Aravena (Human, Fliade surface party)

Aravena came out of the third passage with the light held low and the handheld pressing on the breastbone and a face that, Nakagawa said later, was the same face as a year ago with something added to it, and stopped, and said, in a voice that had not come back yet:

"Two."

"Yes," said Nakagawa. "We saw. Tell me. In order."

Aravena told it in order. The squeeze. The one on the line, as always. The other, beside, on the line, facing the crack. The light going round it, and no shadow. The one on the line not turning toward it. The kneeling, the stone, a hand from the first one's feet. The step back. The thing said, which Aravena did not repeat and nobody asked for. The rock moved. The other one not moving. The going.

"A hand from the first one's feet," said Ferrant. "You chose."

"I didn't choose. I knelt and it was already decided. You put a stone down for the one who answers."

"How did you know which one that was?"

Aravena thought about it, because it was a real question and Ferrant was the kind of person who only asked those.

"The light went onto one of them," said Aravena, "and round the other. You can't put a stone down for a thing the light goes round. There's nothing there to put it down for."

Ferrant said nothing for a moment, and then said, "That is going in my file, in your words, if you'll let me."

"It's not a reading."

"No. It's better than one." And then, to Nakagawa: "The grade doesn't move. I want that said now, at the junction, before anyone has slept on anything. Direct observation, reading unchanged. I'll write it tonight. The one thing I learned on that screen I can't write anywhere, and I'm telling you so that it's said once: it stood beside. I have a page for what it is. I don't have one for that."

"Neither do we," said Nakagawa.

"No," said Ferrant. "I'd noticed."

Aravena knelt to the unit, because there was a shift to log and that was still the job, and said, "Log. Shift one-four-two. Upper junction. Party of three and one. Knock answered," and stopped, because that was not the whole of it, and the unit hummed, low, once, to say it had heard, and waited, the way it always waited, for the rest.