3

This should be gut-wrenching, walking along a narrow strip of vine so high above the streets – one tumble and I’m history – but I proceed at a calm, steady pace. Maybe it’s the unreality of the situation, but I just don’t sense any danger.

I could take a side-vine – I’ve always wanted to visit the Taj Mahal and Sydney Opera House – but I stay focused on Big Ben. I’m not here to go sightseeing. Inez sent me to deliver a cry for help.

The vines are deserted, which surprises me. I’d have thought a place like this would be teeming with tourists.

It takes a couple of hours to make my way to the tower. When I finally arrive, I find that the vine stops short of the clock face by half a metre. Hanging between the vine and the clock is a round, grey borehole, a couple of metres in diameter.

Recalling Inez’s instructions to shout until someone hears me, I open my mouth.

Then I close it.

I can see a lock in the heart of the borehole, a dark green colour, large enough to accommodate both my hands. Inez told me there was no way I could open this lock. She’s probably right, but I don’t see the harm in trying.

I crack my knuckles and lean forward, slipping my hands into the lock. I find lots of pieces of metal, far more than in the locks in the borehole on the bridge. My first impression is that Inez was right — this lock is too complex to pick. I start to withdraw, then pause.

Inez said it would be a few days before she’d be able to make her rendezvous. And the SubMerged didn’t chase me, so I don’t need to worry about them sneaking up on me. Time’s on my side. Why not play with the lock and see how far I get?

Sliding my fingers forward again, I prod the pieces inside the lock, concentrating hard. For a long while I don’t get anywhere, but then a hazy picture forms, and I get a vague sense of how the lock might work. I press on slowly, teasing the internal workings, not flicking or pressing any part until I’ve explored other parts around it.

This is unbelievably intricate. So many tumblers, levers and pins. I slip into a meditative mood and everything else becomes a blur. A bear could come along and chew off my legs and I wouldn’t notice. I barely blink, my eyes fixed on the point where my hands disappear into the lock.

I must be breathing but I’m unaware of it. The lock is everything. My fingers and thumbs are ten linked explorers, passing information to one another and back to my brain, where a map is slowly being drawn. Sometimes I make a mistake, but I catch it after a few minutes and go back, correct it, try again.

I persevere for hours, and would happily work away at it for hours more, but suddenly the little finger on my right hand rolls a tiny, hidden tumbler, and there’s a soft click. The circular borehole shimmers and turns transparent.

I spy lots of clock parts through the open borehole, and I hear loud ticking noises. It looks like the borehole leads into the clock tower, but surely nobody would put such a complex lock on a borehole just to keep people out of a clock.

Then, as I’m staring into the ticking gloom, a man calls to me. “After all that hard work, it would be a sizeable anticlimax if you didn’t come in, Master Lox.”

I take a step back, alarmed. “Who’s there?” I cry.

“There’s only one way to find out,” the man says, and I sense that he’s smiling. But is it a gentle or a vicious smile?

“Who are you?” I shout, but this time he doesn’t answer.

I look back the way I’ve come and lick my lips. I could retrace my steps to the Empire State Building, but even if I didn’t have a message to deliver, curiosity would urge me onwards.

“One of these days you’re going to let your thirst for new experiences land you in serious trouble,” I growl to myself. “And this could very well be that day.”

But since I do have that thirst, and since I’ve come all this way, and since I’m here on Inez’s business, I draw myself up straight, put on a brave face, and step forward, through the borehole, into the dark, ticking cavern of Big Ben.