The archive clerk carried the public copies of the command ledger into a locked reading room. Families could request the contract pages that concerned them; provincial offices had to submit original orders for comparison. Deng Shu received the station reference for his brother’s case. The clerk showed him the sealed appendix, then gave him the public copy with only the district and date.
“Will the capital hearing continue while the regional cases begin?” Deng asked.
“For thirty days, we’ll accept new submissions here,” the clerk said. “The traveling docket adds testimony; it doesn’t close this one.”
At the archive steps, Gu offered to travel to the first provincial hearing with the revised furnace plans and the list of changes he had failed to publish. Qinghe arranged for relevant clinic records to follow in a sealed packet, with patient names protected unless families chose to release them.
A former border worker arrived with another damaged station’s name. Gu wrote it in his notebook and asked who held the local gauge log. The worker knew the keeper and offered to bring him to Long Reed, the first traveling docket. The station could be inspected there without entering its closed work area.
Deng agreed to attend if his brother’s name stayed out of public copies. The clerk confirmed that the appendix would travel separately and could be opened only with Deng’s consent or presence. Gu prepared diagrams that distinguished tested repairs from proposals. Qinghe assigned a clerk to record any changes made during…
