PopCo (25 page)

‘So you knew it was all real?’

‘Well, not quite. I knew then that Francis Stevenson was real, at least. Poe wouldn’t have had access to parish registers for Tavistock. Neither would any plausible American hoaxer of the correct time period – or, at least, it would have taken an awful lot of effort for them to get the information. I had always been surprised that the story was so English, if it was supposed to be an American hoax, anyway. Too many of the details are correct. It just felt like an English story. And it would have been just too much of a coincidence for a Francis Stevenson to appear in the correct parish register if the whole story had been made up. Of course, just because Stevenson was real didn’t make the treasure or the code real. Someone who had known about the pirate Francis Stevenson could easily have added the story about the treasure. That happens all the time. Anyway, I put together a lot of the Francis Stevenson story from my own research, and other historians and treasure-hunters filled in the rest. Molly’s childhood journal survived, for example, and some records from ships Francis Stevenson was on. His log and journal from his
Fortune
voyage are in a museum in Plymouth. It all started to add up.’

‘When did you know for sure it was real?’ I ask. My tummy feels tingly with all this excitement. If I can get my grandfather to tell me where the treasure is, like he must have told my father, I will be able to find him and bring him back. Or – more exciting – my father may return any day now with treasure, and we can live in a palace and I will be a princess! However unhappy you are, as a child, stories about pirates and treasure cannot fail to cheer you up, especially
real
pirates and
real
treasure. My porridge tears now feel as far away as Australia.

‘I never knew,’ my grandfather says. ‘You can never know if something like this is real, or at what point the hoax, if there is one, begins. Francis Stevenson himself could have been the perpetrator of the hoax, for all we know. But the main thing was that the story added up. Here we had a boy who had definitely gone to sea on the right ships, who could read and write and was
interested in coded messages. It was enough for me to start work on it.’

‘What do all these numbers mean, then?’ I ask, flicking through the little red pamphlet again.

‘That’s the code. Not a cipher, mind. A code.’

A cipher is where symbols stand for letters, and these letters make words in a language. A code is where symbols stand for whole words or ideas. I remember this, which is good and means I don’t have to ask about it.

‘In this kind of code, which wasn’t at all popular in Stevenson’s time, incidentally, each number usually stands for a word. The key is usually a book or manuscript available to both the sender and the receiver of the code. The number 01 in the ciphertext would relate to the first word of the key – or in some versions, the last word of the key. The number 211, then, would usually mean the two hundred and eleventh word of the text. It’s actually one of the best methods of encryption around, as long as the key is kept secret. Particularly today, when there are millions of books out there. You and I could agree to use a little-known science-fiction novel as our key and no one could ever find out that’s what we were using unless they watched us all the time and noted the books we were reading. It’s one of those situations where all the keys could simply never be checked.’

‘Why don’t people use that to send codes all the time?’ I ask, sipping my tea.

‘Well, it’s all right under normal circumstances between just two people,’ he says, lighting his pipe. ‘But if we were at war, for example, and I was on a ship, it wouldn’t be very good at all. The enemy could raid the ship and discover a well-thumbed novel next to the communications equipment. They wouldn’t even have to capture and distribute the book; they would just radio the title back to their HQ and the cryptanalysts would easily be able to get hold of copies of it. Changing the key would mean supplying all communications personnel with a copy of the new novel. You could find out what that was just by watching the bestseller lists in the enemy country! Or by having spies in bookshops or book distributors.’

Smoke curls upwards from my grandfather’s pipe, the comforting smell of his cherry tobacco filling the room.

‘But Francis Stevenson used this method?’

‘Yes. The numbers he wrote down related to a text that he told
John Christian he would use in this situation. A perfect key for his purposes.’

‘So all you had to do was work out what book he had used?’

‘You make it sound very simple! But yes, once I’d put together the story of his life, I turned my attention to those texts he may have used to encode his message. It wasn’t as simple as just trying different books, however. I worked in reverse as well, considering the length of the coded message, its possible or likely structure, words that may have begun or ended the message or portions of it. I studied sentence-structure and grammar use from the early seventeenth century. I discounted books that wouldn’t have included words he would need to use, like
gold
or
treasure
. I felt more like a detective than a cryptanalyst, to tell you the truth. Would Stevenson have been here? Would he have read such-and-such a book? What would the seventeenth-century version of the text have looked like? Would the numbers run backwards or forwards? Would he take into account the folio page or not? All these questions were part of my life for years.’

I look down at the worn wood of our kitchen table, looking for patterns in the grain. I do this a lot when I am thinking. I look at patterns in wood, or on curtains, or even in cracks on the ceiling.

‘Were the numbers themselves a clue?’ I ask.

My grandfather smiles at me. ‘Very good,’ he says. ‘So, you tell me.’

I blink hard, trying to reset my big eyes. ‘What?’

‘What have you noticed about the numbers?’

I’m still looking at the table. An old burn looks like a little bird, I suddenly realise. Or possibly a rabbit.

‘The numbers are all three digits or fewer,’ I say, frowning. ‘Um …’

‘What’s the highest number there?’

I open the pamphlet again. ‘Two hundred and something,’ I say, flicking through it. ‘None of the numbers start with a three.’

‘Excellent. If you look at something like the Beale Papers, the numbers get quite large. In the first one of the three, the numbers go up past 2000. Was a larger text used in that case? Or a less common range of words? Of course, we now know that the first of the Beale Papers was encoded using the American Declaration of Independence as a key. Anyway, it is indeed a very good point to start asking questions.’

‘So what was the book Stevenson used?’ I ask, sipping from my mug of tea.

‘Oh, Alice.’ My grandfather looks at his hands and sighs. ‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Why not? I won’t tell anyone.’

He sighs again. ‘I can never tell anyone, I am afraid. I can tell you that it doesn’t exist any more, and that I had to virtually put it together myself, backwards …’

‘But you told Dad!’

‘No I didn’t. He thought he’d worked it out for himself.’

‘Had he?’

‘No. But he wouldn’t be told he was wrong. And I couldn’t tell him why he was wrong without revealing the right solution.’

So my father isn’t coming back with treasure. Great.

‘Did he get the answer from my necklace?’ I ask, touching it under the collar of my T-shirt.

‘No.’

‘But it is the answer, isn’t it?’

‘No.’ He pauses, relighting his pipe. ‘It’s a key to the answer.’

My grandfather infuriates me when he speaks like this. I want answers, not riddles.

‘Why won’t you tell anyone? Are you going to get the treasure in secret?’

‘No. I am not going to get the treasure in secret. I’m not going to get the treasure at all.’

‘You’re not going to get the treasure! Why not?’

‘There is more to life than money and possessions, Alice.’

‘But …’

‘They say pirate treasure is always cursed, you know. I don’t necessarily believe in supernatural curses, but people who go treasure-hunting rarely find happiness. Your friends and relations become quite interested in you when they realise you are going to look for treasure. You can be sure they will want more than just love and friendship when you return. If you do return with treasure, you’ll find you suddenly have a lot more friends and maybe even relatives, too; people you didn’t even think you knew. So many people will want what you have got. Of course, that’s if you even make it back. So you go to some remote place and dig up a big chest full of antique gold, jewels and money. How do you transport it? Where
do you take it? What do you do with it? There are plenty of people in the world who, if they knew what you were doing, would quite easily relieve you of something like that, and probably kill you too. Or maybe you would have to use some sort of violence to stop them. And all for what? To come home and have a private swimming-pool and some fur coats? We have all we need here – why would we risk our lives for more?’

He has got a point. Treasure-hunting sounds quite terrifying.

‘Couldn’t you send someone else to get it?’ I ask.

‘Like who? And what would you pay them? If they dig it up, why wouldn’t they just keep it? There’d be no incentive for them to bring it back and give it to you, would there?’

‘Gosh. I suppose not.’

I hear the pad, pad, pad noise of my grandmother coming down the stairs.

‘Have you told her about the bird sanctuary yet?’ she says to my grandfather when she enters the room.

‘What bird sanctuary?’ I ask.

‘Ah,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Well, there is another reason why I won’t reveal the whereabouts of the treasure.’

‘A
bird sanctuary
?’

‘Yes. The treasure – if it exists – is situated in an area that is now part of a bird sanctuary. This is where I am afraid I seriously fell out with your father. He believed that digging up the natural, protected habitat of some almost-extinct birds was a small price to pay for the treasure we would find. I disagreed. When I told him this was my reason for not going to get the treasure – or one of them, at least – he simply treated it as a clue, listing all the bird sanctuaries in relevant parts of the Pacific and Atlantic, trying to guess which one it was. I am afraid I got very angry with him.’

‘He never had money, Peter,’ my grandmother says. ‘You can understand his attitude.’

‘He had enough. He was able to work. He didn’t want the treasure so he could survive. He wanted it so he could be rich. I’m sorry Alice. In many ways your father is a good man, but in this he was mistaken. People have to respect the natural environment.
Otherwise, what will you have left? A society made of greedy, unhappy people, and a lot of extinct animals.’

‘So no one knows that you’ve solved the puzzle?’ I say, filing the information about my father away for more careful perusal later.

‘No,’ my grandfather says.

‘He did it for the intellectual challenge in the end,’ my grandmother explains. ‘He wanted to be known as the person who solved the most difficult hidden-treasure question in recent history. But now there’s no way he can be known for it – because once people know he has a treasure map he doesn’t intend to use, he – we – will be inundated with people who do want to use it.’

‘Like those men at the bus stop?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And they knew because my father told them?’

‘Yes.’

My grandparents start bustling around the kitchen, making lunch, while I sit there at the table feeling tired and quite small. I am angry with my father; the anger feels bigger than me. He was the reason for those men who approached me yesterday. How could he have been so stupid? And how could he go off on some stupid, dangerous, ill-fated treasure-hunt? How could he go without me? How could he do that? My thoughts blur into confusion over a lunch I can only pick at. I am not sure I understand about the bird sanctuary. I think I do but, given the choice, I would have the treasure. I’m sure the birds wouldn’t mind really. But then I love the fact that my grandfather is so solid and predictable. He would never run away and leave me on a whim. He wouldn’t think it was right. And my grandmother. Does she know where the treasure is? She must do.
I wish I wish I wish
I knew. After lunch I go for a lie-down and I take the pamphlet to read in private, in bed. I will find out where Francis Stevenson buried his treasure, just to prove to my grandfather that I can. My necklace is a key. That’s what my grandfather said. My necklace is a key and I have the code right here. I will do it. With these thoughts I fall asleep, the open pamphlet on the floor by my bed.

The white envelope is still on my desk where I left it. I have brought a bottle of beer with me from the East Wing kitchen and I open this and take a few sips before considering the envelope. It isn’t frightening me so much any more, the fact that someone is contacting me in code. Nothing bad seems to have happened as a result of it, not yet, anyway.

It only takes five minutes or so to decipher this one; it is written using the same key as the others.
Need help to send longer message
, it says.
Very important
. What? Need help to send longer message? Well, OK. Sure, I can tell you how to do that, but
who are you
? You haven’t told me how to get in touch with you! I realise that I am speaking these thoughts aloud and stop, quickly drinking some beer instead. Really, though. This is stupid. I burn the note and consider my reply. As I have no idea who I am dealing with, I can’t think how I would respond to this. Is my correspondent observant or not? Is he or she capable of following clues? I really don’t know what to do. Could I just do nothing? Unlikely. I do want to know who this is and what they have to say. I really, really hope this isn’t just some teaser for a new product.

When I first joined the company, e-mail viruses and ‘viral’ style e-mails were a new-ish thing, at least for people who had only just started using computers all the time. At the launch of one product, a young guy from the marketing department decided to create and send out a viral e-mail telling people about this new product, which had been hyped in-house as that year’s most likely Christmas must-have toy. The e-mail went around the world in about fifteen hours, and then started going around again. Before too long, people were sick of getting this e-mail, and then started asking questions about where it came from. When people realised that this was a corporate marketing device, they went mad. The toy had to be withdrawn, and the marketing guy was sacked. The team who had created the concept for the toy were very pissed off. All that work for nothing. Which just goes to show. You can give people information a couple of times, but do it too often and they just won’t want the information, or anything relating to it, ever again.

It’s almost eleven o’ clock. I switch on my radio, and wait while the soft voice of the woman presenter bleeds into some experimental organ music. As she finishes speaking, I realise that this is a special programme about a woman composer who eventually killed herself. Her music is spare, strange and magical. I lie back on the bed and suddenly there is nothing in the world except for an F sharp and me, then an A, majestic but alone. I am suddenly not there; somehow observing from a point of invisibility, perhaps as a cloud or a wisp of nothingness. I can see a forest with a cottage, all made up of one note, the A, and then an unexpected friend coming to visit, a B flat, carrying a gift – something made of hay, or grass. Am I asleep? I must be because there’s no answer when I ask myself this question, nothing at all.

When I wake up, it is about six o’clock in the morning and the radio is still on. My instinct is to switch it off, take off my clothes and snuggle back into bed for an hour or so of ‘proper’ sleep before I need to get up for breakfast. However, once I have gone to the loo, looked blankly at my odd reflection in the mirror, fiddled with the radio and started to undress, I realise I am actually no longer tired, and go to the kitchen to make tea instead.

From the kitchen window I can see that dawn is just nibbling at the sky as if it’s a biscuit it doesn’t really want. There is still dew on the grass outside, and I remember someone telling me that dew is a magical substance, if you gather it in moonlight. Back in my room, with my tea, I think again about how to respond to the message. It’s frustrating; I know what to tell but not how to tell it. Sending a long message is, of course, easy. You use a book as the key, and then make the code out of numbers relating to the placing of words in the text. But how do I tell this person that? Even if I just write a message with that as the content, using the PopCo code (which would take ages), I wouldn’t know where to deliver it.

There are other ways of sending a long message, of course. One of my favourites, even though it is really for kids, is one I described in my KidTec kit. You have to glue one large envelope inside another one, and then you conceal your message in the ‘hidden’ envelope. When the receiver gets the package, they know to cut it open to find the hidden message inside. Could that work here? Fuck it. Not knowing what else to do, I write
KidTec page 14
on a Post-it note,
and stick this to the outside of my door. (I know it’s page 14, because there were problems laying out the envelope image when the book was at flat-plan stage and I have virtually a whole folder of e-mails on my work computer with the subject header:
Page 14
Problems
).

Back inside the room, I pace for a bit before opening the door again and removing the Post-it note. It’s too obvious. Anyone could walk past, read it, check what’s on page 14 of the KidTec book and know I am up to something involving double envelopes. They wouldn’t even have to be the enemy to be intrigued by that. Not, of course, that I even know who the enemy is. I screw up the Post-it note and throw it away. Then I take it out of the bin and burn it. The smoke alarm in the centre of the ceiling flashes a single red pulse. Perhaps I should stop setting fire to things in here?

At breakfast, Kieran and another guy are giving everyone packs of cards. Each pack is made out of thick, pulpy, recycled-looking orange paper and fastened with string and the sort of button you get on duffel coats. Mine contains five cards. The cards themselves look like an odd combination of Tarot and kids’ trading cards. The symbols on them are both familiar and unfamiliar to me. I have one with a man’s head on it, this head comprised entirely of leaves and vegetation. The legend on the card says ‘Green Man’. Around the edge of the card are numbers corresponding to the north, south, east and west edges, which are themselves implied by a semi-transparent compass graphic behind the Green Man’s head. On this one, north has a value of 31, east has a value of 15, south has a value of 1, and west has a value of 25. I have four other cards. One is a picture of a crossbow, which has values of 4 on all its edges. Another is a winged dragon, with the values 5, 6, 12, and 4 for N, S, E and W. The other two are almost identical, and carry images of wood sprites. One seems stronger than the other, having a value of 10 on its west edge, and 3 on all the others. The second one has a west value of 7, and 3 on the others.

‘Enjoy!’ calls Kieran, as everyone starts examining and comparing their cards. I am on a table with Ben, Chloë, Dan, Esther, Grace and Richard. Richard, Dan and I are eating poached eggs with muffins. The others are all eating cereal or toast.

‘Don’t show anyone your cards,’ Ben says to me.

‘Why not?’

‘You have an advantage in the game if other people don’t know what you’ve got. And you should definitely hide that.’

‘What?’ I look down at the cards on the table. The Green Man is my favourite, so I have put him on the top of my pile.

‘That,’ Ben says, again, gesturing at the Green Man. ‘It’s a powerful card. You don’t want people to know you have it.’

‘Oh. OK.’ I shuffle the Green Man into the small pile of cards. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Oh, Kieran’s been going on about it for days. It’s his
big idea
.’

‘What, for teenage girls?’

‘God no, he couldn’t give a shit about that. No, this is his online card trading game. He thought he could try it out with a bunch of people offline, to see if there were any bugs or anything.’

‘I see. So … he’s not into the teenage girl thing at all?’

Ben pours some more cereal into his bowl and adds milk from a blue jug on the table.

‘Don’t think so,’ he says.

‘So what’s he doing here? I mean, why doesn’t he just go back to work?’

‘He’s having too much fun here. Pagan symbols, witchcraft legends – you get more of that stuff on Dartmoor than you do in Reading. In fact, we’ve been invited to go along on this weird nature ramble with that lot on Saturday, if you’re up for it.’

We’ve been invited
. God, that sounds so coupley.

‘We?’ I say.

‘Well, me,’ Ben says. ‘But I asked if you could come.’

‘And how is it going to be “weird” exactly?’

‘Not sure. At best, it may involve tree-hugging. At worst, we might be required to help summon something.’

‘Yeah, count me in, then,’ I say, laughing. ‘It sounds unmissable.’

‘What’s unmissable?’ says Dan.

‘Kieran’s crazy nature ramble,’ Ben says. ‘You should come, too.’

‘There might be more hill forts,’ I say.

‘Cool.’

While we are talking, the question of how to respond to my odd correspondent keeps turning in my head like cement revolving on the back of a lorry. And then, suddenly …

‘Where are you going?’ asks Dan, as I jump up from the table.

‘Back in a tick,’ I say.

‘You’ll be late,’ he warns.

‘No, no. I really will only be a minute,’ I say. I don’t want to be late for the seminar but this is important – or at least, it feels important, which is the main thing. As I am going, I see Ben give me a raised-eyebrow look. I shake my head almost imperceptibly and try to send him the telepathic message
See you later
.

It is dusty in my room; the early sun picking out millions of dark particles dancing in the air or lying lazily on the desk. Which book? Which book? I select the teen novel about the girl and her horse in the end, not wanting to waste any more time. I scan the first page, looking for the word ‘use’. It’s not there. I scan page two. Yes. It’s there, in the second paragraph. A neighbour is telling the lead character, ‘Take care when you use the stony path after dark, strange things lurk there.’ The page is 2, and the word number is 197. I write 2, 197 on a sheet of writing paper, then the numbers 2, 243, which lead to the word ‘this’. There.
Use this
. As long as the right person cracks the code (which isn’t hard), it will tell them all they want to know. If anyone else picks up the book and cracks the code, they won’t know what ‘use this’ means. Satisfied that this is the best way of responding, I tuck the sheet into the book and leave my room, already five minutes late for the seminar. The only thing now is … Where to deposit the book? I have it tucked under my arm as I walk briskly down the steps towards the main part of the building, and I am thinking so hard about what to do with it that I don’t notice Hiro walking in the other direction and almost bump into him.

‘Sorry,’ I say, smiling.

He looks embarrassed. ‘Do you have something for me?’ he says.

‘Huh?’

He grimaces. ‘This is well embarrassing. All I’m supposed to say is, “Do you have something for me?” I don’t know. It might be like a message, or a secret, or something. I really don’t know any more than that.’

‘Who asked you to …’

‘Can’t say. I’m just the messenger. Really.’

‘Oh. Well, perhaps they mean this?’ I hand over the book and he accepts it without even glancing at it.

‘Cheers,’ he says, walking away. I watch him go, half expecting
him to fade into invisibility, cackle loudly, or spontaneously combust. He does none of these things, of course; he simply walks away like he’s on his way to the most normal place ever. I stop watching him and keep walking in the direction I was going.

So Hiro is involved in whatever this is? Where was he going when I bumped into him? To find me? To break into my room to see if I had left a response there? Again, I find myself hoping that this is not just some silly game, endorsed by the PopCo Board. Or perhaps I do hope it’s a silly game. The idea of it being something else isn’t actually that appealing, now I think about it. As I walk over to the seminar room I realise that I am tired, and wish that I’d gone back to bed again this morning after all. Not one particle in my body wants to go to this seminar but there will be big trouble if I don’t. Sighing heavily, I approach the room and quietly open the door, pretending to be invisible as I slip into the seat Esther has saved for me.

‘Glad you could join us, Alice,’ says Mac, from the front of the room. This really is just like being at school.

There is a man at the front of the room with Mac. I am assuming his name is Mark Blackman, as this is what is written on the board behind him. He is older than the other speakers have been, with slicked-back grey hair and black-framed spectacles. He is dressed rather eccentrically in a tweed jacket, yellow cravat and jeans.

‘Hello,’ he says, now, getting up to speak. ‘As Mr MacDonald has already done such a good job of introducing me I shall not waste time re-introducing myself. The only extra thing I can tell you is that I have an Erdös number of 3. Does anyone know who Paul Erdös was?’ He pronounces the name correctly:
air-dish
.

I put my hand up. ‘A Hungarian mathematician,’ I say when he nods at me.

‘Thank you. And my Erdös number means?’

‘That you have written a paper with someone who has written a paper with someone who wrote a paper with Paul Erdös,’ I say.

‘Very good. Are you mathematically inclined, yourself?’

I can hear Dan groan in the seat behind me.

‘My grandmother was,’ I say. ‘She had an Erdös number of 2.’

‘Wow!’ He looks impressed. ‘Does anyone else know what we’re talking about?’

I look around the room. Kieran has his hand up, as do Grace,
Richard and the blonde girl I’ve seen hanging around with Kieran who either works in videogames or in Kieran’s strange team.

‘OK, thanks,’ Blackman says. ‘You can put your hands down now. All right. What we are talking about here is networks. If you want to take over the world with some undoubtedly pointless plastic moulded product, as Mr MacDonald assures me you do, then you need to understand network theory. You need to understand why your toy, or even your disease, or your idea – it’s the same principle – can be relatively unknown one day and then, overnight, be the thing everyone has. Or not. OK. Forget Erdös for a moment. Who has heard of Kevin Bacon, the movie actor?’ Most people put up their hands. ‘Good. You, boy, with the long, odd-coloured hair.’