Empress of Eternity Read Free Page B

you’re cooking,” she replied, straightening so that her eyes looked down on his. “How long will it be?”
    “Tell me when you want it. Redgrass soup, and fowl with cream pasta and shrooms.”
    “Give me a stan and a half. I’m deep-linked to Vestalte, with a side link to Vaena.”
    He nodded, then watched as she reentered the ancient structure. It now held the most advanced technology that the Vanir had yet developed. His eyes returned to the canal and its deep waters.

4
    17 Eightmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn
    Late into the fall evening Maertyn pored over the results of his latest observations and calculations in his “temporary” laboratory.
    He’d hoped to have been able to report some significant progress to the Ministry of Science when he returned to Caelaarn, but all the measurements he’d taken and all the calculations he’d made had not proven as helpful as he would have hoped.
    He studied the screen before him, and the energy/position/gradients displayed there. They confirmed that, in a real way, the canal and its walls were not built of any discrete material. From what he’d been able to determine, the entire canal was a unit, created/fused/bonded on a subatomic level.
    He paused. That wasn’t necessarily so. Certainly, that finding was true for any part of the canal he had been able to study. But was it the same throughout—or did a thick layer of that adamantine material cover what lay within just to a depth that precluded any energy from reaching through such an outer layer?
    Yet…from his instruments, the canal walls were a uniform width everywhere, thirty point seven one Caelaarnan yards. And there were only two structures protruding from it along its entire length, both identical in exterior shape—one at the eastern end and the other, where he was, at the western terminus. But the eastern structure remained sealed, with no evidence that it had ever been entered. For the canal and the structures to have endured at least half a million years, and possibly many times that, it would seem that it should be composed of the same material throughout. If that material were neutronium or of a similar nature, it would mass more than the entire Earth, and major gravitational irregularities would be more than obvious. In fact, the earth probably wouldn’t exist except as debris. But what if the canal’s gravitational effects happened to be shielded?
    Maertyn knew of no way that was possible. He also knew of no way that the canal could exist. Which impossible possibility was more likely?
    He smiled. Reality trumped theoretical science on any day of any year. Maarlyna’s presence was more than proof of that.
    The other problem centered on the doors and ducts. No form of scanning or focused energy that he had been able to deploy revealed their presence or triggered their opening. Only a living human touch did that. He’d spent two full days running his hands over every part of every surface in the structure, both inside and outside, and while he’d discovered what appeared to be two lower-level storage closets or rooms that had not been discovered by previous researchers, as well as five unused ducts/conduits, no other doors, even in the “new” storage areas, responded to his fingers.
    Then he’d tried the same method on the top of the canal walls, first between the western end of the structure and the ocean wall, then along the narrow space between the structure walls and the chest-high retaining walls, and finally for a good hundred yards to the east. He’d discovered nothing new. There well might be other entrances to spaces within the canal walls somewhere along its two-thousand-kay length, and, in fact, he had no doubts that such must exist, but who had the time or the manpower to feel every span of a structure that stood a hundred yards above the water and spanned a continent?
    He took a deep breath before, useless as he suspected it to be, he slowly considered, yet once more, the numbers,