The Map of Stars, page 22
“No,” said Tess. Her heart was thwacking against her ribs. She imagined being swarmed by guards and blond news hostesses and mushroom Lego men, carried off and hidden somewhere where no one would find her. But she opened the door and marched through it anyway, Theo and Jaime behind her. She was happy to see that Slant hadn’t redecorated yet. Walking into the lobby was like entering the body of some enormous slumbering creature. The floor was a warm, creamy marble. The koi pond still sat in the middle of the enormous space, and a waterfall still tumbled from natural-looking rocks into the pond. Beds of green plants and flowers flourished in the light shining in through solar glass windows and skylights dozens of stories up. The floors of the Tower overlooked the main lobby, curving around it like ribs. The only mark of Slant’s takeover were the security cameras in every corner, and the “Out of Order” signs draped at the entrance of the escalators. Did that mean he had already discovered the secrets of the Morningstarrs? Did he know that plans for some kind of machine were hidden here? Did he have them already?
Were they too late?
Three carefully coiffed young women sat at the front desk taking calls. One of them, a white woman with lush brown hair that fell over one shoulder, smiled at them. “Welcome to Slant Tower,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re doing a project for school. Is it okay if we look around?”
“Of course!” she said. “Are you doing a report on Mr. Slant?”
“Uh, yes,” said Tess. “We’re writing about the future leaders of America.”
Theo coughed and Jaime thwacked his back.
“Fantastic!” the young woman said. “I’m sure you’ll all get an A!”
“Mm-hmm,” Tess said, willing herself not to roll her eyes.
“Just be careful! We’re under construction, so some areas might be off-limits.”
“Thank you,” said Tess. They walked past the desk and into the wider area behind the desk. There were a few tourists here and there, but mostly they had the place to themselves. The security guards patrolling the space gave them a cursory glance but nothing more.
All they had to do was get up the escalator without anyone noticing. Find whatever plans the message had been talking about. Get back down again. Get out of the building.
No problem.
Yikes.
Tess had been worried that Nine would call too much attention to them, make them too recognizable, so she’d left Nine at home. But Nine could have made quite a distraction, enough for them to sneak upstairs unnoticed.
“We need a distraction,” Tess said.
“I could fling myself into the koi pond,” Theo offered.
“If any of us does anything too over the top, the guards might do more than just kick us out of the building. They could call the cops.”
Of course, all of them remembered the bare interview room at the police station, the Bridge of Sighs. Tess and Theo’s mom, with a file folder and photographs.
“What about Ono?” said Jaime. “Ono might be able to distract them.”
Ono’s head popped up from Jaime’s pocket, eyes blinking on and off.
“Maybe he can use his propeller. Fly around the lobby. People might think it’s a bird, or maybe a Morningstarr Machine,” said Theo.
Jaime patted Ono. “I don’t want him to get caught.”
“He won’t get caught if he flies high enough. What do you think, Ono?”
Ono’s head turned all the way around, like an owl’s. It said, “Land of Kings.”
Jaime checked to make sure no one was looking, then set the little robot on the edge of the koi pond. Ono’s propeller popped up from his head and it took off, buzzing loudly.
Just as loudly, Jaime said, “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” said Theo, loudly as well. “A bird, maybe?”
“If that’s a bird, it’s going to poop all over everything!” Tess said, covering her head with her arms.
Ono took to its job with everything it had. It zoomed this way, zoomed that way. It punched through a nearby bush in a flurry of leaves, beheaded entire beds of flowers. It flew low, mussing the hair of the receptionists at the front desk, who started to squeal and wave their arms around. Ono banked off the wide chest of an oncoming guard and then whirled higher and higher till it was just a blur overhead.
Tess tugged Jaime’s arm and then Theo’s. While everyone in the building—guards and receptionists and tourists—was busy trying to figure out what, exactly, was intent on wrecking the place, the kids crouched low and hurried to the first escalator on the left. Tess lifted the “Out of Order” sign and ducked underneath. As quickly and as quietly as she could, she ran up the unmoving escalator stairs. Jaime and Theo followed. When they got to the top, they leaped off, dropping behind a wall, breathing hard. On this floor, the gardens were dried up and brown, the fountains empty. Two more sets of escalators sat idle, with the same “Out of Order” signs as below, but here, the escalators had been stripped, their gears and motors visible, blue and red wires like exposed veins and arteries. Tess was stricken with a strange sort of sadness at the sight of them.
Theo tapped her arm and tore her attention back to the problem at hand. He mouthed: First door on the right. On either side of the escalators, rows of doors to abandoned offices were arranged in two arcs that hugged the rounded interior of the building. She lifted her head slightly so she could follow the line of doors until she identified the first one on the right. They would have to crawl all the way around to the front of the building to get to that door, which was right next to the windows on the front of the building.
Jaime waved to Ono, who was still whirling high overhead, and then pointed down.
Ono made one more circle and then dove back into the lobby. The shrieks of the people told Tess, Theo, and Jaime that everyone below was occupied and probably wouldn’t be looking for movement up here. They kept close to the wall, half scooting, half crawling toward the first door on the right, just as the message in the locket had said. Still crouching, Tess reached up and turned the knob, hoping that it wasn’t locked.
It wasn’t.
She pushed open the heavy wooden door and they crawled into . . .
A broom closet.
“Well,” said Jaime. “Anyone need a mop?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Theo
Theo eased the door closed behind them after they were all inside. Jaime turned on his phone to light up the darkness. “This can’t be it.”
“This was the first door on the right,” Tess insisted.
“Next to the first movable staircase on the left,” said Theo.
They got to their feet and searched the mostly bare shelves.
“There’s one roll of toilet paper over here,” said Theo.
“Is there anything written on it?” Jaime asked.
Theo unrolled the paper until he looked like he was standing in a pile of snow. “No. Nothing.”
There was a rusty bucket with a mop handle poking out of it, some old bottles of cleaner.
“Maybe whatever we’re looking for is on the walls,” Jaime suggested. “Let’s move these shelves.”
They shoved the shelves aside, used their phones for light. But there was nothing on the walls except for some rolls of old wallpaper.
They shone their lights on the ceiling and the floor. They searched under the shelves to see if there was anything stuffed underneath them. Sweat slid down Tess’s back. She didn’t know how long Ono could keep up the chase downstairs.
“What if we made a mistake?” Theo said. “Maybe the locket wasn’t a clue at all.”
“We didn’t make a mistake,” Jaime said, still feeling along the undersides of the shelves.
“I wonder if there’s a panel or a secret door or something,” said Tess.
They pushed and pressed on the walls and the floor. Theo and Jaime hoisted Tess up so she could press on the ceiling.
Nothing.
Tess didn’t want to say it, but she said it. “We’re running out of time. Ono can’t keep everyone distracted forever.”
Jaime stopped pushing and pressing, instead shining his light again at the rolls of old wallpaper. He pulled at the edge of the closest one, revealing a pattern of musical notes and dancing people. “What about these musical notes?”
“What about them?” Theo held up his own phone to look more closely at the wallpaper. “C, G, G, A, G, B, C.”
“Does it spell anything?” said Tess.
“How many words have three G’s?” said Theo. “Baggage? Not enough A’s.”
“What if we’re not supposed to spell anything, we’re supposed to play the notes?” said Jaime.
“‘Play fair,’” said Tess. “Play nicely?”
“Play well, maybe,” said Jaime.
“There’s a rest here,” Theo pointed out.
“Wait, I know this one. We all know this one.” He knocked on the wall to demonstrate. Da, da, da, DA da . . . DA! DA!
And with that, the walls of the closet collapsed, accordioned, and refolded themselves into a pyramid, with Tess, Theo, and Jaime trapped right in the middle of it.
“What in the world—?” Tess had time to say, just before the pyramid shot straight up, pasting the three of them to the floor.
Theo, Tess, and Jaime bounced and rolled and tumbled around the “closet” as it hurtled up and then sideways and then down and then up again.
“Why did they always make stuff like this?” Theo yelled in the darkness. “Why couldn’t they just pick a direction and stick to iiiiiiiiiit—OW!”
And then, as quickly as it had started, the room stopped moving. The walls collapsed again, reconfiguring themselves into a much larger, more elaborate shape, sharp angles on all sides, made with bits and pieces from other rooms. There were random doors on the walls, walls on the floor, floor tiles on the ceiling. Tiny lights previously hidden burst into life, casting the strangely shaped room in a soft glow.
The three of them cautiously sat up.
“Anybody break anything?” Jaime said.
“I don’t think so,” said Tess. “Theo?”
“I’m okay,” Theo said.
Jaime got to his feet and walked over to one of the angled walls. This new room was shaped like a circle in the center, with five pointed alcoves on all sides. “It’s like being stuck inside of a star.”
“I hope we’re not stuck,” said Tess.
“Look,” said Theo. In the middle of the “star,” there was an elegant but modestly sized desk.
They walked over to the desk. A green blotter covered the top, its surface dotted with spots of ink and random letters. In one corner of the desk, there was an inkwell with a pen. And in the other corner, there were schematics.
Theo looked over the plans. They were for some sort of machine, just as they had suspected. He was almost afraid to look too closely, afraid to learn exactly what sort of machine it was, exactly what they would have to build.
Afraid to think about whose desk this was.
“I guess we found the plans,” said Tess. “That was easy.” She grabbed them off the desk.
“Hey!” said Theo. “I wanted to examine those!”
“Examine them later,” Tess said.
“Wait,” said Jaime. “I have an idea.”
“What?”
He took the plans and folded the paper in half, then in half again. He did this twice more, until the plans were barely the size of his palm, and then added a few more folds. He held it up.
“Are you doing origami?” said Theo.
“Badly, but yeah.”
“My grandpa liked origami,” Tess said.
“I do, too,” said Jaime.
“This room folded up like origami,” Tess added. She didn’t have to say more. She didn’t have to talk about what a coincidence it was that her grandfather liked paper folding and Jaime liked paper folding and wasn’t it funny that they’d ended up in a room that had folded itself into a different shape?
When Jaime was done, he held up the plan, which now looked like a palm-sized heart. “Just in case we’re caught and searched.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Theo.
“We can check when we get out of here,” Jaime said, and stashed the heart away.
“If we can figure out how to get out of here, wherever in the Tower we are.”
“Maybe we do the same thing we did before,” Theo suggested.
So they did. They knocked on the walls and on the floor.
Nothing.
Theo went back to the desk. Lifted the blotter, checked underneath, and put it back down. Opened all the drawers.
“Anything?” said Jaime.
“Nope,” Theo said, stuffing a hand in his hair. Think, Theo, Think.
Jaime tapped the letters on the green blotter. “You know, my dad keeps a Post-it on his laptop with his password on it.”
“Why do adults do that?” said Tess.
Theo yanked his hand from his hair and slapped his own forehead with it. The three of them crowded around the desk. Written among the blots and crossed-out scribbles was this:
EMT OIB BQPS
“I bet that’s a cipher,” said Jaime.
“We just have to figure out which kind,” Theo said. He pulled out his phone. “I don’t have a signal. Do you?”
Jaime pulled out his phone. “No.”
“So we can’t use a program to see if we just need to rearrange the letters.”
Tess paced around the desk. “We’ve been gone for almost twenty minutes already.”
“Relax. No one knows we’re here. No one’s keeping track. And we’re going as fast as we can.”
Tess paced around the desk the other way.
“You’re making me dizzy,” said Jaime.
Tess stopped pacing. “The handwriting on the article said hurry!”
Theo said, “It also said to play fair, whatever that’s supposed to—ARGH!”
“What?” said Jaime.
“The Playfair Cipher! Invented by a guy named Wheatstone.”
“Why not the Wheatstone Cipher?” Jaime asked.
“What? I don’t know. But you use diagraph substitution.”
“Right,” said Jaime. “I use diagraph substitution all the time.”
“You do?”
Tess slapped the desk with both palms. “Theo!”
“Sorry. First you choose a key word. You write out the key without repeating any letters in a five-by-five square, followed by the rest of the letters in order. You combine I and J so twenty-six letters in the alphabet become twenty-five, and fit perfectly in the grid.”
“Sounds so simple,” said Jaime.
“Doesn’t it?” Theo said.
“No,” said Jaime.
“Do you have a pencil or a pen or something?”
Jaime handed him a pencil.
Theo leaned his elbows on the desk. “Say the key word was ‘Jaime.’ Your key would look like this.”
A I M E B
C D F G H
K L N O P
Q R S T U
V W X Y Z
“If you wanted to encipher a word or a message, like—”
“‘Hurry’?” said Tess.
“Hurry,” Theo said, “you split the letters into groups of two. Hu-rr-y. Double letters need to be separated by an x. Like this:”
HU RX RY
“Then you consult your key to find your pair of letters. Every pair is in the same row, the same column, or neither of those things. You replace letters in the same row with the letter to their right. Letters in the same column are replaced by the letter below them. If the letters in your pair don’t appear in the same row or column, then you replace the letter in the row with the letter that’s in the same column as the second letter. So, if we use the key to encipher the diagraphs, we get PZ for HU, SW for RX, and TW for RY.”
“Man, this cipher is bonkers,” said Jaime. “Who would use it?”
“The British in World War One and the Australians in World War Two,” said Theo.
“So how do we decipher the letters on the blotter?”
“Well, if our phones worked, we could just put them into a decoder,” said Theo.
“Yeah, except our phones don’t work.”
“We probably need the key word.”
“Great,” said Tess.
“Maybe it’s another word on the blotter?”
But there weren’t any other words on the blotter, none that weren’t crossed out. They ended up trying a few anyway, but they didn’t work.
“We’ve been stuck a half hour,” said Tess. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in here.”
“Try the word ‘out’ as the key,” Jaime suggested.
Theo did. “Nope.”
“‘Leave’?”
Theo scribbled some more. “Nope.”
“‘Exit’?”
Theo made a square with exit as the key word, and then worked backward. “E would give you T, and then M would give you H,” he muttered. “The red door? The red door!”
E X I T A
B C D F G
H K L M N
O P Q R S
U V W Y Z
“Great,” said Jaime. “But I don’t see any doors in here.”
“Neither do I,” Tess said.
“There has to be,” said Theo.
“Look at the lights!” Jaime pointed at the rows of winking lights the size of pinpricks. “They’re not all white. Some are different colors. Like that!” Jaime ran to a panel outlined in the faintest bluish light.
Tess and Theo scanned the oddly angled room. Tess found a panel vaguely lit green.
“Here!” said Theo. Tucked away in one of the arms of the star, blue lights outlined a panel near the floor.
“That’s a small door,” Jaime said. “How are we going to fit?”
“Do you think we should knock, or . . . ?” Theo said.
Tess shouldered them both aside and opened the tiny door. As soon as she did, the walls collapsed around them once again, folding and refolding. The desk disappeared; the blue and green and red and all the other doors flipped out of sight.
“Oh, shhhhhhh—” Jaime said, before the room shrank in on them and they had to duck to keep the ceiling from knocking them out. They dropped straight down, their feet lifting off the floor with the speed of it. They hurtled diagonally, then up, then down, then spun around like a top, something that was entirely unnecessary, in Theo’s opinion, not that he could say so, for fear of throwing up.
