They turned in at the next connecting spoke; m'lord's lips moved as he counted off side branches, then set in a smile as the core stack hove into view.  Another pause, while m'lord weaseled his way into a locked electrical access panel, did some careful counting, and nodded.  They then went out another spoke and turned right into one of the corridors, this one completed, dimly lit with utility lighting and lined with loaded cryo-drawers.

"This doesn't look so fancy," Roic murmured.

"These are the cheap seats," said m'lord.  "If you want to be filed away behind faux mahogany and brass fittings—or gold, I'm told—NewEgypt can supply, on the upper levels."

Even down here, a lot of the drawers had small holders set in the walls beside them for odd little personal offerings, including tiny bottles of wine, wrapped snacks, or burned-down stubs of incense sticks.  Most common were flowers, mostly plastic or silk but sometimes real ones—some fresh, some brown and drooping sadly from their dried-out water tubes.

"Here," said m'lord, stopping abruptly.  He craned his neck at a drawer at the top of the stack.  "Read off the number, Raven."

Raven recited a long alphanumeric string, twice.

M'lord checked carefully against the data on his wristcom.  "This is it."

The disguising boxes then found another use, as m'lord filched one to boost him to a convenient height to examine the drawer lock and attach his ImpSec-special door opener to it.  "All right," he murmured, climbing back down.  "When the lights go out, make the switch."

He unshipped his own hand light and trotted off.

Raven issued Roic a pair of insulated medical gloves, donned a pair himself, and bent to unseal the long bag.   The figure revealed seemed a slender little old woman, clad in a sort of plastic caul that clung to her shape.  What with the translucent protective ointment heavily slathered on her skin and the frost that instantly began to form on the exposed plastic surface, her helpless nakedness had at least a decent veiling.  Roic turned on his own hand light an instant before the corridor lights, and all the little green lights on the drawers, went black.  There having proved no way to open a single drawer without setting off some indicator in the central control room, the next best thing had seemed to give the same flicker to five thousand or so drawers at once.

"Ready," said Raven.

Roic tapped the button on the unlocking device; to his relief, the drawer lock opened easily.  He slid the long drawer out like opening some dreadful filing cabinet.