The secret was to block the stream above the valley floor, using the height of the water to direct it down this slope and that slope. To use the shape of the valley itself to direct the water.
It was all so clear to him. JieMin locked his drawing to his view of the valley itself, so that as he turned his head, the marks stayed with the valley. He made marks here, and here, for more diverters, to divide the flows he had made, carrying the flows through the fields.
His task completed, JieMin was walking down the hill back to Chagu when he received a message from his mother. She had returned from running the delivery truck to Arcadia City, and needed to speak with him.
“Yes, Muqin,” JieMin said when he entered the house. “I am here.”
“JieMin, I have found a way for you to continue your studies. To consider larger things than Chagu.”
FangYan waved to a pillow in front of her, and JieMin sat.
“You have?”
“Yes. When I was in Arcadia City, I met with Chen JuPing. Chen Zumu. I told her of you, and asked her assistance.”
JieMin was shocked. Everyone knew of Chen Zumu. She was the wife of the head-of-clan, Paul Chen-Jasic, Chen Zufu himself. He did not know his mother could simply go see Chen Zumu.
“You did?”
“Yes. She agrees that you should be given the ability to further develop this gift, and that Chagu is not the place. She proposes giving you rooms in the Chen compound in Arcadia City, near Dabo JuanTao. You would study at the University of Arcadia. Such studies would be your only chores.”
JieMin’s head swam. He liked his uncle JuanTao, his father’s elder brother, and his family. They sometimes came to visit. That was no problem. But to have his own rooms? To study at the university? To have no other chores but to do mathematics?
“It is a dream, Muqin.”
“Chen Zumu will make it a reality. The next truck to Arcadia City is day after tomorrow. You will ride with me, JieMin, and you will remain there to continue your studies.”
FangYan’s voice broke there, and JieMin went to his mother. She held him as she cried.
FangYan had made these arrangements for her son because it was the best thing for him, but she would miss him terribly.
The next day, JieMin went to Chen GangJie, the elder who had given him his assignment.
“I am leaving Chagu tomorrow, Zhanglao, but I have completed your assignment. I can share it with you.”
JieMin passed his drawing, with the view of the valley behind it, to GangJie. GangJie brought it up in his heads-up display, and JieMin explained it to him.
“If I understand you, JieMin, this location of the initial block of the stream is the most important.”
“Yes, Zhanglao, because it has the advantage. That is why all of this works.”
“I think you need to show me this location, JieMin. To determine it exactly. You will be able to see it? In your mind?”
“Yes, Zhanglao.”
GangJie obtained a small truck and drove JieMin out to the head of the valley, where the stream boiled out into the valley from the canyon beyond. They got as close as they could, and got out of the truck.
“Show me the spot, JieMin.”
JieMin climbed up the slope, looking around as he went. Several times he stopped, turned around and looked, then continued on. Finally he came to something of a shelf, where the stream cut a notch in the shelf on its path to the valley floor.
“Here, Zhanglao. If you block the stream here, just this high, then water will flow along the shelf to both sides, and descend there and there. Those paths will take it out into the valley there and there. What goes over the blockage will continue down the path it now takes.”
GangJie nodded. From here, with JieMin pointing out the features, he could see what needed to be done. A small dam here – more a retaining wall, really – with a standpipe, and then a spillway there for the flash floods.
“I see it, JieMin. I think it will work.”
“I do not know how to build these things, Zhanglao, but I can see them.”
“The building of such things is straightforward, JieMin. Knowing where to build them, that is the trick.”
Arcadia City
The next morning, Thursday, Chen JieMin and his mother, Chen FangYan, set out for Arcadia City in one of the Chagu enclave’s two panel delivery trucks.
“Navigate to Chen Warehouse,” FangYan told the truck.
After a brief delay it responded.
“Navigation available. Ready to Drive.”
“Drive to Chen Warehouse.”
“Driving in five seconds. Say Stop to cancel. Three. Two. One. Driving.”
The truck engaged gears and pulled slowly away from the loading dock of the tea barn. It maneuvered slowly across the gravel lot until it hit the paved road, then accelerated. It growled as it climbed up and out of the valley, over the small pass on the downstream side. All watercourses here led to the ocean, and the ocean’s coastal plain is where Arcadia City lay.
JieMin had never been out of the mountains. He had been to various places in the mountains, but never down out of the mountains to the coastal plain. In particular, he had never been to Arcadia City. Relatives had always visited them here, anxious for a holiday out of the city.
Much of the trip was with the truck in lower gears, holding back against the grades that led down out of the mountains. JieMin looked around as they moved out of the areas he knew.
“There are things you need to remember, JieMin.
“Here,
