The habitation cluster released the map an hour after the bus was cut.
It came on the read-only link. Not as a reading. As a file, which Eshel’s rack had never been built to take, so that the rack’s slate filled with an error and then, slowly, with a drawing. Eshel printed it on the dock office’s machine because the slate was too small. It came out on six long sheets, which Sen’s crew chief taped together edge to edge on the bench.
A branching sheet. The old well’s control logic, drawn by hand in the Founders’ time and copied ever since. Lines from the main valve to the outlets, from the outlets to the lamps. At every branch, a rule: if this, then that. Which outlet closed first. Which lamp lost flow when the boundary moved. Which crew was called.
And at its foot, signatures.
A row of them, in different hands, each followed by a post. Containment lead. Habitation lead. Route survey. Collar crew, second. Some of the names were faded almost to nothing. Some were clear.
Mara walked the length of it slowly. Six sheets made a map taller than she was, laid flat. The lines at the top, near the main valve, were drawn bold and certain, in the old route ink that never quite faded. Lower down, toward the lamps, the lines thinned and doubled back, and in places someone had drawn over an earlier line in a different hand, and in other places a…
