The display was in the lowest chamber, on the wall above the bench, the panel of dark glass where Orison had read the next line that morning. When Orison lit it, it showed text: columns of it, in the old Founder script, pale green on black, scrolling slowly upward.
“I will translate,” Orison said. “As well as I can. Please stop me if a word makes no sense. Several of them make no sense to me.”
It read the list.
Most of it was what Mara expected from the morning: operations in order, each with a number and a short description. Isolate secondary regulators. Reduce outer shell draw. Close damaged heart’s residual channels. Some of them had already been done; Orison said so, reading the completion marks beside them. Done. Done. Done, I believe. Some had dates beside them that Orison could not convert into anything Mara understood.
Then it came to the next line. The one with the time beside it, the one Mara had written in her margin.
“Withdraw shadow coolant,” Orison read. “From the inner shell circuit.” A pause. “Permit inner shell collapse.”
Mara stood at the bench with both hands flat on its edge and read it in the green script, though she could not read the script, and then she read the translation in her head again.
