The ascent from the wet docking collar of Entry hall 912 to the residential roof ledges of the nine-hundred-and-eighth tier was a journey across the stratified history of human endurance.
Qiao Ming walked barefoot upon the rising coarse grey rock stairs, carrying the shallow cedar basket containing his unknotted horsehair line in the crook of his left arm. Beside him walked Yan Zhiqiu, her hair still damp from the diving helmet, the Joined Broken Slate resting securely in its brass-bound cedar case upon her hip. Behind them marched an escort of forty senior sounders and apprentice masons, their unlit animal fat torches trailing thin ribbons of aromatic smoke into the warm, rising updraft.
With every fifty steps they climbed, the physical character of the Ark shifted from the cold, titanic shape of an underwater machine to the crowded, fragile domesticity of an old family refugee camp.
On the broad granite landings of the nine-hundred-and-tenth tier, the living quarters of the two million survivors unrolled in endless, tiered rows of stone pillars beneath the vault of the ceiling arches. Here. There, the granite beams were thirty arm-lengths thick, the population was organized into twelve distinct guild quarters, mirroring the office divisions of the pre-flood empire: the stone-hewers, the rope-weavers, the kelp-gatherers, the mushroom-farmers, the high-pressure tenders, and the scribes. Families had carved out small, private alcoves from the rock, curtaining their doorways with mats of woven kelp-cloth and oiled sheepskin.
