Eshel’s hand shook as he read the reservoir figure.
It was past the fourth hour now. The guild leaders had sat through the signs, and the corrected sheet, and Caldris’s request, and Mara’s note. Halvek had agreed to put the note to a vote. Before the vote, he had asked Eshel to read the key figure aloud, so the record would have it in the analyst’s own voice: the pressure building behind the command well, on the corrected model, the number that showed the Custodian’s plan making things worse.
Eshel stood at the table’s head with the corrected sheet in front of him. He had been standing for more than an hour. He had not slept since Sable. His bandaged hand held the sheet, and the sheet trembled very slightly in the lamplight.
He read the figure.
“Behind the command well,” he said. “On the corrected model. The excess load there rises by—” and he read the number, and then the unit, “—megawatts per day of closure.”
He began to read it a second time, as he always did.
“Stop,” the engineer said.
On the screen above the table, the panel’s engineer had looked up from her slate. Her voice came through the relay sharp and clear.
