The councillor wrote the figure on his slate and underlined it twice.Merrow took the stand in a grey suit that hung loose on his frame. He described the afternoon he had stood in a doorway and watched his own hands. The councillors wrote it down without looking up from their slates.Lu was not in the hall. Mo's wardens had kept him at the crater with his plates and his brush, and the high table had not asked for him. Melvin noticed that the seat Lu had been promised stayed empty all morning."Councillor, it is being read aloud by a voice that has already decided how the sentence ends." Merrow's voice cracked only once, on the last word.A murmur ran along the benches. Iris Varga sat at the centre of the high table in her grey federal coat, and she did not write anything down. She waited until the murmur died before she spoke."Doctor Melvin, the council has heard that a man on a slab can be spoken through. Can you show us how it is stopped?""Doss will show you, Councillor, with a pr

The public did not recover its trust that week, yet it stopped sliding. The families who had met Melvin in the small room went home and told their neighbours what they had heard. The anchors kept logging their pulses at the gates, and the cold patches kept walking in the same order.Chen came to the window with the ledger under his arm. He looked out at the car park, at the striped canopies and the folding chairs, and at the volunteers who sat on their positions with their hands folded."It will not come back fully, Doctor. Not in a month, and perhaps not in a year.""No. It will hold, though, Chen. That is the most a broken trust can give us at the start."Evelyn's raw data reached the western hospital by the second bell, and the anchors sent copies of every log down the line to the car park. For the first time since the eastern arc, the volunteers heard the census read aloud in their own voices, and they listened without fear.Lin's frame chirped on the sill beside them. She had bee