The crop dome technician had come straight from her shift.
She came through the blanket curtain from the shelter side at the fifth hour, in a technician’s green overall with the Directorate’s agricultural badge on the shoulder, her hair tied back under a cap, her eyes red. One of the guild leaders had sent for her. She stood at the end of the long table, not sitting, because nobody had offered her a chair and she did not seem to expect one.
“I run the third dome,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, worn thin by a night of shouting over the dome’s fans. “Out past the orchards. The medicinal crops.” She looked at Mara. “I’ve heard you want to cut the orchards’ noon.”
Mara had. She had said so at the yard bench after the load order changed. The orchard districts drew first, off the map, through the private pumps. And they drew a long false noon: their domes lit under artificial light for hours beyond Hearth’s natural day, so the trees would fruit twice a year. Pell’s survey had found it. Cutting the orchards’ noon back to Hearth’s natural day would save more load than any reduction the Low Brace could manage.
