The center of the equilateral triangle formed by the Giant statues of Light, Death. Love was marked not by a towering pylon or a gold-trimmed throne, but by a low, plain altar of black green jade, five paces square and three feet high, set flush into the coarse grey rock floor of Entry hall 950.
The green jade was light-swallowing, darker than the black tide that rested upon it, its surface polished to such an extreme flat perfection that the emerald beams from the diving bell’s searchlights did not scatter upon the stone. But reflected upward toward the vaulted ceiling like green laser lines cutting through a dark hall of mirrors. The block was massive stone, weighing easily sixty tons, quarried from the deep-sea trenches of the pre-flood void before the first sun was kindled.
Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu walked through the eight-inch layer of grey diatomaceous silt. Their lead-clad boots left twin furrows in the mud that slowly filled with settling stone dust behind them. They approached the altar. Then, the water around their knees grew warm—a gentle, comforting five degrees above freezing—heated by the thermoelectric heat flow of the central keel embedded three deep-water lengths beneath the stone floor. The cold that had bitten through their vulcanized shark-leather suits since leaving the bell pulled back, replaced by a deep, wrapping life-force that made their stiffened joints supple again.
