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off?”
    A shrug. “Long before I ever got here.”
    “Do you have the key?”
    The superintendent only laughs.
    “Do you have any bolt cutters?”
    “No.”
    “Shouldn’t be hard to find bolt cutters in this neighborhood,” Lastene says, and the superintendent scowls.
    Grandshuk just walks up to the padlock and gives it a yank. The chain rattles, and the padlock falls open. Lastene barks a surprised laugh.
    Grandshuk unwraps the chain and pushes the barred door open. He looks at the superintendent.
    “Somebody’s been down here,” he says.
    The superintendent looks innocent. “Nobody I know. Maybe one of the tenants. Or their kids.”
    Aiah switches on her headlamp and torch. “Let’s go,” she says.
    Heavy boots echo on the stair as the party descends. Memories rise in Aiah: the Plasm Authority has an apprenticeship program designed to acquaint budding executives with their jurisdiction from ground level on up. After college she spent two years underground, doing the sort of jobs that Lastene and Grandshuk do every day. She’d hated it at the time, but it taught her more about the way plasm is distributed than anything she’d ever learned at the university.
    There are footprints on the soiled tile steps, most of them tiny: children have been down here, and a few adults. On the second landing there’s an old bedroll, empty food tins, used fuel cells for a chemical stove, and an untidy pile of plastic liquor bottles.
    Grandshuk kicks at the bedroll and Aiah’s leaping light catches a mouse as it scurries away.
    “Years old,” he says. There are baby mice, Aiah sees, living in the bedroll. Her nerves wail as Grandshuk methodically crushes them all beneath his boot.
    At the next landing water erosion has caused the tile wall to collapse. Aiah and Grandshuk peer into the little cavern revealed, see chunks of old concrete, brick, a leaking water main. No real plasm source.
    Any footprints are now washed away by a water cascade that pours merrily down the stairs. Aiah walks carefully on the slippery tiles, keeps one gloved hand on the corroded rail. Something swims away as they approach a lake at the bottom of the stairs. The water level goes over Aiah’s ankles. It’s cold and she begins to shiver as damp soaks through her socks.
    A level corridor sloshes along for about half a pitch, then divides, UPPER PLATFORM, one sign says. The sign for the other is missing. The water all pours off that way, so its level has to be lower. Aiah looks at Grandshuk. His face is yellow in the light of her lamp.
    “Procedure says we don’t split up,” she says.
    “That’s crap,” Grandshuk says. “We know people have been down here. Nothing’s going to cave in.”
    Aiah hesitates.
    “I can’t feel my feet any more,” Lastene says. “Let’s do whatever’s quickest.”
    Aiah shines her light down the river. It’s the most dangerous way: if they’re to split, two people should take that route, and one the other.
    She’s the leader, she thinks, the downward path should be hers.
    On the other hand, she’d really like to wring out her socks.
    “You two go down that way,” she says. “If it’s more than a hundred paces, come back and wait for me here. I’ll check the upper platform by myself.” They don’t seem to resent her giving herself the driest job. Grandshuk and Lastene begin wading down the corridor. Aiah watches them descend, silhouetted against their own lights, then takes the other corridor.
    Within ten paces she’s on the old platform. Her bootfalls echo in the dark. Wet squelches beneath her soles.
    It’s a pneuma, all right, the oval tunnel makes that clear enough, and there are runners instead of tracks at the bottom of the pit.
    The ceiling is supported by a row of iron stanchions, fluted, each with clawed feet bolted to the concrete platform through a frayed old pad of asbestos insulation. Light supports hang from the ceiling, the light fixtures themselves long since scavenged away. Chunks