"Old?" He laughed. "It was a different world! You've seen the ruins. This whole archipelago was filled with sanctuaries, bigger than any known today. It must've been the focus, the very center of the Great Defense. It might even have been the one place in all of Stratos history where men had any real say in goings on … till those King fanatics got big heads and ruined it all."
Maia nodded. "A whole region, run by men."
"Partly. Until the banishment. I know, it's hard to imagine. I guess that's how the Church and Council were able to suppress even the memory."
Brod was making sense. Even with the evidence all around her, Maia had trouble with the concept. Oh, there was no denying that males could be quite intelligent, but planning further than a single human lifespan was supposedly beyond even their brightest leaders. Yet, here in front of her lay a counterexample.
"In that case, this puzzle was designed to be solved by men, perhaps with the specific purpose of keeping women out."
Brod rubbed his jaw. "Maybe so. Anyway, standing around staring won't get us much. Let's see what happens if I push one of these hexagon slabs."
Maia had already stroked the metal surface, which was curiously cool and smooth to the touch, but she hadn't yet tried moving anything, preferring to evaluate first. She almost spoke up, then stopped. Differences in personality . . . one providing what the other lacks. It's a weakness in the clan system, where the same type just amplifies itself. Maia no longer felt a heretical thrill, pondering thoughts critical of Lysos, Mother of All.
Brod tried pushing one hexagonal plate with a circle design etched upon it, standing by itself on an open patch of metal wall. Direct pressure achieved nothing, but a shear force, along the plane of the wall, caused movement! The piece seemed to glide as if being slid edgewise through an incredibly viscous fluid. When Brod let go, Maia expected it to stop, but it kept going in the same direction for several more seconds before slowing and finally coming to rest. Then, as she watched in surprise, the hexagon began sliding backward, in the exact opposite direction, retracing its path unhurriedly until at last settling precisely where Brod had first found it.
"Huh!" the young man commented. "Hard to imagine accomplishing a lot that way." He experimented with more plates, and found that about a third of them would move, but only directly along one of six directions perpendicular to the hexagonal plate-edges. There was no sign of any sort of rail system holding the slabs in track, so the queer behavior must be due to some mechanism behind the plane of the wall itself, utilizing, forces beyond anything Maia had been taught as physics.
It's not magic, she told herself while Brod pushed away, trying variations. Maia experienced a shiver, and knew that it wasn't due to awe or superstitious fear, but something akin to jealousy. The gliding interplay of matter and motion was achingly beautiful to behold. She hungered to grasp how and why it worked.
Renna says the savants in Caria still know about such powers, but won't release anything that might "destabilize a pastoral culture."
If this was a more benign use of the same power that had fried Grimke, and many other islands in this chain, Maia could well understand why Lysos and the Founders chose such a path. Perhaps they were right, on some grand, sociological scale. Maybe the hunger she felt within was immature, wrongheaded, a dangerous, flaming curiosity like the madness Renna had spoken of — the sort that drove what he had called a "scientific age."
Maia recalled the wistful longing in Renna's eyes as he recalled such times, which he had said were rare among human epochs. She experienced a pang deep inside, envying what she had missed and would never know.
"The plates seem to always go back where they started," Brod commented. "Come, Maia. Let's see if we can push two at once."
"Airright," she sighed. "I'll try this one with a horse etched on it. Ready? Go."
At first she thought her chosen plate was one of those that wouldn't budge, then it began gliding under her hand, building up momentum in response to her constant pushing. She let go after it had crossed three of its own body lengths, but it drifted onward, now slowing with each passing second, until it collided at an angle with the hexagon Brod had pushed, carrying the image of a sailing ship. The two caromed off each other, moving in new directions for several more seconds before coming to a stop. Then each of them reversed course, and the pair went through a negative version of the same collision. Finally both of the plates drifted back to rest at their starting positions. Two minutes after starting the experiment, the wall was back as they had found it, a jumble of hexagons laid out in a pattern that made no immediate sense. Maia exhaled heavily.
