The Industrial District

The whole landward arc of the third ring is the Industrial District: the working quarter where the island fashions what it needs, from a column-drum to a courier-ship's lift-engine. It is a place of grandeur in its own register — long halls of dressed stone and iron, slender venting chimneys, the glow of foundries through high windows, and the steady percussion of the works carried out over the water to the quieter rings.

Its two great houses are the Marble Works, where the island's stone is cut and carved, and the Engine Works, where its brass and bronze machines are forged; about them cluster the foundries and casting-houses, the lift-gas plant that fills the airships, the timber yards and rope-walks, the varnish-houses, and the tide-mills whose patient wheels drive half the lathes and hammers in the district. The finished work goes outward by barge and crane — the engines and frames to the Airship Docks, the marble to the bridges, the Helion and the Gallery.

It is run, like much of the island, by guilds of ancient standing, each with its hall and its masters and its apprentices; and though it is the busiest quarter of the rings, it keeps the island's manners — clean canals, planted yards, and public galleries set high above the floors so that any citizen may come and watch the work.