There had been another riddle wall once, a long time ago. That one hadn't been made of strange metal, but ordinary stone and wood and iron, yet it had been hard enough to stymie a pair of bright four-year-olds filled with curiosity and determination. What were the Lamai mothers hiding behind the carven cellar wall, inset with chiseled stars and twining snakes? Unlike the puzzle now before her, that one had been no massive work of unparalleled craftsmanship, but the principle was clearly the same. A combination lock. One in which the number of possible arrangements of objects far exceeded any chance of random guessing. One whose correct answer must remain unforgettable, intuitively obvious to the initiated, and forever obscure to outsiders.
Shared context. That was the key. Simple memory proved unreliable over generations. But one thing you could count on. If you established a clan — your distant great-great-granddaughters would think a lot like you, with similar upbringing and near-identical brains. What had been forgotten, they would recover by re-creating your thought processes.
That insight had opened the way, after Maia failed in her first attempts in the Lamatia Hold wine cellar, and Leie's efforts with a small hydraulic jack threatened to break the mechanism, rather than persuade it. Even Leie had agreed that curiosity wasn't worth the kind of punishment that would bring on. So Maia had reconsidered the problem, this time trying to think like a Lamai. It wasn't as easy as it sounded.
She had grown up surrounded by Lamai mothers, aunts, half sisters, knowing the patterns they exhibited at each phase of life. The cautious enthusiasm of late three-year-olds, for instance, which quickly took cover behind a cynical mask by the time each towheaded girl turned four. A romantic outburst in adolescence, followed by withdrawal and withering contempt for anything or anyone non-Lamai — a disdain that intensified, the more worthy any outsider seemed. And finally, in late middle-age, a mellowing, a relaxation of the armor, just enough for the ruling age-group to make alliances and deal successfully with the outer world. The first young Lamai var, the founder, must have been lucky, or very clever, to reach that age of tact all by herself. From then on, matters grew easier as each generation fine-tuned the art of being that continuous single entity, Lamatia.
Pondering the problem, Maia had realized she knew nothing of how individual Lamais felt, deep within. Mentally squinting, she pictured a Lamai sister looking in the mirror and using words like integrity . . . honor . . . dignity. They did not see themselves as mean, capricious, or spiteful. Rather, they viewed others as inherently unreliable, dangerous.
Fear. That was the key! Maia had not been able to speak after that flash of intuition, on realizing what drove her mother clan.
It was more than fear. A type of dread that no amount of wealth or security could wipe out, because it was so woven into the personality matrix of the type. The genetic luck of the draw, reinforced by an upbringing in which self perpetually reinforced self, compounding and augmenting over and over again.
It was no crippling terror, or else the offshoots of that one var could never have turned themselves into a nation.
Rather, Lamatia rationalized it, used it as a motivator, as a driving force. Lamais weren't happy people. But they were successful. They even raised more than their share of successful summer progeny.
There are worse, Maia recalled thinking on the day she had had that insight, while turning a crank to lower the dumbwaiter into that crypt below the kitchens. Who am I to judge what works?
Her mind afroth with possibilities, Maia had approached the wall with new concepts in mind. Lamais aren't logical, though they pretend to be. I've been trying to solve the puzzle rationally, as a series of orderly symbols, but I'll bet it's a sequence based on emotion!
That day (it felt like ages ago), she had lifted her lantern to scan familiar patterns of stone figures. Stars and snakes, dragons and upturned bowls. The symbol for Man. The symbol for Woman. The emblem of Death.
Picture yourself standing here with an errand to perform, Maia thought. You're a confident, busy, older Lamai. High-class daughter of a noble clan. Proud, dignified, impatient.
Now add one more ingredient, underneath it all. A hidden layer of jibbering, terror. …
One long year later, and a quarter of the way around the globe, Maia tried the same exercise, attempting to put herself in the shoes of another type of person. The kind who might have left a complex jigsaw of hexagonal plates upon a metal wall. An enigma standing between two desperate survivors and their only hope of escaping a death trap.
"This place is old," she told Brod in a soft voice.
