The second notice went up on the public board at the guild hall’s door an hour before midnight.
Pell saw it when he went out to take the runner’s message. The public board was a frame of varnished wood beside the hall’s steps, under a lamp, where the guild posted its meetings and the district posted its schedules and anyone could post a notice for a coin. Someone had pasted a fresh sheet in its center, over the reduction schedule. The Directorate’s seal again.
NOTICE. The household load network operated from the Low Brace dormitory is classified as unauthorized surveillance of private residences under clause 31 of the emergency statute. Operators are directed to disconnect it immediately.
Pell read it once. Then again.
The household load network was his. He had built it during the survey: every house in the Low Brace that would answer, connected through the dormitory’s old line to a slate on the dormitory roof. Each house could send one figure an hour, its draw, its temperature, whether anyone was home. He had used it for the reduction. He was using it now, for the shelters.
He took out his list and copied the clause number onto it. Clause 31. He underlined it.
