Empress of Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page B

will be addressing the internal Ministry council. Your project has taken on a particular import, as you may have learned from the by-elections in Aracha, especially in Saenblaed. Difficult as it may be for some in the government to accept, there is growing popular pressure to resort to physical geo-engineering to deal with the situation. In this light, any insight you can offer on how the ancients may have employed the canal to avoid such extremes would be especially valuable, particularly in light of your request for additional equipment.
    Saenblaed, reflected Maertyn as he lowered the dispatch for a moment, was where the bulk of the refugees from Edelburg had settled. They always voted for the Returnist party and any scheme, no matter how improbable, that offered hope of reclaiming their lands. What the short dispatch had not said, but clearly implied, was that the strictly biologically based projects and research, always the strength of the Unity, were not turning out as planned, because of either star-high costs or technical problems, if not both.
    He couldn’t say that he was surprised. Biological means of providing the concentrated energy required by technological societies tended to be inefficient or to require significant additional processing and/or infrastructure to increase that energy concentration, effectively diluting the end-use efficiency. Also, efficiency declined in extremes of heat or cold, and the earth was definitely cooling.
    His thesis had been relatively simple. After scanning of the records of temperature observations taken at the east and west end of the canal and at selected points in between and cross-matching them, as best he could, to comparable observations within a kay or more away from the canal, but still within the same climatic area, there seemed to be a definite indication that the canal moderated temperatures more than could be accounted by all the known factors. In the year and a half since he and Maarlyna had been at the station, his own measurements had made that clear. He had yet to figure out why. The impervious blue-gray stone—although he doubted it was stone in any chemical or compositional sense—never changed temperature, regardless of how much sunlight fell or how chill the winters were. Did it somehow regulate its temperature instantly, or did its very composition insulate it from temperature changes?
    He’d originally hoped that determining the basis for that definite temperature differential might lead to developing possible means for pushing the ice back from the northern side of the canal. The more he studied that aspect of the problem, the more he doubted that he could develop even a viable theoretical approach. While he was not about to tell the Ministry that, not yet, there were other aspects of the canal that offered better prospects, including his growing awareness of what might almost be called “messages,” such as the understanding of when a berg might calve or when a tsunami might reach the station—although that had happened but a handful of times. He couldn’t very well put those into a research paper or presentation. Even Maarlyna, who loved and trusted him, had hardly given him any indication that she believed what he sensed. Yet…he had the feeling she sensed something as well, although he had not pressed her on that, not when she was neurally so vulnerable.
    Now he had to give a convincing presentation on a thesis in which he no longer fully believed in order to retain Ministry support to allow him to pursue a research alternative he couldn’t logically justify or quantify. And Minister Hlaansk’s dispatch had made it more than clear that he had best be very convincing.
    There was also the question of whether that was even the real purpose of Hlaansk’s politely worded demand. Was it as simple as what he had stated, or was Maertyn’s presentation designed to provide political cover for the minister against the appointees who were loyal to other