hand into his. He looks at her, then smiles. “Together it is, then.”
In the end, they take the lock from the pantry door. It is an old-fashioned thing, attached by magnet to jamb and door, the mechanism a crude combination lock. But when they get it onto her bedroom door, and Lore wraps the combination cylinder with her hand so that even Oster can’t see what number she chooses, she feels better. Oster tucks her up, kisses her forehead, and when the door closes behind him, she hears the satisfying click that means no one can ever come in here again until she rolls each of the white counters to its proper number.
She is getting dressed the next morning when Greta knocks at the door. She opens it proudly. Greta seems awkward. “Did you sleep better, later?”
Lore nods, then shows Greta her lock. Greta frowns. “This isn’t good enough.”
“But—”
“No, it’s not good enough. Lock the door behind me and watch.”
Lore, mystified as usual by Greta and her ways, does so. Twenty seconds later, the lock clicks back and the door swings open. Lore is suddenly terrified. She doesn’t care that it is Greta who went out of the door, she is sure it is the monster coming back in. She runs to the bed intending to climb under it, forgetting that it is a futon and not her own, high bed in Amsterdam. The door closes again and Lore opens her mouth to scream.
“It’s just me,” Greta says. But she seems distracted. “We’re going to do something about that lock.” And she sits down on the futon right there and starts contacting people on her slate. “There. Now let’s go eat breakfast.”
They are the only ones at breakfast and though the maid drops Greta’s croissant, Greta does not seem to notice. Lore nibbles at her own food and watches her sister surreptitiously over the rim of her juice glass. Where does she go all the time? she wonders. Wherever it is, it does not seem very pleasant.
The locksmith arrives only forty minutes later, and the three of them troop upstairs, again in silence. Greta simply points at the door and the locksmith nods.
It takes five minutes. Lore watches, fascinated, as the old lock is removed with something that looks like a cooking spatula, and a creamy ceramic square with a glossy black face replaces it. Lore thinks he has finished until he fishes a second from his pocket and fits it over the door and jamb on the hinge side. He doesn’t look Venezuelan. When the locksmith is finished, he pulls out a white key remote the size of a rabbit’s foot. He presses a button, and the black face turns to deep blue. “All yours.” He starts to hand the key to Greta but she nods in Lore’s direction and he gives it to her instead. He leaves.
“It’s a special lock system,” Greta says. “No one, and I mean no one, will ever be able to get through that lock. And because there are two, they can’t just take the door off its hinges, or knock it down. They’d have to cut a hole through the middle. And the monster can’t do that.”
Lore looks down at the fat white key in her hand and wonders about monsters in the Netherlands.
“You can remove the locks and take them with you, wherever you go. I’ll download all the operating instructions to your slate later. You’d better choose the code when I’m gone. Anything you like. You can even make them different for each side. And you can use algorithms to make sure it’s never the same twice.” She taps the key in Lore’s hand. “Don’t lose that.”
After she goes, Lore sits on her bed, turning the locks on and off, listening to them thunk competently open and closed.
Greta leaves again the next day, and Lore develops a habit of reaching into her pocket to check she has her key whenever she is nervous.
SEVEN
I was surprised when Magyar somehow managed to get hold of a combination of handheld and portable PDs. She piled them up on the gangway and called the section, some twenty-odd men and women, together.
“You already know that the computer’s down. It’s going to stay down for at least a day. Systems want to dump the whole program, plus backups, to make sure there aren’t any other viruses. Meanwhile, these are handheld detectors. I’ll want readings every half hour—”
“There won’t be time!” a red-haired man called. He worked two