The re-routing of the memory connection was a triumph of improvised field skill. While Ada held the lower pressure at forty-five pounds and Jo monitored Sleeve Beta, Eren Tal and Kel Dorr uncoiled a hundred yards of twelve-gauge bare copper wire across the museum floorboards.
Will Carver climbed out the casement window onto the lead roof low roof wall, his leather safety harness clipped to the Roman stonework. Will used a long bamboo fishing pole that old Hal Rook had kept in the museum closet. He threaded the copper wire through the very same oiled linen guide-loops that Dima had installed for the clockwork tension cord an hour earlier.
The wire slid through the rings with a faint, metal hiss. It leapt across the forty-yard deep gap of the foaming gorge and dropped straight down into the bronze check bushing of the Third Gate control house. There, Bessa Marr was waiting with a padded copper clamp. “Clamped and seated!” Bessa’s voice shouted through the speaking tube. “The copper line is live to the throat!”
Back in the gallery, Pella touched the bare end of the copper wire to the end-post of her father’s brass twisting force telltale. The needle kicked instantly to the right. It shook with a clean, sweet B-flat ringing that hummed through the wood of the table. The connection was restored. It was forty yards longer than the old cellar route. The response would carry a split second of sound delay. But it was safe, it was…
