Rainfall

“you-are-a-complete-knuckle-dragger” look, then said, “Midori, try playing the score on the monitor and let’s see what the computer can do with the data.”

    Midori sat down at the desk and lifted her fingers over the keyboard. “Wait,” Harry said. “You’ve got to play it perfectly. If you add or delete a note, or play one out of order, you’ll create a new pattern, and the computer will get confused. You have to play exactly what appears on the screen. Can you do that?”

    “I could if this were an ordinary song. But this composition is unusual. I’ll need to run through it a few times first. Can you disconnect me from the computer?”

    “Sure.” He dragged and clicked the mouse. “Go ahead. Tell me when you’re ready.”

    Midori looked at the screen for a few moments, her head straight and motionless, her fingers rippling ever so slightly in the air, reflecting the sounds she could hear in her mind. Then she brought her hands down gently to the keys, and for the first time we heard the eerie melody of the information that had cost Kawamura his life.

    I listened uncomfortably while Midori played. After a few minutes, she said to Harry, “Okay, I’m ready. Plug me in.”

    Harry worked the mouse. “You’re in. Let it hear you.”

    Again, Midori’s fingers floated over the keys, and the room was filled with the strange requiem. When she reached the end of the score, she stopped and looked at Harry, her eyebrows raised in a question.

    “It’s got the data,” he said. “Let’s see what it can do with it.”

    We watched the screen, waiting for the results, none of us speaking.

    After a half minute or so, a strange, disembodied series of notes emanated from the computer speakers, shadows of what I had heard Midori play a moment earlier.

    “It’s factoring the sounds,” Harry said. “It’s trying to find the most basic pattern.”

    We waited silently for several minutes. Finally Harry said, “I don’t see any progress. I might not have the computing power here.”

    “Where can you get it?” Midori asked.

    Harry shrugged. “I can try hacking into Livermore to gain access to their supercomputer. Their security has been getting better, though — it could take some time.”

    “Would a supercomputer do the trick?” I asked.

    “It might,” he said. “Actually, any reasonable amount of processing power is enough. It’s a question of time, though — the more processing power, the more possibilities the computer can try in a shorter time.”

    “So a supercomputer would speed things up,” Midori said, “but we don’t know by how much.”

    He nodded. “That’s right.”

    There was a moment of frustrated quiet. Then Harry said, “Let’s think for a moment. How much do we even need to decrypt this?”

    I knew where he was going: the same tempting thought I had at Conviction headquarters when Yamaoto was asking for the disk.

    “What do you mean?” Midori asked.

    “Well, what are our objectives here? The disk is like dynamite; we just want to render it safe. The owners know that it can’t be copied or electronically transmitted. For starters, we could render it safe by just giving it back to them.”

    “No!” Midori said, standing up from in front of the monitor and facing Harry. “My father risked his life for what’s on that disk. It’s going where he wanted it to go!”

    Harry held up his hands in an “I-surrender” gesture. “Okay, okay, I’m just trying to think outside the box. Just trying to be helpful.”

    “It’s a logical idea, Harry,” I said, “but Midori’s right. Not only because her father risked his life to acquire the disk. We know now that there are multiple parties seeking its return — not just Yamaoto, but also the Agency, the Keisatsucho. Maybe more. Even if we were to give it back to one of them, it wouldn’t solve our problems with the others.”

    “I see your point,” Harry conceded.

    “But I like your dynamite analogy. How do you render dynamite safe?”

    “You detonate it somewhere safe,” Midori said, still looking at Harry.

    “Exactly,” I said.

    “Bulfinch,” Midori said. “Bulfinch publishes it, and that’s what makes it safe. And it’s what my father wanted.”

    “Do we give it to him without even knowing for sure what’s on it?” Harry asked.

    “We know well enough,” I said. “Based on what Bulfinch told us, corroborated by Holtzer. I don’t see an alternative.”

    He frowned.