Ganesha mandala on the back of the hand

The bulkhead on Deck Nine has no handle, only a ring of black dots pressed into the grey paint and, above them, a carved face with a trunk curled like a question mark. The engineers call it the Elephant. Nobody has opened it since the reclaimers failed in the year we lost the orchards, and the manifest lists the far side as storage and nothing more. Yesterday Pell sat cross-legged in front of it for an hour, tracing the dots with one finger and counting under her breath until the corridor lights dimmed to their night setting.

She thinks the dots are a lock, but not a code. The rings spread outwards from the face in the same order every time, crown first, then the eyes, then the long tusks, and each ring has a gap where a ring should be. Pell says the gaps are where something must be filled in, the way a sum is completed by the person solving it. I told her that sounds like a riddle for a child, and she said the old builders liked riddles that made you slow down.

This morning I found a scrap of paper tucked into the frame, soft as cloth. It was a copy of the same pattern drawn freehand in pencil, with a note in a cramped hand: the elephant clears the path for whoever is writing the record. Under that someone had added, in brackets, that the record must be honest, or the path stays shut.

So I am writing this down the way I was taught, plainly, with the numbers beside it. Pell has gone back to the corridor with a flask of tea and a stub of chalk. If the door opens, I will tell you what is behind it. If it does not, I will still have kept the ledger honest, which may be the whole point.