The Chaos Code (6 page)

‘I saw you coming up the drive,' Aunt Jane said. ‘Come on in. I'm sorry, you must be bored silly.'

‘Well, a bit,' Matt admitted.

The door opened into a large hallway. In fact it was more like a big room. A wide staircase swept up from the back of the hall, with doors either side of it leading deeper into the house. There were other doors at intervals
round the hall. Between two of the doors stood a suit of armour. Further along was a low table with a modern cordless telephone on it. It looked out of place amongst the oak panelling and the dark oil paintings hanging on the walls.

‘So when do I get to meet Mr Venture?' Matt asked. He'd almost referred to him as ‘Robin's dad' but didn't think Aunt Jane would be impressed by that.

‘Soon,' she promised. ‘He's a busy man, but I'm sure he'll want to meet you too.'

‘Great,' Matt said. Maybe when he met Julius Venture, he'd have some idea why Dad thought he could help – if that was what Dad had really meant.

‘I'm rather busy this afternoon,' Aunt Jane told him. ‘But I'm sure Julius won't mind if you look round. There's lots to see. He has quite a collection.'

‘A collection of what?' Matt wondered.

Aunt Jane shrugged as if the answer was obvious. ‘Everything.'

‘I was hoping to look in the library,' Matt told her. ‘Or maybe use a computer.'

‘There are computers in the library.' She smiled. ‘It isn't all stuffy and old-fashioned like this.' She tapped the suit of armour as she led him past the staircase and to one of the doors. It was standing open, revealing a panelled corridor beyond.

‘Down here?'

‘The library is at the end of the corridor. You won't
miss it. I have an office on the first floor. Up the stairs, turn right and it's the second door on the left.'

‘And you're busy.'

‘Very.'

‘I'll be fine,' he assured her. ‘Down here?'

She nodded, still smiling. Maybe she was anticipating his reaction to the library when he finally got there. Or maybe she was making up for being so short with him earlier.

‘Is Robin around?' Matt asked, as much to see her reaction as anything.

Aunt Jane's smile flickered, but she kept it pretty much in place. ‘I think Robin's busy,' she said. Then more quietly: ‘I meant what I told you. But I know you won't listen. Boys your age never do, do they?' She sighed. ‘Anyway, I shouldn't interfere, I know. Oh, and the password for the computer is secret.'

He was puzzled. ‘Passwords usually are.'

She smiled – properly this time. ‘You'll work it out, if I know you. Your mother always said you'd follow in her footsteps not your father's. Goodness me, I hope she's right.'

There were little spotlights set into the ornate plaster ceiling of the corridor – another strange juxtaposition of the new and the old. There were doors set into the panelled walls. They were so similar in design to the panels that Matt only knew they were there because of the handles and keyholes. They were all closed, and he didn't try
to open any. He made his way slowly along, pausing to look at the pictures. Some were framed documents including several old maps, and an engraving of the opening of the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in 1851. There were a couple of small portraits, and like the ones in the entrance hall, they showed people with striking dark hair and blue eyes. A family trait, Matt decided remembering Robin's distinctive looks.

One was different though. Standing on a narrow table midway along the corridor was a small framed portrait. The delicate brushwork depicted a woman with fair hair and green eyes. Her hair was arranged in curls on top of her head and the picture had faded with age. There was a name at the bottom of the picture in a little white plate painted into the foreground:
Elizabeth Venture
. Another ancestor, but without the same family looks. Maybe she'd married into the family.

Further along was a faded, sepia-toned photograph hanging under a wall light. Matt had to stand at an angle to see it through the glass as the light reflected back at him. It showed two women standing outside the manor house porch where Matt had just come in. But they had been there a hundred years ago or more. One of them was young – maybe only Matt's age. Her hair was arranged in curls and was jet black. Matt could only imagine her blue eyes. The other woman had white hair and was very old. Grandmother and granddaughter perhaps.

It looked like the same girl in the last painting in the corridor. But the date in the corner beside the painter's signature was 1833, which Matt reckoned must be before photography. The grandmother as a girl maybe. And with her was another girl of about the same age, but with fair hair and pale green eyes. There was a similarity between her and the woman in the little picture on the table, Matt realised. Not as close as the dark-haired girls, but a resemblance nonetheless.

‘I bet the holiday snaps are just as interesting,' Matt muttered to himself and stepped out of the corridor into the enormous room beyond.

Matt had once spent an especially boring afternoon with his father at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. He had been expected to amuse himself quietly while Dad examined books that were so old they looked like they'd fall apart if he turned the pages too quickly. The only thing that had come close to impressing Matt had been the size of the library.

Venture's library seemed even bigger.

Matt was shocked to find such an enormous place at the back of an old country house. Part of the effect was because it was all pretty much one huge circular room. Though, in fact, when Matt looked more closely he realised the room wasn't round at all. It was made of so many flat sides meeting at shallow angles and lined with bookshelves that it just seemed circular.

The domed roof high above added to the effect. Matt
felt giddy looking up, and his feet tingled. There were several spiral staircases leading up to higher galleries lined with yet more bookcases. He guessed that there was probably a way into the upper levels from the upstairs floors of the house as well.

Directly under the dome was a large circular table surrounded at intervals by high-backed chairs. The table was made of dark wood, so highly polished that looking down at the surface, Matt could see the dome and the galleries above reflected – as if he was looking into a deep, dark pit. He pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, angling it so he could look all round the room. Books and papers, so far as he could see. No sign of a computer though. But there had to be one somewhere, because Aunt Jane had said so.

‘You look lost, young man,' a voice called to him.

Startled, Matt looked round. There was no one there – the room was empty.

A laugh. ‘Lost and confused.'

Matt looked round again. Still no one. But there was movement, a flicker of light deep in the ‘pit' of the table. He looked up and found that there was a man looking down at him from the gallery above. The light had been his reflection as he moved, walking towards the nearest of the spiral staircases and coming down to join Matt.

He was a tall man with short dark hair wearing a suit, but with no tie. His shirt collar was folded back outside the suit jacket so that he looked both smart and
comfortable. His eyes, Matt was not surprised to see, were a startling blue.

‘Julius Venture,' the man said, holding out his hand as he approached.

Matt stood up and shook hands. Venture's grip was firm and confident without being tight or intimidating. ‘I'm Matt Stribling. And I like your library.'

‘It's good, isn't it?' Julius Venture agreed, looking round as if he'd not really noticed before. ‘Though I do wonder if it's going to be big enough. I seem to acquire so many books. As well as other things.' He fixed Matt with his blue eyes. ‘Do you read much?'

‘A bit. But actually I was looking for the computer. I wanted to check my email.'

Venture nodded. ‘There's no substitute for reading, you know. Well, actually reading is a means to an end – to several ends. Knowledge, enjoyment, understanding.'

‘You can get that off the Internet now.'

Venture laughed. ‘I can see that you still have a lot to learn.' He shook his head. ‘I'm sorry. I'm not mocking you. I think maybe we have different perspectives, different ways of looking at the world, but that's hardly surprising.'

He was walking across the library, and Matt followed. Venture led him towards an opening which Matt had not noticed before between two of the bookcases.

‘Robin said that you were pleasant enough but a bit weird.'

‘Thanks,' Matt said. It was a description he'd have applied more readily to Robin than himself, he thought. Different perspectives again.

The gap between the bookcases was actually a doorway, and Venture led Matt through into another room that seemed to be formed out of bookcases. It contained a desk on which was a flat-panel screen and a keyboard and mouse. The computer system unit must be inside the desk, Matt thought, hidden behind a door or fake drawer fronts.

Venture gestured for Matt to sit down. He leaned over and moved the mouse gently, bringing the screen to life. There was a prompt for the password and a box to type it into.

‘Aunt Jane said there was a password,' he murmured.

‘Did she tell you what the password is?'

He hadn't thought Venture would hear him, so Matt was surprised. ‘Er, no. She said it was a secret.'

He seemed amused. ‘Did she? Are you sure that's what she said?'

‘Yes,' Matt protested. The man's amusement annoyed him. ‘That's what she said.'

‘
Exactly
what she said? Think back, carefully. Hear her voice in your head.'

‘Why?'

‘As I said, you have a lot still to learn. It's time you made a start. What is the time, by the way?'

Matt could see that Venture was wearing a watch, so
it seemed an odd question. But he checked his own watch anyway. ‘Three seventeen.'

‘Thank you. So precise,' Venture said. ‘And so wrong.'

‘Sorry?'

Venture leaned forward, and said quietly, as if he was revealing a secret: ‘Digital watches don't really work, you know.'

Matt checked his watch again. Sure enough, the seconds had progressed. As he looked at it, the 17 became 18. ‘It's working fine.'

‘That's not what I meant. You see everything as numbers, just like a computer. It deals in ones and zeros. You see digits, flicking from second to second. As if time is granular, as if nature is made up of bits and pieces – bits and bytes.'

‘But it's accurate.'

‘Is it? What happens between the seconds? I know, I know – you could have a watch that showed the tenths, the hundredths, even the thousandths of a second. But still it's click click click as the numbers change.'

He sat down beside Matt and showed him his own watch. ‘I don't pretend it's entirely accurate,' he admitted. It was an expensive, heavy watch with a segmented metal strap. It had a traditional analogue dial with numbers round the edge.

‘So?' Matt said, not seeing the point.

‘So the second hand moves smoothly between the
numbers. On some clocks the second hand jumps between the seconds, but even so it has to pass through the space between. In your digital-computer-world you'd try to break down the intervals into smaller and smaller pieces, and time – the world isn't like that. In your model, if I can use that word, the next second will never come. The world …' He stood up again and shrugged. ‘… stops'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that before you can get to the next second you have to get to the next tenth of a second, right?'

‘Yes, I suppose.'

‘And before you get to that next tenth of a second you have to get to the next hundredth, yes?'

‘OK.' He was beginning to see where this was leading.

‘And before that you need to get to the next thousandth. And before
that
, the next ten-thousandth …'

‘And the next millionth and ten-millionth.'

‘Exactly. You see the problem? You can go on forever breaking down the second into smaller and smaller pieces. So, mathematically, you never get anywhere.'

‘I see,' Matt said, though he wasn't sure he'd got exactly the point that Venture was trying to make.

As if knowing what Matt was thinking, Venture said: ‘Just don't rely on the numbers. Look around you, see it all properly. There are more things in heaven and earth than are digitised in your computer.'

‘But computers are useful,' Matt protested.

‘Of course. But you have to be aware of their limitations. They don't allow for ambiguity or misunderstanding. Imprecise input won't give you an approximate answer, and there's no sense of interpretation. You need to know the difference between data and information – between the numbers and what they are actually telling you. And don't expect them to be as accurate as your senses.'

Matt laughed at that. ‘Computers can be faster and more accurate than you can,' he said.

Venture laughed as well. ‘You think so? Does the computer know the value of pi?'

‘To more decimal places than I do,' Matt told him. ‘Henry in my maths set learned pi to a hundred decimal places. A computer can go further even than that.'

‘Well, that's impressive,' Venture said levelly. ‘Over a hundred decimal places, eh? You see, you're thinking in numbers again. Granular, and imprecise.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that the computer can rattle off pi to as many
million
decimal places as it likes. Yet I only have to look at the table you were sitting at in the library, and I see pi exactly. More exactly than the computer can ever know. A computer, relying on pixels on the screen and digits in its brain, doesn't really
know
what a circle is. It can only ever approximate.'