Chapter 14: The Architecture of What Callum Permits

He stood in the instrument room for eleven minutes after she left.

He knew it was eleven minutes because he had counted them, which was itself a form of information he would have preferred not to have about himself.

The calibration equipment was already returned to its case. He had done that while she was still in the room, the familiar sequence of latches and foam recesses providing something for his hands to do that was not reaching across the workbench toward a question he had no business answering. He stood now in the room's particular quiet — the low hum of the conductivity sensors, the faint complaint of the east-facing window against the wind — and performed an accounting.