The sheet is ordinary enough to be overlooked. Its corners have softened. One line has been written more heavily than the others. The initials are still clear. Nothing about the page explains why Gauge has been so slow to speak of it.
Yet old records can carry the weight of decisions that people tried to forget. Rue lays the documents beside the new plans. This time, every condition will remain where everybody can see it.
Gauge lays the original inspection sheet on the table. For a while, nobody reaches across to touch it. Beside his initials are the conditions: one evening's test, with the return channel completed before normal use. The public record kept his initials and left out the warning.
“I saw they'd called it finished,” he says. “I went below and tried to finish it.”
He rests both hands on the table.
The crew opens a reconstruction of the old records. You see Nessa's blue door, Nell carrying the kettle and Ivo working in the hall. The output figures climb while the reserves fall. Spark's plan for the great hall appears.
Rue gives you Nessa's earlier drawing. You line up the surviving corners. The little room fits inside a small part of the hall. The hall plan also covers the workshop's access lane. The lane had not disappeared from the ground. Someone had removed it from the map.
Spark explains how many tools the hall could have supplied before winter. The need had been real.
“What did Nessa ask for?” Rue says.
Spark keeps the little room in view.
“That.”
“Why did you build the hall after she said no?” you ask.
“I thought she would understand when she saw it working.”
Gauge turns to the final night. The record shows Orrean holding the gate for the hall crew. Then it shows the order forcing the survivors out of Doreavinea. Orrean speaks through the workshop connection.
“I knew the evacuation road was clear.”
“Nessa asked whether the people had reached it,” Spark says.
“Yes.”
Orrean watches the order appear again.
“I helped them escape the hall. Then I refused to let them stay.”
At the doorway, Dash turns to Gauge.
“You knew they'd left your warning out?”
“Yes.”
“And you thought you could finish before anything went wrong?”
“Yes.”
Gauge leaves both sheets on the table. Rue puts the current plan beside them. A line runs through the same bypass. This time, the crew changes the route before the work begins. Gauge signs the new inspection with every condition still attached.