At five o’clock on the morning of the twenty-third day, Inspector Korr Var gave the formal order for the first high-pressure fine-tuning trial.
Pella and Eren manned the five-foot hand-wheel. That turned the bronze spindle until the six-ton gate rose eighteen inches from the stone doorstep. With a deep, roaring rush that sounded like a waterfall, a wall of brown river water surged through the opening, crashing onto the granite apron below.
The water didn’t form a dangerous, gnawing whirlpool. Guided by the newly excavated water chutes and the level granite floor, the torrent spread out into a wide, smooth, smooth-flowing sheet that glided across the forty-acre basin. It filled the low contours with a steady, quiet glide. Along the southern levee, the willow dikes held firm, the current rolling past the turf without eroding a single sod.
Korr Var walked the outer edge with his wooden rule, checking the float gauges every two minutes. ‘Depth is pooling at one inch every eight minutes,’ Korr Var shouted over the roar, his face beaming with skilled triumph. ‘Smooth-flowing flow checked. Energy fading away: eighty-five percent across the first hundred yards. Pella, your father’s floor is doing exactly what he designed it to do.’
