Lucia vaguely imagined the Crypt as a great drum shape, sunk deep into the ground beneath the old Appian Way. There were at least three levels—everybody knew that much. On the first story, nearest the surface, there were schools, offices, libraries, and the computer center where she herself worked on the scrinium’s endless projects. On the story beneath that—downbelow, as the Crypt jargon had it—there were living accommodations, the dormitories and rest rooms and dining rooms, food stores, kitchens, a hospital, all of them crammed, day and night, with people. Few of the day girls who attended the Order’s famous schools would ever descend this far, and the light shafts didn’t reach; there was only the pale glow of electric lights, and in the old days, it was said, candles and torches.

And there was at least one more level downbelow.

The elevator whispered to a halt. The doors slid open to a mundane white-walled corridor: the third story. Rosa led the way out with a reassuring smile. Lucia followed reluctantly. The corridor was narrow. Some of the doors leading off the corridor were heavy, as if designed to keep an airtight seal. There was a faint smell of antiseptic here, heavily overlaid with a more pleasant scent, like lavender.

Lucia’s heart pounded. She didn’t know anybody who had visited the third level. Lucia herself hadn’t, not since she was a very small child. From what little she knew, this was a place of nurseries and crèches. She herself had been born here, and had spent her first couple of years here. She remembered nothing but a blur of smiling faces, of pale gray eyes, all alike, none special, all loving.

And, so went the whispers in the dark, this was a place of mortuaries. You were born downbelow, here on the third story, and you died downbelow. So it was said. Lucia didn’t want to know.

The corridor was crowded, of course. In the Crypt, everywhere was crowded. People smiled, nodded, and ducked out of the way as Rosa forged ahead. Almost everybody was female. Most people wore everyday clothing, but some wore simple cotton smocks that looked like nurses’ uniforms. Though most shared the usual lozenge-shaped features and smoky gray eyes—and even though everybody seemed young, not much older than she was—there wasn’t a single face here that Lucia recognized.

Lucia had heard bits of dormitory gossip that the Crypt might hold as many as ten thousand people in its great halls and corridors. That scarcely seemed credible—but then, wherever you looked, there were always more corridors, more chambers, stretching on into the electric-lit dimness: who was to say how far it stretched? She would never know, for she would never need to know. Ignorance is strength . . .

And it was possible, she thought now, that nobody knew the whole picture—nobody at all.