Aravena (Human, Fliade surface party)

Nakagawa asked, at last, the way Nakagawa had asked about the unit at the line a year before: plainly, at the station, after the others had eaten, with the playback up.

"You have not said one thing about that in seven weeks," Nakagawa said. "And you have looked at it longer than either of us. Every time. What is it you are looking at?"

Aravena had known the question was coming and had not got any better at it.

"Where it is," said Aravena.

"The third passage mouth."

"The edge of the light. Where the light stopped, the first year, before we had the stand. Where he stood." Aravena did not say Teddy; Nakagawa had let the word go for a year and Aravena had stopped using it anyway, without deciding to. "The eleven minutes. It's the same place. Not near it. The same."

Nakagawa did not say anything for a moment, and then pulled the second-year file, and put the thermal profile from the eleven minutes beside the imager frame, and looked, and Aravena watched the survey lead see it.

"Yes," said Nakagawa. "It is."

"He was warm. That was the whole of what we had. A warm thing, standing. We never saw him. We saw his warmth. This is the other way round. We see it. It isn't warm."

"So it isn't him."

"No. It's where he stood."

"That is a place," said Nakagawa, "not a reading."

"It's a fact," said Aravena. "File it."

Nakagawa filed it, in Aravena's words, and then waited, because Nakagawa could tell when there was more.

"The other thing," said Aravena, "is the knock. I go down every shift and I set the stone down and the one on the line moves the rock. Every time. A year. Nothing else has ever answered a stone. Nothing else has ever moved one. Whatever this is on the imager, it doesn't do anything. It doesn't move. It doesn't answer. It's there, and then it isn't. The unit at least hummed." Aravena stopped, because the next part was not a reading either. "Egede says a fault. A fault doesn't have an edge the light goes round. Look at it. The light is going round it."

"Egede has looked at it."

"I know."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know," said Aravena. "I'm not saying I know. I'm saying it isn't broken. Those aren't the same, and I've been trying for seven weeks to find a way to say the second one without it sounding like the first."