The registration clerk read the settlement document twice before saying she could not accept it.
The envoy did not take it back.
“It identifies me,” they said.
“I understand.”
“It identifies the community that chose me.”
“I can see that.”
“Then which part fails?”
The clerk turned the rulebook so they could see the categories. Her finger stopped beneath the provisional procedure for displaced human residents. It was not a missing box on her desk. The exclusion was in the rule she had been instructed to apply.
