The conversion of Annealer One from spark anchor power to reserve petroleum fuel was a procedure carried out with the cold, deliberate care of an amputation.
At the rear of the fire structure. There, the heat-proof brick met the eastern stone foundation of the hall, the heat was choking. Six senior glassblowers and fire tenders worked in a tight line along the narrow upkeep trench, their faces wrapped in wet rags, their heavy canvas trousers soaked through with sweat. In the cramped space beneath the backup chimney pipe, the thick copper bus-bars that fed the anchor current entered the fire housing through four fine china wall-metal sleeves, each the size of a beer barrel.
The bitter-salt damp in the trench was acid-burning, tasting of bitter salt and copper scale. Every iron bracket was crusted with thick flakes of rust, and wherever moisture dripped from the ceiling, it hissed against the hot casing of the Lehr. It filled the low trench with a choking, rotten-egg fog. For twelve years, those four fine china metal sleeves had stood under nonstop electric tension, feeding thirty thousand volts of raw current into the internal heavy dark metal heating elements. The air around the terminals hummed with a static charge so dense that the hair on Hollis Fenn’s forearms stood straight out from his skin, crackling with tiny blue sparks whenever he adjusted his wrench.
