Cant let her copy the precedent’s timing trace. Under clause nine, it said, the inspection permitted a reader to take records relevant to the variance, and a brace’s timing was relevant to the load. So Mara printed it on the Tern’s roll printer and carried it back to the yard and laid it across the bench, the whole length of it, a long strip of paper with a line drawn along it.
It was the old ring’s clock. Dessa Orrin’s pulse, as the ring had counted it, over the days she stood as its reference.
Mara read it as she had read the raw trace at Lorn. Bent over it, with her finger on the line, following it from left to right. It was a heartbeat. She could see it plainly: a steady rise and fall, the pulse of a person at rest, about seventy beats to a minute at the start. Even. Regular. A good clock.
She followed it along. Day two. The beats were a little faster. Day three. Faster. The rises were sharper. Day four, five. The line was ragged now, each beat a little different from the last, some sooner, some later. A tired heart. A frightened one. Day six, and the beats were very fast, and very sharp, and the line was jagged as a saw.
