Beyond the eighty-arm-length arch of Entry hall 129, the shape of the Ark tilted downward into the singing dark.
Qiao Ming stood at the crown of the Great Acoustic Ramp. There, the floor began a steady descent of one arm-length in every eighteen paces toward the western foundations. The ramp was thirty paces wide, flanked by huge stone railings of dark phonolite whose balusters were carved in the likeness of ancient musical instruments: stone chimes, bone flutes, bronze bells, and high-pressure trumpets.
High overhead, the ceiling was lost in an endless forest of hanging lithic bells.
There were over a thousand bells suspended from the groin ribs by heavy chains of forged sea-iron. They ranged from small crystal chimes no larger than a child’s fist to giant stone bells ten paces across at the mouth, carved from single blocks of green phonolite that had been hollowed with clean, steady care to produce pure, uncorrupted musical frequencies.
As a gentle draft blew down the ramp from the upper air-flow chimney pipes, the bells stirred.
They didn’t strike one another with chaotic clatter. They were spaced at exact intervals calculated to generate sympathetic sound deep ring.
A faint, crystal-clear chime drifted down from the ceiling—a pure, sweet note of two hundred and sixteen hertz that shook through the air like a plucked silk string.
