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In the City of Locks lived a girl and her father who loved nothing more than one another. The father made his living selling bricks and mortar, and the girl learned the trade as she grew. Their lives were modest, but the girl was happy, and if she could have been happier she did not know it.
One day her father called her to his side. “Daughter,” he said, “when I look out at the City, I see too many doors that are closed to you. I will leave this district to seek my fortune, and I will return to you with a key to every door.”
The girl wept. She was not yet old enough to feel that her world was too small, and she wanted her father with her more than she wanted a key to every door. But he could not be swayed, and that very night he set out into the City without her.
Months passed, and the girl was unhappy. Running the shop on her own was dull and lonely work, and its walls seemed to close in around her. She began to wonder if her father felt that way about the City entire. “I will go and find him,” she decided, “and I will join his quest for a key to every door.”
So she went out into the narrow streets of the City. She did not mind that they were rarely more than dimly lit, or that the air in places was stagnant and choked her with dust, or that the stink of sweat and filth clung everywhere she went; she had never known anything different. She first sought out patrons of her father’s shop, who used his bricks and mortar to repair structures damaged by the Cannoneers. Some of them had seen him set out on his journey, or knew others who had seen him, and in time she traced his path to a heavy iron door at the north end of the district. There the trail ended, for the door—though her father must have gone through it, only months before—was locked.
The girl pressed her forehead to the cold iron and wept, for she knew that the Locksmiths must have sealed the door, and she could go no farther. When she had finished weeping, she wiped her eyes and said: “So there is not an unbroken chain of open doors between me and my destination. Is that not the very reason that my father seeks a key to every door? Just as I found this iron door, I will find my way through it, and I will find my father beyond it and join his quest.”
So resolved, the girl went to the Keysmiths, for she knew they kept an unparalleled catalogue of keys. She found them in their workshop, where some consulted their famous catalogue, others bent over microscopes, and yet others sketched images of keys on graph paper. They wore fine spectacles and silver robes, and their fingertips were stained with keymetal.
The girl stood before them in her poor shopkeeper’s clothes. Drawing herself to what little height she had, she spoke: “My father has left the district to seek his fortune, and I intend to join him. The first door he passed through was locked behind him, and I seek its key.” She gave the Keysmiths the coordinates of the iron door and waited as they conferred among themselves.
At last the leader of the Keysmiths spoke. “We will help you,” she said, “for I know your father well. He came here before you to learn our methods and philosophy, and his dedication impressed me. I offer you this bargain: for the boon you ask, you will be apprenticed to us for a year and a day. If, at the end of that time, you have understood our philosophy as your father did, we will search our catalogue for the key you seek and give you another gift besides.”
The girl hesitated. A year and a day was a long time, and the work would be tedious and exacting. But she thought of her father’s gentle fingers stroking her hair, and she hesitated no longer. “I accept your bargain,” she said. “As I was once apprenticed to my father, so I am now apprenticed to you.”
So the girl served the Keysmiths for a year and a day. They taught her to measure the dimensions of keys, to enter them correctly in the catalogue, and to copy known keys for sale and distribution. At first she struggled to comprehend the underlying logic of the catalogue, for no two keys were alike, and one way of arranging them seemed as meaningless as any other; yet she soon learned to break them down into their component shapes, like letters of an alphabet that could be recombined into each unique whole. She studied also the interactions of keys with locks they fit and locks they did not, peering into the mechanisms with mirrors and borescopes to observe how the shape of a key underlay its function. She came to understand that the Keysmiths’ catalogue–so precisely organized, so carefully kept—was only a means to an end.
One day the Keysmiths brought her before a locked door, and they did not say “Today we will show you what kind of key fits this lock,” nor “Today we will test different keys against this new lock,” but instead “Show us the key that will open this lock.” The girl studied the lock and found its design in the catalogue, but found no associated entry for its key. She thought a moment, then searched instead for keys that had fit or failed to fit similar locks, and from these she devised the shape of the proper key.
She crafted the key and turned it in the lock, and the door swung open. Behind it stood the leader of the Keysmiths. “It has been a year and a day,” she said, “and you have come to the end of your apprenticeship. Tell me, as you have shown me: Have you understood our philosophy?”
The girl said: “By learning from observation and experimentation, it is possible to create a key for any lock.”
“You have understood well,” said the leader of the Keysmiths. “Your end of our bargain is fulfilled, and I am sorry for what I must now tell you of the key to the iron door. Our records show that before your father left us, he purchased not only the key itself, but also sole rights to its design. Our bargain with him precedes our bargain with you; therefore we cannot recreate the key for you. You might try to derive its design yourself, but you would first need to examine the inner workings of the lock, which are concealed even against all our methods.”
The girl knew that the Keysmiths depended on such contracts to fund their work, so she was not angry at them, but she was puzzled. She had assumed that the iron door was unlocked when her father first passed through it, and she thought it strange that he had neither visited nor sent word, if he had held its key the whole time. But then, there were doors in the City that required a different key on each side.
“I told you,” said the leader of the Keysmiths, “that we would grant you your request and another gift besides. I grant you the gift of reason, which you have studiously earned.” She slid the gift of reason onto the girl’s face, so that she could look through it and see all the patterns of the world. “And now your obligation to us is finished. You may go or, if you like, you may stay. We would gladly accept you as a full member.”
The girl had grown to love the study of keys, and part of her longed to stay. Instead she bowed and said: “I thank you for your gift, and for my apprenticeship, which I now see was more boon than price. I will go now and search for another way past the iron door, and I will find my father beyond it and join his quest.”
She went next to the Cannoneers, for their art was the opening of doors for which no key could be had. She found them just inside the great gates of the City, wiring them with explosives—though they must have known they would fail to open them, as all in living memory had failed. They wore sweat-soaked headbands and bright orange robes, and their fingertips were mostly missing.
The girl stood before them in her poor shopkeeper’s clothes, with the gift of reason upon her face. Drawing herself to what height she had, she spoke: “My father has left the district to seek his fortune, and I intend to join him. The first door he passed through was locked behind him, and not even the Keysmiths hold its key. I seek another way through.” She gave them the coordinates of the iron door and waited as they handed out ear protection and ushered her away from the gates.
The leader of the Cannoneers depressed the detonator, and the girl staggered as the wave of heat and pressure swept through her. When the smoke dispersed, the great gates stood unscathed. The leader sighed and removed their ear protection, and the girl did likewise.
“We will help you,” they said, “for I know your father well. He came here before you to learn our methods and philosophy, and his determination impressed me. I offer you this bargain: for the boon you ask, you will be apprenticed to us for a year and a day. If, at the end of that time, you have understood our philosophy as your father did, we will try all our methods against your iron door and give you another gift besides.”
The girl hesitated. A year and a day was a long time, and the work would be grueling and dangerous. But she thought of her father’s gentle voice soothing her to sleep, and she hesitated no longer. “I accept your bargain,” she said. “As I was once apprenticed to my father, and to the Keysmiths after him, so I am now apprenticed to you.”
So the girl served the Cannoneers for a year and a day. They taught her the art of setting explosives, and of choosing where to place them, and of knowing which to use; but that was not all they taught her. Her time with the Keysmiths had lent her a certain fixation on keys as the proper solution to locked doors, but the Cannoneers used no keys. With their guidance, she soon learned that some locks could be picked; some hinges could be unscrewed; some doors could be broken down; some were built into walls that could be blasted through; and some could even be bypassed entirely, through sewers or vents or other, unlocked doors.
One day the Cannoneers set her before a locked door, and did not say “Today you will learn to pick this type of lock” or “Today you will set a new kind of explosive charge,” but instead “Show us a way to get past this door.” The girl examined the door from every angle. The lock was a slide bolt, so she tried forcing it, first by kicking the door and then with a variety of tools. When she had tried long enough to satisfy herself that she could not break the lock, she abandoned that approach and searched for another. She considered destroying the door with explosives, but she could tell from the surrounding architecture that its archway was load-bearing. Then it occurred to her that the slide bolt could be easily opened from the other side, so she pressed her mouth to the crack of the door and called out: “Is there anyone there who can unlock this door for me?”
The bolt slid open at once, and the girl opened the door and stepped through. Beyond the door stood the leader of the Cannoneers. “It has been a year and a day,” they said, “and you have come to the end of your apprenticeship. Tell me, as you have shown me: Have you understood our philosophy?”
The girl replied, “If I wish to know what lies beyond a locked door, then my goal is not to defeat the lock, nor even to defeat the door, but simply to reach the other side of the door.”
“You have understood well,” said the leader of the Cannoneers. “Your end of our bargain is fulfilled, and I am sorry for what I must now tell you of the iron door. Hours ago, we found the door at the coordinates you gave us and brought all our ingenuity to bear against it. We met it with cutting torch and acid; with dynamite and battering ram; with map of street and sewer. All failed; for all paths that once bypassed the iron door have been sealed, and the door itself, and the walls on either side of it, and the ceiling and floor above and below it have all been reinforced. We can no more break through it, or around it, than we can yet bring down the great gates that confine us all within the City.”
The girl knew that the Cannoneers had tried their best, so she was not angry at them, but she was puzzled. She could not understand why anyone would go to the trouble of reinforcing the iron door, or of sealing other paths that had once led beyond it. But then, although the girl could not fathom the Locksmiths’ motives, she knew that they locked doors only as a means of blocking passage through them. It was not unreasonable that they, anticipating that others might employ methods other than keys, might themselves employ methods other than locks.
“I told you,” said the leader of the Cannoneers, “that we would grant you your request and another gift besides. I grant you the gift of lateral thinking, which you have cleverly earned.” They wrapped the gift of lateral thinking around the girl’s head, so that her sight might be clear and her field of vision unhindered. “And now your obligation to us is finished. You may go or, if you like, you may stay. We would gladly accept you as a full member.”
The girl had grown to love the art of circumventing locks, and part of her longed to stay. Instead she bowed and said: “I thank you for your gift, and for my apprenticeship, which was more boon than price. I will go now and search for another way past the iron door, and I will find my father beyond it and join his quest.”
She went last, and reluctantly, to the Locksmiths; for although she resented them for impeding the other guilds’ progress in opening doors, she reasoned that in order to have locked the iron door they must possess a copy of its key. She found them at the top of their great tower, which nearly scraped the highest ceiling of the City, and from which they could look down over the low roofs of all the streets below. They wore heavy iron shoes and night-black robes, and their fingertips were whole and unmarked.
The girl stood before the Locksmiths in her poor shopkeeper’s clothes, with the gift of reason upon her face and the gift of lateral thinking wrapped around her head. Drawing herself to her full height, she spoke: “My father has left the district to seek his fortune, and I intend to join him. Yet you have locked the first door he passed through, and not even the Keysmiths have its key, nor can the Cannoneers break through it. I seek the key with which you locked that door.” She gave them the coordinates of the iron door and waited as they stared her down in silence.
Finally, the leader of the Locksmiths spoke. “You ask us to act against our purpose,” he said, and his eyes were cold as keymetal.
She met his gaze and said: “When I have passed through the iron door, I swear that I will lock it behind me, so that your purpose will not be undone.” She did not mention the key to every door.
“Nevertheless,” said the leader of the Locksmiths, “I am willing to help you only because I know your father well. He came here before you to learn our methods and philosophy, and he impressed me with his prudence. I offer you this bargain: for the boon you ask, you will be apprenticed to us for a year and a day. If, at the end of that time, you have understood our philosophy as your father did—and if you then still wish to open the iron door—we will tell you all we know of its key and give you another gift besides.”
The girl hesitated. A year and a day was a long time, and the work of sealing doors would only take her further from her goal. But she thought of her father’s gentle arms embracing her, and she hesitated no longer. “I accept your bargain,” she said. “As I was once apprenticed to my father, and to the Keysmiths and the Cannoneers after him, so I am now apprenticed to you.”
So the girl served the Locksmiths for a year and a day. She learned the design and purpose of every type of lock, and the art of choosing the right lock for each door, and the art of sealing doors by methods other than locks. She learned that the Locksmiths sealed doors not on principle, but for a purpose; for while behind many doors lay great wonders, some concealed equally great dangers. She studied maps of the City and learned how to judge when a door must not be sealed (to preserve a vital trade route, or prevent the separation of families), and when it must be sealed, and when its key must only be entrusted to a chosen few.
The map of the northernmost part of the City puzzled her throughout her apprenticeship, for she could see scorched edges where part of it had been burned away. Her tutors would tell her only that the missing portion had once described the location of a door, and that what lay beyond that door was no concern of hers.
One day the Locksmiths brought her before a locked door, and they did not say “Today you will take apart and reassemble this lock,” or “Today we will show you which surrounding doors to seal to best protect this one,” but instead “Show us that you know how to open this door.”
The girl had studied the Locksmiths’ maps well, and she knew that a great danger lay some distance beyond this door. She had also not failed to notice the date, and she had learned to recognize a test when she saw one. “I will not,” she said, “for I could only show you by opening the door. I will not endanger the City to obey you.”
“You only say that because you cannot open the door,” said the Locksmiths. “You are covering for your incompetence.”
“Believe what you will,” said the girl. “I will not endanger the City to preserve my pride.”
“Your father waits on the other side of the door,” said the Locksmiths. “If you open it, you will see him again.”
“He will have to wait longer,” said the girl. “I will not endanger the City selfishly.”
She turned away from the door and was unsurprised to see the leader of the Locksmiths standing behind her. “It has been a year and a day,” he said, “and you have come to the end of your apprenticeship. Tell me, as you have shown me: Have you understood our philosophy?”
The girl replied, “Some doors must never be opened.”
“And do you agree?” the leader of the Locksmiths asked, without expression.
The girl answered honestly. “I have come to see the wisdom in your philosophy. To open doors recklessly could be the doom of the City. Yet the same locks that protect the people of the City also bar them from great treasures; divide them from goods they might buy, knowledge they might use, people they might love; separate even those who do love one another, as I am separated from my father. Your work is noble, but I would strive for a future where all doors can be safely opened.”
“You have understood both the purpose of our work and the sacrifice it demands,” said the leader of the Locksmiths, “and it was understanding I asked for, not agreement. Therefore I am sorry for what I must tell you of the key to the iron door. Our records show that it was not we who locked it, for we have never possessed its key. Nor did we reinforce it against the tactics of the Cannoneers.”
The girl knew that the Locksmiths had not meant to cheat her, so she was not angry at them, but she was puzzled. It seemed that no one but her father held a key to the iron door; therefore he must have been the one to lock it behind him, and perhaps he had also been the one to ensure that it could neither be broken down nor bypassed. She wondered if he had meant to keep her from following him, and felt not a little betrayed.
“I told you,” said the leader of the Locksmiths, “that we would grant you your request and another gift besides. I grant you the gift of caution, which you have wisely earned.” He placed the gift of caution onto each of the girl’s feet, where it slowed her steps to give her time to consider each one. “And now your obligation to us is finished. I will not ask you to stay, for although you were a bright and dedicated apprentice, your purpose is not our own.”
“Before I go,” said the girl, “what can you tell me of the door that was struck from the northern map?”
“Only that beyond it lies a great and terrible danger, anathema to our purpose,” said the leader of the Locksmiths. “Your father read that map shortly before he left us, and he asked us—for the eyes of a novice are unclouded, and see much that old masters overlook—whether we feared it might be stolen and read by one who would seek to open that dread door. He reminded us that knowledge can be as dangerous as any key, and that any person we warn away from the door could, instead, be inspired to open it. For that reason we have struck the door and what lies beyond it from all our maps and records, and henceforth the knowledge of it will be handed down only from one leader to the next, and will be spread no farther.”
“I understand,” said the girl, though she thought that sounded very unlike her father. She began to suspect just what lay beyond the forbidden door, and why he had taken care to seal off his path behind him. “I thank you for your gift, and for my apprenticeship, which—for all that I am not meant to be one of you—was surely more boon than price. I will go now and search for another way past the iron door, and I will find my father beyond it and join his quest.”
There was no other guild the girl wished to turn to. Therefore she returned to the iron door, which did not look so invincible as it once had, and this time she did not weep. Instead she laughed and said: “I know the nature of keys, and of locks, and of barriers of every kind. What door can now remain closed to me?”
The inner workings of the lock were as well concealed as she had been told, so she used a shaped charge to expose them. She saw then that the lock had been tampered with, so that even the proper key would fail to turn. She repaired it and, by studying the restored mechanism, devised a key to the iron door. When she had passed through the door she locked it behind her, for she had not forgotten her promise.
So it was with the next door, and the door after. She met doors of marble and brass, of cedar and clay, of ivory and tanzanite, and she solved them all. She solved even those which bore signs of having been sealed by the Locksmiths’ ingenious methods, which she found in increasing numbers as she continued north along the path her father had taken. Yet she knew that there were countless more doors in the City, more than she alone could open in a million million years. More doors than…But there was no comparison she could have known to make. She had never left the City. She had never seen the sky.
When she found her father, he was standing before a silicon door and carrying a silicon key. He was not as tall as she remembered, and she knew then that she was no longer a girl.
He laughed with joy when he saw her. “I do not know how you found me, clever daughter,” he said, “after all I did to forestall pursuit–for there are those who would keep me from my goal, if ever they caught up to me. But I am glad to have you here in my moment of triumph. Look! I am about to attain the key to every door.”
It was as the woman had suspected, and her impulse was to congratulate her father and watch him claim his hard-won victory. Instead, she drew on her gift of reason and asked: “What exactly is the key to every door? How will you attain it?”
“The key,” her father said, “is a creature that lies imprisoned beyond this silicon door. Its sole function is the opening of doors; it can open any door save this one, and with speed no human could ever match. When I release it, it will seek out and open every door in the City as quickly as it can. Then at last all doors will be open to you, my daughter, and that will be your inheritance.”
The woman’s impulse was to cry out with joy at the thought of a City where all could roam as they pleased, for she was old enough now to feel that her world was too small. Instead, she drew on her gift of lateral thinking and asked: “How will the creature open every door?”
“If I knew,” said her father, “I could open them myself. The creature will devise its own method for opening each door.”
The woman asked: “Are there any limitations on the methods it can use?”
“I know of none,” said her father.
She asked: “If the creature can reach the next door sooner by trampling the people in its path, will it?”
“I had not thought of that,” said her father.
She asked: “If it can unlock more doors by enslaving us all into the manufacture of keys, will it?”
“Neither had I thought of that,” said her father.
She asked: “If a great danger lies beyond a locked door, will the creature nevertheless open it?”
“That, also, had not occurred to me,” said her father. “But perhaps the creature will do none of these things. I acknowledge the risks, but is that reason to abandon our hope of a City without locks?”
The woman’s impulse was to concede the point, for that hope had come to shine as brightly in her heart as it did in her father’s. Instead, she drew on her gift of caution and said: “We will open the door, but not yet.”
“When, then, will we open it?” her father asked, and his fingers tightened around the silicon key.
“We will fashion a lock,” the woman said, “not for any door, but for the creature itself. It will be a lock that it cannot open, just as it cannot open the lock of the silicon door, and it will restrict the creature from all methods of opening doors that would harm the people of the City.”
“The task you describe sounds impossible,” said her father; and the woman smiled, for she had once thought every step on her journey here to be impossible.
“How will we do it?” asked her father, despite what he had said before; and the woman smiled wider, for she saw that he was as determined and clever as she was.
“I will share with you the gift of reason,” she said, “so that we may study the creature and its prison, and devise how the lock can be made.” She took the gift of reason from her eyes and snapped it in two, and she fixed one half over her right eye and the other over her father’s left, for she knew that reason is more acute when not limited to a single perspective.
“I will share with you the gift of lateral thinking,” she said, “so that we may imagine all ways in which the creature might subvert the intent of the lock, and design one that it cannot subvert.” She unwrapped the gift of lateral thinking from her head and snipped it in half with sharp scissors, and she and her father each wore their half around their wrists, for she knew that it was not bound to one form or function.
“And I will share with you the gift of caution,” she said, “so that no matter what other doors we wish opened, or how urgently we wish them opened, we will not touch the silicon key until the lock is complete and inviolable.” She took the gift of caution from her left foot, and she and her father each wore it on one foot only, for she knew that caution untempered by ambition is paralysis.
The father saw that his daughter’s wisdom surpassed his own, and as he swelled with pride and pulled her into his embrace, the key fell from his hands and landed in the dust. There it remained until the day when the woman lifted it to the silicon door; when at last all doors in the City of Locks were opened; when even its great gates crumbled, and the people poured through them into the vast and unfathomed world beyond.