Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (38 page)
Read Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath Online
Authors: Lauren Child
Clancy and Ruby stumbled on a version of this code. The secret message had been pulled apart into three random static tracks that 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
Marcus du Sautoy
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.
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 on very, very short notice. To Marcus du Sautoy for inspired code ideas and general brilliance. To David Mackintosh for exquisite design. Thank you to A. D. 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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2012 by Lauren Child
Series design by David Mackintosh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
First U.S. electronic edition 2013
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2012955155
ISBN 978-0-7636-5468-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7636-6357-5 (electronic)
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at
www.candlewick.com
