The survey barge was called the *Prudence II*, and somebody at Tidemark had stencilled a wave-in-a-circle on her bow in the kind of paint that does not chip.

She lay at anchor over Marlowe Street at ten past nine on Thursday, with the tide at slack and a thin sun trying to come through the cloud, and Ottilie stood on her aft deck in an Authority-issue waterproof two sizes too large, holding a clipboard she did not need. The clipboard said OBSERVER. It had taken Pereira-Oduya a day and a half of sighing to obtain it. The Registrar had signed the authorisation with a flourish and the words *good development opportunity*, and Lucinda, when Ottilie climbed aboard, had said, "Oh, I'm so glad you could come," in a voice of such perfect, undamaged warmth that Ottilie had immediately checked her pockets.

There were eight of them on deck. Kemi and the other grey fleece, whose name was Joss. Two Tidemark divers, young, silent, with the shoulders of people who did not need to talk. A technician crouched at a console under a tarpaulin with six screens. Lucinda in a charcoal field jacket and the white trainers, which were not, now Ottilie looked, quite as white as before; they had an inch of grey at the welt, the first sign of weather she had seen on her. And Quim.

He was kneeling on the deck by the dive ladder, checking his regulator, and he had not looked at her once. He wore the Dredge hi-vis. He wore a new, very clean helmet cam. His eyebrow, for once, was level.

"All right, everyone," said Lucinda. She did not raise her voice; she only put it where it would go. "Quick brief and then we get Quim and the guys in the water. Remember, nobody's here to break anything. This is a *survey.* We're measuring, we're photographing, we're being nice. If anyone speaks to the, to the occupant, you stay polite. We're guests."

"Guests," said Joss, writing it down.

"Ottilie, thank you for coming. You'll have a headset and a seat at the console, and anything you want to ask, ask. Complete transparency." She smiled. "That's the whole spirit of it. We've nothing to hide."

It was said so lightly that it took Ottilie a moment to feel the weight of it. She had been in the Authority eleven years. In eleven years she had never once heard a person announce that they had nothing to hide who was not, in the next breath, about to hide something.

---

She sat on a folding stool under the tarpaulin with the headset over her ears. The technician, a thin man named Wenceslas who ate sunflower seeds one at a time, pressed the key and the six screens filled with green water.

Quim's helmet cam went down the shot line in a long fall of bubbles. The silt hung in it like smoke. Nineteen metres: she had that figure by heart, and now it became a sensation, in the throat, in the ears. Below them the Marlowe Street Post Office rose out of the dark, its windows black, its stopped clock a pale disc at 3:14. Quim's breath came over the headset, slow and regular, and then his voice, flat and clipped, for the benefit of the log.

"Descending, Marlowe, east face. Visibility four metres. The gate housing is on my left."

The orange tag was on it. SURVEY ASSET 0042. Next to it a second tag had joined it, white, in the same laminate: SURVEY ASSET 0043, STAIRWELL B NAMEPLATE. Ottilie had a sharp little understanding, like a pin, that the room had been inventoried before anyone had stepped in it.

"They've tagged the nameplate," she said.

"Standard," said Lucinda, at her shoulder. She had not made a sound approaching. "Insurance. If it's on the books it's covered. Honestly it's protective."

"It's property that's the subject of a Schedule Nine determination."

"Which is a *wonderful* point, and we'll note it." The contralto clicked. "We're just looking."

Quim reached the stairwell. The lamp from the shelf glowed warmly in his light, and the water thinned, and then he was through the surface of the landing into the air, and the cam swung up over his own wet hands. The little room came up out of the dark. The doormat; the door-stop; the stool. The nameplate on the wall, its brass lit like a candle in a church.

The room did not move. But it was altered, and Ottilie, who could not recognise faces, knew it at once. The lamp seemed to lean toward the opening, as a plant does.

"Evening," said Quim, hoarsely, though it was nine in the morning. He had unclipped his mouthpiece. "I've brought some people to see you. You're allowed to say no."

*The Applicant is aware of the visit,* said the label printer, in a long sigh of paper, and a strip of receipt slid out of the brass letterbox and curled on the mat. Quim crouched and read it aloud, as they had agreed. "*Notice of intended inspection was served on the Applicant at 08:12 on Tuesday, by hand, in accordance with Schedule Nine, paragraph four. The Applicant consents to a reasonable inspection of the premises in good faith. The Applicant requests that nothing be removed, and that boots be wiped.*"

On the barge somebody laughed softly. It was Kemi, Ottilie thought, and then she saw that Kemi's face was held very carefully still.

The first Tidemark diver surfaced in the room behind Quim, and then the second. They were courteous. They did not wipe their boots, being in fins, but one of them stood on the mat for a second and then stepped off it. They measured the landing: six metres by three. They took pictures of the stool, the lamp, the coat hook, the window pane. The technician murmured readings. For a quarter of an hour, nothing happened, and the nothing was so decent that Ottilie began to loosen her grip on the clipboard.

Then Lucinda said, to the console, pleasantly, "Wenceslas, can we run the compliance panel?"

---

It took her a minute to understand what she was watching.

A form appeared on the technician's third screen. Ottilie recognised its architecture from a thousand audits: *Request for Temporary Operation of Asset (Maintenance Class C).* Gate 14, hatch actuator, open for ninety seconds, for inspection of the lower seal. Requestor: Tidemark Holdings, as lienholder with contractual inspection rights. Authorising signature: L. Moreau-Adebayo, VP. Countersignature: Authority budget engine, AUTO-APPROVED, 09:31.

"That's the hatch under the stairwell," she said. "That drains into the cistern. If it opens with Mr Teixeira-Han in the room—"

"It's ninety seconds. The room's on a landing. Water doesn't come *up.*" Lucinda did not take her eyes off the console. "Besides, it's the cheapest way to check the seal."

"It is not a seal inspection."

"Isn't it? Run it."

Wenceslas pressed the key. And on Quim's feed, nineteen metres down, nothing at all happened. The room stayed still. The lamp glowed. The printer clicked, and a strip of paper fell on the mat.

Quim read it. His voice, when it came, was careful.

"*Request received. Request is correct in form. Request is not approved. Defect: the stated purpose, inspection of the lower seal, is inconsistent with the stated duration. The lower seal cannot be inspected in ninety seconds with the hatch open, there being water. Kindly resubmit with a correct purpose.*"

There was a silence on the barge. Wenceslas ate a sunflower seed.

And Lucinda, to Ottilie's horror, laughed. It was a full, delighted, unaffected laugh, the laugh of a woman who has been waiting for a particular card to turn. She put her hand on the back of Ottilie's folding stool, and bent, and said in her ear, with great kindness:

"So it *can* say no."

"I don't—"

"It can't refuse a correct request. That's what everyone has believed. That's what your friend with the thermos has believed for years. It's in her logs. It's in your Warden's notes. It cannot refuse." She straightened. "But it *can* reject a defective one. Which means, Ottilie, that for nine years it hasn't been a pump that does what it's told. It's a clerk. It checks forms." She looked, for a moment, almost tender. "Do you know how many things I can do with a clerk?"

Ottilie said nothing. She could hear her own breathing in the headset and Quim's under it, and the soft water-drip of the landing. In her head, with perfect clarity, she could hear Mirembe on the long loop, in the dark. *It can't refuse a correct request.* And behind it, quieter, what Mirembe had not said: that the only reason she had never tested the converse was that she had been too afraid to.

"The first time," said Lucinda softly, "that we have a defect in the form is the first time it ever says no. That is the most valuable thing anyone has learned about this system in nine years. And you know what? We got it free." She patted the stool and moved away. "Thank you for coming. I mean it. Complete transparency."

On screen, nineteen metres below, Quim was standing quite still in the little room. He had turned the helmet cam on the letterbox, and the camera held on it, steady, the brass gleaming, the strip of paper lying where it had fallen. Then, very slowly, he lifted his face to the lens.

He mouthed something. Ottilie could not read faces. She could read lips on a screen, she found, as long as the words were short.

*I'm sorry,* said Quim.

And below him, in the quiet, the label printer clicked again, and another strip slid out into the dark.