The needle stopped trembling at Copper Terrace.
Venn watched it hold beneath the marked line while the keeper counted the warm water passing into the clinic branch. In the room beyond the wall, a wash basin filled without the old alternation of scalding spurts and cold gaps. A nurse put her hands beneath it, tested the temperature, and looked through the doorway at the working board.
“Again,” she said.
The keeper repeated the turn.
The water held.
Venn took his hand from the touched support and let the last short damper engagement end. The vibration returned as a faint working hum rather than the violent chatter that had shaken the old gauge loose. Outside, a carpenter’s hammer remained plainly audible. The damper had acted through the support he touched, not silenced the world around it.
The ordinary replacement saddle carried the load now.
“Your people made a good seat,” he told the forewoman.
