The sixth hour of the low slack was heralded by a smell of scorched machine oil drifting from the ceiling.
Qiao Ming sat upon the dry hard speckled rock stone stand of Statue #0342 in Entry hall 340, his back resting against the huge stone calf of an ancient lawgiver. His bare feet were stretched out before him upon the flags, drying in the cool, steady draft that moved through the nave. In his lap rested his simple meal. A wooden bowl of dried sea-kelp strips, two hard wheat biscuits soaked in condensed rainwater, and a handful of salted salt water-plums that he chewed slowly to stave off the thirst caused by breathing salt-air.
He chewed in silence, his eyes half-closed, listening to the vast breathing of the hall.
For thirty years, this had been the only world he knew. The gentle, rhythmic sigh of water draining through sixty miles of floor gratings. The distant, thunderous thump of the Ninth Tide breaking against the outer breakwaters leagues away. The solitary piping of the petrels roosting in the stone curls of ancient beards. It was a cathedral of total order—a world where every cubic foot of air and every drop of salt water was balanced by the huge, patient shape of the First Epoch.
