Éilis Ní Mhurchú

Éilis Ní Mhurchú is the Senior of a Survey Corps boundary post on a Celtic Union charter world the record does not name, kept under the Union's standing agreement with the Corps on boundary-zone matters. She is Union-born, two years at the post in 2826 UCSD, and holds the certification for Etheric-layer assessment, which the post's other Ranger does not; the five bars on her tab are a Senior's. The post is two Rangers, a mast on the ridge and the Union's invitation, and she has it that of the three only the invitation could not be replaced from a hull. The record meets her once, over an afternoon and the morning after it, when the column the post logs on the minute ran through all three Boundary Types inside four minutes and the strain channel did a thing it had not done in her time there. The record renders her as she.

Known History

• Senior of the post in 2826 UCSD, two years into the posting, the one the record holds her at. Where in the Union she was born, where she trained, where she was certified and where she served before, the record does not say.
• Late autumn 2826 UCSD, a little after three by the post's own clock and a little less after three by the other one: the Type column went I, II, III inside four minutes, which it did most weeks, and then the strain channel gathered to a range and a bearing and held there, and the board gave her the duration counted backward from its end, fifty-one seconds, give or take the two the instrument was honest about. She had it after it had closed. She wrote into her log what every officer who had kept the post had written into theirs: Point resolution, post-event. No precursor. The range and the bearing were the top field of the holding below the post. She was down the hill inside twenty minutes, under the invitation; the hand instrument read the strain finding its floor, the line at Type II, the drain column blank. She took the keeper's four answers and the door he showed her, and tried the door herself, which the form did not ask of her. She wrote the door as it was, the shears as the usual, Missing: none, the three practices as she had seen them and the Corps' position beside them, and in the classification box the one word the register has ever let anyone write there. Open. Going out by the back step she said the words at the door. See Nothing Taken (S01E00C11).
• The morning after: she walked down at the hour the board had given, as near as a door can be timed, and the door opened inward. Duration: one day. She had read the figure in the register at every site as one somebody had rounded, and wrote it now as one she had watched.

The Work

The post logs a column headed Type on the minute, and in two years she has watched it say three things in every order three things can be said in. She has the clocks, the Corps', disagreeing with each other by the usual amount; the Etheric line, hers, since she holds the certification; and the strain channel, the Corps' again, and on most days the one that says least. Type I is the clocks drifting and nothing on the line. Type II is the clocks going periodic and the line showing resonance, the neighbour's templates readable and displacing nothing. Type III is the clocks running apart and the line showing the neighbour's templates competing with ours for the right to be true here. At every other site on the Corps' books a Type III is an event with a name and a file. At this post it is a line in the minute log, and the column has gone I, II, III, II, I and settled on nothing since before the mast went up; the working hypothesis for why is on a page she has read and could not have measured.

The register calls the whole far side of the zone Sí Gaoithe, which was the valley's old word for a dust-devil before a survey took it up for a universe, and she has noticed that nobody in the valley was asked, and that the valley does not seem to mind. The form is the Union's, by the agreement, with the Corps' columns on the back, and the practices line is on the back, in the Corps' half, under the Union's heading. The column beside it is the Corps' position, and she writes the position because it is hers to write and she agrees with it: cultural practice; no measured correlation with incident rate. The report goes up with the next hull to a regional office that has filed every one the post has sent and has never sent a question back.

Character Notes

She writes what she saw and the position she holds, and keeps the two columns apart. The door went in as it was, opens outward; hung inward; no damage; duration pending, with no reading attached. The shears went in as the usual, because households put things back and the form long since stopped asking them not to. The keeper had looked twice for anything missing, and she wrote the none and not the twice. A drain column reading blank is, to her, a finding, and she knows the page does not say whether blank means there is nothing or means the Corps has not found what to point the instrument at; she wrote blank.

She does more than the form asks and says nothing about it. She tried the door with her own hand. Leaving by the back step, she stepped over the bowl on the stone without looking down, the way you step over a thing you know is there, and said the words at the door, going out, not to the keeper, who noticed, and who had seen the form. Her own viewpoint does not mention it. The record has no reason from her and offers none.

The strain channel gave her fifty-one seconds; the door gave her a day. The instrument had a tolerance. The door did not. The record has her in one posture more than any other: at the board, with a figure the ground already had.

What the Record Does Not Hold

Her age, her birth year and what she looks like. Which of the Union's worlds she was born on, and her kin. Where she trained, where she was certified, and what she kept before this post. The other Ranger's name. What she said at the door, whether it was the keeper's by your leave or a form of her own, who taught it to her, and why she said it. Whether she has kept a post at any other site on the register, since she knows the register's figures as a reader of them. Whether the regional office sent a question back this time. Any chapter after the morning the door came in.

See also

• Nothing Taken (S01E00C11), the column, the strain channel, the form and the morning after, in her viewpoint and the keeper's
• Donncha Ó Laoire, the keeper of the holding below the post
• Sí Gaoithe: The Discordant Membrane, the register's word for the far side of the zone, and the page she has read and could not have measured
• Concordant Membranes and Intermembrane Bleed, the three Boundary Types the column runs through
• The Celtic Union of Planets, the standing agreement and the invitation the post stands under
• Survey Corps Protocol, the certification that makes the Etheric line hers
• Star Rangers Command Hierarchy, the five bars