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‘Do we have to go through them,’ asked Pitr, his voice also low.
I shook my head. The light from the drone was pointing straight through the chamber and out through the other corridor. ‘Want to see anyway?’ I asked.
Pitr looked thoughtful, and Alyssa didn’t make any comment. I waited. Eventually Pitr nodded and I let out a relieved breath.
I led the way to the door and we went through the routine of looking for a way to open it. This time, we didn’t have to resort to the drone. Pitr found a hidden panel in the middle of the door, and there were green and red buttons underneath it. When Pitr showed me where the buttons were, I reached out and pressed the red one. Pitr gasped, but I knew I was bypassing a whole agonised debate about which to push first.
I got it right first time. There were lots of mechanical thumps and bumps, then a line split down the middle of the door as the two halves recessed into the walls. When the doors opened far enough for us to all pass through side by side, I stepped forwards. As soon as I set foot inside the door bank after bank of lights overhead switched on and flooded the hall with light. As lights seemed to switch on forever in front of me I stood in awe, not moving.
We were in a central aisle. Ahead of us and all around rose a honeycomb of spindly metal stairs, with interconnecting walkways and supports. Buried in the lattice were boxes that were, as far as I could see, all identical. I went over to a stairway walked up one level, the echoes from my feet on the metal treads clattering back and forth around the chamber. The walkway carried on for tens if not hundreds of metres out from the centre, with a new box every four paces. I went to look at the first one. With a part of my mind that wasn’t really paying attention, I heard two sets of footsteps follow up the stairs behind me.
I leaned over the box. There was a translucent sheet covering the top, and a plaque on the edge closest to the walkway.
Mari Sandrah Kettering
ID 227-14-KETTERINGS
There was someone in here, but the plaque didn’t say when they had been born or had died. I reached out and touched it, wondering who she had been, what she had been like. The instant my fingers touched the lid the milky opalescence of the covering drained away and the cover went clear. Mari Kettering was inside, looking as healthy as if she was asleep. Then it came to me – like most information Noah had given me did - a fraction of a second after I needed it. This woman wasn’t dead. She was in Deep Sleep. And so was everybody else in this vast chamber. I had no idea how big the place was or how many people were here. There could be tens or hundreds of thousands. If we could get this chunk of rock back on track, it might be possible to wake all these people up.
‘These people are alive,’ I said, feeling inexpressibly happy as I turned and explained to Pitr and Alyssa. ‘They have been in a sort of super-sleep for hundreds and hundreds of years and they don’t get older. Come and see.’
‘So these people aren’t dead?’ said Alyssa, looking as though she was far from convinced.
‘No.’
I stood aside and let Alyssa get right up alongside the box. She peered inside and gasped. ‘How do you know this?’
‘Oh, he has a friend with a long memory who can talk fast to the right people,’ Pitr said, a trace of bitterness in his voice
Alyssa stepped away from the box, shaking her head. ‘All this, for nothing? I come all this way with you. I saved your necks and I crawl through that disgusting tunnel with you all to see the Halls of the Dead. And when I get here, they aren’t even dead!’
‘Good,’ came a voice from the bottom of the stairway. ‘Now that’s all settled, could I ask you to step outside the chamber?’