Foreman Geth Marr remained on his knees on the cold pine floorboards beside Bed 19, his heavy shoulders hunched forward like a digging prop bearing the weight of a sagging roof header.
He reached his thick, scarred right hand toward the mound of slate-gray melted rock waste that had collapsed beneath the emerald glare of the emergency chandelier. His fingers hovered two inches above the dust. It trembled with a violent, uncharacteristic pause that no rock fall or flooded sump had ever produced in thirty years of quarrying.
Then he pressed his palm into the center of the mound.
The melted rock waste was cold.
It had no heat, no heat memory of the living body that had stood beside the iron cot for four thousand midnights. It had no electric shaking, no faint, magnetic pull against the steel rivets in his cuffs. It was cold with the deep, unbending chill of limestone tailings dredged from the bottom of an abandoned drift fifty arm-lengths below water level.
Geth brought his hand back, staring at his palm. A fine, chalky smear of gray powder coated his calloused skin. It settled into the cracks of his knuckles and the white scars where flying flint had cut him in his youth. He brought his fingers to his nose and inhaled deeply.
