The Chaos Code (30 page)

She was still a friend, he decided. Nothing would change that. He liked her. He liked her a lot. Only … And it was a big ‘only' and it made him think of Dad.

Even so, he almost missed it. He actually copied the symbol – mechanically, without really looking at it. Just
letting his hand do the work. Only as he paused and checked back over what he'd done did Matt see it.

The shape was different from the others because it looked more like a letter than an abstract symbol. Like a capital E, but with a line across the top. He hesitated, wondering why it looked familiar. Was there a similar symbol on the other side of the disc? Or had he seen it in one of the books that Robin had hunted out?

The answer came like Robin had said. Like a pattern – like a jigsaw slotting suddenly into place to give a bigger picture that the individual pieces didn't show. Matt felt the blood draining from his face. He shivered.

‘I think we've got a problem,' he said, and explained what had just occurred to him.

Robin and Jane each examined the clay disc closely.

‘Could be a coincidence,' Jane said. But she didn't sound convinced.

‘What do you think, Matt?' Robin asked.

‘It's LFT,' he told them. ‘Has to be, doesn't it? It's Dad's shorthand symbol for “Let's Find Treasure,” the capital letters all laid over each other.'

‘Go on,' Robin said. She was watching him closely, and Matt guessed that she had known in an instant what that meant, though he had to work it out.

‘So this isn't a clay copy of the disc that we found. I think
this
is the original disc.' He held it up.

‘But that isn't thousands of years old,' Jane pointed out.

‘No, it isn't. And since it has Dad's own shorthand on it, his mark, he must have made it.'

‘Why?'

‘I was wondering that too. It didn't strike me before and it should have. Why did Dad have a clay copy of the disc, rather than an impression? Or a plaster copy taken from a mould he'd made? I mean, how would he copy the disc in clay?'

‘Go on,' Aunt Jane prompted.

‘The answer is that I don't think he did,' Matt said. He was still working it all out himself, talking through it as his mind followed the train of thought. ‘What he did was, he
made
a clay disc, and from that he took a mould. It's probably in his study somewhere buried under a heap of junk. Anyway, wherever it is, he used that mould to make another disc. The disc we found on Valdeholm. So what Harper has got isn't an ancient key to Atlantis that is going to unlock the final secrets of the ancients for him so he can complete his model, or whatever it is.'

Matt was grinning now, proud of his reasoning and also proud of his dad. ‘Harper's got a fake, a made-up disc that Dad planted and led us to find. He'd already been to Valdeholm, like we thought. He found the treasure, took the real disc – if there ever was one – and replaced it with a
fake
for Harper to find. To throw him off the scent, lay a false trail. We can't decipher these
symbols and neither can Harper, because they're just made up by Dad. It's gibberish.'

‘Which is fine,' Aunt Jane said. ‘Until Harper realises he's been tricked.'

‘Then he'll be after the real disc,' Robin agreed.

‘If there is one,' Matt reminded them.

‘Oh, there is one,' Robin said. ‘We can be sure of that.'

Matt looked at her closely, staring deep into her dark, blue eyes. ‘What haven't you told us?' he asked.

But before Robin could answer, the doorbell rang.

Once again, they met in Venture's study. It reminded Matt of the first meeting with Harper, except that instead they were joined by the rather more rotund form of Mephistopheles Smith. And Robin's Dad was absent. She had taken his place behind the desk, Smith sitting where Harper had been on the other side of it. Matt could tell they were firm friends.

Smith listened and nodded and did not interrupt as Robin told him what had happened. Matt waited for him to leap to his feet and declare it was impossible, or stupid, or the imaginings of a teenage girl. But he never did. It slowly dawned on him that Smith knew the truth about Robin and her father. He was an old friend of the family – why wouldn't he? Everyone knew. Aunt Jane, Matt's Dad, Mephistopheles Smith.

Everyone except Matt.

‘Robin thinks there is a real disc that Harper will
want when he finds he's been duped,' Matt said as soon as Robin had finished.

Smith nodded, though his expression was hard to read behind his dark glasses. Matt wondered if he ever took them off. ‘It seems reasonable,' the man said. ‘After all, for whatever reason, Harper was expecting to find such a disc.'

‘And it's another reason to plant the fake,' Robin said. ‘Give him what he was expecting anyway. Less suspicious. He must have found references to the disc in some other source and realised it could lead him to the knowledge he needs. Besides …' She hesitated, and again Matt was sure she knew more than she had told them.

‘Besides?' he prompted.

‘We have Dad's notes,' she said, ‘though you have to realise he was working it out still, guessing at some things and filling in the blanks in what he knew. Trying to discover what Harper was really up to. But from what Dad
did
manage to work out, the way it works is this. They didn't have computers back in the old times. So their model wasn't bits and bytes, it was a physical thing, created from the elements. Principally made from the earth itself. A miniature recreation – a universe in little. A copy of the earth and the heavens in the architecture and the locations of the ancient sites, with the discs as a vital component. That's what Harper is trying to recreate inside his computer. He wants a computer model of the
world as accurate and as powerful as the physical model the ancients were building.'

‘So?' Aunt Jane said.

‘So how do you think they planned to use that model?' Robin asked.

‘All right,' Matt said. ‘Tell us how.'

‘Remember they were trying to predict things, but they were also trying to manipulate events – people, places, things. To do that they needed to focus the model, to define exactly what they wanted to manipulate.'

‘Like hair for a voodoo doll,' Matt remembered. ‘So that the doll is tied, linked in some way, to the specific person you want to affect.'

‘Exactly. You have to sort of aim the model – target it at the part of the world you're trying to change. Now there are two ways of doing it. By a direct link of some kind, like with the voodoo doll and a lock of hair. Entanglement. That's how Harper creates and controls his elementals, the creatures he set on us. They are linked to his computer models and he gives them instructions from his laptop. Like playing a computer game.'

‘Avatars,' Matt said. ‘Creatures you give instructions to or move round with your mouse or whatever. He sets them off to complete some task and leaves them to it like the little people in
Sim City
or whatever.'

‘And the other way of specifying what you want to affect,' Smith said, ‘would be by giving the location. Defining exactly where the events are to take place.'

‘Like map coordinates?' Matt said.

‘That would give the place. You also need to give the time,' Robin said. ‘You need to specify the moment when you want the effect to take place. Like setting a timer. And that, Harper cannot do – not yet. He can only affect the things he has fully modelled and in his computer code.'

‘So, how did the ancients do it?'

‘With the discs. I told you they were vital to the whole thing. And the reason is that the metal disc we had here was used to define the exact time of events that are to be shown and can then be manipulated, changed. It's like a playback, except it could be future events. Any time that you can define using that disc to set the exact year, month, day. Right down to the hours, minutes, seconds … But Katherine Feather took it. So Harper has it now.'

‘And what about location?' Smith said.

‘That requires another, different disc, that specifies geographical coordinates. One vitally important disc that has been lost for millennia. Or so my father reckons.'

‘The disc that Harper is now after,' Matt said.

‘But what can he do with it if he gets it?' Aunt Jane asked.

‘Assuming he realises how the discs work and what they are for, then he can manipulate, control, predict
anything
,' Robin said. ‘If Harper knows what he is doing, he can recreate the discs inside his computer model – make his own versions of them, just as he has been
modelling the ancient sites themselves. If he does that …' She pursed her lips for a moment before saying: ‘Well, then he can probably predict what we're doing right now.'

‘Even without this second geography disc?' Jane asked.

‘We have to assume so,' Smith told them. ‘If he has the rest of it worked out, he may be clever enough to solve the missing pieces himself rather than rely on copying what has already been done. It's like a code, and he is dangerously close to cracking it – to discovering how to control and harness the chaos that is our world rather than just the elemental avatars he has now. The secret is, I suppose, to be
un
predictable.'

‘And find the other disc, the
real
last disc before he does,' Robin said.

‘Dad knows where it is,' Matt said. ‘That's why he created the fake. Has to be. Remember all those times we thought he'd jumped to conclusions or made a lucky guess?' He shook his head. ‘Wasn't luck at all, was it. He already knew where the real disc was, and he was leading us – or rather Harper – away from it. Things, clues, he ignored. It was because he didn't want to draw attention to them.'

‘You could be right,' Robin agreed.

‘Does that mean we can work out where the disc is?' Jane asked. ‘If so, we can still get to it before Harper.'

Robin was already working at the computer. ‘There was a point,' she said, ‘where the Hospitallers split up.
There was a lead that Arnie ignored, remember? An entry in a journal. A sighting. It's here somewhere … The possible locations … He discounted Rosslyn in Scotland, which is probably right. But there was also the possibility of the disc ending up in Pomponini in Italy, or Pont St Jean in the south of France.'

‘I'll have them both checked,' Smith said. ‘But I suspect we are too late.' He went to the door, and spoke quickly and quietly to the large man in sunglasses standing outside.

‘What makes you think we're too late?' Matt asked when he had finished.

‘At some point,' Smith said, ‘Harper must realise the disc is not the one he is after and that he has been tricked. At that point, he will be as able to trace back the clues as we are. Your father knows that.'

‘That just means we have to hurry, to get there first.'

Smith held up a pudgey finger. ‘Another thing. To create an authentic-seeming disc, your father must have had some idea what he was making a copy of. You can't expect a forger to create a fake painting if he's never seen the artist's real original work.'

‘You're saying that Arnold must have seen the original disc,' Jane said. ‘So that he knew what Harper was expecting to find.'

‘It seems likely. He must have had a good idea of what the real one looked like so he could make a convincing fake with useless symbols on. That and his determination
that Harper should not find the original would both suggest that Doctor Stribling did indeed discover the disc himself. It doesn't matter where, because he didn't leave it where he found it.'

‘So where is it?' Robin asked. ‘Did he hide it somewhere else? Or destroy it, even?'

‘It's a relic, it's old,' Matt said. ‘He'd want to look after it, keep it safe.'

‘And he wouldn't leave it at his house,' Robin agreed.

‘He was expecting Harper to come for him.'

The realisation came to them all at the same moment. Aunt Jane was the first to speak.

‘Oh, the silly old fool,' she said.

‘Typical,' Robin agreed.

Matt shook his head in disbelief. ‘He hasn't hidden it anywhere, has he?' Matt said. ‘Dad's still got it with him. At the pyramid. With Harper.'

Having had practically no sleep the night before, Matt had been functioning on adrenaline. Aunt Jane was the same, judging by how easily he managed to persuade her that he was going with Robin.

By the time Smith's limousine got the two of them to RAF Cosworth, Matt could barely keep his eyes open. He was asleep almost as soon as the huge transport plane was in the sky. And despite the discomfort of flying in the back of a military aircraft designed to move soldiers and their equipment, he didn't wake until Robin gently nudged his arm and told him they had to disembark.

Word had come back quickly from Smith's enquiries, and, as they suspected, the curator of the local museum in Pont St Jean was pleased to report that a recent excavation had provided his establishment with some interesting old documents and relics. There wasn't a metal disc among them, but now it was mentioned the
Englishman had taken some things away to be dated by the British Museum. He was fairly sure there had been such a disc among those artefacts.

‘Typical Arnie,' Robin had remarked. ‘Not content with finding one hoard of treasure he has to go and find himself another one as well.'

‘You think the Valdeholm stuff was genuine?' Matt had asked.

‘Oh yes. He just added the fake disc to it.' She shook her head in renewed disbelief. ‘He's so brilliant, but so daft. How's he manage that?'

‘Perhaps it's hereditary,' Matt joked, coaxing a smile from her.

Now, refreshed but anxious, Matt watched the helicopter that had brought them on their final stage of the journey turning in the sky and heading back towards Rio. Leaving him and Robin standing in a small clearing in the rain forest, far from the Waterfall Pyramid but as close as they could get without fear of being detected. Alone.