Sera’s coastal contact put a cart on the floor map and refused to move it.
The cart was a wooden block with a bent wire handle. A summit aide had made it from a packing spacer. On the drawn road it stood for the inlet’s evacuation transport, waiting beside houses that did not appear on the capital’s warning plan.
“The message was sent,” the capital delegate said.
“Not received,” the scout answered.
Across the room, the exercise clock continued running.
Sera watched the radio operator call again. The harbor station answered clearly. The inlet did not. At the door, one of the delegates folded his arms and waited for someone to discover an obvious mistake with a battery.
It had begun as a generous offer.
The capital had spare radio capacity and equipment that could be sent to the coast. Its delegate brought the offer into the technical session before anyone asked him to. After the previous hearings, the promise of a resource without an accusation attached had changed the room’s mood.
