At twelve-thirty-six, as Pella prepared to go down the spiral stairs into Sub-Cellar 4 to make physical contact with Senn’s memory knot, Imran Bell burst through the gallery door. His yellow was bright jacket drenched with water, his headlamp beam cutting wildly through the gloom.
“Stop! Nobody goes down those stairs!” Imran shouted, throwing his arms out to block the archway. His clipboard was soaked, but his eyes were wide with intense skilled urgency. “Pella, don’t set a boot in Sub-Cellar Four!”
Pella stopped with one hand on the cold iron handrail, her measuring tongs poised. “What’s it, Imran? Did the sulfur gas penetrate the lower vents?”
“It’s not gas,” Imran panted, catching his breath against the stone door post. “The beetles have fully abandoned the forty-foot ceiling crack above the memory knot. Every single one of them. Two thousand insects, Pella. They aren’t crawling. They’re dropping from the ceiling and scuttling up the stone stairs like they’re being chased by blowtorches. That rock isn’t shaking anymore. It’s shearing.”
Imran unclipped his sound listening probe—a six-inch electronic transducer with a digital readout—and pressed it against the stone wall of the stairwell. On the small lit up screen, a jagged green waveform danced wildly between two hundred and four hundred cycles. “Listen to that hum, Pella. That isn’t water hammer. That’s the living granite being ground into quartz powder under fifty tons of quirky torque. If you walk into that nook, the roof will be on your head before you can…
