Chapter 34Accepted with Conditions

At the signing desk, the Signer had stopped and did not read out the next item.

There was no sound in the hall. The fan’s low sound was still there under the flagstones, sounding a little at a time, unable to get into the air of this floor. Mitsuki stood at one corner of the desk, a hand’s width from its edge. Her right hand held the straight blade. The blade had no sheath. Its point faced down, and the cherry-pink cord on the hilt pressed into the web of her thumb. She was not counting. She was looking at the card sleeve in the middle of the desk. The pen stood in it, cap facing out, the thin cord on the pen slack. No one reached for it.

There was no watch on her wrist. The time outside could not be worked out on this floor. All she could do was count. She counted to forty, and the Signer was still stopped. She counted again, to forty, and the Signer was still stopped. The D-ring at her chest was clipped, her chest harness drawn tight under her breast, the buckle biting. She did not touch it.

The Signer’s right thumb was still pressed under the edge of the desk, the hook in the ring on the table leg. The bright band on the inside of the ring faced up, and the edge of the hook sat exactly on the rim of that band. The left hand moved.

On the Signer’s side of the desk there was a narrow slot. It was usually shut, and from this end of the desk it could not be seen. The slot opened an inch. A form showed one corner from inside it and stopped. Two fingers of the left hand took hold of the corner, drew the form out and laid it flat on the desk. The fingers closed together again, the middle finger against the edge of the desk.

The form was white, thinner than the sheets on the wall. The heading was one word: Acceptance. In the box below it was printed: Floors, whole tower. The box below that was Open items, printed with a single rule, and above the rule it was blank. At the bottom was Conclusion. The conclusion box was blank, and the signature box was blank too.

The left hand picked up the pen. The pen came out of the card sleeve, and the thin cord pulled straight for a moment, then went slack again. The nib came down on the first square of the conclusion box. It did not shake.

The Signer wrote. The nib moved very slowly, without a sound, and the paper made no sound either. After each character the nib paused, then moved on to the next. The wrist was straight, the elbow did not lift. Only the fingers moved. What was written was “Passed (open items: one, under observation)”. The characters were the same size and the same distance apart. The brackets were straight, and the colon and the comma fell where they ought to fall.

At the last bracket, the nib paused. It paused to the right of the bracket and did not come down. Then it came down, outside the bracket, and made a full stop.

When it was done, the Signer put the pen back in the card sleeve, cap facing out. The thin cord swung once and stopped.

The Signer drew a breath.

As that breath went in, the chest rose and fell once. The shoulders did not move, only the chest. The webbing moved with it, all the way from the chest to the hook on the table leg, and the hook touched the inside of the ring lightly, without a sound. In, hold, then out. When it went out, there was no sound either.

The shoulders were still at their old height, both sides still level.

Mitsuki’s count broke. She had heard that breath, and it came from outside her own count. Her own breathing stopped for a moment, and she did not pick it up again. Her left hand gripped her right thumb, gripped it hard, and let go.

The Signer spoke.

“I’ll sign.”

The voice was still flat, every word set at the same height. But when the word I came out, the voice did not press down in front of it. It came from the very middle of the mouth. That word had never been in this voice before.

Mitsuki did not move. Her feet were still where they had been, a hand’s width from the edge of the desk.

※

The Signer’s right thumb reached in under the edge of the desk. The spring bit hard, and only when the thumb pressed all the way down would the gate of the hook open. As the thumb pressed down, it did not pause, and there was no click. The hook backed out of the ring, the edge of its gate brushing past the bright band, and the brushing made no sound. The moment the gate opened, nothing made a sound. The tail of the hook scraped a small patch of old paint off the table leg, and the iron beneath the paint was dark.

The webbing went slack. The length that ran round under the right armpit slackened by an inch, slid across the edge of the desk and hung down, swinging once beside the Signer’s leg, no longer taut. On the inside of that length of webbing there was a mark a little darker in colour, left by being wound round and taken back many times.

This time, Mitsuki looked at her face.

The face was a little smaller than Mitsuki had thought. The hair at the temples was drawn back, tied tight and flat against the skin, showing a very faint white scar where something had grazed it long ago, healed smooth now. The eyebrows had not been shaped. They were level, each hair pointing its own way. The eyes were black. The lamp shone into them, and there was a small point of light inside, and that point did not move. On either side of the nose was a layer of fine dust, blown there by the wind, not wiped off. The lips were a little paler than the face, closed, with a very fine line in the middle. The ears were clean. There was nothing on the lobes.

The eyes blinked once.

The lids closed, then opened. After they opened, the eyes were still turned towards the desk. They did not look at Mitsuki.

The Signer came out from behind the desk.

It was the first time Mitsuki had seen the Signer leave the desk. The Signer’s back was straight, the shoulders level, the webbing running from under the right armpit round to the back, without a single crease across it. The Signer took three steps, to the wall, to the sheet furthest left. Her feet came down on the flagstones without a sound, and without an echo. As the soles lifted from the flagstones, they left a very faint print in the fine dust on them, the first step she had taken. The hook trailed beside her feet, also without a sound. She had brought the pen out of the card sleeve as she left the desk, the nib sliding across the desktop. The thin cord on the pen was long enough. It followed out of the mouth of the sleeve length by length, dragged over the edge of the desk and dropped onto the flagstones, and only at the wall did it pull straight, then go slack again.

The Signer raised the pen to the wall.

The sheets on the wall ran one after another to the end of the wall. On the one furthest left, the box at the end was blank. It had been left for the person who signed. Mitsuki looked across from this end of the desk. That box was only a white square, a little darker than the colour of the paper, with nothing in it. Mitsuki counted the sheets on the wall once. Twenty-three. In the bottom right corner of each was a square black stamp, and the stamps were dry. There were twenty-three pin heads as well. Not one was missing.

In the blank box the Signer wrote three words: closed with conditions.

The words were written after the printed words, lighter than the print, darker than the colour of the paper. Every stroke was finished. Where each stroke ended, it was a little lighter than elsewhere.

Then the Signer put down one more stroke. That stroke was neither light nor heavy. It did not form a word. It was only the stroke of a signature. Over at the desk, Mitsuki had wondered whether that stroke would come down lightly or heavily, and she had not been able to work it out. As the nib lifted from the paper, it left a very small dot, black, a little whitish at the edge.

The Signer did not turn round. The pen still in her left hand, facing the wall, she read the line aloud.

“Open item oh-oh-oh-one, closed with conditions.”

The voice came out of the mouth still flat. But this time the sentence did not fall on the desk, and did not stop at her feet. It came back from the wall. It came back from the left-hand corridor, and from the middle one, and from the right-hand one too, all coming back together, a little slower than the Signer had said it, and in unison. As the sentence came back, it struck the sheets on the wall and paused among the twenty-three pieces of paper before it scattered. The last word came back slowest.

The Signer’s voice now had an echo in the hall.

Mitsuki heard it. Her count stopped for a moment before it carried on. The back of her neck tightened for a moment, and she did not loosen it.

※

The narrow slot in the desk opened again, wider than before. A card was pushed out of it and stopped at the edge of the desk, directly facing Mitsuki.

The card was stiff, thicker than the acceptance form, its corners square, with a very faint scuff at the edge, worn by the mouth of the card sleeve. A line was printed on the card: LM-1-06, handover number, followed by a sentence. The original wording of that sentence was still there, struck through by a thin line. What had been struck through was “Acceptance not passed. Handover withheld.” After the struck-through sentence, three new characters were printed: “Handed over.”

Those three characters were printed darker than the struck-through ones, every stroke pressed down solid. The new characters came after the old ones, and the old ones could still be seen. Mitsuki looked at them for a moment before she looked away.

Mitsuki picked up the card. It was cool, a little cooler than her palm. She turned it over. The back was white, with no writing.

She did not speak. The Signer did not look at her either. The Signer was still standing by the wall, her back to the desk, facing that line of writing. The webbing hung beside the Signer’s leg, not taut. The Signer’s right thumb moved once at her side, then stopped. It was the movement of clipping. The hook was no longer on the table leg. The thumb did not find the ring, and stopped where it was.

Mitsuki put the card in her pocket. There was already a V-06 visitor card in the pocket. The two cards lay side by side, both stiff.

The sentence printed on the card, she had never heard anyone say. It was printed, not spoken.

The lift door was open. No one had pressed anything. She walked over. The light in the car was white, and the steel walls reflected an upright shadow, hers. She walked in without pressing a button, and the door closed by itself. The seams in the steel ran one after another, from bottom to top. She counted four and stopped counting.

The car went down. As it passed the sixth floor, a thin line of white light came through the gap in the door and was quickly gone. At the fifth it did not stop either. At the third it did not stop either. The numbers on the panel went dark one by one, down to one, and stopped. The door opened.

There was no one in the small lobby. The walls were concrete, grey, rough to the touch. The cement at the foot of the walls was bare, dark in one patch and pale in another. In the corner stood the tin bin, and the paper on its side was still stuck there. It read: No eating or drinking in the lift. In the south wall of the small lobby was an iron door, with no writing on it. It was not locked. She pushed it open a crack and turned sideways to slip out through it.

Below the steps was the water.

※

Above the steps, the tower rose over her head.

The haze had thinned. The lights of the seven plant floors were still on. They were the seven dark bands across the tower, and the lights in the bands were white. When they had come on from the foot of the tower, they had lit one level after another upwards. Now, starting from the topmost band, they went out one band at a time. One band went out, a pause, then the next. When it reached the lowest band, there was a pause as well. Then all seven were dark.

The lights went out without a sound. The fan’s low sound did not stop either. It was still there, close to the ground, coming from far away.

Between the bands a few windows were still lit, white, not in any line. At night the tower was grey. The glass doors at the foot of the tower were lit one after another, and the stone slabs behind them shone very evenly.

On the water there was a band of white, very low, close to the surface, lit from the south side of the tower’s foot. There was an opening there, not far above the water, and the light inside the opening was white. The stone of the steps was cool, with a layer of fine dust, and her soles made no sound on it. The steps at the water’s edge went down one by one into the water, and the lowest was submerged. On the ground at either side of the steps, a little grass grew in the cracks between the stone slabs. The grass was grey, pressed down by the wind, showing only its tips.

The wind came off the lake and blew against both her shoulders. Both shoulders were bare, and the wind pressed straight onto the skin. She did not hunch. The wind blew across the very faint mark under her left eye. The small cherry-pink knot on her wrist pressed against the bone.

A bird flew low across the water and did not call.

Something very large that had not been moving, moved.

The ship slid out of the opening. First the bow, a wedge, tapering at the front to a chisel point. The hull was whitish grey. It passed close by the edge of the opening without touching it. It came out an inch at a time, came halfway out, stopped, and then came out entirely. The white on the water slowly thickened into one broad sheet, holding the ship’s shadow up from beneath.

It was very big. It was longer than any of the annexes at the foot of the tower. The ship had come out of the core shaft. The shaft was at the very centre of the tower and ran all the way up from the bottom. As it came out, the water at the edge of the opening did not stir, and there was not a single ripple on the surface.

There was no name on the hull. A serial number was sprayed in one line beneath the bridge, the letters grey, one shade darker than the hull: LM-1-06.

The bridge was low, with glass on three sides, and the glass was dark, reflecting the water below. On top of the bridge was a small dome, dark too, giving back no light. The spine was an openwork box girder, and a little white showed through the gaps in it. Two parallel fins stood up on the tail, leaning back, and their shadows drew two slanting lines across the water. Two lights glowed at the side, one red and one green, neither flashing.

Along the middle of the hull, from bow to stern, ran a thin line, orange. Only one, as thin as it could possibly be, starting at the chisel point of the bow and running to the root of the tail fins, without a break anywhere.

There was a point of light under the belly. That was the throat. It was only a little lit, and it was warm. It did not light the water. It lit only the small patch beneath itself, and that small patch was bright, and everywhere else was dark.

The ship turned through an angle. Its bow pointed at the shore, and it stopped above the lake, very high above the water, and yet not so high. The portholes were lit a warm white, a row of nine on each side, lit very evenly. It had stopped, and did not move. It did not come down, and it did not fly away.

The ship stayed there, directly facing her. That ship had been handed over to her. The card in her pocket was printed with the same number.

Mitsuki’s hand was in her pocket. It touched the corner of the card. The corner was square.

Mitsuki stepped back two paces and went down one step. Only from here did the whole of the tower come into view.

To the north-east, the disc was still hanging. Its rim was pale violet, very fine, so fine it was only a single ring. The bright face was as it had been, and the clouds on it were white, in clumps, still moving. When a cloud reached the rim of the disc and passed over that ring of pale violet, the pale violet did not change colour. When the cloud had passed, it was still the same colour.

Above the disc, off towards the tower, was a black mouth. Round its edge there had been a fine white ring. On the side nearest the disc, a section of that fine white ring had broken away. The break was even, both ends finished very cleanly, not a single thread trailing.

When a cloud passed over the black mouth, the black of the mouth was blocked by it for a moment. After a while it showed again, still the same black.

The disc itself had nothing missing. It was still round. Only that section of the fine white ring was gone.

A piece of the sky was empty.

There was a small piece of pale violet in the water as well, the rim of the disc reflected on the lake. When the wind blew, it broke, then slowly pieced itself together again.

Her gaze came down from the sky and settled on the tower.

The three wings parted at the bottom and drew in as they rose towards the core in the middle. Each wing stepped back level by level as it rose, the edges of the setbacks straight, each level narrower than the one below. The seven plant floors lay across the tower. With their lights out, they were only seven bands a little darker in colour, each one shade darker than the silver-grey of the tower. Above them was the spire. The top of the spire, she could see.

The haze had cleared. It had pressed on the middle of the tower before, and when the lights reached the fourth band, they had gone into it. Now it was gone. From foot to top, the tower was silver-grey, with nothing pressing on it. The top was pointed. Above the point was the sky.

The lake was still leaden grey, and the lights on the shore fell into the water and broke into a few streaks of white.

Over the water to the east, there was one more light. It stayed just beyond the edge of her sight, lower than the lights on the ship, only a little lit, and did not come closer. That was her first ship. It did not move.

The seven bands she looked over once, and did not count.

※

The next day, at half past eight, Sol went back to his dormitory on the fifth floor of Block Two.

The man in the top bunk was still asleep, the quilt wrapped up over his head. The air conditioner in the room was half broken, and the air died away at the window. In the wall at the head of the bed was a nail, and on the nail hung the metal ring.

He took the safety line off his shoulder. He lined the clip up with the metal ring and clipped it in. With a click, it bit.

He looked at it. The clip had bitten very tight. Yesterday he had clipped it three times. Today it bit the first time. He did not clip it again.

He lay down without taking off his overalls. The air conditioner pipe in the corner was no longer dripping, and the mouth of the pipe was dry. He did not count.

At one in the afternoon, he woke. He did not sit up straight away. There was a water stain on the ceiling, yellowed at the edges, and he looked at it for a while.

On the water bottle by the bed, the lines were still there, not one of them wiped off. The phone under his pillow had not rung.

At twenty past four, he walked from the dormitory to the service yard again. There were no trees along the way. He did not pick his way from shadow to shadow, but walked straight out in the sun. There was no water truck on the road. A woman worker pushed an empty handcart past, its wheels rattling twice on the gravel.

There was no one by the cooler drum. A little more of the white paint had peeled off the drum, and the iron showing through was dark. He wrapped his cuff round the tap and turned it. The water that came out was lukewarm, with a slight taste of rust. He filled the bottle and pressed the mouth of it with his thumb.

He went back under the shade canopy. The shade cloth cut the sun into pieces. It had already moved round to the west. The steps were concrete, three of them, and there was no one on the bottom one. The shadow of the shade cloth fell on the steps, moved past the first, moved past the second, and moved off onto the concrete beyond the steps.

After five, the night shift came over again. Some of them walked in pairs and stood on the inner side of the fence. Some hung their hard hats from a finger, the back of the brim facing out. Someone was clipping his nails, click, click, very quietly. On the back of the brim of his own hard hat, the lettering had faded by half again. He did not go over it.

A young worker’s shoelace had come undone, and he crouched to tie it once. When he had tied it, he stood up and did not undo it again.

At twenty past five, the crew foreman came over from the fence with a tape measure in his hand, the tape not wound back in. He glanced at the window, did not stop, and walked on.

At half past five, a crew pickup drove in and stopped beside the cooler drum, and a bag of ice was unloaded from the back. The ice was tipped into the drum with a rush, and the pieces floated up one by one and knocked against the sides. This was added for the night shift. This bag was a little smaller than yesterday’s.

At twenty to six, he walked to the window of the sign-in booth. The noise of the site dropped for a moment, then rose again.

The window was open. The crack in the glass was taped over with clear tape, and the edge of the tape had curled up. Duka sat inside, his hands very clean, a pencil tucked behind his ear. The sign-in pen was tied to the table leg, its cord slack, the nib pointing out of the window. The flask on the sill had its lid on, and no steam came from the spout. Duka pushed the sign-in sheet out, to the edge of the sill.

Sol handed his work badge in through the window. Duka did not look at the badge. His finger travelled down the sheet, line by line, not looking at the names, only at the numbers.

Sol picked up the pen. The pen was tied, and the cord reached him. He found an empty line on the sign-in sheet, and in the name column he wrote one word: Sol.

The number column was blank. Here, his number was oh-four-one-seven. That box, he did not fill in.

Duka’s pencil stopped over that box. The box was blank. The pencil did not fill it in, and did not draw back either. It went round that box and touched the end of the line, once.

On the sill, the register lay open, turned to a page near the back. On that page was a line, the one he had seen from outside the window. LM-1-06, handover number. The writing after it had changed. He knew the two characters for “handover”. In front of them, only one character was left. On the notice board at the site, the handover date for one of the blocks was written up, and it had been pushed back several times. This line ended in “Handed over.” It had not been pushed back.

He put the pen back where the cord could reach. The nib touched the desk with a tap.