The opening order was on the plate, and its first line was blank.
Eshel had drawn the rest. Every lever, every branch, every step from the trunk’s inlet at full to the last branch at its working setting. Twelve minutes. But the first step, the first heavy pulse, had two ways to go, and he had not chosen.
He drew both now.
On the board beside the plate: a slate on its stand, larger than the rack’s, which the clerk had brought down from the gallery. He drew the reservoir at the top. The manifold’s trunk below it. And from the trunk, two paths for the first pulse.
“Path one,” he said.
He drew it going out through branch two, the reserve branch, along the Lorn return, to Lorn. Into Lorn’s new heart. Through Lorn’s buffer.
“Lorn’s heart takes the first pulse,” he said. “Its buffer absorbs the surge. The heart passes what it can’t hold back into Lorn’s own return. Then the surge is spent, and the rest of the opening goes on behind it.” He tapped Lorn. “The pulse never touches the collar. The collar only carries the steady flow after.”
“Path two,” he said.
