Tamett blinks and takes a moment to gather his thoughts, surprised to be asked his opinion, though the quiet scratch of pen on paper doesn't stop. 

"Magnetic storms..." He sits up a little straighter, heartened by the new hypothesis. "So when we see a compass needle twitch, that could be from their presence. And in a long wire, exposed to their effects for a long time; that builds up like -"

Inspiration strikes, and he picks up a couple of the long-necked glass water bottles and takes them over to the horse-trough.

"Electricity is like a fluid, so -" He upends one bottle, giving it a twist so that a vortex forms, allowing the water to drop and the air to flow in smoothly. Then he upends the other without that twist, water glugging out slower and less regularly. "...a kind of, what's the world, turbulence like that could build up, and then when we apply heat or cold or turn off the power then that lets it start to settle back down inside, but maybe we need to leave it longer for the wires that keep having that problem."

Witred's horse glares at the disturbance.

"And we could detect that by putting a compass or some iron filings by the wires, to compare when the power is on and when the problem starts."

Lemrae nods. "Turbulence. That makes sense, it's a good thought. Compasses tend to twitch anyway when they're close to telegraph lines, of course. We'll have to keep it a short distance away from the wire to make sure we're only detecting the storm, not the transmissions. But it should work." 

He looks back towards the farmhouse. "What would be really nice is something like a seismometer connected to a compass. Something that'll make a log of where the needle's pointing. That might let us see exactly when the storm sets in. Maybe I can put one together -- but we should start with the most simple method. Compasses and iron filings."

Compasses and iron filings... do not turn up the expected effects. There are the minute twitches as a signal goes down the line, reduced to nothing further away. However, a degraded wire and a fresh one present no differences to the compass or filings, and no magnetic storm can be detected.

By now, they have some lines in the yard that undergo transient resistivity almost immediately upon being turned on again. When this happens the compass shows no deviation beyond the initial twitch, while the filings are disturbed as though by a faint breeze or dust devil rustling about the wire. It is a still day. Tamett looks queasy as he double-checks his shorthand.

Lemrae frowns, nudging a wire contemplatively with his foot. "Let's run another line, one without any cladding at all, and see how fast it degrades." He looks at Tamett. Something seems wrong.

"Are you alright?"

"I don't feel so good, sir. May I be excused?" 

He almost runs to the farmhouse, the tendons of his hand visible from how he clenches his stationery.  

Lemrae nods absently. There are stories about ideomotorists. That their bodies are controlled by spirits, that their skills cause them strange maladies, that they form a globe-spanning conspiracy to do... something or another. Most of the stories are probably nonsense, but it can't be denied that the chroniclers can behave very oddly sometimes.

Walking to the shed, Lemrae takes a length of wire without cladding which has never been used. He carries it over to the testing ground, runs it next to the wires, and turns it on, watching the ohmmeter intently.

This time, he barely has to wait a minute for the transient resistivity to begin. The ohmmeter dial slowly rises, and it seems to do so in fits and starts, almost discrete jumps. A silent movement of the air disturbs the grass.