‘What sort of book?’ Ben asks.
‘A novel,’ I say. ‘All about PopCo. All about what PopCo is, and what it does, and how you can wake up to it and decide to make a difference.’
‘Ah,’ Grace says. ‘A NoCo book.’
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ says Chloë.
‘I have some other things I want to write about too,’ I explain. ‘Something I promised my grandfather I’d do before he died …’
‘But you won’t be able to use PopCo’s real name. Or NoCo’s,’ Esther says.
‘I’ll change them,’ I say. ‘When I was talking to Chloë last night it hit me that it doesn’t matter how many people know that NoCo exists. No one really knows what it’s called, or who’s a member. I’ll make it the kind of book that young or interesting people read and powerful people ignore. I’ve got some of it in my head, already. I’m going to include all the toys we never made, all the ideas that got scrapped, all the dreams that went wrong. That will be how I’ll build up the image of PopCo. After all, no one can sue me for using concepts that never made it into existence. And then of course there’s the other stuff. Something about a treasure map, an old puzzle … Oh, you’ll see when it’s done.’
‘Cool,’ says Hiro.
‘So you are leaving?’ Chloë says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But I’m still in NoCo. Like we said.’
‘Yeah. Like we said.’
She smiles at me. People drink more beer, and make odd little sandwiches out of the salad, the hummus and the crisps. Chloë starts talking to Esther about her ‘outbursts’ and Grace sits there with Hiro, smiling softly at him while he opens another beer for her. Seagulls screech overhead, looking for any scraps we throw overboard. In the far distance, an aeroplane marks the sky with a thin white trail.
Ben looks sad. ‘So you’re still going home on Sunday,’ he says to me.
‘Yeah, which only gives me five days to work out what to make you for dinner when you come to stay.’
‘You want me to come, still?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘I do.’
‘And what was that thing you were going to ask me?’
‘How do you fancy going on a treasure hunt?’ I say.
Postscript
The Pacific Bird Sanctuary
1 May 2005
Dear Miss Butler,
Thank you so much for your recent letter. We are very much looking forward to your visit in the week of the 15th. We have made arrangements for you and your companion to stay at the Melody Inn, which is a lovely guest house on the south side of the island, not too far from the sanctuary. On the 17th, we would be honoured for you to attend the opening of the Peter Butler Community School, and the Peter Butler Animal Care Centre. We can also show you the plans for the Francis Stevenson Museum, the initial building work for which, as you already know, will go ahead next spring.
I still cannot quite express to you what the last year has been like not just for me but for all the trustees. To find that your bird sanctuary, or to be more specific, the public picnic area of your bird sanctuary, is the site of treasure worth almost two billion dollars – this is certainly something that doesn’t happen every day! As you know, the Peter Butler memorial buildings have been constructed on land that had been earmarked for development by a US toxic-waste-management company. We were thrilled to be able to buy back this land ourselves. As for the rest of the money, well, we can discuss it further when you are here. Obviously, we will now be the richest bird sanctuary in the world, but we have been rather touched by the ‘generosity bug’. Can you suggest some other uses for the money? Some worthwhile charities? I never thought we would be able to say this, but we really have too much!
With love and warm wishes – and wishing you a safe trip!
Helèna Rico
Pacific Bird Sanctuary
From The Cryptogram
2005, Issue ––
Those of you out there working on the Stevenson/Heath Manuscript – stop writing. Put down your pens. This puzzle, almost four hundred years old, has, at last, been solved. The late Cambridge, UK-based cryptanalyst Peter Butler (known to members of the ACA as ‘The Cam Buster’) came up with an answer back in 1982. Now, almost three years after his death, we talk to his granddaughter, Alice Butler, about just how he solved the puzzle and why he kept it a secret for so long.
‘My grandfather started working on the Stevenson/Heath Manuscript just after the Second World War finished,’ she says. ‘From what I’ve been told, he worked on it every single day until he had cracked it.’ Butler didn’t announce his success with this code, however, because he was concerned about the environmental impact of people going to get the treasure. Butler, a keen bird-lover, had discovered that the treasure was buried right in the middle of a bird sanctuary on an island in the Pacific. ‘He just didn’t want to be rich,’ Alice tells us. ‘He didn’t do it for the treasure. For him it was just the thrill of solving the problem that was important. But then he found he couldn’t tell anyone about his success. I remember him being very frustrated about this conundrum!’
Butler did tell two people, however, his wife, the mathematician Elizabeth Butler, and his son in-law, Alice’s father William Bailey. He did not tell anyone exactly how he had done it, of course, but he did reveal that he had cracked this notoriously difficult puzzle. But what about the proof? Is there any point in solving a puzzle unless you can tell everyone about it? While he considered this, Butler had a locket made up with a code of his own engraved within it. This code took the form of the following: 2.14488156Ex48. He placed this locket on a chain, gave it to his then nine-year-old granddaughter and told her never to take it off.
‘As a child I lived with my grandparents,’ Alice says. ‘My mother had died some years earlier. I was fascinated with my necklace and tried my hardest to understand it but it took me years to work out what it meant. I remember having one breakthrough when I was about twelve. I was fiddling around with my calculator and I suddenly understood the way the letters and numbers were arranged. I realised that it was shorthand for a longer series of digits, and expanded it accordingly. So then I had a string of digits – but I still didn’t know what to do with them. Then teenage life took over and I stopped trying to work it out. It was only after my grandfather died that I properly looked at it again. When I finally realised what to do with all these digits, I saw that my grandfather had taught me how to decode my necklace years before. It was quite clever of him.’
The code that Francis Stevenson used to create his treasure map was based on a numbered system similar to that found in the Beale Papers, in which, as readers will know, each number in the ciphertext stands for a word from a famous document. In the Beale Papers, the first of the three documents was decoded using the American Declaration of Independence. But no one has had any luck cracking the next two texts, (Unless …? No, Alice Butler assures us that Peter Butler didn’t also work this out in secret.)
‘I knew that my grandfather had worked out which text Francis Stevenson had used to create his code,’ she explains. ‘He had told me that much. But of course he wouldn’t tell me what the text was. He did, however, drop clues sometimes but I didn’t pick them up until much later. I remember once he said that he’d had to reconstruct the text, as it didn’t exist any more. When I finally cracked the code on my necklace, I knew immediately what the text was. All I had to do then was find my grandfather’s reconstruction of it, although that was harder than it sounds. I had all his papers but, of course, so many of these papers – including the ones I wanted – were in code!’
Then Alice had to work out what she would do, now that she also knew the location of the treasure. ‘More than anything, my grandfather wanted his achievement to be recognised. However, in his lifetime, he never saw a way that this would be possible. You can’t just suddenly tell the world you have a treasure map. You’d have absolute chaos on your doorstep! After a while, he stopped talking about Stevenson/Heath and immersed hi
mself in his new challenge, the Voynich Manuscript. And no, he didn’t solve that one either.’
So what to do about the treasure? It turns out that Alice Butler didn’t want it either. ‘I felt it was wrong for me to have it,’ she says. ‘So I did something that seemed logical. I simply gave the information I had to the trust of the bird sanctuary on which the treasure was buried. I thought, “Well, it’s really your treasure, since you own the land.” I also thought they would know how to dig it up without disturbing the birds. I made an arrangement with them that if there did turn out to be treasure down there, they would use some of the money to build a school and a rescue centre for animals. I also suggested that a Francis Stevenson museum would be a nice idea, too. His story is very fascinating, and deserves a much wider audience. I left it up to the trustees to decide what they wanted to call these structures. But I know my grandfather would be very proud to know that they chose to honour his name. And now that the Peter Butler Community School and the Peter Butler Animal Care Centre are both about to open, I can finally tell everyone that he worked out the location of the Stevenson treasure. The treasure is of course now gone, so there is no risk of people pounding on my door in the middle of the night wanting a copy of the map.’
However, Alice is more reluctant to tell us the name of the document which Stevenson used to encode his map.
‘I thought I would leave that as an open puzzle,’ she says, with a smile. ‘Now that everyone knows what was on my necklace, it should be easy for your readers to work out.’
There’s another reason, too. Alice Butler has written a novel. ‘It’s not just about the Stevenson/Heath Manuscript,’ she says. ‘But the story is there. In the first UK edition of the book I have left the puzzle open, so I don’t want to spoil it for any potential readers by revealing it now.’ Never fear, though, you don’t have to wait for later editions of the book to come out to get the answer if you really want it. The whole story of the solution to the Stevenson/Heath Manuscript will be a key exhibit in the Francis Stevenson Museum, due to open in the fall, and the answer will also be posted on their website.
Across
1) Erase game backwards on mathematician’s computer, perhaps? (5)
3) Unity found in loneliness (3)
6) No right to French silver for SOE Operative (5)
7) Group would have more assets without donkey (3)
8) Rumour about conflict, we hear, with bad end (4)
9) There are seven of these (7)
12) Neat? Help sort out this beastly mess (8)
13) Make your own portable instrument out of fragment (3)
14) A short farewell, during cricket game, perhaps? (3)
Down
1) Mage is plucky but confused (4)
2) Cube me (5)
4) Scrambler finds fish in backwards north-east American casualty (7)
5) In mix-up, Premier of Norway swears to reply (6)
7) Maisie very carefully sifts through clue (5)
10) No clue here. Explain missing piece today! You! (5)
11) Wholly. Except? (4)
Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in English
The following table is from Fletcher Pratt, Secret and Urgent: The Story of Codes and Ciphers, Blue Ribbon Books, 1939.
Rank Letter Frequency of occurrence in 1000 words Frequency of occurrence in 1000 letters
1 E 591 131.05
2 T 473 104.68
3 A 368 81.51
4 O 360 79.95
5 N 320 70.98
6 R 308 68.32
7 I 286 63.45
8 S 275 61.01
9 H 237 52.59
10 D 171 37.88
11 L 153 33.89
12 F 132 29.24
13 C 124 27.58
14 M 114 25.36
15 U 111 24.59
16 G 90 19.94
17 Y 89 19.82
18 P 89 19.82
19 W 68 15.39
20 B 65 14.40
21 V 41 9.19
22 K 19 4.20
23 X 7 1.66
24 J 6 1.32
25 Q 5 1.21
26 Z 3 .77
Let Them Eat Cake cake
Ingredients
2 oz ground almonds
6 oz self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 oz light muscovado sugar
150 ml corn oil
200–250 ml soya milk
zest of two unwaxed lemons
juice of 2 lemons
1 tbsp orange flower water
1 tsp natural vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees, or less if it’s a fan oven.
Grease a cake tin. A deep six-inch tin is good but any will do.
Sift the flour and the baking powder into a bowl and then add the sugar. Mix in the ground almonds and the lemon zest. Add the oil and the milk. Use slightly less liquid to make the end result more of a cake and less of a pudding. You don’t have to be 100per cent precise with the liquids in this cake.
Now add the lemon juice and mix in thoroughly. Add the flower essence and the vanilla extract and mix again. The result should look like a thick batter.
Pour into the cake tin and bake for about forty minutes. The outside should be brown and the inside very soft. Turn out, cool and decorate with fresh mint leaves and strawberries.
The First 1000 Primes
2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29
31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71
73 79 83 89 97 101 103 107 109 113
127 131 137 139 149 151 157 163 167 173
179 181 191 193 197 199 211 223 227 229
233 239 241 251 257 263 269 271 277 281
283 293 307 311 313 317 331 337 347 349
353 359 367 373 379 383 389 397 401 409
419 421 431 433 439 443 449 457 461 463
467 479 487 491 499 503 509 521 523 541
547 557 563 569 571 577 587 593 599 601
607 613 617 619 631 641 643 647 653 659
661 673 677 683 691 701 709 719 727 733
739 743 751 757 761 769 773 787 797 809
811 821 823 827 829 839 853 857 859 863
877 881 883 887 907 911 919 929 937 941
947 953 967 971 977 983 991 997 1009 1013
1019 1021 1031 1033 1039 1049 1051 1061 1063 1069
1087 1091 1093 1097 1103 1109 1117 1123 1129 1151
1153 1163 1171 1181 1187 1193 1201 1213 1217 1223
1229 1231 1237 1249 1259 1277 1279 1283 1289 1291
1297 1301 1303 1307 1319 1321 1327 1361 1367 1373
1381 1399 1409 1423 1427 1429 1433 1439 1447 1451
1453 1459 1471 1481 1483 1487 1489 1493 1499 1511
1523 1531 1543 1549 1553 1559 1567 1571 1579 1583
1597 1601 1607 1609 1613 1619 1621 1627 1637 1657
1663 1667 1669 1693 1697 1699 1709 1721 1723 1733
1741 1747 1753 1759 1777 1783 1787 1789 1801 1811
1823 1831 1847 1861 1867 1871 1873 1877 1879 1889
1901 1907 1913 1931 1933 1949 1951 1973 1979 1987
1993 1997 1999 2003 2011 2017 2027 2029 2039 2053
2063 2069 2081 2083 2087 2089 2099 2111 2113 2129
2131 2137 2141 2143 2153 2161 2179 2203 2207 2213
2221 2237 2239 2243 2251 2267 2269 2273 2281 2287
2293 2297 2309 2311 2333 2339 2341 2347 2351 2357
2371 2377 2381 2383 2389 2393 2399 2411 2417 2423
2437 2441 2447 2459 2467 2473 2477 2503 2521 2531
2539 2543 2549 2551 2557 2579 2591 2593 2609 2617
2621 2633 2647 2657 2659 2663 2671 2677 2683 2687
2689 2693 2699 2707 2711 2713 2719 2729 2731 2741
2749 2753 2767 2777 2789 2791 2797 2801 2803 2819
2833 2837 2843 2851 2857 2861 2879 2887 2897 2903
2909 2917 2927 2939 2953 2957 2963 2969 2971 2999
3001 3011 3019 3023 3037 3041 3049 3061 3067 3079
3083 3089 3109 3119 3121 3137 3163 3167 3169 3181
3187 3191 3203 3209 3217 3221 3229 3
251 3253 3257
3259 3271 3299 3301 3307 3313 3319 3323 3329 3331
3343 3347 3359 3361 3371 3373 3389 3391 3407 3413
3433 3449 3457 3461 3463 3467 3469 3491 3499 3511
3517 3527 3529 3533 3539 3541 3547 3557 3559 3571
3581 3583 3593 3607 3613 3617 3623 3631 3637 3643
3659 3671 3673 3677 3691 3697 3701 3709 3719 3727
3733 3739 3761 3767 3769 3779 3793 3797 3803 3821
3823 3833 3847 3851 3853 3863 3877 3881 3889 3907
3911 3917 3919 3923 3929 3931 3943 3947 3967 3989
4001 4003 4007 4013 4019 4021 4027 4049 4051 4057
4073 4079 4091 4093 4099 4111 4127 4129 4133 4139
4153 4157 4159 4177 4201 4211 4217 4219 4229 4231
4241 4243 4253 4259 4261 4271 4273 4283 4289 4297
4327 4337 4339 4349 4357 4363 4373 4391 4397 4409
4421 4423 4441 4447 4451 4457 4463 4481 4483 4493
4507 4513 4517 4519 4523 4547 4549 4561 4567 4583
4591 4597 4603 4621 4637 4639 4643 4649 4651 4657
4663 4673 4679 4691 4703 4721 4723 4729 4733 4751
4759 4783 4787 4789 4793 4799 4801 4813 4817 4831
4861 4871 4877 4889 4903 4909 4919 4931 4933 4937
4943 4951 4957 4967 4969 4973 4987 4993 4999 5003
5009 5011 5021 5023 5039 5051 5059 5077 5081 5087
5099 5101 5107 5113 5119 5147 5153 5167 5171 5179
5189 5197 5209 5227 5231 5233 5237 5261 5273 5279
5281 5297 5303 5309 5323 5333 5347 5351 5381 5387
5393 5399 5407 5413 5417 5419 5431 5437 5441 5443