The heavy iron pawls of the levee crank winch clattered with a sharp, rhythmic clink-clink as four watermen threw their weight against the ash rope winch bars. Down in the granite water gate throat, the greenheart gate leaf groaned against its cast-bronze guide tracks. He lifted three inches from the underwater doorstep plate. A dark, glass-smooth tongue of river water snapped beneath the timber lip, crashing into the stone basin with a hollow, echoing boom.
The impact threw up a blinding spray of cold river water that carried the ancient, choking silt stench of decaying reed beds and bottom sludge. Pella stood on the lower stonework narrow high walkway. Her fingers gripped the wet iron railing while she watched the water curl around the stone baffles. The surface of the torrent was streaked with foam. But the current remained orderly, following the curved diversion raceway designed by Hal Rook twenty years before.
Ada Morland was already down on the wet stonework apron, her knees resting on a folded square of tarred canvas to protect her overalls from the slimy stone. She pressed the cupped wooden earpiece of her tone check rod hard against the cast-iron pipe rim of the main discharge pipe hub. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the metal shakes traveling through the metal casing.
