The sound tuning of ninety arm-lengths of ancient dark rock was a building operation of terrifying, razor-sharp care.
Under five hundred and eleven sea-weights of water-pressure load, sound in water did not travel as a loose, sky wave. It moved as a high-pressure hammer, carrying the physical mass of the liquid column directly into the core structure of the stone. A single clashing strike, an error of half a cycle in the hum math, could induce high-hum shear fractures along the dark rock cleavage planes, shattering the giant statue into fifty thousand tons of black gravel and triggering an implosive blast wave that would collapse the diving bell three hundred yards away, crushing their lungs inside their suits.
Qiao Ming knelt between the huge stone toes of the titan’s right foot, his lead-clad knees sinking into the thin film of white pale limestone dust that coated the platform. The sheer scale of the stone toes was staggering. Each toenail was carved as a broad, curved slab of black dark rock two feet wide, dressed with fine level filing marks that imitated the natural growth-rings of human horn-protein.
From his harness, he uncoiled the sixty deep-water lengths of his Knotted Horsehair Sounding Line. The cord, braided from stallion-hair and star-fallen iron wire, was stiff with old sheep fat. But as he worked it through his leather-gloved fingers, the warmth of his hands softened the grease until the braid was supple as boiled silk. Every knot along the line had been tied…
