HALF ACROSS THE WORLD, the Pyramid in the Himalays felt, or heard, or tasted—a difference.
Possibly the h-f pulses that had gone endlessly wheep, wheep, wheep were now going wheep-beep, wheep-beep. Possibly the electromagnetic “taste” of lower-than-red was now spiced with a tang of beyond-violet. Whatever the sign was, the Pyramid recognized it.
A part of the crop it tended was ready to harvest.
The ripening bud had a name, of course, but names didn’t matter to the Pyramid. The man named Tropile didn’t know he was ripening, either. All that Tropile knew was that, for the first time in nearly a year, he had succeeded in catching each stage of the nine perfect states of water-coming-to-a-boil in its purest form.
It was like ... like ... well, it was like nothing that anyone but a Water W
