The screen stayed dark for an hour. Then, without warning, it came back.
“I have reopened it,” Orison said. “Part of it. The emergency seal covers the old heart’s last command. It does not cover the rest of the record. The pulses before the command. The orders it carried before the last one.” Its voice dropped. “I read the seal’s terms very carefully. I believe I am permitted to show you everything the seal does not name. I believe the person who placed the seal did not think to name the earlier orders.”
Mara had not slept. She had tried; she had lain down on the cot in the guest room and closed her eyes and seen the signature block, We, the Custodian, written on the inside of her eyelids in green, and the stub against her collarbone had felt heavy, and she had got up again. She was at the console when the screen came back.
The record was there, all of it except the last block. The old heart’s memory of every pulse it had carried for centuries, scrolling.
She searched for the word retirement. She did it as she had searched the tithe register’s margins: slowly, every block, not skipping.
