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.She couldhave repaired the problem easily, but part of the discipline she enforced onPage 182ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlherself was that she didn't use her abilities for most routine problems.Sohonshould come from trained, personal focus, not from cutting ones' self off fromthe ordinary issues of daily life.Her office was a calm place.The walls were a softly luminous shade of blue,shading from sky blue at the bottom to deep indigo at the top.Instead of awater cooler, she had a running fountain in the corner.It was one of her ownteenage art projects.The pebbles in the lower pool were strangely colored.She had let out some of her adolescent rebellion and angst in the colorationof her projects.There were a couple of freighters sailing around space withpink stabilizers in their containment rooms to this day.She normally didn't teach the apprentices herself, but in this case thepersonal lesson was a reward for outstanding diligence.Also, the apprenticewas one of the Clan Ildaewl workers who were members of her manufacturingteam.Clan O'Neal's numbers on Adenast were far too small for a full team, andshe owed a debt to Ildaewl for her own training when she had first come fromEarth as a child, fleeing the Posleen War.Her own diligence and skill inmanaging her team and ensuring the progress of the team members under her,together with her own constant research of techniques which probed theboundaries of the Art, had converted her association with Ildaewl from meredebt to something more like an alliance.Ildaewl being the second largest ofthe Indowy Clans, this was no small thing.The apprentice, Aen, was barefoot.Indeed, he was completely bare except forthe fur-like leaf-green filaments that covered his body.Michelle was also barefoot, as was her own habit in her office.Elsewhere inthe building, she wore sandals.The soles of her feet were not nearly as toughas the Indowy pads, and like all manufacturing facilities everywhere, Indowyworkshops inevitably had the risk of small, sharp objects that landed on thefloor between sweepings.In her own office, she was a neat freak who wouldn'tdream of allowing a foreign object to land on her floor, which was a carpet ofliving grass whose original seed she had shipped up from Earth.She had grownher furniture as a practice drill in materials science.The seat cushions werea soft material like squishy suede, but the slight variances in the surfaceenhanced the effect of the lichen and moss covered Georgia granite pattern shehad tuned into the surface.The surface was indistinguishable in appearancefrom the hard, structural portions of the tables and chairs, which she hadsized to accommodate the members of the various of the Galactic races whomight have occasion to meet with her here.Truth be told, it was all an excellent excuse for the office to be indecentlyspacious.Everything, even the low table that served her in place of a desk,gave the appearance of having been carved from stone in a style that wouldn'thave been out of place if set down in the middle of Stonehenge a touch of herown wry humor over the reputation of Humanity.The corners and edges withinthe office were all beveled.Random clouds scudding across the ceiling.Theairflow paired with potted plants on small tables along the walls gave thescent and feel of being outside on a pleasant, late spring day.Despite thealien origin of her vegetation, people of just about every race experienced acertain calmness in her office which was, of course, the point.The herbivorous Indowy, normally a bit shy around even the Indowy-raisedPage 183ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlhumans they knew personally, tended to be calmed by the environment.Thisdespite thousands of years living, by preference, in closely packed warrens oftheir own kind.The decor smoothed her working relationships.Darhel wouldhave hated it, of course, so when she met with one ofthem it was alwayselsewhere.Which suited her just fine, since from childhood she had absorbed avery Indowy attitude towards Darhel.It was not so much that the Indowy fearedthe Darhel.The Darhel did, after all, serve a useful purpose in Galacticcivilization.Each race had its role.But then, so did the flies that infest a dung heap.Which brought her back to her apprentice.A young Indowy, he was beginning toembrace the theoretical underpinnings of advanced Sohon.He was also beginningto appreciate the difference between knowing and doing, as he moved on fromchildhood training projects to his first adult working team.She looked at the raw Galplas, or what was supposed to be raw Galplas, thathad coalesced in the center of the tank, before reaching in with a simpleceramic strainer to lift it out.One of the things she had fashioned forherself when she first began teaching was a stainless steel hammer.Such aprimitive tool tended to convey a point indelibly.She appraised theunpleasant mass, choosing her spot.One sharp rap reduced the stuff to rubbleand dust."On Earth, they call that chalk," she said."Now, why did the polymericbinding fail in the third stage of processing, and as a consequence, what isthe present imbalance in your tank's raw materials? Neglecting the tank fluidand nannites that dripped off your.chalk.how much of whichsubstances will you add to bring your sohon tank back into workingequilibrium? I want the answer along with the uncertainty range.Here.I willhelp you."She pulled a stainless steel pan out of the top drawer of her desk and sweptthe rubble and dust into it with a careless hand.Liquid crept away from herhand, up the side of an empty water glass.The stray dust followed along,obediently falling into the pan."The pan masses fifty Earth grams, to tendecimal places.The contents masses the product I took out of the tank, inEarth grams, to three decimal places.The glass is thirty grams and massesstandard nano-solvent to eight decimal places."She would have continued, but a ten-legged arthropoid figure had entered thedoorway and was bouncing up and down in a pensively contemplative sort of way."Go.Write it up, send it to my AID," she concluded, dismissing theapprentice.She flipped the indicator on the side of the unbalanced tank fromgreen to the amber warning light, and hit the lockout switch.Looking up, she favored the Tchpht with a friendly, closed-mouth smile,"Wxlcht! It has been at least three years.Are you at peace?""I follow.And you?" Dancing gently on its spidery limbs, her friend offeredthe customary response, routinely indicating adherence to the enlightenedspecies' philosophical Path.Page 184ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"I work.The grass grows," she offered the closed-mouth, tiny quirk of thelips that had become the polite Human smile."Is it a good season for your work?" he enquired."It is interesting," she gave a negative."Would you have a moment for a game of Aethal with an old friend?" Shewondered idly what business he had on Adenast.Wxlcht was neither properlyhenorshe [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]