Hesper Nakagawa (Human, Fliade survey lead)

Nakagawa had told the unit the channel was off, and the time, and the unit had hummed once and gone quiet, and Aravena had gone down the third passage with the light held low, as on every shift since the order.

Ferrant was at the junction. She had taken to coming down on some shifts to countersign at the junction instead of at the table, which she said was the difference between a gap you had stood in and one you had read about, and nobody had argued, because it was the kind of thing she was right about. She stood at the edge of the light with the handheld's feed on the junction screen and her hands empty. Egede stood where Egede stood. Nakagawa stood by the unit, with the timepiece running, because the column needed the interval.

The rise came up the third passage as it always did now, a shape with nothing in it, and reached the junction, and the unit on its base heard it and had nowhere to put it.

Then the wait.

Nakagawa knew the interval without the timepiece. Everyone at the junction did; it was in the boots. The point came where the floor had always moved. The floor did not move. The point went by, and Egede shifted weight, and nobody said anything, and the third passage stayed dark where the light should have been coming back up it.

"The order says come back," said Egede, quietly. It was not an objection. It was the instrument specialist reading the one instrument at the junction that still had a channel open, which was the file.

"Yes."

"Aravena isn't coming back."

"No."

Then the sound.

It came up the third passage and through the crack the way the rise came, and it was not the rise. It was lower. It was longer. The crack took the words, if there were words, and kept the shape, and the shape went on: up and down and along, one piece after another, with gaps in it the length of a breath and then more of it, and it reached the junction and stood in the fungus-light with the three of them, and the unit on its base had no channel open for it, and nothing on the roof did.

Egede looked at the unit. Then at Nakagawa. And said nothing, because the objections had all been had, in order, on the night of the argument, and were in the file, and this was the thing they had been about, and Egede knew it, and did not say so, which Nakagawa noticed and was not going to forget.

Nakagawa could have gone down. The thought came and Nakagawa had it properly, standing still, the way you have a thought you are going to decide against. One person at a door is a knock. Two is something else, and the people below had a word for it, and the party had decided two years ago not to find out what. The order had been written for a person at a door with nothing happening on the other side of it. It had not been written for this, because nobody had known what this would be. And the one person on the planet who could read the order against the thing in front of it was standing on the silt with a light held low, and Nakagawa was not, and that was where the decision was.

Nakagawa left it there.

The timepiece ran. Nakagawa did not look at it. The column would need the number and the number would be whatever it was.