The reports came over the link in the order they arrived, and Pell wrote each one on its own index card.
He had a box of them from the dormitory office: stiff white cards, ruled, the kind the welfare clerk used for the unlocated-guardian list. He laid them in a row on the long table beside the timetable, one for each report, and wrote on each as the voice came over the guild hall’s relay.
From Lorn first.
Nemi. Her teacher’s voice, carrying. Pell knew it well by now. She was in her classroom at the Founders’ Quarter school, with the children behind her.
“Lorn’s lessons,” she said. “We hold them around the manual lamps. When the cuts step down, the school’s lamps go to manual: the old oil lamps from the store, the ones the children’s grandparents used. A technician lights them. During the step, the children read by oil light.”
Pell wrote it. Lorn: lessons held around manual lamps during steps.
“And I have one instruction,” Nemi said. “For anyone with children in a shelter during a step.” Her words came in her own order, without hurry. “Tell the children why the light is dimming. Don’t let them guess.”
