Hesper Nakagawa (Human, Survey Lead, Fliade survey)

Both readings went in the file, that evening, side by side, with neither one chosen.

Egede argued for choosing. Egede always did, and was usually worth listening to, and was not wrong: two readings of one event, filed as equals, is a file that says the survey does not know what happened. Nakagawa said that this was exactly what the survey should say, because it was exactly what was true. A dropped thing returned. A line drawn. Both of them were readings. The unit standing on the silt was the fact, and the fact was filed first, above both, in the plainest words Nakagawa could find.

Then the standing order, and this was the one Egede really did not like.

"From now on," said Nakagawa, "the log says, every shift, that nothing happened."

"That isn't a log entry. That's a —"

"It is a count. Somebody has moved our instrument to the edge of their place and set it facing us. We do not know what it meant. When you do not know what a thing meant, you do not do the next thing. You write down that you do not know, and you wait, and every day you wait you write that down too. So that on the day something does happen, the file will say how long it had been true that nothing did."

Egede thought about that, and then said, "Unasked," to nobody in particular, the way Egede said a word when it was going to end up in a document, and let it go.

Nakagawa filed the order. Then Nakagawa sat with the two readings a while longer, in the wind, and thought that the trouble with a party of three is that there are only three readings to be had, and one of the three had not been given, and that the one who had not given it was the one who had knelt.