Hesper Nakagawa (Human, Fliade survey lead)

Nakagawa wrote the log at the junction, standing up, in the survey lead's own hand, because this one was not Aravena's to write, and the unit had been told nothing it could hold.

Party announced itself at the line: one member, one stone of the upper levels, set down and left; handheld carried, pointed low, sound channel off. The one who answers was present, in the open, and put a hand on the rock at the edge of the silt and did not move it. The one who knocked stayed past the interval, by the one who knocked's own reading, entered under that name. Something was then said at the line by the one who answers, to the one who knocked, and went on, and ended, and the rock was then moved once. Nothing said is recorded. Nothing on the roof could have recorded it. The line was not crossed by any party.

Under it, in the survey lead's own column: Sound channel at the junction off for the knock, by order. Interval: forty-four minutes. The longest number the column had ever carried, by a factor the column had never needed, and the only measure the roof would ever hold of how long the thing said had been.

Ferrant came and read it, from the edge of the light, as she did, and wrote her line under it. Countersigned. Interval as stated. Nothing to grade.

Then she did not go.

"One more thing," she said. "And it isn't advice. You're going to write who heard it."

"Yes."

"Put me on it."

Nakagawa looked up.

"I heard it. I was there. I've no page for it and I'm not going to pretend one, and I'm not going to write a word of it in my own file, because there's nothing in it my file is entitled to. But that line is the only true thing anybody on this roof can write down about what happened today, and I want my name on it where it belongs." She put the timepiece away. "Forty-four minutes. I kept it too. It agrees."

So the last line of the entry, in Nakagawa's hand, under the column, said: Heard by Aravena, at the line. Heard from the junction by Egede, Ferrant, Nakagawa.

Egede read it over Nakagawa's shoulder, which Egede did not usually do, and said nothing, and then said, "That's the entry."

"That's the entry."

"That's all of it."

"That is all of it that is ours," said Nakagawa, "and it is a great deal."