There's got to be a logic to it. An objective. The Game of Life looks like a meaningless mass of hopping pieces, too, until you see the underlying beauty.
Also, like the game, the men who designed this might have thought it alien enough to keep out women. That could be an important clue, especially with Brod here to help.
Unfortunately, there was a problem inherent in her "shared context" insight. For all she and Brod knew, the puzzle might be based on some fad current a thousand years ago, and now long forgotten. Perhaps a certain drinking song had been popular at the time, featuring most of these symbols. Almost any man of that era might have known the relationship between, say, the bee rendered in one plate and the house etched on another. One clever inscription seemed to show a slice of bread dripping globs of butter or jam. Another showed an arrowhead, trailing fire.
Maia changed her mind. It had to be based on something longer lasting.
Whoever put so much care into this obviously meant it to endure, and serve a purpose long after he was gone. And men aren't known for thinking ahead?
Clearly, all rules had exceptions.
A growling sound distracted Maia, accompanied by an unpleasant churning in her stomach. Her bruised body wanted to be fed, the sooner the better. Yet, in order to have a chance of doing so, she must ignore it. Somehow, she and Brod would have to make it through what had apparently stymied countless interlopers before them. The only difference being that those others — hermits, tourists, explorers, pirates — had presumably come by boat in peace, able to leave again. For Maia and Brod, the motivation was stronger than greed or curiosity. Their only chance of surviving lay in getting beyond this wall.
"Sorry there's no sauce, or fire to cook it, but it's fresh. Eat up!"
Maia stared down at the creature that lay on the ground in front of her crossed legs, still flopping slightly. Emerging from a trance of concentration, she blinked at the unexpected sight of a fish, where none had been before. Turning to look at Brod, she saw new lacerations that bled fine lines across his chest and legs and arms. "You didn't climb back down, did you?"
The boy nodded. "Low tide. Saw some stranded critters on the bar. Anyway, we needed water. Here, tip your head back and open wide."
Maia saw that he carried in the crook of one arm a sodden ball of fabric, made of bits of canvas and his own rolled-up shirt. These he held out, dripping. With sudden eagerness arising from a thirst she hadn't recognized till now, Maia did as told. Brod wrung a stream of bitter saltwater, tanged with a faint hint of blood, into her mouth. She swallowed eagerly, overlooking the unpleasant taste. When finished drinking, she picked up the fish and bit into it ravenously, as she had seen sailors do.
"Mm . . . fank you, Broth . . . Mm del-ishush …"
Sitting beside her, Brod chewed a fish of his own. "Pure self-interest. Keep up your strength, so you can get me outta here."
His confidence in her safecracking abilities was inspiring. Maia only wished it were well-founded. Oh, there had been progress, the last ten hours or so. She now knew which plates would move and which wouldn't. Of the stationary ones, some served as simple barriers, or bumpers against which moving tokens might bounce or reflect. A few others, by a process she was never able to discern clearly, seemed to absorb any plate that ran into them. The moving hexagon would merge with or pass behind the stable one, and stay there for perhaps half a minute, then reappear to reverse its path, returning the way it came. Each time one of these temporary absorptions occurred, Maia thought she heard a distant, low sound, like a humming gong.
Unfortunately, there weren't direct shots from movable hexagons to all the rigid ones. Nor would all combinations produce the absorbtion plus gong. Maia soon realized the solution must entail getting several plates going at the same time, arranging multiple collisions so that pieces would enter certain specific slots during the brief interval allowed.
For a while, I thought there was a clue in the fact that the puzzle is reversible . . . that everything returns to the same starting condition. The variant Life game that Renna used to send his radio message was a "reversible" version. But, as I think about it, that seems less likely. It's got to be simpler, having to do with those symbols inscribed on the plates.
