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and make them susceptible to the compulsions of others. Kien s voice is
stern.
I have not with her, and I will keep your advice, ser.
Good. Would that you will be so amenable to showing greater interest in your
studies. If not, perhaps a time in the lancers will settle you down& though
this is not the best time.
Lorn knows he cannot manifest any greater interest in his studies, although he
has come to enjoy learning for its own sake, feeling the sense and the power
involved in transferring chaos from the tower outlets to the firelances, and
in seeing just how much chaos he can press into each weapon. He also is less
than enthused about the thought that he could be posted to the frontiers and
use a lance or blade in earnest, even if his skills with the blade are among
the best among the students, including those like Dettaur who had been born
with a blade in his hand. Using a blade in earnest would definitely increase
the odds of an earlier demise than Lorn would wish.
Vernt was right, then& about the barbarians? he asks his father.
There have been more attacks than in any time in memory-or in the records,
his father admits. And they have even used archers in the far northwest. A
faint smile appears on Kien elth s thin lips. All the attacks have been
repulsed, and most of the barbarians killed.
But they keep attacking?
Yes& Enough& we can talk about it at dinner. After you wash off some of that
scent. I ll tell your mother that you re here.
Page 20
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Yes, ser. As he hurries toward the wash chamber, Lorn can sense his father s
unease, as though there is far more left unsaid. Yet, Lorn does not wish to
push, not when he has apparently misdirected Kien elth s inquiries about his
actions of the afternoon.
VIII
The core of a fully functioning tower maintains an isochronic/isotemporal
barrier of approximately nine hundred nanoseconds. This temporal dislocation
effectively provides the points of energy polarity which generate the raw
power fed to the converter system&
The dislocation also provides a barrier against the operating impingement of
the physical energy transfer/generation/entropy laws of the spatio-temporal
coordinates of the systems hereafter described&
This impingement effect is illustrated by more than ten local years of
observation. No tower in which the isochronic/isotemporal barrier has failed
[failure being defined as a barrier separation of less than 150 nanoseconds,
with an error margin of three percent] has ever functioned again in the
spatio-temporal coordinates in which this world is currently situated&
Tower cores have been run continuously without shutdown for the operating life
of a Mirror Ship. The longest known continuous operation documented prior to
the space-time shift translocating the colonizing/planoforming expedition& was
eighty-seven elapsed standard Anglo-Rationalist years.
Given that a standard storage cell [model CD-3A] discharges power at the same
amplitude as before the trans-spatio-temporal shift, but for more than
quadruple the previous duration, and that power amplitude
requirements/discharges from various powered end-use equipment [i.e., electro
cell carriers, motor/dynamos, laselectroburst rifles, antipersonnel
electrolasers] varies by user, locale, and even spatio-temporal planetary
locales, accurate determination of tower core life is unlikely.
Consequently, despite considerable depletion of technical personnel and
transport equipment, in the interests of pragmatism and maintaining a viable
colonial structure with the infrastructure necessary to adapt to the local
parameters and paradigms, as described in Section IV, the remaining tower
cores have been located in physical circumstances that would appear as most
conducive to their continued and uninterrupted operation&
Maintenance can be accomplished on the secondary systems [see Section V], as
well as the energy transfer and conversion systems, since these are located
outside the core, and the power transfers are accomplished by field
manipulations and impingements. Such maintenance should be held to an absolute
minimum, however, since macular cellular degeneration has already been
observed among personnel with high exposure within the operating confines of
the basic system, in contravention of previously established principles and
tolerances&
Overview
Maintenance Manual [Revised]
Cyad, 15 A.F.
IX
Lorn grins as he peers into Myryan s chambers. How s the studious healer?
His younger sister looks up from the old and cushioned maroon armchair she had
claimed years earlier from the second-floor sitting room when their parents
had considered sending it down to the first-floor servants quarters. She has
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