The damp in the lower under-road drains of Track Four didn’t rise like river water. It seeped through the lime-washed sandstone joints as a cold, greasy sweat that smelled of coal-gas, wet soot, and stale iron bilge. For twelve years, the drainage beneath the switching sheds had served as the backup drainage basin for the central town under-road drain. Now, with the Star tower’s high-pressure boilers cycling their evening blow-down thirty minutes ahead of schedule, the drains were groaning under three feet of boiling cooled water that backed into the cellar foundations.
Nine hundred and twelve fever patients lay on damp straw mattresses across the length of the check gallery. Two hundred and forty of them were coughing infants, swaddled in coarse gray wool sacking, their faces mottled with the red, peeling rash of the third-day ague. In the alcoves between the brick stone props, mothers sat huddled over smoking peat fire bowls, trying to keep the wet chill from piercing their children’s chests. Meanwhile, the floor drains gurgled with dark, greasy bubbles that carried the stink of sulfur and machine oil.
Len Vey stood on the narrow iron narrow high walkway thirty feet above the turntable pit, his back braced against an upright steel support post. His left arm was strapped rigidly against his ribs by Doma Reel’s splints. Four notched strips of seasoned white ash bound with waxed harness linen that cut into his chest muscles with every labored breath. The compound fracture in his forearm throbbed with…
