Continuance Office · June 23, 2230 · After dusk
The first copy of the revised Future-Service Table was too wide for the public board. Its right-hand column curled around the edge and hid the numbers whenever the night wind came down the street.
“Appropriate,” said Dovin, who kept a stall at the end of the market lane. “That's where the money goes.”
Carla held the paper flat while Hesta, a route-copy clerk, found a second tack. Hesta had copied street changes for eight years. She knew how to keep a notice visible at a crossroads, though this was the first one she had been asked to hang outside the Continuance Office after dark.
At the top, in Orr's unmistakable upright hand, the table said REQUIRED: 1,840. FUNDED: 1,440. UNFUNDED: 400. Beneath it were the services, each with a promise on the left and paid people or supplies on the right. The forty-eight shifts taken from the suspended counsel-engine expansion had two new addresses: twenty-four at Quarry Run, twenty-four on the North Cut watch.
Dovin read the last line twice. “They'll ask for the stall coin tomorrow.”
“They might,” Carla said. “First bell is when they take that up.”
“My customers will hear might as will. Then they'll ask me how much bread will be.”
“How much will it be?”
“I don't know. That's my objection.” He tapped the page. “Your nice table tells me what their shift costs. It doesn't tell me what I can charge before a person walks away without supper.”
Carla let him have that. A market levy could move through prices more readily than through the Office's columns. She had asked for the table because she wanted a blank shift to be visible, not because she thought a printed number would make somebody else's rent easier.
On the other side of her stood Bess, coming off the North Cut early watch. She wore the dust of the road high on one sleeve where she had leaned against the stone at the narrow turn.
“Twenty-four,” Bess said. “Across the night watches, not in my pocket.”
Hesta showed her the smaller line that named the assignment. “Yes. The roster's still short.”
“If they trim us by a little from here, there won't be a little of me at the turn.” Bess touched the dusty sleeve. “There will be nobody. A person walking home doesn't get a proportional share of a watcher.”
Dovin looked at her, then at the bread he had carried wrapped in yesterday's paper. “I didn't ask them to cut you.”
“I know,” Bess said. “I didn't ask them to charge you.”
They stood with that for a moment. Neither had brought four hundred shifts to the board.
Hesta pulled the lower corner of the sheet free. “This part needs another line.”
The Quarry Run entry read TWENTY-FOUR FUNDED SHIFTS: MATERIAL SEPARATION, INSPECTION, FIRST ASSEMBLY. In the neighboring space, the left-hand promise still read TEMPORARY SPAN. The wind folded the descriptions together, making a span appear under a paid count.
“Somebody will see that while hurrying,” Hesta said. “They'll take a cart to the rope.”
“The road notices still say west rise,” Carla answered.
“So did the engine's cabinet once,” Hesta said. “If the new table travels farther than the correction, we've copied the wrong thing well.”
She took a strip from her case and wrote in block letters: WORK FUNDED. SPAN NOT OPEN. CARTS VIA WEST RISE. ROPE GUIDE FOR LIGHT BUNDLES ONLY. Bess held the paste pot while Hesta fixed one strip beneath the Quarry entry and made two more carbon copies. The paste was a little dry. Dovin offered the damp cloth from his bread, and Hesta used its clean corner.
“Is that an Office notice?” Dovin asked.
“It's a route-copy clerk's annotation,” Hesta said. “I'll sign it, and Orr can tell me in daylight if the road has moved.”
“He'll tell you to use smaller letters.”
“He can buy a larger board.”
Hesta handed one copy to Bess for the watch shelter, where people asked which crossing held after dark. The other went into the route-copy tray with the public notices. No one called the span finished. No new bridge timber appeared. A warning had acquired three places where a person might actually read it.
At the bottom of the table a second note said the six route-copy clerks remained on the paid list. Hesta saw Dovin reading it.
“That's tonight,” she said. “It doesn't promise me the quarter.”
“Neither does the bread,” Dovin said.
Carla pressed the last tack through the stiff edge. She wrote FIRST-BELL DECISION PENDING on a separate card and fixed it above the figures, not across them. She did not know whether the District would choose a levy, cuts or another argument dressed as an answer. The table did not know either.
Bess took her copy north. Dovin took his bread home before it acquired a new price. Hesta went back inside to put her signed annotation into the record. Carla remained long enough to watch two people stop at the board. The first read the large numbers. The second read the small warning underneath the span and changed the direction in which he pointed his companion.
That was not four hundred shifts. It was one wrong turn somebody would not have to make tonight.