At twelve-eight on the afternoon of Day Twenty-Nine, Pella Rook took her stance before the brass Courtesy Arch mounted against the southern stonework wall of the Old Ferry Storehouse. Her canvas apron was freshly laundered, her work sleeves neatly pinned back to the shoulder. Her dark hair held firmly under a band of forest-green linen. In her right hand she carried her father’s brass sound tuning fork. In her left, a square of soft oil-chamois she had used to polish the bearing collars of the main balance weights.
The Courtesy Arch stood nine feet high, its curved bronze uprights anchored directly into two-ton blocks of dressed river granite bedded beneath the ash flooring. Unlike Sorell’s ugly academy rig this arch possessed the clean, plain elegance of a deep-mine winding engine. It bristled with barbed holding runes, pulsing glass Leyden jars, and screaming air-powered bypasses. Its moving parts were exposed to view, lubricated with clear winter sperm oil. Then he designed for immediate human understanding.
Eren Tal and Senior Engineer Korr Var stood at her shoulder, their attention fixed on the four analog dial gauges set into the white-washed brickwork to the left of the arch. Each gauge featured a nine-inch circular face of white glassy enamel marked with crisp black graduations. Its delicate brass needle was balanced on jewel pivots.
