Honor - Kevin Killiany [31]
“Bundinal.”
The humans nodded.
Soloman drew two parallel lines a hand’s width apart, bisecting the circle.
“Northern aqueduct system,” he said, indicating the hemisphere above the double line. “Southern aqueduct system.”
Then he drew a series of short lines connecting the two parallels.
“Forty-eight aqueducts, evenly spaced around the equator,” he said. “Connecting the two networks.”
“Yes,” Abramowitz said, “one for each week of the Bundinalli calendar. The length, twelve zrht, corresponding to the number of days.”
“They should not be there.”
“But they were always there.”
“They were never there.”
“Wait a minute, Soloman,” Bart spoke up. “The foundations were there. The measurements are Bundinalli tradition to the core and their placement corresponds to Bundinalli records. The reconstruction team simply restored the superstructures destroyed in the bombardment.”
“Where are the locks?” Soloman asked. “Nowhere in the Bundinalli water systems do canals or aqueducts meet without lock gates to control the flow of water. Yet there are no locks at either end of any of these forty-eight spans.”
Bart frowned at the drawing in the dust, then up toward an aqueduct junction in the middle distance. Even at a couple of kilometers, the boxy structure of the lock mechanism was clear. And he knew, from studying hundreds of drawings and verbal accounts, that every single juncture had been constructed to exactly the same specifications.
Except the forty-eight, the calendar aqueducts that had joined north and south. Those had simply connected the two hemisphere-spanning networks with plain right angles.
The houses between where they stood and the arch of the aqueduct caught his eye. Each was laid out in perfect bilateral symmetry, with windows, gingerbread, gables, and gardens all exactly matching. Including a faux front door to balance the real.
“Symbolism,” Abramowitz said, a half second quicker than he on the uptake. “The forty-eight aqueducts weren’t real, they didn’t actually connect. The Bundinalli just needed their symmetry to keep the world in balance.”
“Would the Bundinalli actually forget to tell us something like that?” Stevens asked.
“Most Bundinalli would have assumed it was so obvious they wouldn’t have thought to mention it,” Abramowitz said. “Do you remind everyone you meet not to stick their hand in a fire?”
“But if they knew what we were doing—”
“Fabe, in all your traveling has even a single Bundinalli asked you about what we were doing beyond his or her own village?” Bart asked. “Curiosity about the big picture is not in their nature.”
“If we restore the aqueducts properly,” Soloman said, focusing on the problem at hand, “and close off both ends of the connecting spans, the two systems should attain equilibrium.”
“Immediately?”
“No, they are much too massive for that. The parameters and variables are too complex for me to evaluate without computer models.” He shrugged. “Four local years, maybe six. But once started, the process will be inevitable.”
“Fabe,” Bart said with a grin, “why don’t you give Tev a call?”
Chapter
15
A dozen Smaunif were working on small electric motors, taking them apart and checking each circuit individually. From what Pattie could see, they were finding different things wrong with each one. A broken connection, dirt or moisture inside a sealed casing, a fouled or broken gear. Little things, any one of which could be attributed to normal wear and tear or misadventure.
That all of these minor breakdowns had happened at once indicated something other than chance was responsible. Pattie could not tell from the technician’s body language if they were simply frustrated or they suspected someone was responsible for their difficulties. For her part, she took it as evidence Corsi was somewhere close at hand.
Over the last couple of days she and Solal had talked—or he had talked and she had listened—about