Twelve hours after the first pump began to stroke, the underground silence that settled over the undercroft of the Grand Cathedral was deep, total, and respectful.
The four force-pumps stood idle, their brass cylinders coated in dried gray cement. Eighty-four ditchers and masons sat along the dry stone steps of the crypt, their faces blackened with torch soot, drinking hot tea from tin mugs and wrapping their blistered hands in clean linen.
Tomas Reed, Nessa Vale, and Sile Rook walked across the solid floor of the former wash-out cave.
It was no longer a deep pit. It was a solid, seamless monolith of pale gray volcanic cement concrete. The eleven thousand cubic feet of void had been fully filled, the high-pressure cement curing underwater into an artificial rock harder than native limestone. The footing pad of Pier Four was no longer suspended over empty air. It was bedded permanently into eleven thousand cubic feet of solid stone.
Nessa knelt before the Ames dial indicator mounted between the granite pier and the bedrock datum pin.
She struck the granite cut stone three sharp blows with a four-pound hammer to test for leftover shaking.
The black needle on the dial didn’t move. It sat locked at total zero, unmoving as the core of the world.
