Outward Borne Read Online Free Page B

there
was a small boat attached to the buoy, it would be blown around and
stretch out in the direction of the wind. Many times, she said, you
could see the water flow in the opposite direction of the wind, but
only when the breeze was light, would you see this. Sometimes, YoLa
assured RaLak, the direction of flow could change back and forth in
a single day. Most often, the flow just changed from fast to slow
or sometimes stopped altogether. She was very convincing. RaLak was
intrigued. Perhaps this was something new.
    After four weeks on the water,
MaxNi completed placement of all the flow meters in the waters
entering and leaving the lakes. Measurements were made of all the
streams and creeks and they added up to the Foot River flow; so
there was no great underwater spring feeding the lakes. He added
water level measurements, wind velocity data, and a lot of
information on the effectiveness of wind in creating ridges of
water and large swells that rolled across the lake and even
rebounded off the shore and travel back against the wind. MaxNi
felt that the project was just about wrapped up, and very
satisfactorily at that, so he was rather frustrated when RaLak
disagreed. They had good data, no doubt, but it did not square with
old YoLa’s memory.
    So MaxNi was set to building a low
broad shed over Foot Lake just beyond the channel. RaLak wanted to
shield the water surface from local winds and buffer the effects of
random waves. It was coming onto the time of year when the dead
still days could be expected.
    MaxNi set about redoubling the
number of wind direction and velocity, water height, temperature
and flow, air pressure and other measurements all across the lake
and surrounding areas. Sure enough, the water level seemed to
change by itself, slowly, throughout the day it would rise and then
subside. There was some pattern to it, but he could only collect
this nice clean data for a few days at a time, and these patches
were sometimes separated by days or weeks, but it was enough. RaLak
found that the data behaved as a repetitive event; a simple model
for cyclical processes easily fit the water level changes. The
model even tied together separate sets of measurements. It is
always more believable if it is simple, although he was not to
think so for long.
    He used vectors that were like
three hands on a clock. If they all pointed straight up there was a
maximum effect, if they were in different directions then nothing.
Interestingly, the three hands all moved at different speeds. That
is all well and good for a bunch of mathematical calculations. They
described how causes behaved, but not what they were. So, what were
these vectors really? It was then that RaLak noticed one of these
vectors was exactly in sync with the light-of-day. If the thing
that made the light also caused the effect on the water levels, it
must be very massive indeed. What if all three vectors pointed to
other world objects?
    Physicists on ObLa understood
gravity and had worked out that it must be dependent on distance,
the farther away the less the effect and all that. RaLak worked out
that if the source of the light-of-day was massive enough and if it
circled ObLa once each day, it could be the cause of one of the
cycles of high water levels. Perplexingly, it was the smallest
force and the other two did not have any detectable light
associated with them. So RaLak forced himself to postulate that
three ridiculously large bodies were circling ObLa, the least of
which happens to provide the light-of-day, and these produced the
modest, but real recurring changes in water levels on the surface
on Head and Foot lakes that, from time to time, changed the
direction of water flow through the Filim channel.
    It was an elegant piece of work,
detailed, clearly described, and almost completely ignored within
the scientific community and unknown outside of that body of
disinterested individuals. ObLaDas had many fables about the
light-of-day, but none as outlandish