The woman whose lamp Iven had broken accepted his apology, examined the remaining lamp in his hand, and told him he could pay for a replacement on the next pay day.
“That one’s mine,” he said.
“I can see that. Mine was better.”
It was not an argument he could win without producing a lamp, so he wrote her name on a scrap of paper and promised to return. She gave him the broken lamp’s handle as a reminder. He put it in his coat pocket beside a length of wire and hoped the two would not become friends.
By the time he reached Sera’s clinic, a queue had formed on the stairs. Three people waited above the bathhouse sign: a man with a wrapped hand, a woman holding a sleeping child, and Brin, who had brought a basket of clean linen and was making up a story for the child about a fish that had learned to climb ladders.
“It doesn’t have hands,” the child said without opening her eyes.
“That’s why it needed the ladder,” Brin replied.
Iven stepped around them and knocked on the open door. Sera was cleaning Maret’s injured leg at the table while Lill stood nearby holding a cup. A dark bruise had spread around Maret’s calf. She gripped the edge of the chair and looked determined not to show how much the examination hurt.
“Good news,” Sera said. “You can stop hopping.”
Maret’s face brightened.
“You’re staying off it.”
The brightness disappeared. “For how long?”
“Long enough for the swelling to go down. Then we’ll see what it will bear. If I tell you three days, will you spend the fourth carrying a filter frame?”
“Only if someone asks nicely.”
Lill handed her the cup. “I’ll hide her boots.”
“You’d have to find them first.”
The two of them seemed able to continue without assistance. Iven gave Sera the folded note the workshop woman had written for him: the replacement lamp’s make and the cost of a new glass.
“Your medical report?” Sera asked.
“My debts.”
“Thicker than the report.”
“More durable.”
He stayed long enough to help Lill get Maret down the stairs. At the bottom, Maret stopped and looked toward the covered walkway that led back to the filter bank.
“Oris told me what happened after I fell,” she said. “He thinks the thing was trying to get through to the drill pipe.”
“Was it?” Iven asked.
“I was under a floor. I had a poor view.” She glanced at Lill. “But the knocking I heard wasn’t from above me. It was farther in. Like something hitting metal.”
“Could it have been a worker?”
“It stopped when the drill stopped. Or near enough.”
She did not say it proved anything. Iven liked her for that. They had a torn sleeve, a broken panel, and a living creature attacking a pipe. None of those explained the whole chamber.
Lill thanked him as if he had personally carried Maret out. He started to correct her, remembered that he had in fact done part of the carrying, and settled for asking whether they had someone to help them home. Lill pointed to a cart waiting by the curb. The driver gave Iven a solemn nod, then went back to arguing with a wheel that would not stay straight.
Back upstairs, Sera had laid a length of thin copper wire beside a small wooden board. A drawing occupied most of the board’s surface: two lines approaching a loop, one continuing through it, the other ending abruptly.
“What is it?” Iven asked.
“A guess.”
He looked at her. “I thought experts didn’t make those.”
“They make them constantly. Good experts label them.” She tapped the broken line. “Your graft has an input path and a return path. When you use the bell, some of the vibration should be directed back into the filament and dissipated through the graft’s own structure. Instead, I think part of it is traveling through surrounding tissue.”
“To my ears.”
“Possibly. We know the muffling follows use and clears with rest. We know the graft was damaged before you took it. We do not yet know the exact break.”
“Could it happen with the winch?”
“It could cause a different kind of trouble. Or no noticeable trouble at all. A vibration is very good at finding places to go.”
He took the chalk from her and drew a short line from the broken end back to the loop. “A bypass.”
“That’s the obvious thing to try.”
“Which means it won’t work?”
“Which means it might. But we need something flexible, insulated, and capable of moving with your arm. If you use bare copper to bridge living filament, I may need to cut it out again.”
He returned the chalk. “You could have led with that.”
“I wanted to see whether you’d suggest it first.”
They examined the graft as carefully as they could without opening his arm. Sera placed a small listening cup against different parts of his forearm while he held the winch pattern ready. She asked him not to pull anything, only to route a little force toward a fixed point and release it. The cup gave a faint irregular tick near his wrist.
“Does that mean anything?” he asked.
“It means it ticks.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’m enjoying having someone present who can draw a useful bypass.” She put the cup down. “Don’t make me regret saying so.”
The line that needed repair was too fine for the copper wire on the board. Sera described a flexible, insulated sleeve used in old clinical fittings. She had none. A proper new one would require College supply, money, and questions neither of them wanted answered.
“I know a place,” Iven said.
“Everyone says that before making me climb six flights of stairs.”
“It’s only four.”
He went out before she could ask which four.
The place was a repair yard squeezed between two warehouses, reached by a staircase so steep that whoever had built it must have disliked knees. Neri was on the top landing with one boot braced against a timber, directing two workers who were lowering a bent support beam onto trestles. Her close-cropped hair was damp at the temples. A carpenter Iven recognized by sight held the lower end of the beam while a rigger eased the line through a pulley.
“Slower, Jem,” Neri said. “If it comes down on Dessa’s foot, I have to fill in a report, and if I have to fill in a report, you’ll both be sorry.”
Dessa Morn glanced up from the line. “You’d be sorry first.”
“That’s why I’m warning you.”
The beam settled without incident. Neri checked the trestles before she looked at Iven.
“If you’re here to borrow a hammer, you owe me the one from last winter.”
“I returned it.”
“You returned a hammer. Mine had a handle.”
“This is a very expensive yard to hold a grudge in.”
“Good. You can pay for it by helping.”
She showed him the beam. One side had been bent under a load, and the replacement would not arrive until the following day. The yard needed the current beam straight enough to move a stack of covered parts before rain came through a gap in the roof. Iven set aside his errand and helped Jem measure the bend. Neri’s first proposal used two screw jacks and a pair of timber blocks. Iven suggested moving the lower block closer to the middle.
“That would twist it,” she said.
“It would spread the force.”
“Along the edge you can see. What happens underneath?”
He crouched. A reinforcing rib ran along the far side, hidden from where he had stood. The block would have pressed against one end of it, forcing the beam to turn.
“I was testing whether you’d noticed that,” he said.
“Wonderful. I passed.”
They set the blocks where she had indicated and worked the jacks a quarter turn at a time. The beam rose, resisted, then shifted with a loud metallic complaint. Iven stopped to check the rib. It had stayed in line. On the third adjustment the beam was straight enough for its temporary use.
Neri wiped her hands. “What do you actually want?”
He described the sleeve without mentioning the graft. A flexible insulated tube, narrow enough to cover a very fine line, able to survive repeated bending and a little heat.
“That’s an odd pipe,” she said.
“It’s for a small machine.”
“Small enough to fit under your sleeve?”
He had forgotten he was still holding his left arm a little stiffly. “You’ve been watching.”
“I supervise people who carry loads over other people. Watching is most of my work.” She considered him for a moment. “I’m not asking where you got it. I’m asking whether you understand what it’ll do if your repair fails.”
“Not entirely.”
“Good. You’d worry me more if you said yes.”
Dessa had a box of old electrical fittings. Most were cracked or too rigid. Near the bottom, Iven found a coil of woven insulating sleeve around a corroded connector. The connector itself was useless, but the sleeve was still supple. He cut away a short section and bent it repeatedly between his fingers. It held.
“What do you want for it?” he asked.
Dessa looked at the beam. “You can return tomorrow and help us move those covered parts.”
Neri pointed to the scrap of paper in Iven’s pocket. “He seems to be collecting debts.”
“Only the interesting ones,” he said.
He took the sleeve to Sera. It was almost what she wanted. Almost, she explained, was a dangerous word in a clinic. They needed to separate the inner strands and test one with a finer filament before allowing it near the graft.
For the rest of the afternoon they worked on a model laid out on the wooden board. Sera brought a small piece of cultivated graft material, no longer viable but still flexible enough to respond to an electrical test. Iven built a miniature loop around it using the insulated strand and a one-way valve taken from an old instrument. The valve was meant to prevent a returning surge from running backward into the point where the output began.
The first test did nothing. The second produced a brief flicker in the measuring needle and an unpleasant smell.
“That’s the insulation,” Sera said.
“I noticed.”
The strand had folded sharply where it joined the valve. Under the small current, the fold had heated. Iven replaced it with a longer curve and tried again. The needle rose smoothly, then fell.
“That looks better.”
Sera did not answer immediately. She pressed her finger to the board beside the valve. “Again.”
He repeated the test. The needle rose. The valve clicked. On the return, the needle jumped backward and struck its stop.
Iven frowned. “It shouldn’t do that.”
“No.”
They checked the connections. The valve was correctly oriented. The strand was intact. When Sera moved the listening cup to the other side of the model, the click came again, followed by a thin rattle.
“The valve closes too late,” she said. “It lets the return hit the junction before it seats.”
“Then a lighter spring.”
“Perhaps. Or a different path into the loop.”
He leaned over the drawing. He could see several ways to make the model neater. None of them promised it would survive inside a moving arm.
The man with the wrapped hand knocked at the door. He had waited through the afternoon, patient enough to become part of the furniture. Sera looked at him, then at the model.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
Iven gathered his tools. “I can come back.”
“I assumed you would.”
He started down the stairs, then stopped. Through the open door he could see Sera place the unfinished model on a shelf where no one would knock it over. She made room by moving a jar, then washed her hands before attending to the waiting man.
He had expected her to demand a payment, or a promise, or the graft itself. Instead she had given him a problem and let him work on it. That was less comfortable than a debt. It meant he would have to decide for himself whether to deserve the time she spent.
Outside, the evening market was coming awake. A woman turned cakes on a griddle; a boy called the price of onions to people who clearly knew the price of onions. Iven bought a small hot cake, tore it in half, and gave the larger piece to Brin, who was sitting on the step waiting for a message.
“Did the fish get up the ladder?” Iven asked.
Brin chewed. “No. It found a lift.”
“Smart fish.”
“It charged everyone else to use it.”
Iven watched a cart wheel pass through the market, its iron rim clicking at each joint in the pavement. One click came late. He followed it with his eyes until the cart vanished around a corner.
Late was the problem. Not the return itself, but the moment at which the valve closed.
He ate the rest of his cake and went back upstairs before Sera could put the model away for good.