The airlock at the bottom of Obsidian Diving Bell Number Three was a circular bronze trunk three feet in width, accessed through a counterbalanced drop-hatch set flush into the floorplates between the two watching couches. Through this narrow throat, the land-mappers of the First Dynasty had stepped out onto the seabed when the universe was young, leaving their warm iron cradle to walk among the cold foundations of the unmade sky.
Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu prepared their diving dress in the cramped, green-lit cabin, their movements economical, disciplined, and silent. They didn’t wear the clumsy canvas and brass suits of mortal harbor divers. They wore the pressure dress of the ancient water-scribes. Suits fashioned from three plies of vulcanized shark-leather, cured in baths of hot lamp-wax and lead-salt until the hide was impervious to the bite of five crushing deep-sea pressure of water-column. Across the chest and thighs, overlapping scales of cold-hammered star-bronze were riveted to the leather with flat-headed copper drift-pins, distributing the crushing external load across the skeletal frame without constricting the movement of the lungs. The leather was thick, smelling of beeswax, mutton fat, and sulfur, stiff to the touch until the animal warmth of their bodies softened the wax along the joints.
