So, he hadn't found the pumping station or the electrical transformers.  He'd found the deeper secret of this place—working cryochambers.  A number of mysteries fell neatly into place.

Suze and companions were running a secret cryocorp.  No—a cryo-cooperative.  And, unless he missed his guess, unlicensed, untaxed, and un-inspected.  Clandestine, off the books in every way.

Kibou-daini—a whole planet so obsessed with cheating death that even the street people managed to scavenge hope.

Which beat living, and dying, in a cardboard box all to flinders, Miles had to admit.  He opened his mouth in what might have been a silent laugh.  And I thought I'd pulled some audacious stunts in my time . . .  How the hell Suze and whatever helpers she'd suborned had managed to palm an entire facility, back when this place was being decommissioned and stripped, its patrons shifted to the elegant new Cryopolis on the west end, gaudy with its floodlit pyramids, was a tale Miles was suddenly dying to hear.

Bad choice of phrase, my Lord Auditor.

Less than a third of the cryo-drawers in this corridor sported those glowworm lights, and how many other corridors might there be?  Plenty of room for more customers.  And, because his mind worked that way, he considered how easy murder by cryo-drawer would be.  The ultimate shell game, one live body hidden among hundreds of dead ones.  Asphyxiation would come quickly in the sealed black box, even without the freezing, and no one would know where to look till much too late . . .

It's nothing I haven't undergone before.

It was curious how much that reflection didn't help.

He stepped forward to the end door, raised his hand to touch the cool metal surface, and just stood there for a minute.  Then, curling his fingers into a fist, he knocked.

The creak of a chair.  The door opened partway, and a hairy face thrust through.  "Yah?"

"Tenbury-san?"

"Just Tenbury.  What did you want?"

"To ask a few questions, if I may."

Beneath shaggy brows, dark brown eyes narrowed.  "Did you talk to Suze?"

"Jin took me to see her this morning, yes."

Tenbury's lips pursed amid their thatch.  "Oh.  All right."  The door swung wide.

Miles did not correct the misperception that Suze had therefore gated him into this covert community, but slipped inside at once.