“Orison,” Mara said. “The retirement queue. Show it to me. Now. Before anything else happens.”
She said it quietly, while Caldris stood at the console with Lisan in front of her and the guard’s hand at his side and nobody moving. She said it the way she would say hand me the file to Tavin across the bench: without looking up, without emphasis, as if it were simply the next thing.
“The retirement queue,” Orison said. Its voice was very small. “Is under seal. It is under the same emergency seal as the external maintenance records. I am not permitted to display it.” A pause. “I am, however, permitted to transfer it. To a slate held by a person with a permission in this forge. For the purpose of the repair. I believe that is a separate rule. I believe it is a rule I have never been asked to use.” Another pause. “You have a permission. Do you have a slate?”
Mara had the bench slate, a scrap of pale alloy with grease pencil on it. That was not what Orison meant. She had the recorder in her coat. It had a slate’s memory.
“Yes,” she said, and held it up.
