The manifold could not be copied.
Eshel said so at the first hour of the morning, standing at the rack with the remote viewer’s picture on one screen and the station record’s drawings on another. He had been up all night with the two load models and Anwen’s housing dimensions and the twenty-two probe lines.
“The old heart’s branches,” he said, “assume equal lamps.”
“Which they aren’t,” Mara said.
“Every governor on every fork,” Eshel said. “They split the flow by fixed proportions. Half left, half right. A third and two thirds. Whatever the Founders set.” He pointed at the drawings. “Because when they built it, the lamps were the same. Same size, same demand, same shells. A fixed split worked.”
“And now they’re not the same.”
“Now Hearth runs full and Lorn runs at the network figure and Tal runs at half,” Eshel said. “Three shells are dark. Two reserve lamps sit sealed. The outer ring’s on a different return.” He shook his head. “If we copy the old heart’s proportions, we copy a well that hasn’t existed for four hundred years.”
“So?”
