The reference pass was due at the fourth hour, and Mara could not give it.
She stood at the bench in the interface chamber with the dressing still behind her left ear and her right hand on the rail that ran along the bench’s front edge. The manifold’s first seven modules sat in their frames along the bench, bolted, connected by their open seams to the test line. The eighth sat at the end, waiting for its channel.
A reference pass was the last thing before a heart went into service. The traditional forge expected it: every heart, every brace, every repair since the Founders. The smith who made it stood at the bench with a hand on the work and listened, through the graft, to the whole thing ringing at once. And said true, or said what was wrong.
The pass was meant to be hers. It was in the old procedure, and in the keepers’ rules, and in the Compact’s maintenance code, which Lisan had read aloud at the council: a reference listening pass by the responsible smith.
The rail under her hand was cold.
She could feel that. Iron, smooth, cold. She could feel the pump under the bench, faintly, through her palm. She could not hear anything in it at all.
