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I say nothing over the next few hours while working on the nine-sided lock. I explore slowly and surely, building up a detailed picture of its interior. Eventually I start flicking, sliding and teasing. Levers slide away into nothingness, others fall into place, I bat them aside, then bolts glide away from me, tumblers click and the lock opens like a flower in the sun.
There’s a low rumbling noise and a circular lock is revealed. I pull away and lie down, taking a rest. Inez and Pol stare at me as I rub my eyelids and breathe in through my nose.
“Well?” Inez asks.
“I’ve cleared the extra layer. This is the lock I would have got to if I hadn’t rushed the first.” I open my eyes. “How much time do we have left?”
“Maybe twelve hours,” she estimates.
I ask Pol if he has any more mushrooms. He fishes out a few and I chew on them distractedly, staring off into space, psyching myself up for what’s to come.
“Can you do this?” Inez asks.
I chuckle drily. “Easy-peasy.”
“Are you really hopeful?” she presses.
I shrug. “I won’t know until I get to grips with the next layer. The first was a trap, the second a chore. This will be where the lock’s creator shows me what they’re truly made of, the point where we’ll really wrestle.”
“I have faith in you,” she says.
“I don’t,” Pol laughs.
I laugh too, then finish off the last mushroom and shake my fingers. “Right,” I grunt, remembering all the locks I flew through when I was with Winston, using the memories to boost my confidence. “Time to get serious.”
The circular lock is deceptive. It feels at first as if it’s going to be easy, but then I find an interconnected series of hidden levers and get a sense that this involves a shutdown mechanism, that it’s been devised to seize up if I make a mistake.
As I’m carefully exploring with my fingertips, I find a raised bump and I smile. It’s the letter W. That could stand for anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s Winston’s initial, which means this is one of the kindly old locksmith’s creations.
That gives me hope. Winston told me I could help Inez. He must have known how she planned to get into Canadu, that I’d have to pick a lock in one of the vines. He can’t have been sure that I’d encounter one of his, but I guess he figured there was a good chance that I would.
Maybe that’s why he tested me with the locks in his workroom.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I assumed Winston simply wanted to see what I could do, but maybe he was preparing me for this, selecting locks that would provide me with the clues I’d need when I came to work on the real deal.
I proceed with the same caution as before, but with more optimism. Winston was confident that I could do this, and since he built the lock and saw me in action, he must have had reason to be upbeat.
I nimbly manipulate levers and pins. Nothing here has surprised me so far, and while it’s too early to predict how long this will take, I’m starting to feel that it’s a matter of when I can open the lock, not if.
As my fingers work their magic, the rim of the lock retracts, revealing new niches for me to explore, more levers to flick. My hands move further apart, and I have to remind myself to be wary of the borehole.
I’m humming softly, making good progress, when the index finger on my left hand brushes over another bump. I smile again, thinking Winston must have been especially proud of this lock if he signed it twice. But then my smile fades.
It’s not a W.
It’s an S.
“No,” I wheeze as I swiftly consider the implications of the raised S. If the W was Winston’s signature, this must be the signature of another locksmith. Does this mean Winston worked with someone else on this lock? Or – and this thought sends warning bells ringing through my head – did another locksmith work on the lock after Winston had finished with it?
The reason that worries me so much is that I imagine it’s extremely difficult to tweak an existing lock. To meddle with the internal workings without disturbing the rest of the mechanisms... to pick the lock so it doesn’t open but allows you to add additional levers and pins...
A person who could do that would be the more advanced craftsman. Winston said he’s one of the finest locksmiths in the Merge, and he thought I was up to the task of picking the locks that he’d installed, but if there’s someone better than him, and that person reconfigured this lock...
My newfound confidence disintegrates. I almost step back to gather my thoughts, but I’m scared I might trip a trap if I retreat, so I stay where I am, hands immersed, taking deep, calming breaths.
It’s OK, I tell myself. Keep going. Don’t let fear defeat you.
It’s good advice, and moments later I’m back at work, trying to convince myself that nothing has changed, but I soon fall headlong into an abyss.
The lock’s worked in a logical way up to this stage, but that all changes within the space of a few clicks. Suddenly I’m into a whole new world, where the tumblers spin in unpredictable directions, where the roles of pins and levers are reversed, where nothing that’s gone before has prepared me for what I now have to deal with. To an amateur, the difference would be negligible, but to me it’s like moving from light into darkness. I feel levers slip away from me with every gesture, tumblers roll out of alignment, chaos take the place of order.
Since admitting defeat won’t get us anywhere, I carry on picking at the tumblers long past the point where I know I’m lost, but eventually, my fingers shaking and bathed in sweat, I admit the horrible truth and extricate my hands. Wiping them dry on my trousers, I stare at the lock one last time – a petulant, hateful, envious look – then turn my back on it and face the expectant Inez and Pol.
“I can’t do it,” I croak. “There’s no way through.”
As their faces fall, I brush past them and slide down the bend that we climbed up earlier, to lie in the darkness out of sight of the borehole and suffer my defeat in humiliating isolation.