MICHAEL PA
Panting for breath, I scrambled to the top of the oversized staircase, only to find a large metal door barring my way, towering a good two or three metres over my head. From the hallway at the foot of the steps, I could hear the echoes of the flyer’s dying engine and guessed I only had a minute or two before its occupants found me. They knew I’d come this way. If I couldn’t get through this door before they came around the curve of the stairs, I’d be caught and shot.
In a panic, I ran my hands around the frame. There were no buttons or handles; nothing except a small box inlaid into the wall beside the frame, containing four plastic dice on a spindle. Turning the dice with my fingertips revealed a different number of dots on each of their faces, and each individual die featured a different set of numbers. Die one had the numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8; die two had 1, 3, 6 and 9; die three had 5, 6, 8 and 9; and die four had 4, 6, 7 and 8.
“Damn.” The box was a combination lock. Feverishly, I spun each die to the number 6, but nothing appeared to happen. “No, that would have been too easy.” I rapped my knuckles against my brow. “Think, dammit.”
Ears straining to hear footfalls on the stairs behind me, I clicked the first of the dice around to the number 2. I had to start somewhere, so why not start with the lowest number? As a scavenger, I’d come across similar puzzles. Sometimes, Cordelia had solved them; other times, we simply took the locked object and brought it back unopened. Undisturbed, uncontaminated relics fetched far more on the collectors’ market than antiquities bearing greasy fingerprints.
I clicked the second die around to 3.
2 and 3.
Something about those numbers tickled my brain. From below, I heard the harsh ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk of fresh shells being worked into a shotgun. I only had moments…
Two and three, two and three—what was so special about two and three? It was something Cordelia had told me once, when we were trying to open a locked chest in a damp basement somewhere off the Old Yard. They formed some sort of a sequence. If only I could remember…
I heard a cough, a footfall. My pursuers were coming up the stairs, weapons loaded and trigger fingers primed to shoot on sight.
Primed…
Of course!
Sagging with relief, I spun the remaining pair of dice to 5 and 7, completing the sequence 2, 3, 5 and 7: the first four prime numbers. Something within the doorframe clicked and the door hinged open. I stepped through and pushed it closed, hoping the lock would reset and buy me some time. Whoever was chasing me, I hoped they weren’t very bright—or, at least, that they didn’t have sisters as clever as mine.
* * *
Another winding staircase took me up to a glass-walled bridge that connected my building with the tower Doberman and I had been aiming for. It rose up ahead of me like one of Uncle Caleb’s gnarled fingers, its rough surface blocking the stars and the soft lights of the nearer Plates. It wasn’t the tallest building in the city, but certainly looked the most solidly constructed. Its thick circular walls seemed to grow upwards out of the Plate material, and appeared to have been designed to withstand a siege. The base of the tower was surrounded on all sides by a circle of polished Plate material. The glass bridge appeared to be the only way in, and there were no windows or other openings lower than six or seven storeys above ground level. Any would-be attackers approaching via the glass bridge would be exposed to defensive fire from above, and I had no doubt the bridge itself had some hidden method of withdrawal to prevent invaders from crossing.
At the end of the bridge, I passed through a tall arch into the body of the tower. The walls were over two metres thick. Overhead, slots in the top of the arch showed where iron gates stood ready to drop into place—a hangover perhaps from their builders’ history. The Hearthers were technologically brilliant. They made these twenty flat worlds, but part of them had always remained grounded in the past. Once, they had needed ramparts, moats and other defences— and the ghosts of those battlements had stayed with them. It gave them a historical context, and raised the hope that, given time, their intellects and motivations might be at least partially understood.
On the far side of the arch, I found myself in a low-ceilinged room filled with waving, fern-like sculptures, their rust-coloured fronds moving in thrall to an imaginary breeze. When I ran my fingers through the nearest, the spines rattled together like delicate wind chimes, and I swore. If I could retrieve and sell these sculptures, my fortune would be made. A single one would bring in enough money to get off the Plates altogether. Doberman had been right; this truly was the mother lode. Yet, with armed assassins on my trail, I had no time to linger. I pushed through the chamber towards the only visible exit: a three-metre-tall doorway on the opposite side. As I moved, the metal ferns jangled, the disturbance rippling out from one sculpture to the next, and the next again. By the time I reached the door, the whole room rang with cascades of delicate sound.
The doorway led to another flight of stairs. By this time, my legs felt rubbery, but I was acutely aware my pursuers might at any moment tumble the combination lock on the outer door. I could worry about being tired later; right now, all that mattered was finding somewhere to hide. Crawling on hands and feet, I pulled myself up from one too-tall step to the next, working my way around the corkscrew spiral, into the upper reaches of the tower.