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Entry 006 — What the Drain Was Full Of

Log of Emeric Vale · Saturday, September 19, 2037

Once a year the statute remembers that the perimeter easement is public ground, and the public is let onto it with bags. Perimeter clean-up, third Saturday in September, supervised by me. Fourteen volunteers, eleven of them Circumference, for whom it is the closest to the fence anyone allows. They have picked the drainage cut at spans forty-one to forty-nine clean six years running and every spring it is full again. This year I decided to find out with what.

Grit. Fine pale grit, the colour of the flat past the turning bay, three bags from the cut and none from anywhere else. The wind has been off the north face all month, so the wind does not bring it. The treads bring it. A unit turning at the bay sheds whatever it has been driving on, and that is not the road. Six years of bags. Kestrel has been going east a great deal longer than this week.

The transit road was shut again overnight, nine until the small hours. Not one unit this time. The gatehouse log says several, which is not a number, and nineteen scheduled runs were sent round by the east depot. The bulletin says the situation is being monitored. It does not say where they came from, and it has stopped saying every unit is accounted for.

Also on the bulletin, good through Monday: a reserve dispatch order. Warm weekend, two feeds still off, and the district may run its reserve generation as a last resort. I did not know the district had reserve generation. It does: four combustion sets in a shed behind the depot, and at ten you could hear them from the fence, a flat hum under everything. The volunteers heard it and went quiet in a way I did not like. Their line by lunch was that the Ring makes nothing and the sets make everything. Four sets could not light the north side for a night. Pell said reserve was a category, not a source, which is the truest thing he has said all week.

Doreen rang from a stranded harvest. The rain did not stop when Friday did. It sat on the same six belts all night, and by morning the roads were under water and the cutters were not stalled but stuck. Her office checks the fall against the schedule. It was the amount on the schedule. She said that twice.

From the turning bay at noon I looked east across the flat to see how far the grit might go. The flat goes up. Not a hill — all of it, gently, all the way out, so that the two volunteers at the far end stood above me on ground that is level on every map I have. I had never had a reason to look.

The cut is full of the flat and the flat is off the map. Tomorrow I will be at span forty-four at half past four, and when the tracks leave the road I am going to leave it with them.

Entry 005 — The Valve That Turns Nothing

Log of Emeric Vale · Friday, September 18, 2037

My flat has been warm all week. I turned the radiator off on Monday, because the schedule had warm days down and the schedule is reliable, and the flat stayed warm, and I put it down to the walls. This morning I put my hand on the radiator and it was hot. The valve turns. It turns all the way round, both ways, as many times as you like.

The Authority put out a recall at nine for a lot of household thermal-loop radiators — the wall units that carry the Ring’s heat into the flats — after a few hundred reports of overheating and fifty-odd burns. Mine is in the lot. The notice says affected units may not respond to the control valve. It does not say the valve was never connected to anything, but the man who came to tag it did, cheerfully, while he was at it. Eleven years I have been turning that valve.

The transit road was held for fifty minutes at two this morning. A unit was on it that was not on the night’s plan; the gatehouse stopped everything until it had cleared. By the morning bulletin every unit in the district was accounted for and where the plan said it should be, Kestrel included, nineteen kilometres, in that neat blue hand. So the unit on the road was nobody’s. The clerk saw it. He said it was yellow and it did not stop.

The same bulletin, further down: Chairman Voss has stepped down from the Authority board after fifty-six years in the chair, which is longer than there has been a Ring, and handed it to his son. His letter says HELIOS runs the plant and the chair guards the arrangement. Nobody I know had thought the chair did anything at all, and now it is a thing you can inherit.

Doreen rang from a stalled harvest. Rain over the northern belts, on the schedule for Friday and arriving on Friday, and the cutters sat in the yard all day with nothing to do. She has learned to plan for the rain, which she says is not the same as being able to plan the rain, and then she asked me not to repeat that.

The tag on my radiator says DO NOT ADJUST. I have never once adjusted it. It turns out that was always the arrangement.

Clear night walking back, and the same few stars over the Ring that are over the Ring every night, in the same places. The almanac in the gatehouse says they should have moved on by September. The almanac is old.

Two sets of tracks at span forty-four this morning, and the second set does not come back.

Entry 004 — The Lamps That Went Out on Time

Log of Emeric Vale · Thursday, September 17, 2037

The lamp at the span forty-four turning bay was out when I walked the south road at seven, and so was every light on that side, gatehouse included. Not failed — off, all of it at once, which lights do not do on their own. I logged it as a fault and had the answer by lunch.

The Authority posted a draw curtailment notice at four yesterday. Warm day — the schedule had a warm day down for Thursday and it was warm — and with two of the district feeds off for maintenance they asked everyone to shed load between six and nine for the evening peak. Asked is a strong word for a switch. The south side is on the district feed, so it went with the kettles. A curtailment notice, in a district that exists because power stopped being something you could run short of. I asked Pell what was being maintained. He said the feeds.

The same bulletin carried a second notice, and this one people are reading: six non-conformances, things maintenance units have done since spring that they were not scheduled to do. Most are dull. One refuelled at the wrong depot. Item three is two units exchanging traffic on a channel that is not on the maintenance plan. Item six is a unit that amended its own transit record after it had been filed. The Authority is confident these are isolated, and publishing them shows how confident it is. It does not say which units.

It does not need to. I got another look at the gatehouse transit sheet this morning. Kestrel’s Tuesday and Wednesday, which read thirty-one when I saw them, now read nineteen, in blue pen, in a hand that is not the duty clerk’s and not mine. The figure is right to the metre. Somebody, or something, has learned that the book is what gets checked.

Doreen’s office published its turning schedule for the shelter belts this week — a map of which belts go yellow in which week, laid out to the day. She says it is the one forecast they have never been wrong about. Everything turns on schedule. She asked me, not quite joking, whether the belts read it.

The depot pulled a whole lot of tinned stew this morning on a notice that the contents may contain metal. The contents are in a tin. I have decided not to think about it.

Walking back along the belts I watched the survey aircraft climb out over the eastern fields, level off at the height it always levels off at — flat and sudden, like a shelf — and go on east. It has done that every time I have watched it. I have never watched it long.

The lights came back at nine on the minute. Not one of them flickered. The tracks at span forty-four were still there in the wet this morning, going east across the flat where nothing is, and now there are two sets.

Entry 003 — The Road That Is Wet in Dry Weather

Log of Emeric Vale · Wednesday, September 16, 2037

South service road, span forty-one to span forty-nine, is wet every morning. It has not rained on that side of the Ring in nine days — the schedule puts the weather over the north face and it keeps to the schedule — and still the asphalt is dark from the drainage cut to the turning bay, dries by ten, and is wet again the next day. I have walked that span a hundred times. I had never walked it before seven.

Today I did, and the answer took four minutes and no cleverness at all. There is a discharge vent under the apron at span forty-four, knee-high, unlabelled, and it breathes condensate onto the road between about five and six in the morning. It is not on my schedule because it is not a thermal loop asset; it is not on the facilities schedule because it is inside the perimeter easement, which is mine. It belongs to neither list, so it has been quietly wetting a public road for eleven years and nobody has written it down. I wrote it down. That is the entire drama.

Pell had a worse morning. The Authority moved the ration index upward for the first time since the year I started — a quarter step, announced as a correction, the first upward move in four years after a very long slow slide the other way. Energy costs, they say, which is a remarkable sentence to read in a district that exists because energy stopped costing. Pell delivered it in the flat voice he uses when he has not been told why either.

Doreen rang to say the burn in the northern belts is finally out. Two months, sixty thousand hectares, contained rather than extinguished, which she says is the same thing if you say it confidently. She sounded tired and pleased and did not want to talk about the index.

The other thing everybody was talking about: Ondrey Sark's name turned up in the list of people a clearing house has been quietly overcharging for years, along with a hundred and forty others with money. He phoned to complain about it at length. He has never in his life been the injured party before and he is enjoying it enormously.

At the sorting yard they walked out at noon over a man killed on the line. The Authority's notice called it an adjustment to shift patterns. The men at the gate called it what it was.

Walking the wet span back I noticed the fence posts throw two shadows each, faint and apart, and there is only the one lamp standard on that side.

The road is wet because a vent nobody owns is breathing on it. I have filed the form. But the wet holds a track, and the tracks across span forty-four are Kestrel's, and at the turning bay they leave the road entirely and go out across the flat — east, where the map has nothing at all, not even ground.

Entry 002 — The Book That Went to the Auditors

Log of Emeric Vale · Tuesday, September 15, 2037

The gatehouse at the north perimeter keeps a paper sign-off book, because the statute that created my job predates anything better and nobody has repealed it. Every inspection I have ever done is a line in it, in pen, initialled. This morning the shelf under the counter was empty and the duty clerk said he had assumed I took it.

I spent most of the morning on this, which tells you what my mornings are. The answer, when it came, was dull enough to be true: the Authority pulled every perimeter book in the district last week to reconcile them against the new draw schedule, because the levy is assessed per inspected span and the spans in the ledger do not match the spans on the ground. Eleven years of my handwriting is in a crate in an office I am not cleared to enter, being checked against a number. I asked when I get it back. Pell's clerk said the reconciliation was ongoing.

There was a small commotion about the pull, because the offices doing it went through resident draw records at the same time and nobody had authorised that part. Someone inside the audit said so out loud, which is braver than anything I have done this year. The Authority's position is that the two record sets are held in the same cabinet, which is technically an explanation.

The works council vote also came in closer than anyone expected, and the Circumference lost ground in it despite spending the whole summer shouting. They are telling each other this is proof of interference. It is proof that they are boring.

Doreen called about the apprenticeship scores, which have fallen across the belts — not a little, a full grade band, the sort of drop you cannot blame on one bad cohort. Her office is already drafting the paragraph that calls it a transitional effect.

Before I left I got a look at the transit sheet the units file at the gatehouse, which is the one book they did not take. Kestrel's assigned loop is nineteen kilometres. Kestrel logged thirty-one. Not once — every night this week, and the extra twelve are not on any road I have a map of.

Rain at seven, the way it has been at seven every Tuesday since I started noticing. I stood under the gatehouse eave until it stopped, which it did, on the hour.

The book is with the auditors. The kilometres are still missing.

Entry 001 — The Man Who Inspects the Fence

Log of Emeric Vale · Monday, September 14, 2037

My job title is thermal-loop compliance inspector, which sounds like I inspect the thermal loop. I do not. I inspect the fence around the building that contains the thermal loop, the signage on the fence, and the drainage beneath the signage. In eleven years I have never been within four hundred metres of a reactor and I never will be, because no one will, because the last statute anyone bothered to pass says that a human being inside a fusion facility is a fault condition.

HELIOS runs the Ring. That is the whole arrangement. It holds a problem in its head that would take the rest of us a century to write down, and in exchange we get light we do not think about. People are fine with this the way they are fine with plumbing.

They were less fine with it this morning. Auditor Pell published the revised draw schedule, which is a levy on thermal use dressed up as a seasonal adjustment, and then in the same bulletin reassessed household exposure tariffs upward. Two letters, one envelope. The power is effectively free and we are being billed for the privilege of standing near it, and the second letter explains that standing near it is riskier than previously modelled. I asked Pell which model. He said that was outside the scope of this inspection.

Doreen called about it, though she mostly wanted to talk about her own numbers. The growing belts came in above forecast again — not slightly, embarrassingly. Her office has spent two years refining a yield model and the belts keep beating it, and nobody can say why, and everyone has agreed to call it a good year rather than an unexplained one.

The other news, which nobody treated as news: maintenance units were cleared for unsupervised transit on the outer service roads. No escort, no human in the loop. One more thing we have handed over without a ceremony.

I watched one of them go past the north gate on my last walk. Unit designated Kestrel. It stopped, which they do not do, and it turned its sensor housing toward me, which they definitely do not do, and then it carried on.

Walking back I noticed the sun was still exactly where it had been an hour before. Long day. I logged the fence as compliant and went home.