At forty-three minutes past noon, with the guide-grit cleared and the spare sleeves ready, the order for the second timed together opening went out from the museum gallery. Pella Rook stood by the open window, her wooden speaking horn to her lips: “All stations! Three-gate set on my mark! One... Two... THREE!”
Across the expanse of the roaring river, the three separated crews moved as one single body. At the basin, Hesta signaled her winches, opening the backup scour channel by three notches. At the Eastern Flume, Bessa Marr threw her full weight against her lever. She dropped the dog into Notch Four. And down in the Third Gate vault, Renn Vos leaned into his ash bar, the bronze spindle spinning smoothly without a single tremor as it completed six full revolutions.
The three gates opened in perfect, harmonious row. A sound like three great bronze organs sounding in a cathedral echoed through the gorge as the divided river rushed through the three open throats. The violent, destructive standing wave in the gorge collapsed, its energy absorbed smoothly into three parallel streams that carried forty thousand gallons a minute into the chosen bypass channels. The water was no longer an unvented hammer. It was a harnessed current, obeying the shape of three equal crews.
