The file went out through the maintenance line while they watched.
Eshel stood at the laboratory’s desk with his slate connected to the station’s port and read the upload’s progress aloud as it went, as he read everything. The deposition: Iona’s voice, her face, every frame, both recordings, the first and the shorter second one. The alcove’s timestamp, the stamp that said when each had been made. The trial logs from the racks. The drone’s record of compartment seven. The pump log with its eleven hours.
“It’s going to a routing list,” he said. “I built it from my office’s old contacts. The grid timing section’s distribution list. Every server my section ever sent a report to.” He kept his eyes on the slate. “I’m saying so, for the record. So it’s clear where it’s going and who chose the addresses. I did.”
The upload’s bar crept across the slate’s screen. Mara watched it over his shoulder. On the wall, Caldris watched too. She had not said anything since do not transmit. She sat behind her desk on Meridian with her hands flat on its surface, the way she had sat at the bench at Lorn when she read the word withdraw, and watched the status line at the bottom of her display.
