Vlad sat in Doug’s chair with the tablet dark on his knee, going back through nib from memory. Marcus sat on the arm of the couch with his foot up on the cushion.
“Two people ever answered kolobok,” Vlad said. “One of them stopped working on nib three years ago.”
“And the other one?” Samantha asked.
“Hanne Lund. She merged the sampler. Under it she wrote, ‘Thanks, nice work.’”
“That’s it?” he asked. “That’s the whole relationship?”
“Yes.”
“Did you write back?”
“No.”
Samantha wrote Hanne Lund in the notebook under 8:12 and drew a box around it. Marcus leaned over far enough to read the page upside down. Above the box she had already written issue — no and kolobok on the tracker — his mother.
“So kolobok asks Hanne Lund on the tracker,” Samantha said. “In front of everybody.”
“And everybody goes looking for kolobok,” Vlad said.
Neither of them looked at the other one. Marcus wanted them to still be talking to each other when this was over.
“Don’t put it on the tracker,” Marcus said.
They both looked at him.
“When something blows up at a company, nobody reads the support queue. It’s four hundred people yelling. You read a text from somebody you know, or an email with your own name at the top. The CEO gets a thousand emails that say urgent. He opens the five from people he’s met. You write to one person.”
“She does not know me,” Vlad said. “She knows a word.”
“She doesn’t have to know you.” Marcus turned to Samantha. “How long does it take her to check it?”
“If she knows what sigma is supposed to be, a minute. It’s one number in the file, and it’s the same number as the small key’s.”
“So she doesn’t have to believe him. She just has to look.”
“Yes.”
“Then she fixes it,” Vlad said. “It will be her commit, and her name on it.”
“Does that bother you?” Marcus asked.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Samantha said.
“And Ostvik?” Vlad asked.
“You’re not getting two things done by eight twelve,” Marcus said. “Pick one. Ostvik won’t stop the rotation because of an email from nobody. Hanne Lund can call Ostvik. She’s somebody.”
Vlad didn’t say anything for a while. Then he opened the patch on the tablet and typed a number with fourteen digits after the decimal point. He deleted it and typed it again. Then he opened a blank page and started writing.
At twenty past seven the door opened and Cooper came in first. He went straight to Marcus and put his chin down on the bad foot.
“Ow. Cooper. Off.”
Cooper didn’t move. Seth came in behind him with frost on his hat and the leash in his hand. He looked at the three of them, and then at the pot of water on the stove, which was cold.
“Is it over?” Seth asked.
Vlad stood up out of Doug’s chair. When he told the two of them, he had been crouched by the stove.
“The problem in the new root is in a file I wrote when I was seventeen,” Vlad said. “I did not tell anybody until today.”
Seth took his hat off.
“Okay,” Seth said. “Does it help that you wrote it?”
“I know where it is.”
“Then that’s good.” Seth hung the leash on the hook by the door. “Who else knows?”
“The three of us.”
Seth looked at Marcus. “Did you text anybody?”
“Fuck you, Seth.”
Samantha snorted. Marcus hadn’t heard her laugh at anything in two days.
Seth turned the burner on under the oatmeal pot and got the oats down off the shelf. Cooper stayed where he was, on Marcus’s foot.
At a quarter to eight Vlad held the tablet out to Marcus.
Marcus took it. In fourteen days Vlad had never let him hold it.
Hanne —
nib 4.2.1 samples FN-DSA-1024 with the FN-DSA-512 sigma, 165.74. The standard says 168.39. It is one number in the sampler file and you can check it in a minute.
Every PQ1 signature in the log is too narrow, so each one gives away a little of the key. The fix is attached. Please call Ostvik and ask them to stop signing until nib ships it.
I wrote this sampler. You merged it and said thanks.
kolobok
It was a good email. It didn’t have a subject line.
“Put her name in the subject line,” Marcus said. “And the number.”
Vlad took the tablet back and changed it. Hanne — nib sampler sigma, one number.
“The last line,” Marcus said. “Do you need ‘said thanks’?”
“It is the only thing she knows about kolobok.”
Marcus left it alone.
Samantha took the tablet out of Vlad’s hands without asking. She typed for a minute and gave it back. Marcus read it over Vlad’s arm. The count is about 2.2 million signatures. It’s an estimate from a small key. If it’s wrong, it’s low. She hadn’t put her name on it.
At eight Vlad took the black case out to the porch. Marcus got up off the couch.
“You’re going to fall off the porch,” Samantha said.
“Then I’ll fall off the porch.”
He went out on the side of his foot with one hand on the wall and lowered himself onto the top step with his leg straight out in front of him. The step was cold enough that after a minute he stopped feeling it. Samantha came out and stood at the rail. Seth stayed in the doorway with the wooden spoon.
Vlad set the dish on the rail and angled it at the gap in the trees. When it had the satellites he opened Ostvik’s page.
“Ostvik is at two million one hundred and eighty-four thousand,” Vlad said. “As of ten in New York.”
“Sixteen thousand,” Samantha said. “Twelve minutes.”
“Her address is on every commit she has made,” Vlad said. He made a new account, pasted the email in, and attached the patch. Marcus watched his thumb sit over the button for a second.
“Sent,” Vlad said. “Eight oh one.”
A train came out of the tunnel below the road with its lights on. Marcus counted the cars because there was nothing else he could do. Eleven. At four minutes Vlad reached for the power.
“Leave it up,” Samantha said.
“It has been up four minutes.”
“I know how long it’s been up.”
“Every minute it is up, it is easier to find,” Vlad said. “If they find the dish, they find this cabin.”
Marcus moved his foot off the step and set it down on the next one, which hurt, and took a deep breath.
“Then they find all of us,” Marcus said. “On the highway outside Buena Vista, Sam told me there were three of us. You were standing right there. So leave it up.”
Vlad looked at Samantha. She didn’t look away from him. He took his hand off the power and put it back on the rail.
At six minutes the inbox was still empty. Vlad refreshed it. At nine he refreshed it again. Marcus was scared. Cooper had come out past Seth’s legs and sat down against his back. Marcus didn’t know what he would do if it was still nothing at twelve.
At ten past, the tablet made a sound.
“Hanne Lund,” Vlad said. He opened it. “Checking.”
“What else does it say?” Marcus asked.
“Nothing.”
Samantha was looking at the clock in the corner of the tablet. When it turned to 8:12 she said, “Now.”
“Now what?” Marcus asked.
“It’s past two point two. If I’m right, they have enough.”
“Are you right?”
“I’m usually low.”
“Low meaning what?”
“Meaning the real number is probably bigger. They might need more time.”
“How much more?”
“I don’t know.”
Vlad powered the dish down. “Twelve minutes, forty seconds.”
Samantha picked up the cable before he could. She coiled it and handed it to him, and he closed the case. Seth went back inside to the oatmeal.
Marcus tried to get up off the step and couldn’t. Vlad set the case down and held out his hand to pull him up. Marcus took it.