The Chaos Code (3 page)

Matt ran to the door and yanked it open. The postman was already on his way to the next house. He'd left the van's engine running and it was puffing white exhaust into the cold morning as it stuttered and chugged.

‘Hi there,' Matt shouted.

The postman turned. ‘Morning. You staying again?'

‘Just for a bit. You haven't seen my dad have you?'

‘Not for a day or two,' the postman admitted. ‘Probably off on one of his expeditions.'

‘Yeah. probably. Thanks.'

‘Does he know you're here?' the postman wondered. ‘Not on your own, are you?'

‘He knows,' Matt said. ‘And Mum's …'He shrugged, not wanting to lie.

The postman pushed a bundle of post through next door's letterbox. ‘You get your letter?' he asked Matt as he went back to the van.

‘My letter?'

‘The one at number three. Bit odd that.'

Matt checked the latch wasn't down and hurried over to the postman, conscious that he was still in his pyjamas. ‘Sorry, what do you mean? What letter?'

‘Old Mrs Dorridge has it if you've not picked it up.' He pointed to the house opposite – number three. ‘It was addressed to you but care of her. Came yesterday. I nearly stuck it in with your dad's post, but it said on the envelope care of Mrs Dorridge at number three and it was underlined. So I thought …' He shrugged. ‘Well, I dunno. Not my business to think, is it? But that's where it is if you've not got it.' He climbed into the van and banged the door shut. ‘Cheerio then.' He waved out of the open window, and the van pulled away.

Matt went back inside and got dressed, then hurried across to number three. He didn't really know Mrs Dorridge. She was old with a face so weathered and lined that it looked like the side of a cliff. Her eyes were pale and watery and she peered round the door at Matt suspiciously.

‘Er, I think you have a letter for me,' he said.

There was a hint of a smile. ‘Oh yes. Matthew, isn't it? I told the postman he'd made a mistake.' She disappeared
back into the house, her frail voice barely reaching Matt as he waited outside. ‘But he said no, look what it says. And I said well be that as it may …' She reappeared, pushing the letter at Matt. ‘Very peculiar, I thought. I wonder who it's from?'

Matt took the letter, but Mrs Dorridge was reluctant to let it go until he answered. She raised her thin grey eyebrows encouraging him to reply.

‘I think perhaps they knew Dad might be away and wanted to make sure I got it,' he said. He managed to tug the letter free of the old lady's shaking fingers. ‘I don't recognise the handwriting,' he lied.

In fact, he knew the handwriting only too well. He forced himself to get back into the house before he tore open the envelope. He felt empty inside – like he'd not eaten for days. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper, and again he recognised the handwriting. It was his dad's. Why was Dad writing to him and sending the letter to Mrs Dorridge? Why not just leave him a note, or give him a call?

‘Dear Matt,' the letter said, ‘You might find this interesting. Before she married me, your mother would have been able to help you with it.'

He read it three times. Just two lines of handwritten text, followed by another line, printed in capitals. It started HTTP:// and Matt recognised at once what it was. Things were not getting any clearer, but for some reason Dad wanted him to look at a website.

• • •

Dad had a laptop, and Matt remembered seeing it on the desk in the study with papers blowing round it. Another thing that suggested Dad was expecting to come home soon – he wouldn't leave his laptop behind.

Typically, the laptop was half-buried, its silver metal casing gleaming through the detritus – papers, an old book, a dark, stone disc… Digging down to find Dad's desk was like the archaeology that Dad did, Matt thought. All sorts of junk needed shifting before you got down to the important stuff. He swept the bits and pieces aside and opened the laptop. While it was powering up, Matt tidied the papers that had not actually been blown off the desk into a pile and looked for somewhere to deposit the things off the laptop.

The stone disc, he found, wasn't stone at all. It was clay. A copy of some relic or other, which Matt could feel squashing slightly in his grip as he picked it up. He had thought it was a plain circle, about four inches in diameter. As it caught the light though, he could see that there were markings on it.

The symbols looked a bit like Egyptian hieroglyphs – tiny pictures of a man's head in profile, a flower, a jug or vase. There were what might be tools of some sort, perhaps a shield, and more abstract shapes that were little more than lines and squiggles. One looked like the > maths sign while another was a small triangle filled with dots. The symbols were arranged between thin lines
spiralling inwards. On one side they covered the surface, while on the other the symbols framed the main picture in the middle of the disc.

The central picture was a strange, irregular shape – or rather two shapes, one about three times as big as the other. Matt turned the disc slowly as he looked at them, hoping to make out what they represented. But they were just shapes, he decided – like a child had drawn round something rather badly. Maybe it was a picture of something that had been broken apart in the middle?

The computer loaded the welcome screen and Matt put down the clay disc at the side of the desk and clicked on the little picture of an archaeologist's trowel that represented Dad's user ID. It prompted him for a password, but Matt knew what it was from when he'd borrowed the computer before to do his homework – ‘parchment.' Dad had talked about setting up Matt an ID of his own, but he hadn't done it yet.

While the computer loaded the desktop and connected to all the things it had to connect to, Matt picked up the book that had been lying with the disc across the keyboard. It was called
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings
and was written apparently by Charles Hapgood. Just the sort of book Dad would be reading. Just the sort of book that Matt found really boring. He flicked through it – the dense-looking text, diagrams and old maps confirming his opinion.

As he did so, a sheet of paper fell out. Matt picked it up, feeling a bit guilty at having lost Dad's place in the book. It was a printout from a travel agent company, some sort of itinerary. He glanced at it, and saw that it must be a trip that Dad was planning – flying to Copenhagen, then by train and boat to somewhere called Valdeholm. Digging up boring bits of pottery, most likely.

Matt was about to push the paper back between the pages of the book, when he saw that the other side had writing on it – notes scrawled by Dad, probably as he read through. They looked just about as boring as the book and itinerary did, but Matt skimmed through them as the computer continued the click and whirr and show him its hourglass.

Piri Reis & Oronteus Finaeus cf Mercator and
Buache. Show America and Antarctica clearly.
Ant. ‘discovered' 1818 but mapped by Russians
b4 – and Mercater = 1569!!
Buache (1737) shows Antarctica landmass
pre-glaciation (as in 13,000 BC ??) – seismic
survey didn't confirm shape till 1958.
M & B both based on older maps – from
Alexandria (or Constantinople & taken by
Venetians 1204?)
Conclusions – obv
.

‘b4' was Dad's way of writing ‘before,' and ‘obv' was his abbreviation for ‘obvious' though Matt knew from experience that what was obvious to Dad wasn't always apparent to anyone else. He tucked the paper back into the book.

The top drawer of the desk seemed to be where Dad kept his pens and stationery – stapler, sticky tape, Post-it notes. Matt helped himself to a pen and found a blank piece of paper. Then, on an impulse, he stuffed the book of ancient maps and the clay disc into the drawer. Maybe Dad wanted them kept safe and together.

The web page that came up was blank apart from an entry field headed: ‘Password.' Matt stared at it for a moment, then typed ‘parchment.' But there was only room for eight letters, which appeared as blobs in the box. So he actually typed ‘parchmen.' The screen changed – but only to display a single line of red text beneath the now empty entry field:

Maybe he'd mistyped the address and gone to the wrong page. He checked it against Dad's letter, but found it was the correct website. So what was the password? It would be something Dad would expect him to guess. Matt had no idea what the secrecy was about, but obviously Dad wanted Matt to be the only one able to see whatever was on the page behind the password
screen. Otherwise he'd have simply written whatever message he wanted to get to Matt in the letter. He'd need to work out the password to find out why Dad was being so cautious. Or maybe it was a game – Dad had arranged treasure hunts with cryptic clues when Matt was younger. But he was too old for that now, surely.

But someone had taken the letters, Matt realised. He sat rigid, staring at the screen as he thought about that. Had Dad sent this letter to Mrs Dorridge because he
knew
that his mail was going to be stolen? Was it Matt's letter that the intruder had been looking for? Matt's mouth was dry, and swallowing did no good.

He picked up the letter and read it again. Maybe there was a clue to the password in there, but it didn't seem to be any use. Or was it? That last sentence had seemed weird to Matt when he first read it, but now he wondered if it was the clue he needed:

Before she married me, your mother would have been able to help you with it
.

Well, he needed help. But why Mum? She was certainly good with computers. She'd been working for the company that serviced the university computers when she met Dad. He was head of the Archaeology Department, and told Matt that he found her in his office one day under the table.

‘She was connecting up the new computer systems,'
Matt remembered Dad saying. ‘I wouldn't let her out from under my desk until she agreed to go for a drink with me.'

Matt had laughed, but Mum didn't. ‘Your father was younger then,' she said. ‘We both were.' And that seemed to close the topic.

Which didn't really help, Matt thought frustrated. There were no cables to connect. Matt got down and looked under the desk. There was nothing hidden so far as he could see – no envelope with secret codes taped to the bottom of any of the drawers. But there was a metal plate with a manufacturer's name stamped on it. ‘Timberly.' He counted the letters, feeling more confident and excited – eight!

He bumped his head in his haste to get out from under the desk, catching the bruise he'd got the previous night. He scarcely noticed as he typed in the name, sure it would work.

But it still wasn't right. He got the same error message and almost thumped the screen in frustration. Why wasn't it ‘Timberly'? It made sense. It fitted the clue. If Dad was actually here, he'd shout at him. Matt took a deep breath. But was it the only answer that fitted the clue? That was the next question.

And then he got it. Really got it, he was sure – even more sure this time. Mum's name. Before she was married and became Sarah Stribling she'd been Sarah Milligan. He typed ‘milligan.' It didn't work. He stared
at the red error message. The error had to be wrong, he thought, smiling despite his irritation at the notion of an error being itself a mistake.

A mistake. That might just be it. He typed ‘Milligan' again, but this time with a capital M. There was an agonisingly long moment when nothing happened. Progress blobs crawled along the bottom of the web browser as it contacted the server computer, wherever that was. Matt held his breath. Then the screen changed.

It showed a plain window of text – black on white. A letter, addressed to Matt.

‘Yes!' he said out loud, his hands bunched into triumphant fists.

Dear Matt,
Sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff, but you can't be too careful these days! Actually I thought you'd enjoy the challenge and I'm glad, though not at all surprised, to see that you're up to it. Well done.

I'm sorry I'm not at home now. Your mother did warn me you were coming, but I've had to go away. It was sudden, though not unexpected. I really don't know when I'll be back, and so I thought I'd better give you some clue what to do and where to go while I'm away. Like learning Latin, it could be quite an ad-Venture. And you might need some help with it.

Remember those games we used to play when you were younger? Notes and cryptic clues? Let's Find Treasure, I used to say and you were always so good at it. But maybe you're too old for that now. I'm sure you'll think of something to do.

Great, capital, so the real question is where you can
go
. Obviously you're welcome to squat at The Old house for As long as you like. Unless maybe you think you should find a school friend like Ned or Tim or someone to Join for the Annual holidays. No more Encouragement needed.

I'll be in contact just as soon as I can, but don't worry if you don't hear from me. (Too many negatives in that last sentence, I fear!)

Remember – LFT (doesn't work on the computer, sorry!)
Love,
Dad

Matt read it through several times. He couldn't believe it was as innocuous and unassuming as it seemed. Why go to all the trouble – the ‘cloak and dagger stuff' as Dad described it – just to say he was away for a few days and Matt would have to look after himself. No, Matt decided, there had to be more to it than that.

He read the letter again, thinking carefully about every word and phrase. First of all, he was sure it
was
from Dad. The mention of ‘Let's Find Treasure' brought back more memories of the treasure hunts Dad had set up when Matt was about eight years old. Dad used to plant clues for him round the house and garden – simple coded messages, like lists of numbers where 1 represented A and 2 stood for B and so on through the alphabet. Then Dad would pretend it was a mystery to him as well and help Matt work them out … All the messages were marked with a symbol – like a capital letter E with an extra line across the top. It was, Dad helped Matt work out, an amalgam of the letters L F and T all drawn over the top of each other. They decided between them it must stand for ‘Let's Find Treasure.' And like Dad said at the end of the letter, the symbol wouldn't work on the screen – you'd need to create a graphic for it, and Dad probably wasn't up to that.