54.

Eighteen Minutes

Sabik, Year 200 AGH

I. What a Hand Is For

Month 6

The clamp lay beside a block on the table, with room enough around it for a much more interesting object.

Asta Henwick put her bag under her chair. She had expected a model of the approach, or a view of the room large enough to stand before. The survey provider had hired this space for the preparation, and someone had moved the chairs to make a clear way between the table and the door. Through the open window she could hear a load being set down on the quay. The men outside disagreed about where the next one should go. She knew the sound of that disagreement well enough to picture the load remaining exactly where it was while they had it.

Here there was a clamp.

“This one?” she asked.

Leth Saren pushed it nearer her. “This one.”

The repair-shop proprietor had brought the block too. Her hand stayed on it while Asta picked up the tool, as though she wanted the two considered together. At the other end of the table, Aven Dorran was trying to arrange a view of the underwater room so that everyone could see it without his fingers covering the entrance.

The proposed job was to leave a sealed craft beneath the sea and stand on a dry floor. Two qualified workers, a short protected task, and a way back through the hatch they had come out of. Asta had been selected as one of the workers. She had said yes to the paid preparation before she had seen the clamp.

She turned the screw back a little, opening the jaws.

“You don't want anything fitted to the floor?”

“No,” Leth said. “The block comes with you and comes back.”

“And you want it clamped to what?”

“Just held by the clamp. Use it. Release it. Bring it home.”

Asta looked at her, then set the block between the jaws. The tool was sound. She could tell that much before the screw had traveled far: no catch in the turning, no unhelpful sideways movement where she wanted the pressure to arrive straight. She supported the loose block with her left hand and turned with her right.

The first contact was a small interruption at her fingertips. She eased her grip on the block, settled it square and went on until it was held. There was no need to wrench the handle. The tool had already given her the answer.

Leth leaned nearer.

“There.”

“Yes.”

Asta lifted the clamped block enough to show it, lowered it again and reversed the turn. The pressure left cleanly. She set tool and block apart.

“I can do that.”

“I thought you could.”

It was an ordinary reply, without the slight smile Asta had expected. Leth had watched the whole operation with more interest than Asta had given it. Asta glanced at the picture farther down the table.

She had seen Stillwater Hall in the selection material: paving and piers in a constructed space under the water, an open span where the sea stayed on its own side. The first time she had looked, she had searched the picture for the piece that would make sense of it. She had looked for that piece again the next day. Nothing in the preparation offered it.

Aven turned the view toward her.

“From the outward position, would you be able to look farther this way?”

He pointed toward the right-hand opening. His finger obscured it.

“Move your hand,” said the other worker.

Aven did.

The man opposite Asta leaned forward, his tied hair sliding over one shoulder. He had introduced himself as Bren Ollis when they arrived, then asked whether she had seen the moving record. She had seen the views provided for selection. Apparently that had not been the answer he wanted.

“The stationary watch didn't give us that angle,” Aven said. “A person standing farther out might.”

The supervisor laid a hand beside the picture.

“The working place hasn't been cleared yet. We won't choose it from a useful camera angle.”

“I'm asking what we might see from it when it is.”

“Then we'll answer when we have the place.”

Aven nodded, though he kept looking at the opening.

He managed and partly owned a cargo boat. That was how the introduction had put it, and Asta had liked the exactness. A boat was a thing with particular claims on a person's time. He and Leth had been buying work at Stillwater for years, together for some of it and separately for some. They had come to this table wanting something from the two people who might stand outside.

Bren touched the edge of the view, away from the opening.

“Is this where the animals passed?”

“One of the recorded passages was there,” Aven said. “You haven't had the relevant watch yet.”

“No. I was wondering which side we'd be on.”

The supervisor drew the picture back into the center.

“You will both see the permitted part during preparation.”

Asta put her thumb against the clamp's handle. It seemed an unnecessarily long conversation to have before establishing which of them would take the tool out first. Bren was still studying the picture. His face was lean through the cheeks, his nose long and gently curved; his hazel eyes remained on the small space Aven's hand had uncovered. He looked interested enough to spend the whole visit there.

The supervisor turned to Asta.

“Show me the return.”

She placed the clamp beside the block.

“From there?”

“From your working position, in the protection.”

Asta looked down at the table and understood the question she had been answering. She had shown Leth a hand tool. The supervisor wanted the worker who would use it.

“I'll need the mat on the floor.”

“Yes.”

She rose and moved her chair out of the way. She was short, and the seat had put her at a comfortable height for the loose block. On the floor the same work asked for her knees, her balance and room to bring her long torso forward. Asta placed the mat where she could reach it from the clear space by the door.

The chosen hand protection had a familiar weight when she put it on. She checked the fit before taking up the clamp again. The handle did not lie against her skin now. Her fingers closed farther before she felt sure of it.

“We aren't running the whole exercise today,” the supervisor said. “Give me the positions.”

Asta indicated where the block would lie, where she would lower herself to work, and where the hatch worker would be. Bren came out from the table to stand at that second place. He did not take the position she had imagined for him. He stood slightly farther back, leaving a clearer passage.

“There?”

She considered the route between them.

“Yes. Keep that side open.”

He shifted his foot.

She picked up the block. It had been easy to let it rest across her bare palm at the table. Protected, she had to give it more of her hand. She set it down, opened the clamp and brought the jaws around it. The first fine contact disappeared into the covering. She went on through the turning until the resistance was available, held it, then released.

Leth had come around the table. She watched without speaking.

Asta brought the objects toward Bren, stopped at the distance where a handoff would be possible, then looked back at the mat she had left behind.

“That too,” she said.

“Everything you take out,” the supervisor answered.

“I know. I'm deciding the order.”

“Good.”

Bren held out his hand for the block. She did not give it to him yet.

“Show me where you'd put it.”

He turned toward the space representing the cabin, checked the passage and changed the receiving hand.

“Here. Then the clamp.”

That was better. Asta passed him the block, then the tool, and went back for the mat. The distance was only a few paces across a hired room. She was aware of the chairs pushed aside, the gritty sound of a boot sole and Leth watching her empty hands when she returned.

It was something she could do. It was also more than the turn she had made while sitting down.

She took off the hand protection and flexed her fingers. Her deep-brown skin showed a lighter crease where the covering had pressed. She rubbed it once and picked up the clamp barehanded again.

“How long outside?” she asked.

The supervisor described the short visit they were preparing toward. About eighteen minutes for the working sequence, subject to the tests and the supported opening, with a return that did not depend on finishing everything they had hoped to see.

Asta listened to the remaining conditions. She asked about the proposed exchange of positions, and Bren asked how they would confirm it when a view of the other's face wasn't enough. Leth wanted to know whether both would perform the tool task. Aven returned to what could be recorded from their permitted place.

When the supervisor asked whether Asta wished to continue, she said she did.

Walking out afterward, she found Bren waiting while a cart crossed the doorway. He had the patient posture of someone who could see the cart had nowhere else to go.

“It's a very small block,” he said.

“It fits in the hand.”

“I meant in that room.”

The cart cleared. Asta stepped into the light from the quay.

“So will we.”

He considered that, then came through after her.

She liked the feel of the clamp while it was working. She wanted to be the one who carried it away from the hatch first, before anyone had shown her what it looked like to do that.

* * *

The recovered bench was occupying the part of Leth's workshop where a customer usually tried to put down an object larger than the space left for it.

She had moved two smaller jobs to make room for the inspection. They were still jobs. One had a promised collection time that afternoon, and the other had arrived with a note asking whether it could be ready sooner than the time already agreed. Leth had put that note under the object so it would stop catching her eye.

An employee was rubbing the bench's outer face with a cloth.

“Leave that for now,” she said. “I want the release open.”

“I was getting this out of the way.”

The worker showed her the residue on the cloth, then folded it and set it aside. Leth had mistaken the movement for polishing. She bent to see the area that had been cleaned.

“All right. Thank you. Can you hold it here?”

They exposed the part together. She waited while the worker shifted to a better grip, then took the piece that came free. The rebuilt release was unremarkable to look at. A visitor who knew nothing about it would have passed over it on the way to something with more moving parts.

In 197 it had given her plenty to think about.

The failure had left her paying for another round of work on an arrangement that already cost more than she liked to add up at one sitting. She could still recall the shape of the failed motion in the record. The release had not completed what she had bought it to do. She had watched the attempt again, then watched the same absence of completion while someone explained what could be rebuilt.

They rebuilt it. In 198 they tested the revised arrangement. In 199 she had taken a customer's pump and promised to be responsible for its replacement if the experimental repair did not return a working one.

Now the employee waited for her to turn the release.

Leth did. It moved as it should.

“Again?”

“Please.”

They reset it. The worker was watching the contact rather than her face. She liked that, and moved her hand so it did not block the view.

The whole undertaking had acquired a collection of things people wanted to look at. In 189, when she and Aven first subscribed money to the investigation of the offshore rise, there had been little worth displaying. They had paid from the businesses that kept them occupied ashore. Their Open Floor Partnership was a shared purchase before it was a name anyone said with interest.

Then there had been the years of guide work, and dummy placements that failed to put the intended thing where it had to go. From 190 through 193 she had become familiar with the difference between a promising picture and a usable approach. Aven was willing to spend time with pictures. So was she, up to the point where she wanted to put something through them.

The closed craft had reached the paving for four hours in 194. There had been two six-hour visits the following year. The visitors called the place Stillwater Hall. Leth had learned the name with the rest of what came back; she had never looked through the cabin frame herself.

When she began the repair experiment in 196, Aven did not invest.

He had said it plainly. He wanted to see more of the place, but he did not want to buy her repair venture. She had been annoyed for an afternoon and had continued to be annoyed by particular costs afterward. That did not change his answer. They agreed paid use of the carriage in which he still had his share, and she paid for the experiment from new repair-shop earnings.

“Is it meant to have this much movement?” the employee asked.

Leth looked at the indicated part.

“There, yes. Hold it through the release. You'll see where it stops.”

The worker repeated the motion, slower this time. Leth watched the hand remain steady when the piece cleared.

“There?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it might be wear.”

“I'd rather you asked.”

She did not need to add the years to that answer. The employee was already bringing the parts back into their proper relation.

The pump in 199 had worked.

Leth remembered the customer standing through its ordinary service trial, paying attention to the pump instead of to her. The owner had bought a repair. The fact that this repair had traveled through the sea to a dry place below it had not changed the use the pump was needed for.

She had expected to talk while they waited. Once the test began, she found she could not make herself look away long enough to judge whether the customer wanted conversation. It went on doing its work. After all the arrangements that had brought it to this point, the next thing happened as it ought to happen, and then the next.

The owner asked a question about taking it back.

“When the trial is finished,” Leth said.

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I'll arrange for it.”

That was the response. No one asked her to explain the open waterline or the recovered bench. The customer stayed until the trial was complete, received the working pump and paid the fee.

Leth had wanted to touch the casing afterward. There had been no reason to. It was on its way back to the work it had been bought to do, and she had stood a moment with an empty space before her.

The fee had gone into the repair account. The costs had stayed where they were.

“Can we put this back now?” the employee asked.

“Yes. Let me see the underside once more.”

The worker held it for her. Leth checked, nodded and helped settle the piece. A call came from the other side of the shop about the afternoon collection. She answered it, then looked at the note beneath the second waiting job.

“Not sooner,” she called. “The time we gave them.”

The employee smiled, recognizing the request.

“And this bench?”

“Stays here when the crew go out.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

Leth laid the inspection material where it would go with the bench.

The human trial was a different question. She had seen Asta's bare fingers stop the clamp at the exact point where it held. She had watched the same hand inside protection, turning a little farther before the contact became available. Leth knew that movement from her own work. She wanted to see it performed on that paving, by a person who could change a grip because the grip needed changing.

There were further things she might one day want to take there. She did not choose them now.

The employee put the cloth back to work on the face of the bench. This time Leth left the cleaning alone. She went to the ordinary job with the promised afternoon collection and found the part she needed exactly where she had set it down before the inspection.

* * *

By the end of month six, Asta could set down the mat without looking at the place where its nearer edge would fall.

She looked anyway. The practice floor was plain, the hatch mock-up familiar, and Bren stood where he had stood a dozen times before. Her body had begun to anticipate the lowering movement. She knew where the block would be when her hand went to it and how much room her protected knees required.

The clamp seated. She released it, placed it on the mat and looked back toward the hatch.

Bren confirmed her return. She came to him with the recovered kit in the agreed order, and they completed the exercise without anything touching the boundary of the marked working space.

The instructor asked them to change roles.

Asta took the hatch position. Bren carried the kit out, set it down and lowered himself to the work. He was a little more angular in the movement than she was. His short body folded in a different sequence, the bend coming visibly through his legs before his upper body inclined. He had secured his fine brown hair before putting on the protection; no loose piece escaped to help her recognize the man she had spoken to outside.

She watched him open the clamp. He set the block between its jaws, adjusted the position and began to turn.

She already knew what he would do next. That was the difficulty with watching the exercise. Her hands had an expectation of their own. She could feel the action waiting in them while someone else completed it.

Bren held the block, released it and set the clamp down. He looked back.

His hand moved.

She answered.

He remained where he was.

Asta shifted toward the exchange position.

“Hold,” said the instructor.

She stopped. Bren's hand was still raised.

For a moment nobody moved except the instructor, who came nearer the mock-up without entering the space between them.

“Stay where you are. What did you ask?”

“For the exchange,” Bren said quickly. “She saw me.”

“What did you understand?” the instructor asked Asta.

“That he was ready to come back.” She looked at Bren. “I was making room.”

“I hadn't started.”

“I'd said yes.”

He glanced at her lowered hand. She raised it again.

“This.”

“Yes, I saw it. I didn't know if you were telling me you were ready or just that you'd seen me.”

Asta kept her hand there. Someone was moving equipment in another part of the preparation space; she wanted to finish before they came to ask for the mock-up.

“I thought you were telling me you were ready.”

“I was asking whether you were.”

The instructor waited. Bren's hand was still raised, and the passage Asta had started to clear lay empty beside her.

“Do it once more,” she said.

The instructor kept them in place. Bren made the motion again, deliberately enough that Asta could see the part she had supplied for herself.

“I was reading that as a statement.”

“I know that now.”

There was an edge to his reply. She had been waiting for the easy agreement she usually got from him. Instead he was still holding up his hand. She looked at it, wanting the movement she had made to have been clear, and could see how quickly she had looked past his signal to the walk she expected him to make.

Asta turned toward the instructor.

“Can I show him?”

“In place.”

She did not repeat the gesture as she had made it. She gave Bren the version she had thought he was giving her, then showed where she expected his next movement to begin.

He watched her through the whole demonstration.

“That's not what I was doing,” he said.

“I can see it.”

“You weren't looking for the question.”

“No.”

The word came out more abruptly than she intended. She was hot inside the protection, and she had been ready to continue. Neither fact helped.

She held his gaze long enough to make the next question an actual question.

“Can you show me the confirmation you were waiting for?”

He did.

This time she watched until he had finished.

The instructor moved them back to the point before the exchange. They stayed there long enough to make the whole confirmation visible, with no forward motion added to give the answer its meaning. Then Bren rose, approached the hatch and took the position Asta had been holding. She waited until he occupied it before going out to the tools.

It was not a difficult walk. The clarity was almost irritating.

She lowered herself to the mat. The block lay where he had left it, its useful faces turned a little differently from the way she preferred. She turned it, set the clamp, completed the fastening and release, and came back through the same confirmed sequence.

This time they finished.

They removed enough of the protection to speak comfortably while the instructor made the practice notes. Bren rubbed at the place where his tied hair had pressed against the back of his head. Asta worked her short coils clear of the covering and let the air reach her scalp.

“I should have asked you to repeat it,” he said.

“You did stop.”

“I stopped moving. I didn't ask.”

“Ask next time.”

“I will.”

The instructor looked up from the notes.

“Again from the beginning?”

Asta reached for the hand protection.

“Can I stay at the hatch first?”

Bren glanced at her. “I thought you wanted the outward work.”

“I do.”

“All right.”

He took the kit.

At the hatch, she watched him prepare the mat. The outward job gave her hands something exact to do. From here she had to know which of his movements mattered to her before she could know when to move herself. When he turned his head, she could see that he was looking at the block and not at her. When he brought his hand up later, the difference was plain.

She answered, waited and saw the answer received.

They made the exchange.

Through the following practices she learned the small differences in how his body returned to standing. He learned where she would pause to settle her balance before bringing the kit back. Neither had to turn those observations into an instruction to the other. If something was unclear, they asked.

There were exercises in which they completed the whole sequence and had nothing much to say afterward. Asta liked those more than she had expected. The instructor could name an adjustment, they could make it, and the next repetition would carry the change. Sometimes Bren talked while putting the equipment away, then stopped in the middle of a sentence because he needed both hands and his attention elsewhere. When the piece was properly placed, he continued exactly where he had left off.

One afternoon in month seven, after their practice had ended, Asta found herself holding an empty section of mat while he finished folding the other side.

“You can let go,” he said.

“Have you got it?”

“Yes.”

She released it.

He looked at the empty space between her hands and the folded mat.

“That was a good answer,” she said.

For a moment he seemed to be deciding whether she was making fun of him. Then his mouth lifted.

“I was very sure.”

She went to get her bag.

They were both hungry by then. Bren had been asking whether a place near the quay was still serving at that hour. Asta knew it was, and when he asked which way he should go, she put her bag over her shoulder and went with him.

* * *

The bread arrived folded over itself, holding its heat in the soft middle. Bren opened it at once.

“You'll let it cool,” Asta said.

“Only until I can eat it.”

She left her half folded. There were beans in a shallow dish between them, and a serving spoon with a handle too short to stay clear of the food if anyone let it slide. Asta set the handle against the rim. Bren moved his cup to make room, then moved it again when the server put down hers.

They had chosen the table for the clear spaces on either side of it. Now the dishes occupied nearly all of those spaces. Asta took her bag off the spare stool and put it under her feet.

For a while they ate.

The soft bread pulled apart unevenly, leaving a thinner piece in one hand. She used that first. Bren broke off a browned edge and bent over his plate when it fractured into crumbs.

“Which part are you looking forward to?” he asked.

“The food?”

“Below.”

“Taking the tool out.”

“I thought so.”

“You asked.”

“I know. I meant which part of that.”

Asta lifted a little more of the beans. She had expected him to begin on the animals. He was waiting for her answer. She considered it while she ate.

“Getting it seated.”

“You do that here.”

“Yes.”

He waited, and she found she wanted to give him more than that.

“There'll be a moment when it's holding. I'll know it in my hand. That's the part.”

Bren looked at her fingers, then at his own bread.

“Even if nobody ever saw the picture?”

“I'd still have done it.”

He nodded and broke another piece from his bread.

“Would you?” she asked.

“Would I what?”

“Still want to go. What would you want?”

“To see one of the animals keep going.”

“Keep going where?”

“I don't know.”

“You've chosen a very incomplete thing.”

“I haven't chosen where it goes.”

She tore a piece from the middle of the bread. “You know what I mean.”

“I'd like to be there while it was doing whatever it was doing. Without having to bring it back to the point where the picture starts.”

He took another bite. Asta pictured him at the table in the preparation room, waiting over the small part of the view he had not yet been allowed to see move.

“It might go straight out of sight.”

“It might.”

“That would satisfy you?”

“I'd probably want to see longer.”

She laughed.

He swallowed. “You wouldn't want the clamp to go on tightening forever.”

“No. I'd like that very much to stop.”

They both looked down at her hand, which had made a small finishing turn above the plate. She let it fall back to the table and used it to steady her cup.

The bread had a dark crescent along one edge. Asta separated it from the soft part and laid it on the side of her plate.

Bren looked at it.

“Are you leaving that?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have it?”

She passed it over.

He ate it with the pleased attention he had given to his own first edge. Asta broke off another piece of the soft center.

“It's dry,” she said.

“I know.”

“And part of it's nearly burned.”

“That part's good.”

“I don't like that part.”

“You haven't had this one.”

“I can see it.”

He held the remaining piece toward her. She took the smallest corner and bit it. It broke sharply, left a dark taste and needed a drink afterward.

“There,” he said.

“Yes. That's what I don't like.”

He looked at the bread, as though she had managed to describe a fault in the very feature he was offering. She pushed the rest toward him.

“You can have it.”

“I was trying to give you the good bit.”

“You've got it back.”

That seemed to settle the matter. He ate the rest, and she finished the middle while it was still soft enough to fold around the beans.

At the next table a chair scraped backward. Asta shifted her feet to keep her bag from becoming part of the departing person's route. When she straightened, Bren was looking past her.

She turned. Someone had put a chair on top of another chair while clearing an unused corner, and the upper one was tilted so that its legs projected into the air.

“What?”

“Nothing. I keep thinking someone's left their seat without taking it down.”

She looked again. From their position, the upper chair seemed to have a perfectly usable place waiting for an unusually high table.

“It would fit me better than the one in the preparation room.”

“You'd need help with the soup.”

“I could send the bowl down.”

He smiled at the raised chair, then went back to the beans.

Asta asked whether he wanted the last spoonful. He said he did, but only if she was finished. She told him she had asked because she was finished. He took it.

The server came to collect the empty dish and asked about another drink. Asta had meant to leave after eating. She had work the following morning, though not so early that sitting for a little longer would make a difference.

“Yes, please,” she said.

Bren ordered another too.

They talked about the distance between the quay and the preparation room, then stopped talking about that before it became a discussion of the next practice. Asta took off her jacket. Her shoulders had been too warm in it, but she had not wanted to interrupt the meal to free the sleeves.

Bren moved the cups while she made room for the folded jacket. His own hair was loose now, falling to his shoulders. He looked at her over his cup and asked what she was going to do with the softer piece she had saved beneath her folded bread.

Asta had forgotten it was there.

She opened the fold. It was still warm.

II. The Room Remains Strange

Months 8–11

The fragment moved before Asta could make out what carried it.

She leaned toward the image. Light caught a piece held clear of the paving, then lost it as the plated body changed its angle. She followed the bright interruption. It came back farther along, at a slightly different height.

“There,” she said.

Bren was watching beside her.

The passage continued beyond the available field. Asta kept her attention on the place where the fragment had disappeared, trying to set it in relation to the piers.

“Again?” she asked.

The supervisor returned the permitted extract to its beginning.

Aven's stationary watch had taken place in month four. He had bought thirty hours of recording within a five-day supported block, with crews and support taking their turns. The camera had not traveled after anything. It had remained where it was put, watching the portion of Stillwater Hall available from that place.

The preparation extract was shorter. The crew had the relevant passages and the views needed for the proposed task. Asta could not make the absent parts arrive by looking longer at the edge of the image.

On the repeat she found the fragment sooner.

“It's going past that pier,” she said.

“I see.”

“If the opening is there, then it might be going toward it.”

Bren did not answer. She looked at him.

“What?”

“Can we see the end once more?”

“The end doesn't show where it goes.”

“I know. I was watching the wrong thing.”

She thought he meant the fragment. She had been pointing very close to it, and on the next repeat she kept her hand down.

This time he followed the plated body. Asta saw his attention move at a different pace from hers. The carried piece caught light and vanished from it; his gaze went on through the intervals in which she had been waiting for that piece to appear again.

“That part,” he said, after the animal had left the image.

“Which part?”

“Just before it goes out. I lost it while I was looking at what you meant.”

“There's less to see.”

“There's still the animal.”

The supervisor was comparing the route with the working views and had a reason to return to the passage. Asta sat back far enough to see the whole available image. She let the fragment travel without trying to fix its destination.

The plates changed their relation to the light. A surface she had taken for an edge became a broader part of the moving outline, then narrowed again. She could not predict the exact shape it would make next. Her eyes kept trying to finish the body before the body had finished moving.

It continued out of the available view.

For a little while she could imagine looking after it without the edge of a picture intervening. She would still have had the piers, the opening, the part of the room she could not see. She would not have had this particular rectangular end.

“All right,” she said.

Bren turned toward her.

“I saw it.”

He looked back at the empty part of the image with a small, absorbed smile.

The supervisor placed the working view beside the recorded passage. The strip they were preparing to test lay away from the route the animal had used. Asta followed the indicated relation from the hatch position to the proposed working place.

“This much?”

“If the tests support it.”

She placed her hand flat beside the image, using the edge of it to hold the direction in mind.

“And we stay inside it.”

“Yes.”

Bren asked where the recorded passage ended in relation to the right-hand opening. The answer gave him what could be seen from the camera's position. Asta watched him accept the edge of that answer without ceasing to want the rest.

The account they had been given recorded at least two plated animals during the watch. Asta returned to this one carrying a piece through the room. She could still lose the fragment in the light while the animal went on.

When the preparation session ended, she stood and let the chair move back against her legs. Bren remained seated long enough to finish looking at the working view.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Yes.”

He got up.

Outside, someone was drawing a loaded cart away from the building. Asta watched the driver turn, walk backward for several paces and bring the cart through the opening without touching either side. She knew what that movement would become before it was finished.

She found herself wanting another look at the one she could not finish in her head.

* * *

In month ten, the findings arrived while Asta was finishing a receiving shift on the shore.

Bren waited outside the working area. She saw him when she turned from the last of the load and raised a hand to show she had seen him. He answered, then went to stand clear of the people coming through.

She completed the count before she went to him.

“You could have come later,” she said.

“I did.”

“Later than this.”

“I didn't know when you'd finish.”

“Neither did I.”

She worked her fingers open as they walked. For most of the afternoon they had held one awkward shape after another, and the hand wanted a moment to stop expecting weight. Bren looked down at the movement.

“Long day?”

“The last part of it.”

He slowed while she adjusted her bag. She was hungry, but now that the findings were available she wanted to see them before doing anything else. At the preparation space she washed the shore dirt from her hands, dried them and found herself ready to close her fingers around another object.

The results did not look like an occasion.

There were the gas examination and material checks, and the record of the unmanned weighted traverse. The supervisor went through what those findings allowed for the proposed brief protected task. Asta listened. She asked about a point she wanted to have repeated, then waited while Bren checked the corresponding part of the record.

They came to the paving.

The view of the strip showed the load carried over it. Asta knew the area from the working images. She had pictured it with the mat placed down and the block waiting for her hand. Until now those had been things she had put there in her own mind.

“Can you show the return?” she asked.

The supervisor did.

She watched the unmanned traverse come back across the tested area. The floor continued to hold it. Nothing in the paving's appearance had changed to announce the fact.

Asta shifted her weight onto one boot.

The shore floor met the pressure. She increased it, felt the sole settle and tried to put that ordinary upward support into the image before her. Not a drawing of where she might stand. Something underneath her.

She looked again at the portion of paving nearest the hatch. Then at the farther end.

“That's where the tool would be.”

“Within that area, yes.”

Bren followed the indicated place.

“And farther through the opening?”

“Wasn't tested.”

He returned his attention to the strip.

The supervisor laid the relevant material together. The findings supported the bounded gas-side task in the chosen protection, with their carried breathing and the planned return. They still had a supported opening to make. They still had a commission to complete within the resources being bought for it.

Asta asked to see the paving once more.

The place had become reachable in a new way. She could imagine the short movement out from the hatch and could no longer leave her own weight out of it.

Her hand rested open on the table. The tired grip had loosened.

Bren was studying the same image with his head a little to one side. She wondered whether he was putting himself beside the moving animal. She could have asked. Instead she moved her hand so he could see the nearer edge of the tested strip without leaning around it.

“Thanks,” he said.

When they went outside, the light on the quay had changed. The last receiving work was done, and the space where the load had stood was clear. Asta looked at the empty paving there, then at the water beyond it. She could see the shore's ordinary boundary all the way along.

“Are you eating?” Bren asked.

“Yes.”

“Now?”

She turned toward him.

“Very much now.”

He laughed and fell into step beside her. She was still thinking about where she would put her boots, but she could also smell food from the place ahead of them and knew which desire would be answered first.

* * *

Leth read the proposed sequence before she read the total.

Aven had read them in the other order. She knew because he had turned the account face down and was now looking at the task sheet beneath her hand.

“How much time does the clamp take?” he asked.

“Both workers are doing it.”

“I know.”

“Then it takes two uses.”

“I'm asking how long.”

She moved the paper toward him. They were at the survey provider's table, with the supervisor opposite them and the tested view laid out beside the sequence. There was no reason for Leth to hold the only readable copy as though that would give the tool a larger share of the visit.

“There,” she said. “Placement, use, exchange, second use.”

Aven read the entries she had indicated.

“And what remains for the farther view?”

“What remains?”

He looked up.

“Leth.”

“That isn't a little demonstration to put in before the proper work.”

“I didn't say it was.”

“You asked what remains.”

“Because I want to know what they can look at after they've done it.”

She looked back down at the sequence. Both workers' uses were there. Aven had not crossed either one out.

The supervisor waited until Leth took her hand away from the paper.

“The proposed order gives them the task and the available view from the tested strip. It doesn't give them a walk through the room.”

“I'm not asking for a walk,” Aven said.

“Then that is the work we can undertake.”

Leth wanted to hear him say the clamp mattered. She could see, with some irritation, that she was asking for something beyond his part of the purchase. He had paid for a stationary watch in month four because he wanted sustained observation. Her permission for inspected carriage use had not made that her experiment. She had not lent the bench or paid for the watch. Now she wanted a hand tool used, and he wanted the new angle that a person might have from the strip.

The distinction had been easier while they were spending separately.

“I want the use included as work,” she said. “Not only the object carried out and shown.”

The supervisor turned the task sheet so the line was upright before her.

“It is.”

She read it again. She knew what it said. Reading it was something she could do while the force of her first reply settled.

Aven rested his hands on the table.

“I want to see past the place where the watch ends,” he said. “As much as can be seen from where they stand. I don't want the same picture with a person in front of it.”

“The person might be doing something worth seeing.”

“Yes. And then the person might turn.”

Leth nearly answered the tone instead of the suggestion. She picked up the view and examined the permitted position.

“From there?”

“That's the question.”

The supervisor indicated the limit of the tested space.

“From within this. If the supported opening and conditions permit the task to proceed. The crew retain the stop decisions. Finishing the picture isn't a reason to delay the return.”

Aven nodded.

“I understand.”

“So do I,” Leth said.

She was glad it had been said to both of them. There were practical reasons to stop a tool exercise before a client had the proof she wanted too.

She turned over the account.

There was the supported craft and approach, the qualified work, the surface provision, the preparation already performed and the coming occupied task. None became free because she and Aven owned interests in useful equipment. Leth followed the items she needed to match to her own records. Her shop could pay the part she had come prepared to pay. It could not pay for an indefinite continuation of the idea.

“This purchase,” she said. “The exit on the strip. I'm not agreeing to further work beyond it.”

“Neither am I today.”

“I mean my part.”

“I heard you.”

She looked at him. He had put a finger beside his portion of the account, not across hers.

“All right.”

They settled the remaining particulars. Leth corrected the address for delivery of her agreed report portion; the shop received things at the working entrance, and she did not want someone searching for an office that did not exist. Aven checked his own receipt arrangements. The originals would remain in their proper custody. Their shares in equipment would remain what they were.

When the supervisor took the account away to complete it, Aven stayed looking at the right-hand opening in the view.

“I thought there would be more room in the image,” he said.

“More room?”

“To see. When we first bought the survey. I didn't know how much of a place could be just outside what the camera gave you.”

Leth considered the small framed view.

“The bench was always in the way of something.”

“Yes.”

“That wasn't a criticism of the bench.”

“I didn't take it as one.”

She smiled despite herself. He returned the view to its place beside the task sheet.

The supervisor came back with the completed arrangement. Leth checked her part and committed to it. Aven did the same. It was a finite piece of work they could now ask other people to perform.

Outside, he turned toward his own business. She had a collection to attend to at the shop and a worker waiting for her answer on another job. They walked together as far as the place where their routes separated.

“When the first tool view comes back,” Leth said, “I'd like to see it properly.”

“You will.”

“I mean with you sitting still long enough for it to finish.”

He laughed.

“Then you can sit through the next view.”

“If there is one.”

“If there is one.”

She went back to the workshop with the agreed work in her bag. The clamp was there on the table when she arrived. Someone had put it clear of a customer's things, leaving a space around it just large enough for the block.

* * *

On the morning of the task, Asta poured too little into Bren's cup and too much into her own.

He watched her consider the two levels.

“Leave it,” he said.

“I can put some back.”

“I don't want more.”

She gave him his cup. His bare fingers came around it below hers, close enough that she could feel their warmth for the brief moment before she let go.

She kept looking at the hand.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He glanced down. With his free hand he made the little closing movement they had been repeating around the clamp handle for months.

The exactness of it made her laugh. He stopped with the imaginary tool seated, held it for her inspection, then opened his hand.

“I was looking at how you took the cup.”

“Did I do it badly?”

“You haven't dropped it.”

“That's what I was hoping for.”

He drank.

Asta sat beside the laid-out equipment and took a small sip from the fuller cup. It was too hot to drink quickly. She could have left it. Instead she waited, feeling the warmth through the side.

The readiness work had begun before this pause and would continue after it. Asta finished her own checks, set down the cup when someone needed her answer and waited for the confirmations that would let her go on. Around her, the provider's people were occupied with their parts of the task.

The mat was ready. The clamp and brought block were ready. Looking at them did not make her need to use them again.

Bren had tied his hair securely. Without its loose fall beside his face, the rounded line of his jaw was clearer. He put his emptied cup where it would be collected and checked the equipment he would carry.

The supervisor came to confirm the starting positions.

The forward kit lay between them. Asta had only to reach for it. She looked at Bren's hand beside the block, the fingers that had just closed around the cup. He would lower himself with that little fold through his knees and turn the handle. She had watched him do it so often with the practice wall behind him. She wanted to see what would be behind him this time.

“I'll take the hatch first,” Asta said.

Bren looked up.

She had not said it before that moment. The exchange was part of the task, and they had practiced both positions until neither one belonged to a single worker. Still, she knew he had expected her to want the first outward turn.

“All right,” he said.

He moved the forward kit toward his place.

The supervisor confirmed the arrangement with both of them and went on to the next readiness matter.

Bren waited until there was room to speak again.

“Have you changed your mind?”

“About going?”

“About first.”

“I'd like to see you go out.”

He considered her for a moment.

“You'll get a better look at the room from there while I'm working.”

“And at you.”

“You know what I look like doing that.”

“Here.”

He looked toward the equipment, then back at her.

“Yes.”

She finished the drink.

Putting on the protection changed the space her body occupied. The fit had been worked out around the body she had, not around a taller worker who might have reached the same places differently. She settled the covering over her short coils and checked that its pressure was where she expected it. Her long torso had room for the movements she needed. The carried breathing set became part of the weight she would take with her.

Her hands were the last familiar part she watched disappear into their working coverings. She flexed them, tested the range and let them rest. Bren made his own checks. Where something required another person's attention, they gave it to each other.

The tool-work recording would take in the mat from the hatch. Asta checked the carried equipment for the separate outward view, putting it back where she could reach it after the clamp was down.

The craft would carry them through the surrounding sea; their protection was for the brief work on the gas-filled side. With the set's weight settled on her body, Asta waited to board.

Outside, the boat's crew and the other support workers were preparing for the approach. Asta moved through the prepared boarding, ready for the moment when there would be fewer things arriving from the edges of her attention.

Bren waited clear of her movement into the craft. She adjusted her position, then made room for his. In the confined space his shoulder seemed nearer than it had at the mock-up. The equipment took some of the easy shape out of both of them, though she could still recognize the brief settling motion he made before he was comfortable.

Bren checked that she was ready for the next part.

She answered.

He received it, and they went on.

III. Eighteen Minutes Outside

At first Asta could see more of Bren's shoulder than of the place they were approaching.

She moved her head, found a clear piece of the view and lost part of it again as the craft's movement changed the angle. The frame divided what lay ahead into portions she could examine one at a time. Water occupied the space beyond it. Light reached only what it reached, and she could not make the rest available by leaning farther.

The tested carriage was carrying them along the approach that had been prepared for this task. There were people and equipment above them doing work she could not now watch. Inside, Bren shifted enough to clear her view. The movement was small and familiar. She made the corresponding room for him without looking away.

A hard edge came into the light.

For a moment it could have belonged to something standing in water, with the water making its surface difficult to judge. Then the lower part of the view changed. Paving occupied it, pale where the available light struck, continuing into a space the surrounding sea had not entered.

Asta pressed her knees into their braced position.

She had known what the approach would show. It had been on the working views all through the preparation. Now the paving moved in relation to the cabin frame. It was not coming nearer because someone had enlarged an image. The craft was bringing her to it, with Bren's shoulder beside her and the pressure of the cabin against her own body.

She waited for the water to follow.

The view changed again. More floor became available. Beyond the open span, the sea remained visibly there.

No wash came across the paving.

Asta looked back toward the span. She could hold the water in the upper and farther part of her sight and the dry floor below, but every time she gave one her full attention she had to look again at the other. Her body kept preparing for a continuation that did not arrive. It was a bracing without a blow.

Bren's hand moved into the edge of her view. She turned to receive his check, answered and watched him receive it. When she looked out again, the paving had moved relative to the frame once more.

The room was too large for the portion she could see, though she had no useful measure of it. Piers entered and left the frame as their angle changed. The permitted records had shown six. Here she saw the edge of one, the surface beyond it and a nearer obstruction made by part of the craft. She knew how to read a working image. The moving view kept asking her to give up the last arrangement of it before she had quite finished looking.

The carriage came to its prepared resting position. Asta attended to the securing and its confirmation. She had to move her attention away from the floor to do that, and for a few moments the familiar sequence occupied her fully.

When she looked back, the floor had stayed.

That was the part she had not practiced. The task could require her to look away, and the room would remain where it was, with the sea still held beyond its open span. She did not have to keep watching to keep the two things apart.

She settled her feet within the cabin and checked the reading relevant to the opening. It fell within the accepted equalization range. Bren made his own confirmation. The approach had brought them here; the supported opening could proceed.

Their hatch was on the gas-filled side, over the dry paving.

They completed the controlled equalization. Asta watched the work she had to watch, not the unknown room beyond it. The opening took its proper place in the sequence. She felt the familiar weight of her carried set and heard its breathing sound close to her, the sound she had brought with her from the surface preparation.

Then the hatch was open.

The shape of the opening had occupied so much of their practice that she knew where her body would have to go before she moved. The short step and return line reached the tested strip. She checked the way down, the clear passage for Bren and the place she would occupy beside it.

Her first boot took support outside.

She transferred her weight and felt the second boot come to the paving.

The outside interval began.

For a moment she attended only to what was under her. Her feet were covered, and the sole separated her from the stone, but the support was immediate. She did not have to look at a record to know that her weight had arrived. Her knees adjusted to it. The carried equipment settled with her.

She was standing.

The sea remained beyond the span.

Asta looked back at the hatch to place herself precisely in relation to it. The craft was behind and beside her now, no longer around her. Its frame contained a piece of the space she had just occupied. Bren came through with the forward kit, and she moved only enough to leave him the passage they had prepared.

He stepped onto the strip.

From the cabin she had been close to his shoulder, his arm, the side of the protection around his head. Now she could see his whole body. He looked briefly toward her before proceeding, and she gave the confirmation from her station.

He went the few paces to the working place.

The distance was ordinary. Asta had seen him cross it repeatedly on a practice floor. Here she could see the paving continue around the bounded piece they were using. The tested strip did not put walls up at its edges. The farther room remained in sight even where their work did not go.

Bren set down the mat. It unfolded into the familiar shape she had held while he folded the other end. He placed the clamp and block upon it.

The task recording from the hatch took in the mat and his figure beside it. Asta checked the view, then looked directly at him as he lowered himself. His knees took the movement first, then his torso inclined. He adjusted the carried weight before putting both hands to the task. There was a small pause while he found the position he wanted for the block.

Behind him there were no rehearsal walls.

She could see the sea past the place where his shoulder had been a moment before. He reached for the clamp, his hand crossing that part of her view and closing on a tool she knew. She followed the familiar movement all the way to the handle.

Her own breathing continued in its usual sound. She could feel it as part of the work her body was doing, close and enclosed, while the body itself stood outside the craft. She turned her head and the view turned with it. The room's gas gave her nothing to smell or taste through her protection. Her attention went to the places she could reach with sight, then returned to the man whose task she was watching.

Bren had the block between the jaws.

His supporting hand moved a little to keep it steady. The turning hand continued, slowed and stopped. He held the position long enough for the result to be clear, then reversed the movement.

Asta wanted him to look up.

She wanted him to see his own body in relation to the paving and the water, which was a foolish thing to want of someone inside that body. She could have called his attention to the open span once his hands were free. While they were occupied, she left them occupied. The turning was smaller now. The clamp released.

He placed it back on the mat.

The block stayed beside it.

He looked toward the hatch and found her already watching. His signal asked the question they had once mistaken for an announcement. She answered it, remained where she was and waited for the answer to be received.

He rose.

She saw the effort travel through the protected figure, the small shift that brought his weight over his boots. He stood where there had been a lowered worker and a tool. The height of him changed the part of the room he obscured.

Then he came back.

Asta had time to look at the empty working place before he reached her. The mat held the two objects. She knew which faces of the block would be turned toward her and where she would put her hand.

They made the exchange at the hatch.

He took the station she had occupied, with its view of the work to record. She waited for his confirmation, then went toward the mat along the same tested strip.

Her boots carried her over the paving she had watched support him.

She did not need to test it with a tentative foot. The movement had been prepared, and she gave it her weight. What surprised her was how much of the place she could feel through that ordinary commitment. The floor met each step. The equipment moved with her. The open sea remained available at the edge of her sight while she came to the mat.

She stopped at the working position and looked back.

Bren was at the hatch. The opening lay clear beside him. The return line held its familiar relation to the route, and the mat was where he had left it. From here the craft looked like a thing standing in the room rather than the extent of the place she could occupy.

She lowered herself.

Her right hand closed around the clamp. The covering filled the little spaces that would have let her skin settle against the handle. She held it, finding the grip she knew from practice, then brought the block into the jaws with her left hand.

For a moment the room narrowed to the two objects.

The block wanted supporting at a slightly different point from the one she had first chosen. She moved her hand beneath it and held it steady. The clamp's handle gave her the familiar turning movement through the covering. She could see the approach of the pad to the face of the block.

Barehanded, at the table in month six, the first contact had arrived before she needed to look for it. A slight change at the fingers, followed by the certainty that the freely moving tool had met something.

Now she saw the meeting before she felt it.

She continued the turn.

The resistance came up through the protection, indistinct at first, then firm. Her other hand kept the block square. She made the last small turn and felt the handle press back against her fingers.

She stopped.

The clamp held.

Her fingers remained around the handle. She could feel the held pressure there, and the weight of the small assembly supported in her other hand. It had become something she could have lifted from the mat without losing the relation she had made.

She had wanted this.

The block was held, her hand had done it, and beneath the hand and the lowered body was the dry floor she had come to stand on.

She gave herself the moment that the task allowed. Then she reversed the turn.

The resistance eased. The block was loose again, and she kept it supported while the jaws opened. She set it down and returned the clamp to the mat. Its handle lay at an angle she knew she would recognize when she came to retrieve it.

Both hands were free.

Asta raised her head.

Bren remained beside the hatch, watching her. She gave the completion signal, saw it received and brought her attention back to standing. She straightened her legs under the carried weight, feeling it settle as she came upright over her boots.

The room returned around the task.

It had been there all through the turning. She had let most of it fall away while her hands were busy. Now she could see past the craft and into an angle the hatch position had not given her.

Through the right-hand opening, a line went downward.

She looked directly at it.

Stone steps descended from the level she occupied. Below them was a landing, dry in the available view. A balustrade stood about waist high beside that lower place and continued beyond what the opening let her see.

She had been looking into a room. The steps made another direction available within it.

Her attention went down them before she had finished recognizing the shape. She could feel the familiar bodily proposition of a stair: the shift of weight, the lower place for the next foot. Her own boots stayed on the tested paving while the eye carried the movement farther.

There was the landing.

The sea was outside the open span behind her, and here was a dry surface below the one on which she stood. She looked from the descending edges to the balustrade and tried to keep the lower level clear in her mind without turning it into a whole place she had not seen.

The line of the balustrade passed out of sight.

She wanted the next portion.

She kept her feet where they were and followed the balustrade to the edge of the opening, then looked back to where the steps met the landing. From the hatch she had seen none of it.

Asta brought the recording equipment to bear on that angle. Her hands were free for the work now, and she steadied the view from the position they had prepared. The descending stair, the lower dry landing, the balustrade continuing away: she recorded what the opening allowed.

She looked over the equipment once more to see it directly.

The difference mattered to her before she could say what it was. The image would carry the visible relation. Her body was here, occupying the upper level while she looked down to another one. She could feel the support of the floor she knew, and could not feel the floor below.

She finished the downward recording and secured the equipment in its carried place. Then she turned toward Bren.

He was still at the hatch, but his attention was no longer on her recording.

At first she noticed only the stillness. He had stopped in a posture that did not ask her to move. Then his hand directed her attention beyond the working area.

She followed it.

A plated animal was crossing the floor farther out in the room.

For a moment she had the lower stair at one edge of her attention and the moving body at the other. She could not follow both in the same way. The stair would remain where it was while she looked elsewhere. The animal was already making the next part of its passage.

She watched it.

Light broke across the plates as the outline changed. A surface that had faced her turned away; another caught the available light and lost it. She could follow the whole moving shape without being able to say precisely how each part contributed to the movement.

In the recorded watch she had first followed the fragment. She had tried to carry its destination beyond the picture's edge. Here her eye stayed with the animal. There was no replay waiting at the end of the passage. If she looked down at her own hand, the movement would go on without her seeing it.

She left her hand still.

The clamp's resistance remained recent in her fingers. She was aware of it while the plated body moved beyond their work, two experiences close enough together that neither had become a finished thing to remember. The room contained the mat, the block she had just held, Bren's protected body beside the hatch and this other motion continuing farther out.

The animal made no visible change in its passage because of anything they did.

Asta could not have said whether it had perceived them. She could see it continue. That was more than she had expected to want when Bren first described the pleasure to her over a plate of bread.

She looked briefly toward him.

His head remained turned toward the crossing. The hatch was clear beside him; he had not left his station. She could see the exact part of his stillness that held her interest now. He had time to look, and he was using it.

When she turned back, the animal had reached a different part of the available light.

Its outline narrowed, broadened and was partly lost beyond the view she could hold from the strip. For a little while one visible portion was enough to keep her following. Then that too passed out of sight.

She waited through the next breath.

Nothing came back into the part of the room where she had been watching.

The stair was still there when she returned her attention to it. She could see the lower landing and the balustrade disappearing beyond the opening. It had not become the animal's destination merely because the two things occupied the room together. She had no passage joining them.

She looked once more down the steps from her standing place, then back toward the hatch.

Bren received her attention. The task had reached the point they had prepared for: the work done, the available observation made, the equipment waiting to be brought back.

The clamp lay where she had put it, its handle turned toward her.

Asta lowered herself and took it up. The block came into her other hand. She had been looking farther than either object for long enough that their weight was a small, useful surprise. These were things she could close her hands around and bring toward Bren.

She rose with them.

The hatch had not moved. Her view of it changed as she crossed the strip, the opening growing large enough to contain the space in which they had been sitting. Bren prepared to receive the block. She brought it to his waiting hand, saw his grip take the weight and released her own.

His fingers were covered. Before boarding, the cup had passed from her skin to his. Here the held object gave her the transfer through the change in its weight, with no direct touch between their hands.

He placed the block inside, clear of the return, and came back to receive the clamp.

She passed it handle first.

Once it was stowed, she went back over the same few paces for the mat. It was empty now. Where the tool had been, the material held a small change of shape that vanished when she raised the edge. She folded it sufficiently to carry, then gathered the return line as she came toward the hatch.

The paving she was leaving had become particular to her. Here she had lowered herself. Here she had stood and seen the stair. She could have picked out the working place without the mat on it, though nothing had been fastened into the floor to mark it.

She brought the folded mat to Bren. He received it and put it with the recovered block and clamp.

The line followed.

Their hands took turns with the remaining length. It came from the tested route, across the place where she stood and back through the supported opening. Asta kept the final portion clear while Bren moved into the cabin. He received it from inside.

She stepped up.

The hatch frame came close around her body again. Her carried equipment followed the movement she had practiced, and she brought her second boot inside. Bren had made room for her. She settled into the confined space without having to ask him for it.

Both of them were back.

The recorded outside interval was eighteen minutes.

Asta checked the recovered kit in its place. Mat, clamp and block were there; the return line was in; the recording equipment and carried sets had come back with them. They completed the supported closing arrangement. The hatch shut.

For a little while she kept looking through the frame at the floor.

The piece of paving she had occupied lay outside it. She could see the place where the mat had been. She could remember lowering her body there and the effort of straightening after the tool seated. The view now contained a pressure through the soles of her boots that the view itself did not give her.

Bren moved beside her. His shoulder entered the same part of her sight it had occupied on the approach.

She did not lean away from it at once.

They completed the work necessary for withdrawal. The carriage carried them back along the supported approach. Paving moved relative to the frame. The open span came into the part of the view she could hold.

She watched the sea remain where it was until the craft's movement brought that surrounding water around the view again.

The room diminished by portions. An edge of paving, a pier, part of the space beyond: the frame lost them as their angle changed. Asta turned her head as far as the occupied cabin permitted, following what remained available. The last piece she could see was not the part she would have chosen to keep.

Then it too was outside her view.

Bren checked her attention for the next part of their work. She answered him. Her hands still knew where the handle had stopped.

The supported return took them back to the surface arrangements and the people whose work had continued while they were below. Asta heard ordinary voices again when the equipment no longer separated her from them. Someone asked a question that needed an exact answer, and she gave it. Someone else received the recovered kit.

The immediate checks found no injury and no breathing-set failure.

She took off the hand protection when it was time to do so and looked at her bare fingers. They were ordinary fingers, slightly damp from being covered. She opened and closed the hand before putting it to the next small task.

Bren was still occupied with his checks. She waited until the person attending to him had finished.

“Did you get a good look?” she asked.

He turned toward her. Without the covering, his face seemed for a moment less familiar than the protected figure she had been watching.

“Yes.”

He took a breath.

“I did.”

Asta smiled.

“The block held,” she said.

“I saw.”

They had more paid work to finish before the visit was fully handed over. Asta reached for her ordinary jacket and put one arm into it, then stopped because the sleeve had turned inside out. Bren was being called to give his part of a check and went to it. She drew the sleeve straight herself.

When she put her hand through, the air reached the skin between her fingers. She had been warm inside the protection. The shore air felt cool, and she stood for a moment with the jacket still open before fastening it.

IV. Different Uses for the Same Wonder

The image from the hatch showed her hand turn the clamp.

Asta waited for the part she meant.

The hand stopped, held the position and began to reverse. The block came free. Her covered fingers put it down and returned the clamp to the mat.

“Again, please.”

The relevant portion was returned for her. She watched the same operation.

It was plainly successful. The picture showed what Leth had paid to know. The jaws held the brought block, then released it; the tool was placed down for retrieval. Asta could identify each action without difficulty.

She had expected difficulty of some other kind.

Bren sat beside her at the review table. The report was partly complete. They had recorded the two tool uses, the lower stair and landing observed from the strip, and the animal crossing beyond the work area. The task information and available views were being put with the operation's record. Asta had answered the questions that concerned her part and checked the words describing the position from which she had made the downward recording.

Now there was time to see the tool view.

Her glove made the turn again.

“Did it look like that to you?” she asked.

“The clamp?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

She watched it release.

“It looks very small.”

“It was.”

“I know how big it was.”

Bren glanced at her, then back at the image. He did not supply a better answer immediately.

Asta rested her hand on the table. Without intending to, she had curled her fingers as though the handle were in them. She opened the hand and placed it flat.

The floor did not arrive with the picture. She could see the mat on the paving, could see the body lowered to work, but her boots here met the shore floor beneath the table. The image would not put her weight where it had been. The turn looked smooth and brief. It gave her none of the interval between the contact she saw and the resistance she could feel through the protection.

She pointed to the moment before the hand stopped.

“There.”

Bren looked.

“That's where it seated.”

“Yes.”

He watched through the release. Then he indicated the part that followed.

“Can we have that?”

The review moved on.

Her protected body began to rise.

Asta had remembered this from inside: the work of her legs, the shift of the carried weight and the arrival of the right-hand opening in a clearer view. The image gave her a worker standing up. The figure was shorter than she somehow expected it to be. She recognized the proportions of her own body and still needed a moment to think of that figure as the place she had been.

“That's what I was looking at,” Bren said.

“Me getting up?”

“After. You were standing there and I could see all of you, like I could from the mock-up. Except the floor kept going behind you.”

She watched the figure straighten, then looked past it at the paving.

“I was looking through the opening.”

“I know. I couldn't see what you had from where I was.”

“The steps were just there.”

“You turned toward me after.”

She remembered turning. She had seen him looking elsewhere and had followed his signal to the animal.

“You were watching it.”

“By then.”

He asked for the earlier moment once more. Her body rose, found its standing position and remained there.

Bren leaned back a little, as though the view required more space than the table gave it.

Asta tried to see it from the hatch. She could remember his whole figure working while she had stood there. She had wanted him to look up and somehow possess that view of himself. He had seen something of her that she had been too occupied to imagine from outside.

“I didn't know I stood that way,” she said.

“You do after the block. In practice too.”

“Like that?”

“A little.”

She looked at the way the protected figure held its weight.

They finished reviewing the material their report required. The stair view was clear within its limits. Stone steps descended to a dry lower landing; the balustrade continued beyond the available angle. Asta checked the description against the recording.

The animal crossing belonged with the observation from their actual stations. Asta remembered a particular change of light across the plates and could not find quite the same appearance in the retained view. She left that private mismatch alone.

The staff responsible for the original material received the completed crew record. The agreed portions would go to the clients. Asta handed back the review material rather than taking it with her.

Outside the reporting space, she found Bren waiting while she adjusted the strap of her bag.

“When you did the clamp,” she said, “you held the block differently from me.”

“Did I?”

She showed him with her empty hands.

He looked at the placement.

“That's where it was when I picked it up.”

“You could have turned it.”

“I could reach it.”

She tried the imagined grip his way, then let her hands fall.

“It worked.”

“Yes.”

They walked toward the quay. Asta watched a pair of workers bring a load to rest and make space for the next one. She had work of her own booked ashore.

Bren asked when her next shift was. She told him.

“I won't be here then,” he said.

“When will you?”

He gave her a day they both expected to be in Sabik.

“I might find you,” she said.

“All right.”

At the parting she raised a hand. He answered and went on.

She walked home still able to feel the handle stop.

* * *

In month twelve Leth watched a hand turn the clamp below the sea.

She had seen the image already. She knew which worker it was, what had been fastened and how long the two of them had been outside. The completed report lay beside the account on her table. She had read both before Aven arrived.

The protected fingers closed on the handle. Her own fingers moved against her palm.

“There,” she said.

“Yes.”

She let the use finish. The block came free. The worker put the clamp down and began to rise.

Aven leaned forward.

“Now the other view.”

“In a moment.”

She returned to the closing hand.

She had spent enough time watching devices fail to perform some small necessary act that she did not become tired of one that worked. Here a person took the loose block, placed it, adjusted a grip and turned the handle. She could follow the slight alteration in the hand as resistance increased. No remote movement had to stand in for that decision. Asta Henwick was there to make it.

Leth let her own hand relax.

“You see what she does?”

“She tightens it.”

“Before that.”

Aven watched again. This time she left the image alone until the clamp was released.

“She settles the block,” he said.

“Yes.”

She wanted to see it once more.

She gave him the downward view instead.

The stone steps fell away toward the lower landing. Aven moved nearer, then stopped, as though he had caught himself trying to improve his position in a room whose view had already been taken.

Leth watched him looking. He had not leaned forward like that for the hand.

“The rail continues,” he said.

“The report says so.”

“I'm looking at it.”

“I can see that.”

He stayed with the image.

Leth looked where he was looking. The balustrade passed out of the angle available to Asta. It might have taken only a change of position to show more. It might have required far more work than anything they had yet bought. From this table she could not distinguish the two.

“I'd like to know what that landing gives onto,” Aven said.

“So would I.”

He turned to her with more interest than she intended to encourage.

“I haven't said I'd pay for it.”

“You hadn't had time.”

She laughed. He looked back at the steps.

For a while neither asked to change the view. Leth could recognize the appetite that made him stay there. She had felt its close relative in a workshop over things other people had been willing to leave alone.

“A repair,” she said at last. “Something brought there that needs a hand to make it work. I would like to see that.”

“You've seen the hand.”

“I've seen it fasten and release a block. Asta did it properly. So did Bren. I'd ask for their part of it again.”

Someone at the working entrance asked whether the collection was ready. Leth recognized the customer's voice and called that it was. She got up to check that the completed job and its account went out together. Aven remained at the table, looking down the stairs.

When she came back, he had returned to the beginning of Asta's downward recording.

“You'll wear that part out,” she said.

“I thought you wanted to see it.”

“I did.”

He made room for her beside the table.

They watched the downward view once more. Then Aven asked to go back to the tool-work recording. In that view Asta set the clamp down and rose; the steps lay beyond the recording's angle. Leth watched the worker turn toward the opening. She wanted to see what Asta had seen, and returned to the separate recording made from the strip. The steps appeared again.

“There ought to be a good account of this,” Aven said.

She put a finger on the report.

“There is.”

“I know. They'll hear eighteen minutes. I'd like someone to ask how we got that far.”

Leth left her finger on the report for a moment. She could have told him where she would begin: the customer waiting while the pump worked. Aven's eyes had gone back to the steps. She took her hand away and drew out the account beneath it.

The account was easier to finish than the viewing. The commissioned work was complete, the agreed report portions delivered and the current custody charges paid. Leth checked the settlement against her own entries. A further departure would need a new purchase.

Aven took his record. She kept hers with the repair business's accounts.

She returned to the tool-work view.

He rose when she closed the account.

“Will you keep that?” he asked, indicating the hand in the image.

“It's part of what I bought.”

“I meant will you keep looking at it.”

“Probably.”

He nodded. The answer appeared to satisfy him.

At the working entrance he turned back.

“When she gets up,” he said. “Before she turns. I don't think she's seen the steps yet.”

Leth considered that. She had been waiting, at that moment, for the completed use to remain visible a little longer.

“I'll look,” she said.

After he had gone she returned to the table. For a few minutes there was no customer waiting. She could hear the ordinary work of the shop continuing nearby.

She watched the hand close, settle and turn. When the worker began to rise, she let the image continue.

* * *

Asta found Bren on the day he had said he would be in Sabik. Her paid work was finished. She had thought about going home first, then decided that if she sat down there she might be reluctant to put her boots on again.

He was near the quay, with his bag over one shoulder and his hair escaping its tie.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“Not properly.”

“What does that mean?”

“Bread, standing up.”

“Then come and sit down.”

He shifted his bag to the other shoulder and came with her.

They found a table with room to put their things out of the way. Asta sat where her boots could rest flat without touching a crosspiece. She stretched her fingers once on the tabletop while Bren made himself comfortable opposite her. There was no task sheet between them and nothing she needed him to practice.

He asked what she had been doing that day. She told him about the last load and how everyone had wanted it placed somewhere slightly different. It had reached the right place eventually, after they moved the things that had made the right place unavailable.

“Were they yours?” he asked.

“No.”

“That was lucky.”

“They became mine to move.”

He grinned. She found she was smiling too. The work had not been especially amusing while she was doing it.

Their food came with a flatbread folded over itself. Bren reached to separate the layers, then stopped with his fingers above it.

“That reminds me.”

“Of what?”

“The bread I had.”

“Standing up.”

“I was standing up. He wasn't.”

“Who?”

“The man selling it. Let me tell you.”

She took a piece from the soft middle and waited.

Bren placed his palms level above the table, trying to make them into the two sides of a balance.

“He weighed it so carefully. It was nearly right, then he took a little off, then he put something back. Not a slice. A piece this big.”

He showed her a small space between finger and thumb.

“And that made it right?”

“Nearly. There was a crumb loose on the pan. He noticed it just as he was about to give me the bread.”

Bren drew his brows together and lowered his head. The concentration was so exact that Asta could imagine the seller in front of him, offended by the last small movement of the balance.

“He picked it up.”

“And put it with the bread?”

Bren shook his head. He brought the pinched fingers to his mouth and opened them.

Asta laughed before he could explain.

“And then?”

“Then it was right.”

“For him.”

“He looked very pleased.”

“Did he weigh the bread again?”

“He looked at the balance. Then he gave it to me.”

“You should have asked for the crumb.”

“I thought of that after.”

He tried the seller's expression again, looking down at his empty fingers. It made her laugh a second time, though she knew exactly what he was going to do.

“It was good bread,” he said.

“Did you tell him?”

“I was out of the way by then.”

She pulled the browned edge free from their own flatbread. It came away in an uneven curve, crisp along one side. She passed it across the table.

Bren took it and broke off the darkest end. He was still half smiling at the remembered seller when he ate it.

They had enough food to stop talking for a while. Asta used a soft piece to gather what was left near the edge of her plate. Bren kept the rest of the browned strip beside his hand, taking a little of it between other mouthfuls. Outside, someone passed the open doorway calling to a person farther along the street. Neither of them turned to see who answered.

When their plates were nearly empty, Bren asked whether she had seen the tool view again.

“Only at the review.”

“I keep thinking about the part before you stood up.”

She wiped her fingers.

“The clamp?”

“When you finished with it. There was a moment before you looked at anything else.”

She remembered setting it down. The release had left a particular absence in her hand, the pressure gone while her fingers still expected it.

“I liked doing that,” she said.

“I could tell.”

She looked at him. He was choosing another piece of bread, as though he had said nothing she might want to question.

“How?”

He thought for a moment.

“You didn't hurry it.”

“I'd like to go again,” she said.

Bren nodded.

“I'd like to see one come into view.”

“One of the animals?”

“Yes. I'd like to be looking before it arrives. I keep remembering the moment I was already watching.”

She understood the difficulty. Her own memory began with his stillness at the hatch. Before that she had been looking down.

“I was glad you showed me.”

“So was I.”

They finished the bread. There was no departure for either of them to discuss, and Bren had to be home before his next morning's work. Asta knew when she wanted to leave and could stay a little longer.

She asked for another warm drink. He did too.

While they waited, he moved his bag with his foot, found that it was already out of the way and left it alone. She told him about a place near her home where she had thought the doorway was too low until she saw someone taller than either of them use it without ducking. It was the hanging cloth, she had realized, which made the space look so short. Bren wanted to know whether she had ducked. She said she had. He nodded with exaggerated gravity, and she reached across to push his remaining bread crumbs toward his side of the table.

The cups arrived. Bren drew his nearer and kept talking about the doorway, now placing himself in it and stooping so far that she could not finish her reply.

Asta let her hand rest beside her cup until she had stopped laughing. Then she curled her fingers around it. Warmth pressed directly into the pads and along the inside of her thumb, stronger where her skin lay flat against the curve.