National Mall · June 23, 2230 · Late afternoon
By the time the speaking stopped, the paper in Ilen's pocket had softened at every fold. She took it out and read it again while people walked around her.
RETURN SEAT INQUIRY. Her name, the river-road stop, two passengers, and the hour she had asked. No carrier's name. No price. In the square where a seat number might have gone, somebody had drawn a line.
Her father held her other sleeve. He had stood through the address because sitting made his knees worse when he rose. Now he wanted to sit. A strip of stone by the shade was free, if she could get him there without joining the line pressing toward the exit.
"Is this the fare?" he asked.
"It's what they gave me at the travel table."
"That wasn't my question."
No, it wasn't. They had come because he wanted to hear Joshua with his own ears. He had heard him, including the part about the beds. Ilen had thought the return would be a smaller problem than arrival. It was difficult to say exactly when she had begun treating the strip as a ticket.
At the outside lane, the travel table had a new queue and an old sign: NAMES TAKEN FOR RETURN SEATS. The clerk stood on a crate, trying to make the word taken audible above the crowd.
"We took names," she said. "The carriers have the names. We have no seat list back. If I put a number on your paper, I would be making one up."
A man in front of Ilen asked why she had bothered writing anything. The clerk showed him the carbon copy and the time marked beside his name. "So they cannot tell you nobody asked. It is proof of an inquiry. I know it is less than you need."
Ilen stepped out of the line. She did not need proof that she needed to go home. She needed the fare and a place to board. Her father sat on the stone. Beside him, Enno was lowering bottles into a crate at his new position. A board behind him distinguished his sales from the free water cart; in the morning, she remembered, his table had been somewhere else.
"Do you take these back?" she asked, holding up the two refillable bottles they had bought from him.
Enno took out her receipt. Bottle price: six. Returnable vessel deposit: two each. Return by last light, undamaged, to this stall. He turned the first bottle in his hands, checking the rim. He gave her two coins, then made a mark on the receipt and gave it back.
"I might need to show that I paid," she said.
"Then you should keep it." He looked at her father's seat. "The water was not the deposit. He can drink what's left before you give me the second one."
She gave the remaining bottle to her father. He drank. The two coins in her hand would not buy a fare, but they had been his and hers all along. She was tired enough to resent how much work it had taken to establish that.
Miri, the steward with the yellow chalk on her sleeve, came past carrying a plan board. Ilen asked where a person could ask a carrier directly.
"The river-road carts load beyond the west rise," Miri said. "That was true at the last check. I can mark the way, but I cannot tell you a cart has room now."
She turned her board over. On its blank side she drew the outer walk, the firm turn, and the crossing to the loading shed. Then she wrote ROUTE CHECKED THIS AFTERNOON — SEATS NOT CHECKED and signed the hour. A steward needed the board for the next crowd, she explained, so Ilen copied the drawing onto the back of her inquiry slip.
"Will this path still be here when we come back?" Ilen asked.
Miri looked at the moved bottle table. "Today, while I am here, I'll check it again. I cannot sign tomorrow's ground."
Her father finished his water. Ilen returned the second bottle, accepted its two coins, and asked Enno to mark the second return. The receipt now had two small ticks, each beside a date. She put it behind the travel inquiry. Two pieces of paper, two different promises.
They took the outer walk. At the narrow turn, a family was resting with their bundles spread across the hard paving. Her father waited while Ilen asked them to draw the bundles in. They did, without apology demanded or given. Behind them, Miri moved toward the turn to see whether the next crowd could pass it too.
At the loading shed, an actual carrier had a board with destinations and fares. The river-road cart was already full. Its driver listened while Ilen showed him the inquiry. He recognized the list delivered from the Mall but had never agreed to hold places against it. The next cart had not yet come in; he would not sell its seats until its driver and wheels arrived. He told her the earliest time to ask again and pointed out the public bench where passengers could wait without paying him.
Ilen wrote the time on the slip. Her father sat. For the first time that afternoon, neither of them stood in a line that could not answer its own question.
"If the next one is full?" he asked.
"We ask what comes after it."
He tilted his head toward the folded paper. "And if they say you have a ticket?"
"I'll ask them to show me the seat."
He smiled at that, not because it solved their journey but because she had found a sentence she could use. Across the shed, a driver lifted a wheel to test its bearing. Ilen watched him set it down before she looked at the road.