“Yaozu thought it might be a good idea. This would have been one of the engineers’ offices if anybody had ever used this station for traveling.”

“How nice for you,” he said, more crossly than he meant to. He’d never owned a key to anything, not in his entire life. Not even now that he had his own room.

Houjin unlocked the door and led everyone inside, setting his lantern on a small table beside the door. On the wall above it, there was a metal bubble with a button in the middle. Houjin pushed the button. With a sputtering series of sparks, a line of bulbs lit up overhead. They were connected on a wire, and hanging low enough that he could’ve touched one if he stood on his toes.

He lifted one hand almost mindlessly, reaching for the light as if it called him.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Zeke warned him. “Them things are hot.”

“Not yet. But they will be soon,” Houjin confirmed. “They’re electric, and it takes them a minute to warm up.”

“I’ve never seen so many in one place.” Rector withdrew his hand.

Houjin nodded and reached for a large box, which was sitting beside an even larger desk. The desk was littered with wires, coils, tools, schematics, stray parts, and scraps of paper covered in Chinese characters. The box was heavy, if Houjin’s posture could be gauged. He used his elbow to clear a spot, then set the box on the desk.

He said, “Electric lights are better than torches and candles down here, because they don’t leave smoke everywhere. Better than lanterns, because fuels like kerosene are heavy to carry around. And you don’t have to keep refilling the bulbs. You just change them out once in a while.”

“Where do they get their power from?” Rector asked.

“The pump rooms, same as the air circulation. They run on coal.”

“Coal’s heavy, too,” he pointed out.

“True, but we’re already using coal to power the air circulation. It was easy to rig up a generator and siphon off some of the energy. I’m telling you,” he said as he began to unpack the box, “electricity is the future. Before long, we won’t be using coal anymore, or any of the petroleum derivatives.”

Houjin had just used two words in a row that Rector didn’t recognize, but Rector played along like this made perfect sense to him. “I like how they don’t smell like anything.”

“They do have a smell,” Houjin argued lightly. “You notice it after a while. But it isn’t very strong, and that’s not why I brought you down here. This is what I wanted to show you.”

He held up a device that appeared to be made mostly out of dynamite, with a handful of other things attached.

Both Zeke and Rector jumped back.