The furniture, partitions, ceiling tiles, lighting, and other equipment were modern, just as above. Nevertheless there was a different atmosphere down here. The corridors seemed narrower, lower, more confining, darker, while most of the chambers were big—if not huge—mighty, open cubicula each of which could have held hundreds of people. The businesses of the Order, like the genealogy service, were run from Level 1, but most of the rooms down here were given over to functions that served more basic needs. I was shown an immense hospital, equipped with modern gear but oddly open-plan, a refectory the size of an aircraft hangar, and dormitories in which rows of bunk beds, jammed close in together, marched into the distance.

I never saw a room empty, anywhere in the Crypt, and so it was here. The hospital seemed to have few patients, but swarmed with activity. People were sleeping in some of the dormitories, even in midmorning, perhaps night-shift workers tucked into their bunk beds like rows of insect pupae in their cocoons. The corridors, too, were always packed with people, squeezing to and fro on their endless chores.

Crowding around me, they would touch, squeeze past, smile just as politely as above, and I saw the same faces, the family face, as I thought of it now, with low cheekbones, pale gray eyes. But the denizens of Level 2 had a slightly different look about them. Many were very pale, and they seemed to have exaggerated features—large, flaring nostrils, big eyes, even prominent ears. They were all a similar size, smaller than either Rosa or me. Compact, to fit into a compact space, I thought idly. They weren’t freaks. None of them would have looked out of place in one of Rome’s ancient piazzas. But cumulatively, there was an impression of subtle difference, even from the level above.

And few of them talked. Oddly, it took me a while to notice that. But there was little of the incessant chatter of Level 1. Here, there were words exchanged, brief conversations, but no hubbub. It was, I thought, as if words weren’t really needed here.

It struck me that I had already come deeper than most members of the public, like the schoolchildren in their classrooms above, would ever reach. Nobody would see this—nobody but another member of the Order—and to her, who had grown up with it, none of this would seem strange at all.

And the air was thicker, warmer, and more redolent with that earthy animal musk. I soon felt breathless; my chest strained as I breathed, my lungs ached. After a time I began to feel sleepy, and I had a vague sense of the Crypt and its inhabitants swimming past me, as if I were in a waking dream.

I struggled to think.

“Most people born in the Crypt stay here. Is that true?”