Nobody Present

The second day opened on item seven, which was Isren's, and the witness had already drawn her feet in.

That was how a Mnemari came into a room built for other bodies: not through the door so much as past it, the three legs gathered until the arch of them cleared the frame, then let out again one at a time, two always down, until the hub stood where it was going to stand, higher than any head at the table, and the body slung under it hung still. Ulessa had done it on the first morning while the roll was read and had not moved since except as a witness moved, which was by the neck. The long neck came forward under the arch of her own legs and laid the head at the height of the table, and whoever was speaking got the near side of it: one small dark eye, deep in the hide, level and unhurried, the breathing slits beside it, and nothing else. There was no face to speak to. Isren, who had none herself, found that restful, and had noticed over two days that the delegates with faces did not.

The room was a kept one, long and pale, the table long and low, the light from a slot above it, soft and even and, to a kinbed, worth nothing at all. Isren had her vanes folded, which was correct in a room and cost her a little for every hour she spent in one, and had budgeted the two days the way a delegate from Verdance budgeted anything, by deciding in advance what the afternoon would not contain.

Item seven was a proposal. The Federation's standing compact with the Star Rangers was older than anyone at the table but one, and every delegate could give its terms without the sheet: member worlds contributed refined materials, fabrication capacity and fold-route survey data toward the Corps' operations, and the compact bought the Federation nothing, the Corps' neutrality applying to the Federation as it applied to everyone, which the Federation's founding delegates had called entirely reasonable and had meant. What the compact did not say was anything about what came back. The Survey Corps mapped lanes. A lane had a member world's sky at the end of it, and the Corps' instruments read that sky at a resolution no member's own could reach, and what the Corps learned of a member's approaches went into the Corps' record and stayed there, not because anyone had decided it should but because nobody had ever decided anything else. Isren's proposal was that the assembly ask for it. Formally, by instrument, member by member. She had sponsored it under her own seat as the first formal proposal of its kind, and had said on the first day why: a people whose biology depended on knowing exactly which light fell on which ground had a stake in boundary data that no other people at the table could feel in their metabolism, and she would rather argue from that than from fairness, because fairness could be argued back.

The Prismere seat had argued back anyway, on the merits, which she respected. Prismere supplied the compact's fold-corridor expertise through its guilds, and its delegate, Full Wings and on the floor for it, which was not cowering, had put the position plainly on the first afternoon. The compact's data term ran one way by its words, toward the Corps, and a Federation that began asking for things back had altered what the compact was. It had been a gift. Make it an exchange and it became a thing the Federation had bought, and the Corps had said at the first table that nothing was for sale. The delegate had not said that Prismere's guilds had a trade in corridor knowledge that returned data would undercut. Isren had not said it either. Each knew that the other knew, and the argument was the better for leaving it where it was.

So the question the chair put, when the session came to it, was what the first table had said. Not what it had meant. Whether toward had been in the words when they were spoken, or had got into them afterwards, by way of the hand that kept the minute, which had been one member's hand in one member's rendering. The minute was on the table. Three worlds' translations of it did not agree on the preposition. That was why the assembly had requested a witness, and why the witness it had requested was the one who had been there.

She had raised the standing item at the opening, as a Mnemari witness did, before the roll was closed: that the Ollune delegate was not in the room, that Cirrane's position on the session's items would arrive by courier, lagged, and be read into the record by someone who was not Ollune, and that this had been raised before. She had given the session at which it was first raised, by the name of that day's chair. Nobody at the table had heard the name. Isren had written it down, because she wrote down what she could not place, and had not yet found a use for it.

"The chair asks the witness of Ilenne for the words of the term as they were said," the chair said. "In order, and the words around them."

Ulessa's head turned. Not quickly; nothing she did was quick. The near eye left the chair and came to rest on the middle of the table, on nothing, and Isren understood that she was not looking at the room.

Then she gave them.

Her voice was low and did not carry, in a room. It was made for open country and she kept it down, and the recorder's housing at the chair's end took it without trouble. She gave the term as the Corps' officer had spoken it, and it was the term, materials and capacity and survey data, toward, and the delegates who had been waiting for the preposition heard it, and the Prismere seat's wings shifted on the floor and were still. She did not stop at the term. The chair had said the words around them, and she gave those: the chair of that day taking the term and naming the next item; and then a reader, given by role and not by name, rising with a mark that had come in that morning by courier, from Cirrane, asking the chair's leave to read it into the record on the item just closed, and the leave given.

Then the mark, in the reader's cadence, which was not Ulessa's. Isren heard the difference and could not have said what it consisted of.

Cirrane has the term. Cirrane asks where what the Corps learns of a lane is carried, and to whom, and whether a member that cannot come for it may have it. Cirrane asks that the question be kept until an answer can be carried back.

"The chair of that day said: Noted," Ulessa said. "The chair of that day said: Item nine."

She stopped. The near eye came back to the chair. The neck did not move again.

The Prismere seat asked the question somebody always asked, and asked it well, without heat. "Is the witness certain of the words? Of the mark in particular. It was read by a reader, in a rendering. The witness gives it in that rendering."

"I give it as it was read," Ulessa said. "Certainty is not the question the session has. The question is whether anyone present can contradict me." A pause, and not for effect; Isren had watched her for two days and had decided she did not have effects. "Nobody present had been there."

The chair took the words and thanked the witness and did not ask her what they meant, which was right, because she would not have said. The session had what it had asked for. What it did with it was the session's. Isren watched the chair look down the table at this session's reader, who had a mark on the table in front of them, come in that morning by courier, lagged as every mark was, on an item the session had passed the day before; and the chair did not look away quickly.

The room was the room. The other room was also the room, and she was in both, which was the work.

She did not confuse them. Nothing in her was built to confuse anything. The composite of this room was older than the composite of that one had been, and had a different give under the feet, and this room's slot of light lay a hand's width further toward the chair; she had each of them whole, and the one she was asked for was the one she gave. The table of that day had been new. The Corps' officer who spoke for the Corps had kept one hand flat on the sheet throughout, and the officer's name was on the compact and did not need her. The chair of that day had a way of saying noted that closed an item like a hand on a lid.

She had been asked for words, and words were what she had. Everything else she also had, and nobody had asked for it, which was the arrangement, and she kept to it.

The reader of that day had asked leave with a voice that had not been steady, because the mark had arrived that morning and the reader had read it in the corridor and known it would come after the term and had read it anyway. That was not in the words. She did not give it. The reader had died in a year she could have given and did not, in the way of a people who die, and had been among those she had stayed to see out, as she stayed to see most of them out. She gave the reader's cadence, because the cadence was in the words, and kept the rest.

The session took the words. She heard it take them, on the membranes along her sides, which took a room whole: the Prismere wings on the floor, settling; the Verdance seat's vanes, folded, which made a small dry sound when the delegate held still that the delegate did not know about; the recorder's draw; the chair's breath before the thanks. She leaned the head toward the chair, who was speaking. That was how a witness was seen to listen, and it was also how she listened; the two had never needed to come apart.

The Prismere delegate's question she had answered before, in other rooms, with the same words, because they were the true ones. Nobody present could contradict her. That was not the same as being right, and she knew the difference exactly, and the difference was the session's to carry. She had carried enough. The word her people had for what she carried did not go into any language at this table in fewer than a sentence, and she had not been asked for it, and did not give it.

At the opening she had raised the item, as she did. She had given the day it was first raised by the name of the chair of that day, which was the only name she could give that would mean it, and had watched it mean nothing, as it did, and had not minded, because minding was not the item. The item was that Cirrane was not in the room. Cirrane had not been in the room then. The mark on the table in front of this session's reader had come in that morning. It was on item four, which the session had closed the day before, and she did not know what it said, and tomorrow, when it was read, she would know, and then she would always know.

She leaned her head to the chair, and listened, and kept it.

The facility had an evening, and the evening had a sun in it, and Isren took the terrace the moment the session rose.

The vanes went out. It was not a decision. There was sky worth taking and a body that had been folded for two days in a slot's light went toward it the way a ship's hand kept their balance, without consulting anyone, and the kinbeds along the leading edges, High-Reach green and raised in the Understory's shade, took the low sun and began, at last, to eat. She would give them the direct light for the length of the sun and then the shaded interval her upbringing had left her wanting, and colleagues who had learned to read that rotation as a tell were welcome to read it. It was the one thing about her that was not an argument.

The witness came out past the door.

Feet in, and the arch of the legs cleared the frame, and then out again, one at a time, onto the terrace's composite, until the three stood wide and the hub stood high and the hide, which the slot's light had made a dull thing of, took the evening and turned out to be what it was: deep ochre and russet over the legs and the slung body, darker bands across the hub and back, pale sand on the underside where the three working limbs hung curled like something not yet opened. A long pale seam ran down the near foreleg. Two shorter ones sat low on the flank. Nothing on her read as age, because nothing on her was. The neck came down. Isren was a low thing when she was open, and the head came down to her, and stopped at her own height, and the near eye rested on the leading edge of a vane with the kinbeds working on it, the way it had rested on the chair.

"You did not give us what it meant," Isren said.

"No."

"The chair of that day said noted."

"The chair of that day said noted."

Isren let that stand. She had argued eleven local years against a formula and had learned which sentences would not move, and this was one, and it was not obstruction; it was what a witness was. She went at the specifics instead, which was her trade. "Was the question answered? Was anything carried back?"

"Not at any table I was requested to," Ulessa said. "The Federation record would hold it if it was. I have not been asked to look."

That was an absence, stated as one, and Isren filed it as one. She had brought her sheet out with her, because she brought the sheet everywhere, and on it under the first day's date was the head of her own item in her own hand, first formal proposal, with the Prismere seat's objection noted under it and the three translations' prepositions in a row. Under those, from the opening, was a chair's name nobody at the table had heard.

She looked at the name. She looked at the item number Ulessa had given, item nine, and the one before it, which had been the term, and the mark that had come after the term and before nine, with no number of its own, because it had arrived after its item was closed and the minute had no column for that.

"The mark before this session's reader," she said. "It is on item four."

"Yes."

"It will be read tomorrow, on an item we closed yesterday. And the chair will say noted."

"I do not give words before they are said," Ulessa said.

The sun was going. She had the length of it left and then the interval, and the kinbeds were taking what there was. Beside her the witness stood with her feet let out and her head down at Isren's height, in the one place on the facility that nobody had asked her to remember, and took the evening on a hide that had no use for it, and seemed, as far as a body with no face could seem anything, to be in no hurry about anything at all.

Isren looked at the sheet once more. First formal proposal. She did not strike the word. It was still true, and now she knew what it had been true instead of.