When Lucy was gone, Yaozu set the beer aside. He said to Andan Cly, “I need a ship.”

“What are you moving? Big sap shipment going out?”

“On the contrary, I want to bring goods into the city.” He gave the beer a hard stare and a moment of philosophical inquiry. He took another drink before continuing. “I’ve been reorganizing Minnericht’s operations — a task which needed to be done long before his demise, might I add — and I’ve discovered that Seattle is running perilously low on the basic necessities. Between you and me, Captain, I’m not sure how much longer the city can remain habitable. Such as it is.”

Intrigued, Andan Cly nodded. “So what are we talking about?” he asked. “Pitch and the like, for seals? Masks? Pump equipment?”

“All that and more. We need canvas, lumber, charcoal for filters, coal for the furnaces, and that’s just the beginning.” He sighed. “Last week we ran out of coffee, and I thought the chemists would start an uprising.”

“It can be a lifesaver,” Cly acknowledged. “Sharpens the mind, and the hands, too.”

“That’s what they tell me.” Yaozu abandoned the beer glass, now more empty than full. “This will be an enormous undertaking, and I’m happy to finance it. Minnericht was an able tinkerer, but some of his works are not so stable or permanent as one might wish.”

The ensuing silence in the saloon was so thick, you could spoon it into a bowl. Cly realized that everyone had been listening in, but he was still startled to feel the eyes of everyone present glued to himself and Yaozu.

In a normal speaking voice, intended to be overheard, his companion added, “For now, things are as safe as always, of course. But there’s room for improvement, don’t you think? Here—” He pulled out some coins, one of which appeared to be pure gold. Placing them on the counter, he added, “Let us take a walk. We can discuss your fee.”

Andan Cly wasn’t sure how he felt about taking a stroll with Minnericht’s former right-hand man, but there was more to be said, and Yaozu was unwilling to say it in front of an audience. The captain couldn’t blame him, so he shot Lucy a two-fingered wave and followed the Chinaman out the sealed door, into the dark, mulch-smelling spots beneath the city.

Both men carried gas masks for convenience or emergency, but the masks were not required in the unfinished basement wonderland. There, forests of brick created a dank labyrinth that unfolded with bends, kinks, and curves under the streets as far as the Seattle wall extended, in every direction. It would have been an impenetrable place, blacker than any night without a moon, except that lanterns were hung on hooks at the spots where corners crossed, and at the mouths of the tunnel entrances.

Yaozu unhooked a lantern and turned the knob to raise its wick. He offered the lamp to Andan Cly, who lifted it above his head. Courtesy of his prodigious height, the whole quarter was bathed in a yolk-yellow glow.

“This way, Captain. Toward the vaults. If we take the long way around, I can show you what I mean.”

The corridor was wide and flanked by the exposed wet bricks that characterized so much of the underground’s topography. Its floor had been packed, but it was not paved in any way; the surface was soggy from the atmospheric moisture — seeping rains above, drizzling down long-dead tree roots and filtering past the houses and businesses of the polluted city.

The air captain and the oriental man walked side by side, their feet struggling slightly with the mucky path. And as they pushed onward, back farther and deeper away from the buried saloon called Maynard’s, Yaozu explained.

“I am fond of this particular passage. It sees little travel, partly because”—he gave his dirty boots a rueful gaze—“no one ever installed flagstones or slats. And up ahead, one of the walls has crumbled across the path.”

“Then why do you like it so much?” Cly asked, doing his best to keep the lantern steady. But with every step, shadows danced and kicked to the sway of the light, up and down the moss-covered walls and along the black-mud footway.

“Because it very nearly connects our Chinatown to your vaults, and to the storage quarters back beneath Commercial Street.”

Andan Cly said, “Huh. I can see why that would be useful. So you want to clean it out? Shore it up?”

“I do. However, two walls will need to come down in order to make the way passable by track and mining cart,” he replied, referencing the handcarts and buckets by which some of the residents moved supplies and toted important items. “And above those walls, new sections of street-level buildings must be sealed against the blight.”

“Gotcha.”

“Also, if we expand and fix this passage, we could turn one of the offshoot basements into another pump room.”

“Do we need another pump room? The air’s plenty breathable down here.”

“So far,” Yaozu agreed, “but in the last few weeks, the workers have been keeping longer hours, and more coal is being used to power the pumps. My engineers suggest that it’s a maintenance issue. Therefore, I wish to invest in maintenance procedures. I want to clean the pump tubes, all two to three hundred feet of them, one after another.”

Cly made a low, worried whistle. “That sounds like a big job.”

“Yes — a job that will require the pumps to be shut down for cleaning, one at a time. But before we can begin such a chore, supplementary pumps must be operational. Do you understand?”

“I do,” he said thoughtfully. Then he stopped and said, “And this must be the brick pile.”

Yaozu nodded. “You first? Since you’re holding the light.”

They scaled the bricks and slid down the other side. Cly dusted off his pants and observed, “The kind of thing you’re talking about … big renovations, big improvements … is going to take time. And money.”

“Money we have, and time, too — though less of the latter than the former.”

The path split before them, and Yaozu urged Andan Cly down the right fork.

“How much time?”

“Impossible to say. The tubes and pumps have held for years, and might hold for years to come. Or they might not.”

“What about those engineers you mentioned?” Cly asked. “Can they give you a better idea?”

“They’re trying, but they are new to the city and still learning the finer points of its workings. I have recruited them with generous paychecks. And I am trusting your confidence on this matter when I tell you—” He paused and looked up into the giant’s face. “—I’m burning through Minnericht’s coffers at a rather alarming rate. He left a fortune, of course. He hoarded it like a dragon, underneath King Street Station. But it is costing a fortune to keep this place livable.”

The captain asked, “Then why are you going to all this trouble? Does the sap really make that much money, to make it all worth this?”

A thin, slow smile spread across Yaozu’s face, and it was not entirely pleasant. “Oh, yes. And the potential for more money still is staggering. The gas — this punishing, brutal substance that killed the city above us — it offers us the means to save it. With better processing and more efficient means of survival underground, these doornails”—he used the white men’s slang for the underground citizens—“could make more money than Californians have ever dug out of their rocks.”

“And you.”

“Me?”

“You stand to make a bundle, too, don’t you?”

“Absolutely. But as I was sometimes forced to wonder, with regards to my former … employer, what does it profit a man to be wealthy, but to live in the midst of such…” He hunted for a word, and settled on one. “Instability? It was obscene to me, how much he could have done for this place — and how little interest he showed in doing so.”

“So why don’t you make your money and leave? With what’s left of Minnericht’s stash, you could live like a king outside these walls. Everybody knows it. Everybody wonders.”