The cradle stood in an alcove off the drum, reached by a short branch of the walkway that Mara had not noticed the first time because she had been looking at the heart.
Orison opened the alcove for them. “The cradle is part of the test,” it said. “The ring is tested from the cradle, so the cradle is permitted. Only the cradle. I have locked the arm that reaches the heart.” A pause. “I believe it is the right arm. I have checked twice.”
It was a standing frame. Mara had read about it in notebook I without being able to picture it, and now she saw why. It was like nothing in the yard. A cage of pale alloy bars, taller than a person and a little wider, bolted to the alcove floor, open at the front. Inside it, at shoulder and hip and knee height, padded rests jutted from the bars, shaped to a body standing upright. There were grips for the hands at waist height. Above the head, a curved plate, like the brim of a hat. And on the frame’s front edge, at about chest height, a small round platform on an arm, swung out, with a clamp on it: where the work went.
