The bridge engineer drew his first white line where nobody had expected a route to go. It followed the inside of the remaining rail, crossed a broad plate, then returned toward the center before a broken seam. Sera’s scout held the lamp while he put a second mark at the place where each carrying pair must wait.
“No vehicles,” he told the driver. “And nobody beside the pair on this stretch. You wait until their load is down beyond the last mark.”
The replacement leader looked at the regulator in the vehicle bed. Its casing seemed to have grown since he had opened the manual. Inside were the parts that could give tired people somewhere to put down a burden. Between them and those people lay a walking line narrow enough that two men would need to carry one section lengthwise.
Below, Juno listened to the engineer’s report through the portable set. Eli stood beside her with the corrected roster. He had stopped seeing the missing worker as an empty space that somebody might fill. She was working at another junction, with her own interrupted relief. The hands available here were the ones answering the call.
“Give us the heaviest section,” Juno said.
