Orla sent for them on the fourth morning.
The roll from the ceramic tube lay open beneath a sheet of clear protective material. It was longer than Iven had expected, nearly the length of Orla’s workbench, and divided into three columns by faded red lines. Its surface was made from interwoven plant fibers pressed thin. In several places the fibers had parted, leaving holes through which the white backing showed.
“Don’t lean on the table,” Orla said as they entered. “And don’t point with anything you wouldn’t put in your own eye.”
Brin lowered the pencil he had been carrying. Neri moved her hands behind her back. Iven stood beside Kesh and looked down at the marks.
The left column contained repeated groups of short strokes. The center held drawings: a basin, a ridge, several small human figures and a long segmented shape. The right column consisted of numbers and symbols, some familiar from old maintenance records and others unlike anything he recognized. Near the bottom, the paired arcs appeared beside a rectangle filled with dots.
“Is it a map?” Brin asked.
“It contains locations,” Orla said. “That doesn’t mean every part is geographic.”
Elian had brought a copy of the ridge sketch. He laid it on a separate stand. The drawn basin resembled the dry basin in the stone building, though the roll showed a second pipe they had not seen. A line ran from the basin to a group of hills and then to the segmented figure. The…
