The new selection notice had been posted for less than a day when the training yard filled.
Eli stood outside the fence with Tessa and watched three teams compete for the same practice lane. One group had reserved it through the yard office. Another claimed the revised schedule had canceled the reservation. The third had arrived at dawn and set out equipment before either of the others appeared.
A yard attendant separated the groups by the simple method of standing in the lane until they stopped arguing. She checked the posted notice, found that the reservation remained valid and offered the other teams two shorter periods later in the morning. One captain accepted. The other demanded a refund for the time his people had spent waiting.
“That’s the first useful exercise,” Tessa said.
“What is?”
“Finding out whether we can train when everyone else has had a week taken away.”
The earlier selection window had passed while Eli’s permit was suspended and his application remained incomplete. The office had now announced a new round: applications closed ten days after the announcement and the trial began twenty-one days after it, a week earlier than the organizers’ previous provisional projection. One day had already passed. Eli had nine days to complete an application and twenty before the trial.
