by Lauren Child
The kid from Colwin City continued to scoop cereal loops while studying the carton. There was definitely something odd about this particular competition; for one thing, it didn’t seem like it was really a competition and for another it didn’t seem like it was aimed at the average child. You would have to be some kind of genius to see that this was not so much a word search puzzle as it was a code, and an even bigger genius to figure how to crack it. But that was OK, because the Colwin City kid was both of those things.
Once solved, it was plain to see that it was actually an application form for what seemed like a very exciting future. However, there was a problem. Casey was not eligible for a place on this programme, that was stated clearly in bold. That seemed wrong to Casey, unfair and stupid. When were things ever going to change? It was 1938, for goodness’ sake!
Then an idea grew: break the rules.
The kid emptied the milk carton, washed it, cut out the coupon, filled in the blanks. The small print made clear that a birth certificate was required, so the kid fetched it from the large oak desk that stood in the study. Before sliding this into an envelope along with the coupon, the Colwin City kid made one very simple alteration to the document. That done, the envelope was addressed and mailed.
RUBY LOOKED AT THE CLOCK: it was 2.57am and she was still wide awake, or at least her brain was. Her body felt like it could do with a whole lot more lying down. But by the time the clock ticked round to 3.33am, Ruby gave up arguing with herself and crawled out of bed. She figured she might as well get dressed since there was little likelihood of sleep coming her way. Once clothed, she tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen, turning on the low light which hung over the table so that it was bathed in a warm orange glow. She took a glass from the cupboard, walked to the refrigerator and searched around before pulling out a carton of banana milk. She poured herself a glass, took a swig, sat back in one of the kitchen chairs, and stared out at the snow flurry on the other side of the window.
How to get hold of the Prism Vault entry code? She was still sitting there when a slice of toast popped up from the toaster. Sort of surprising, since she hadn’t actually dropped any bread into the little silver kitchen appliance.
She retrieved the slice and read it:
Ruby climbed into the silver convertible at precisely 4am and they drove at great speed north out of town.
‘Is it really necessary to leave so early?’ yawned Ruby.
‘Is it early, or is it just very late?’ said Hitch.
‘It’s early,’ said Ruby. ‘I know it’s early because I was in my pyjamas twenty minutes ago, the sun hasn’t come up and the hands on that clock of yours haven’t crawled past the six.’
‘There’s breakfast in the glove compartment, if that helps,’ said Hitch.
Ruby shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I can eat. My teeth are still asleep.’
When Hitch and Ruby arrived, they were greeted by two familiar faces, Sam Colt and Agent Kekoa. Ruby’s heart sank, not because she had anything against these two individuals, in fact she liked them a lot; it was what they represented that was the problem. Sam Colt was a survivalist and survival trainer, and Kekoa was the Spectrum dive instructor. This meant that today was going to be wet and very cold.
‘Welcome to extreme elements survival,’ said Sam.
‘Boy, do I not like the sound of that,’ said Ruby.
‘That’s kind of the point, no one does,’ said Sam. ‘But with the weather and the storms coming, Hitch here thought it would be a good idea if you took part.’
‘Gee, thanks Hitch,’ said Ruby.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Hitch.
There were seven other trainees there, and Ruby was glad to see Kip Holbrook was one of them. The location was up at Big Sky Lake, which was frozen solid.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ muttered Holbrook.
‘Not unless you’re thinking about finding the first bus out of here,’ hissed Ruby.
The first part of the training was easy. Sam Colt taught them some key cold-weather concepts and none of them involved taking a dip in an icy lake. But quite a lot of what he said involved making sure to keep dry.
‘Hypothermia is the number one killer of people in the outdoors,’ said Colt. ‘As the old saying goes, “Stay Dry and Stay Alive”. So seeing as how I’m urging you to keep dry, you’re probably wondering where the lake comes in, right?’
Ruby wasn’t actually wondering this; she was pretty sure she knew how the lake was going to fit into this scenario.
‘Well, let’s go take a look,’ he said, and the eight trainees all followed him out onto the ice.
Two twenty-four-inch holes had been cut in the lake’s surface, approximately twelve yards apart.
‘First of all, we’re going to practise getting a feel for the temperature of the water.’
‘I don’t like where this is going,’ whispered Kip Holbrook.
‘To begin with,’ said Sam, ‘you’re all going to have a go at swimming from point A to B, under the ice, but with a line secured around you so there’s no chance of you losing your way.’
Ruby was faintly reassured by this news. She might end up frozen to death, but at least they would find her body.
‘When you hit cold water, your body’s going to do something very unhelpful,’ continued Colt. ‘It’s called the “torso reflex”. Basically, the shock of the cold is going to make you breathe in. That’s bad. That will get you drowned. So brace, and hold your chest still.’
He went through the rest of the principles of surviving a fall through the ice:
‘RELAX your body. Conserve energy. Cold shock will set in quicker if you move around too much.
‘FOCUS on getting out as quickly as possible without too much splashing around. The longer you stay in the water, the more likely you are to die.’
It was as unpleasant as Ruby had feared, but she did it and that was something. The next exercise made the previous one seem easy. This time it was all about finding one’s way out of the ice without there being any pre-cut hole.
‘OK, so the ideal thing to do if you fall through ice is to look for the hole that landed you in this situation. If you can climb out of the same hole you originally fell in through, you can be reasonably sure that the edges are likely to support your weight while you climb on out. But what I am going to teach you is how to find your way out of an ice-covered lake or river if you cannot find your original entry point. LOOK for changes of colour in the ice to find a weaker point. These will show up as lighter in colour. When you find one, you need to smash through it. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a suitable tool provided by Spectrum, but if not, you’ll need to use your initiative. Once you have broken through the surface, you need to GET HORIZONTAL: slide your arms full length onto the ice then kick your legs like a seal to propel yourself out. Then you need to ROLL until you get to firmer ice or ground. The key is to get out of the water ASAP.’
Ruby was relieved to see both Hitch and Kekoa clad in wetsuits and in the water.
‘At least there’s some chance I might get out of this lake alive,’ she muttered.
She let her body sink in through the hole.
The cold felt like a punch to the chest.
Relax, she thought.
She swam away from the entry point and began searching for a place to break through.
Focus, she thought.
Around her was all blue and white, and for a moment she had no idea where was up and where was down.
Don’t panic, she thought. RULE 19: PANIC WILL FREEZE YOUR BRAIN.
Holding her breath, she turned in the water, and saw a rounder, lighter patch to the left and above. Amazed by how hard it was to move with her clothes soaked and the cold in her bones, she made it through and without help from Hitch or Kekoa.
There was a welcome interval where the recruits dried off and warmed up and every single one of them hoped that that would be it as far as cold water survival was concerned. But as it turned o
ut they were just getting started.
The second half of the training took place at the aptly named Desolate Cove, a windy curve of grey pebble beach.
Here they were faced with a whole new set of problems.
Survival in the ocean was a very different challenge: a vast expanse of moving water, crashing waves, currents and rip tides.
As the day was coming to a close, Ruby saw a figure picking his way across the beach. It was Froghorn. He didn’t look too happy to be there. He was trundling a small cart about the size of a wheelbarrow. He was wrapped up warm against the chill; he had really gone to town on the cold weather gear.
‘What a drip,’ muttered Ruby.
‘Hey kid,’ called Hitch. ‘I have to get back to HQ. So when training’s over you can get a lift back with the other trainees. Can I trust you to do the right thing and get home safe?’
‘Of course,’ said Ruby.
‘See you later then,’ he said. She watched as Hitch walked over to speak to Froghorn. They talked together for a few minutes, all perfectly fine until Hitch appeared to notice something – perhaps it was to do with Froghorn’s attire, it was hard to say from this distance but Ruby recognised the subtle change in Hitch’s body language and knew he was not happy, not happy at all. He walked off to the Spectrum tailer while Kekoa briefed the trainees on the equipment they were about to be issued.
Froghorn’s job was to sign out the kit to each of the trainees.
Today’s items came in a neat little bag, light in weight.
The first was a breathing band, not unlike the breathing buckle Ruby had once acquired from the gadget room, though this device looked a little more up-to-date than that one. It was worn around the wrist and when one needed air it could be pressed to the mouth so you could draw in oxygen. It was intended for emergencies – the hope was that it would buy you just enough time to get you out of a bad situation.
‘Use it only when you really, really have to,’ warned Kekoa. ‘Once the five minutes are through, that’s it.’
The second item got everyone talking.
‘What’s this?’ asked Lowe.
‘That,’ said Kekoa, ‘is a Superskin. It keeps you warm in cold water and aids swimming. You’ll find you move significantly faster, particularly under the surface. The suit will keep you totally dry, but the truly remarkable thing about it is that once you step from the water it will shed every drop within a matter of seconds. You need to take it back home with you and practise getting into it – it’s not easy.’
Ruby looked inside the little zip-lock bag. ‘So that’s a Superskin.’
As they trooped back up the beach a quarter-mile on from Desolate Cove, Ruby noticed something written there in the sand. Four words:
The stars were indeed beginning to twinkle and as she gazed on them so she caught sight of the Observatory, perched as it was on Meteor Island. Stars were so often used to point the way, to navigate. Could it be, thought Ruby, that the stars hold an even bigger secret? Musca, she thought, the fly constellation.
If she looked for those stars then would she find her way?
Two months after the
letter was mailed …
… the kid from Colwin City received a reply in the form of a single line of gibberish. Once deciphered it told of a location. So, wasting no time, a ticket was purchased for the nine hundred and twenty mile bus ride to reach not an address, but a manhole cover. One thing this kid knew for a definite was that even crawling down a drain was preferable to living one more day in the suburbs of Colwin City, and so down the kid went.
The ninety-nine-second test completed, the kid from Colwin City was inducted into the Spectrum 8 JSRP.
No one doubted this kid’s brain. ‘A phenomenal mind,’ they all agreed. ‘Aced every one of the junior agent tests.’ ‘The smartest of them all.’ Well, almost.
They said, ‘You pass the big one and there’s no looking back – make the top eight and your future’s Spectrum.’
That sounded good. The life of a secret agent made sense like no other life could.
The Colwin City kid felt good, good enough to raise a smile, a rare occurrence indeed.
‘You know,’ said the test agent, ‘I think one day you might even be up there with Bradley Baker.’
The kid from Colwin City felt a sudden jolt, an inexplicable pain.
Who was Bradley Baker?
The training officer continued to drone on about this agent rival.
‘Baker was our first junior recruit, joined when he was just seven, but now look at him, thirteen and going places. If you get close to being as good as him, we’ll give you a medal.’
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the smartest of them all?
Not you, not the kid from Colwin City, some other kid’s got that badge.
So how to wipe the smile off this Bradley Baker kid’s face?
SHE DIDN’T EXACTLY WANT TO HANG AROUND out there once everyone had gone home – she wasn’t even sure that she was right about all this, she could have got the whole thing back to front and the wrong way up – but the way Ruby saw it, if there was a chance she was right, then it was a chance worth taking.
Getting herself into the Superskin was no small challenge. Neither Blacker nor Kekoa had been exaggerating: it was near impossible to put on and uncomfortable to wear. It sort of suckered to the skin, covering fingers, toes, neck and head. Only a small oval of the face was visible.
‘Weird,’ said Ruby, as she looked down at her feet, ‘very weird.’
To make the vision stranger, the material the Superskin was made from resembled fish scales and the effect was not unlike a costume from the well-known B movie, Return of the Fish-people.
She hid her snow parka, boots and other clothing, concealing them behind a large rock. The water was black and uninviting, there was no moon tonight and all in all the cove was living up to its name.
Ruby walked to the water’s edge and let the waves lap over her feet, and was surprised when she felt no chill at all. She stepped in farther – no, not cold.
‘Pretty super,’ she said, pulling down her facemask and diving into the slick black water. The Superskin seemed to aid swimming too, and she cut through the water with ease.
When she arrived at Meteor Island, she dived down under the water and searched for the hidden door. She was looking for a series of marks, or points, which might represent the constellation Musca – the sign of the fly.
It took her a few dives to spot it because she had been looking for something tiny, but the fly constellation was marked in fossils and spanned four feet across.
Now it was just a matter of getting in. She felt around, moving her palms along the rock.
At last she found what she was looking for: a panel of glass.
When she put her hand on it, a word flashed up: Capricorn.
Ruby pressed in the star points.
The screen flashed violet and a new message appeared:
ACCESS APPROVED.
The door slid open and in she swam. Now she found herself in a sort of twelve foot by twelve foot indoor pool, only it wasn’t a pool, because pools don’t have lids. What this was, was a cube full of water, and as she watched the door to the ocean slide shut, she realised she wasn’t entirely sure how she was meant to get out. She swam carefully round and round the cube, searching for a clue which might lead to her release.
Previously, Ruby had only been able to hold her breath for just a second over one minute. Now she was able to do three times that – it wasn’t exactly outstanding but it was enough. She found it just in time – a tiny, tiny image of a fly. Once it felt the pressure of her fingertip, the water drained out of the cube and a hatch in the lid slid open, allowing Ruby to climb up a metal ladder and out of the tank into another chamber. By the time she did so the Superskin had shed every drop of water and she was completely dry.
The space she was now in was not so different from the one she had just emerged from. It was the same shape, same
size, same colour, but this time the door was in front of her, with an entry panel to one side.
HIGHLY SENSITIVE, RESTRICTED AUTHORITY.
There was one violet button next to it. This she pressed and up came a grid. She pictured the books on Froghorn’s desk, the ones about error-correcting codes and data transmission.
What she was looking at was an error-correcting code, she could see that. But what kind? Ruby peered more closely at the black and white dots, counting them.
It didn’t take her long to realise: it was a parity bit system and the final row and final column of each grid held the parity bits relating to the black dots, saying whether there was an even or odd number in the row or column.
But how to get a code from that …?
Then she saw it: one row and one column in each grid had the wrong parity bit. The fourth row and ninth column in the first, and in the second …*
She typed four numbers into the keypad:
4912
A green light came on. And with a hiss, the door opened …
ACCESS APPROVED.
33 MINUTES GRANTED.
The whole room at first glance appeared to be plain white, white floor, white ceiling, white walls; another shiny white cube containing nothing. She ran her hand across the wall and as she did so the wall became colour.
Lots of colours, each one a narrow vertical oblong.
She held her hand on one – a dark red. There was a pneumatic hiss and the red oblong slid out from the wall. The file was labelled: THE NEW DELHI AFFAIR. She tried another, an olive green: THE ITALIAN CONUNDRUM.
Ruby looked around the room. So where to find information on Baker?
There were no letters, no numbers. She trailed her hand along part of the wall and watched the files turn from shades of green through yellow, through orange, and to red. They glowed for a few seconds before fading back to white wall.