High above the underground brick arches of the tram undercroft, the memorial bells of Rookvale began to toll.
The sound didn’t go down like a call to prayer. It dropped through the air-flow chimney pipes and the iron floor gratings with the crushing, rhythmic impact of a steam-hammer striking cold iron. Eight slow, heavy, ringing strokes boomed through the limestone foundations of the valley, shaking the water in the copper cooking pots and sending ripples across the surface of the soaking tubs.
Across the seven wards of the province, the tolling was answered by the clockwork chorus of the shift change. From Salt Ward rose the scream of kiln sirens, calling glass blowers to their turns. From Quarry Ward came the blast of steam hoists, signaling limestone blocks rising to the surface crushers. And two miles south, at the fortified bottleneck of Gate Ward, the boundary siren wailed, warning merchant wagon drivers that outward wickets were locked until morning.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon.
In the outside world beyond the steel canopy, the sun would be hanging broad and warm in an unclouded sky over green river valleys. In Rookvale, beneath four thousand, three hundred and eighty days of engineered night, there was only the choking twilight of burning copper salts beneath an iron-hard lid of dead black slate.
