Mira had placed the quiet city fourth.
She had not written a date beside it. There were arrows, broad intervals and a note that the sequence came from a source she could not make independently reproducible. The planners knew her prior warnings had sometimes helped. They also knew enough had changed that her order could not serve as a timetable.
Still, fourth had become a kind of reassurance.
When the city’s report reached the planning room, a delegate put a finger on the board and said, “That can’t be the same reversal. You said we had time here.”
Mira looked at the fresh paper. Pressure on the gate-facing side had fallen while the outer instrument rose. The observer had underlined the divergence. It resembled a stage she associated with later development, but the interval was too short to establish how quickly it was progressing.
“I said I expected the other sites to change first.”
“Which amounts to the same thing when we allocate equipment.”
She could have defended the qualifications on the original note. They were there. She could see them from her chair, written in ink dark enough to survive any accusation that she had added them afterward. The delegate’s staff had nevertheless scheduled a reader delivery according to the order, and she had not stopped the sequence from acquiring more authority each time someone copied it.
