For sixty minutes following the utterance of the name, Korr Var didn’t speak except to announce the five-minute readings of the liquid silver column.
The senior town land-mapper knelt on a clean pine kneeling board, his horn-rimmed glasses pushed high on his forehead, his left hand steadying the brass fine-scale of the approved U-tube pressure gauge. Beside him on the oak wooden props block sat an open inkhorn and his leather-bound town survey book, its ruled thick parchment pages already bearing three columns of neat, square figures inked with indelible iron-gall.
“Reading twelve,” Korr announced, his dry voice slicing through the low, ringing hum of the water chute. “Time: three hours and fifteen minutes post-clearing. Liquid silver column: sixty-two point one five pounds of pressure. Surrounding water chute heat: fifty-four point two degrees. Static bending: negative twelve point zero five pounds.”
He dipped his quill into the black ink, logged the number with a firm downward stroke. Then he blotted the wet entry with fine hardened bone dust.
“The curve has flattened, Miss Rook,” Korr said. He turned his head toward Pella, who was inspecting the bronze pipe rim with Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs. “The transient pressure wave has fully faded away. The system has reached a stable manometric balance at sixty-two point two pounds.”
