Harl stopped in the quiet seat and listened to the floor.
He had heard the place described, seen Iven’s drawings and argued over the dimensions of its outward path. None of those things had prepared him for the faint, separate sounds arriving through its ceramic mouths. A movement at the receiving yard came from one direction. Water in the older channels came from another. Farther out, something vast shifted its weight, the low pressure entering the room without becoming a sound a person could mistake for a cart.
Tal watched him from the second stool.
“Don’t try to hear all of them at once,” he said. “Pick one.”
Harl obeyed. His face changed.
Iven left them there for a moment and went up to the old drive pit.
The cover stood secured in its lifting frame. Below it, the ruined wooden structure he remembered had been replaced with new members shaped around the surviving stone cylinder. The old connecting arms lay on clean cloth. A new flexible bellows waited beside the pit, its folds tied for transport.
Mira had commissioned the preparation after the refuge agreement was complete. The local shop had made the frame and bellows while Iven was returning to Mercy and finishing the evacuation arrangements. No one had needed him to stand beside the work for those twelve days.
