The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection
Page 48
The first encrypted picture just consists of a genuinely random selection of these 2x2 black and white blocks. To create the second encrypted picture you need to look at the original picture. Place the random picture over the top. Take each 2x2 block in the random picture you’ve created. If that block sits over a white square in the original image, then the 2x2 block in the same position in the second encrypted picture is chosen to be the same 2x2 block. If it’s over a black square then make the corresponding 2x2 block in the second encrypted picture the opposite of the one in the random picture (where black and white squares are swapped over).
Above: How to combine the original picture and the first encrypted picture to form the second encrypted picture
The second encrypted picture you’ve created looks as random as the first. But now when you place the two pictures on top of each other something magic happens. The original picture seems to appear out of the combination of the two random images.
The combination of a 2x2 grid in the first random picture with the opposite 2x2 grid in the second picture, creates one big black pixel. If the 2x2 grids are the same, then although the combination doesn’t create a completely white pixel, nevertheless it is white enough that looking at the combined picture your eyes see the same combination of black and white pixels that made up the unencrypted picture.
In the book, Ruby encounters a similar code using sound, when the three static tapes combine to form the sound of a voice. Although this code would have been built using pictures too, in a very similar way to what has just been described. This is how the Count’s static code was created:
If, instead of a picture, you take a recording of a voice, you can translate that using binary code into a sequence of 0s and 1s. Then translate that into a black and white picture. Then apply the same process as above to pull it apart into two random pictures consisting of black and white pixels. Translate these two random pictures back into 0s and 1s. If you now translate this into sound again, the two messages sound like random static noise. But play them together and, like the two pictures combining, you will hear a message appearing from the static.
Clancy and Ruby stumbled on a version of this code. The secret message had been pulled apart into three random static tracks which sounded like white noise, but which, when combined, revealed a message to Count von Viscount that led Ruby and Clancy to the rubies.
To create your own visual code try this website:
www.leemon.com/crypto/VisualCrypto.html
A note on Arvo Pärt
ARVO PÄRT, BORN IN 1935 IN ESTONIA, is a real and much-celebrated classical composer, predominantly of sacred music. He is known for working in a minimalist generative style, using his mathematically-based compositional technique, tintinnabuli.
In addition, Pärt has been known to encode messages into his music, as Ruby knows very well. In his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, for example, the word BACH (simply rendered by the notes B, A, C and H) is played as a repeated motif by the string orchestra, as a hidden tribute to the composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Rachel Folder; without her I would have been in quite a muddle. She did very well to untangle a tangled plot and generally push me into picking up my pen when I didn’t feel like it. To Thomas Gardner for composing (and explaining) the Chime Melody code at very, very short notice. To Marcus du Sautoy for inspired code ideas and general brilliance. To the girls of the Holms team from The Red Maid's School, whose winning entry to the Ruby Redfort code competition first inspired the music code. To David Mackintosh for exquisite design. Thank you to AD for inspiration. To Lucy Mackay for pointing out flaws in the nicest possible way. To Lucy Vanderbilt for being authentically American and helping make Ruby appear that way. To my editor Nick Lake for being calm as well as clever. Last, huge thanks to my publisher Ann-Janine Murtagh for, as usual, being wise, supportive and a pleasure to work with.
* Like book 1, this is a Vigenère cipher. But the keyword has changed! Clue: it swims in the sea but it’s not a fish. It was once on the surface, but now it’s on the bottom…
* Go to page 418 if you want to know what Ruby and Clancy said!
Dedication
For Peps
Contents
Cover
Titlepage
Dedication
The Abandoned One
An Ordinary kid
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
A little silver key
All as it should be
The lost perfume of Marie
The rare animals
A note on Lorelei von Leyden’s perfume code
Acknowlegments
‘Smell is one of the most powerful triggers of the human memory.
An odour is a portal to the past, instantly transporting the smeller back to some long forgotten time. The conscious mind might be unaware of the memory, but, just as smelling salts can rouse a person from a dead faint, so smell rouses the subconscious and awakens the dormant memory.’
DR DAVIDSON WALTER F MACKINTOSH PHD CBE, Ulwin University, co-writer of the highly regarded textbook, Nasal Passages
The Abandoned One
THE GIRL OPENED HER EYES AND BLINKED UP AT THE SKY. From where she lay, curled on the pine-needle floor, she could see pure blue, vivid behind a latticework of black branches. Sensing that she was alone, the girl sat up and looked around. She listened for footsteps, voices, but heard no human sound at all, just the hot lazy birds and insects buzzing and zithering. The picnic things were still laid out and a chain of ants was busy deconstructing the leftovers. She picked up the novel which lay where her father had sat, The Abandoned One – A Thriller, and she began to read.
But an hour later and almost halfway through, her parents still had not returned. Had there been some emergency? Was her father looking for help? Her mother waving at passing planes? Had they both been devoured by bears or some other wild thing – some terrible beast that lurked in the faraway forest? Or had they simply forgotten her, left her here? Her four-year-old imagination began to run wild, egged on by the pages of the book.
She calmed herself, took deep breaths, inhaling the forest aroma. The scent of the pine was a comfort, reassuring and fam
iliar, and her common sense drifted back to her. She was aware that the most likely explanation was probably the actual one: her parents had gone to the river to fetch water and had got sidetracked.
She waited, stayed exactly where she was, remembering this was the advice given by the yellow survival manual that sat on top of her father’s bureau. But time ticked on and night began to fall and no one came back. She stood up and pushed her feet into her boots, tying them carefully, doubling the knot so they would not come undone.
She pulled on her red waterproof mac with its sensible hood, just in case the weather broke – in the wilderness you could never be sure. She took the winding path down to where the river must certainly be, and as she walked she breathed deeply, filling her tiny lungs with pure forest air, and as she inhaled she smelled a smell so delicious, so like perfume, she couldn’t help but follow where her nose wanted to lead her.
She left the path and twisted through the dark trees and the tangles of briars and fallen branches, and came to a place where the moon could reach if only the cloud would let it. Ahead of her was deathly dark, and so it was with great caution that she stepped into black. As she did so, she felt her coat snag on something sharp; she pulled, but it pulled back – the tiny girl now caged in thorns.
Trapped.
She sensed something ahead of her, quite near. Something alive, something dangerous, something bad. The cloud moved, the moon shone and the girl gasped. For barely three feet away, staring at her with the palest blue eyes and the sharpest glistening teeth, was a wolf.
The girl stood very still, watching the beast, its gaze fixed upon her. She waited; she closed her eyes to block it out. Her heart beating fast and her breathing shallow and unsteady. She listened to the creature and heard the same sound, the same panic, the child and the wolf both locked in fear.
Slowly, the girl began to unpick herself from the brambles, pulling the thorns one by one from her legs, twisting out of her little hooded coat until it was all the briars could claim. She stepped out of the thicket and saw what held the wolf; it was trapped in an ugly mouth of iron teeth. Her four-year-old instinct took hold: it told her to free the desperate wild thing and so, picking up a rock, she struck the trap over and over until it gave, and the bleeding paw of the wolf was released.
For a moment the beast looked at the girl, its eyes in hers, hers in its, and for just a second they knew each other’s thoughts.
In the distance a voice called out, two voices. ‘Ruby, Ruby! Where are you?’
The wolf held her gaze just a second longer. Its beautiful eyes, crystal blue and ringed with violet, gleamed; then it turned and melted into the darkness of the forest.
And the wolf, like a wisp of smoke, was gone.
An Ordinary Kid
WHEN RUBY WAS SIX, she was entered by the Junior Chess Club, known as The Pawns, in a local city tournament. Game one, she found herself drawn against Mr Karocovskey. Not the opponent anyone would wish to be sitting opposite for their very first public game, at least not unless that person wanted to get home early so they could watch Tiny Toons. Mr Karocovskey had been a big champion in his heyday and had played chess against many famous Russians. Now he was an old man with a sharp brain, not as sharp as it had been, but he was still a grandmaster and the best chess player in the state.
Ruby looked at him across the table. He had a nice face – his eyes, watery and grey, looked like they might have seen the woes of the world. This man knew what it was to yearn for something and struggle to get it.
She could see what he was going to do ten moves ahead. She lost the game skilfully. Mr Karocovskey was very generous about his win; he smiled kindly, shook her hand and thanked her for being such a challenging opponent. He was a gracious winner, a good sport.
Seventeen-year-old Kaspar Peterson smirked. He wasn’t surprised she’d lost: he didn’t see there was any way this squirt of a six-year-old girl was going to win against a champion – she wasn’t going to win against anyone. Ruby Redfort challenged Kaspar to a game. He casually accepted.
She beat him in five easy moves. He was an ungracious loser, a bad sport.
Ruby had been reluctant to beat old Mr Karocovskey; she had no such qualms about thrashing Kaspar Peterson.
Some several years later. . .
Chapter 1.
A positive mental attitude
‘THE ONLY THING TO FEAR IS THE BLUE ALASKAN WOLF, which by the way doesn’t exist.’
These words were spoken by Samuel Colt, a former special agent turned environmentalist. Now he had taken up work as a Spectrum survival trainer. He was a tall, well-built man, getting on in years, but still in good shape, the kind of guy you wanted to have on side, the kind of guy you would be relieved to have show up, and the kind of guy you would hope to see standing on the horizon if you found yourself lost – unless, of course, he was the reason you had tried to get lost in the first place. If so, your heart might sink more than a little.
Colt had a large grey moustache and shoulder-length hair. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and clothes that gave him the look of a trapper – he wouldn’t have looked out of place had he travelled back in time a hundred years. He had seen it all and survived it all and he knew what he was talking about. There was nothing unfriendly about Sam Colt, a little straight talking perhaps, but never cruel.
‘Cruelty has no place in the wilderness. You sometimes need to be single-minded, tough as an old lasso, but you don’t gotta be cruel.’ He believed in that. ‘You don’t kill unless you have to and if you have to you make it quick.’
‘Blue wolves you don’t gotta concern yourselves with,’ he continued, ‘but regular wolves? Be prepared for those fellas. My best advice: avoid them. You don’t seek ’em out, you don’t feed ’em, you don’t pet ’em, you don’t look ’em in the eye. That goes double for bears; bears are a whole lot more trouble than wolves and wolves are trouble enough.’
‘Who’s going to be dumb enough to feed a bear or a wolf?’ whispered trainee Lowe.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Colt.
Samuel Colt, among all his other fine attributes, had very acute hearing and trainee Lowe was somewhat taken aback.
‘You don’t clean up after a meal, that’s feeding; you’re leaving a trail from him to you and, I assure you, you don’t want to do that.’
‘But what if you do run into a pack of wolves?’ asked trainee Dury. ‘What then?’
Today was a theory day and the trainees were indoors, taking notes and asking questions. There was a lot of studying to do, though Colt’s job was mainly to teach the practical stuff. He preferred that: being outdoors was natural – inside, not so good.
Sam Colt scratched his head and sighed. ‘If you should find yourself in this predicament, then there are a few ways you might handle things.’ He scanned the trainees to see who might know. ‘Redfort? Give me two pieces of good advice.’
Ruby leaned back in her chair. ‘If you’re able to, you wanna get up a tree pretty darned fast, but don’t count on the wolves leaving you to enjoy the view; they’ve been known to sit it out, waiting for people to come down. Crocodiles behave the same way, though if you have a wolf on your tail then you’re unlikely to have a crocodile after you, so I guess you can tick that worry off your list.’ She paused before adding, ‘Only run for it if you’re certain you’re gonna reach that tree before the wolf reaches you. Running gets it all charged up – brings out the hunting instinct.’
Colt nodded. ‘That’s correct.’
Ruby knew all this from the many books she had read over the years. She had written up some of these survival tips, the ones she considered particularly useful, in a pea-green notebook. Most of them she now knew off by heart and, as Colt went through the various dos and don’ts of outdoor survival, Ruby found herself mentally replaying what she had learned.
SURVIVAL SUGGESTION #7:
Dealing with dangerous wildlife
1. WOLVES
SURVIVAL RULE 1:
Keep
a clean camp. Wolves have an exceptional sense of smell: they can smell prey from up to 1.75 miles.
SURVIVAL RULE 2:
Keep a fire burning. Wolves don’t like fire.
SURVIVAL RULE 3:
Do not run. Unless you are sure you can run at over thirty miles an hour (no one has yet).
SURVIVAL RULE 4:
Stick with the group. Wolves are less likely to attack if you are in a large group than if you are alone, so don’t wander off by yourself.
‘There are many theories about these creatures,’ Colt continued. ‘Some say, in places where they’ve been aggressively hunted, wolves remain wary of man, preferring to avoid any human interaction at all. Others say that the wolf is a ruthless predator and will attack if it gets any opportunity. Either way, it don’t matter. My advice is the same: keep away from wolves and try to make sure they keep away from you.’
Ruby was thinking back to her own wolf encounter a long time ago on Wolf Paw Mountain: she had not followed any kind of advice, but had done the very worst thing as far as the textbooks were concerned, yet she had lived to tell the tale – how, she had no idea.
Unlike the other trainee agents, Ruby Redfort was not sleeping over at Mountain Ranch Camp. This was due to the fact that, unlike them, she was still attending Junior High. This made her task a little more complicated than anyone else’s: she was still expected to make it to class each school day, get her homework in on time and show up every afternoon for survival school.
To make it more complicated still, no one, not the school, not her family or friends, was aware that she had been recruited by the secret agency known to only a few insiders (and a handful of evil geniuses) as Spectrum.