Xian, you tracked him down.” “Not at all, I merely helped contain him. Your man had already found him.” “Yeah,” said Effie proudly. “I spotted this guy shelving the Discourse on Method just to the left of the Ars Poetica. I mean, no real librarian would put Descartes before Horace.”
We marched Fuad out of the building and into a quiet alley, where we were joined by the star. “Time to face the music of the spheres, sorcerer,” said the monk, ripping off el-Amr’s headset. “Don’t worry if this makes it harder to communicate,” he added, looking over at Ric’s. “We’ll always have Parsi.”
The star lifted a manhole cover out of the pavement as if weighed no more than a pizza box, then stretched and folded it into an origami crane big enough for the three magical visitors. “Good work, Mr. Dikk,” the monk said in farewell. “Don’t be in too big a hurry to cash in the jade – you never know when a snow dragon might be useful.” Soon they were only a bright patch in the twilit sky.
Can you duplicate Liebnitz’s feat by providing the name of the player who turned out to be the missing star, plus the release code? As a hint, while the answers to the two parts of the puzzle (reflected in the two clue-lists) will eventually connect, it will probably be easier to solve them separately. For those not familiar with poker, the winning hands in ascending order are a pair, two pairs, three of a kind, a straight (five numbers/faces in a row, mixed suits), a flush (five cards from the same suit), a full house (a pair plus three of a kind), four of a kind, and a straight flush (a flush with all cards in the same suit). If there are jokers, they can represent any card. The face cards are the jack, queen and king. bout de papier will choose the winner by drawing one entry from all those with correct answers submitted by October 29, 2010. The prize will be a book autographed by A Aalto. Not necessary to solve the puzzle, but can you also provide the actual readouts from the painting and from the six hands on the table? In addition, can you nail down the “reality status” of the following: Yi Xing, Li Gao, el-Amr Fuad, category error, Baraboo, asterisms and Steppin’ Razor?
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2010) — Summer 2010 // Été 2010, pp. 44–48. Read the rest of this issue →
