1·01Nine Seconds and No PlanChapter I · Four LettersNo contact. One woman, one table, one card, and rain coming at a window sideways in handfuls.1·02She Lowered the TowelChapter I · Four LettersNone of it reaches the outside of her. The whole image is a woman stopping in a doorway with a towel and putting her hands down.1·03Six Feet and a Clear Line to the DoorChapter I · Four LettersThe blocking is the content. Six feet, a clear line to the door, and a woman who knows exactly what she has just done and does it anyway.
1·04Two ColumnsChapter II · The CalendarNo contact. The most clinical thing they ever did together, and both of them were glad of the work. The sheet is never legible.1·05He Never CrossedChapter II · The CalendarThe thing that makes it worse rather than better: not passion, not carelessness, but a timetable.
2·01Stripped to the WallsChapter III · GoneThe marks of the feet still on the floor is the whole image.2·02Hell Want a DocketChapter III · GoneSaid in passing by somebody carrying a crate, and Kyra files it while too angry to file anything, and it comes back two months later and cracks the book open.2·03Clean as AnythingChapter III · GoneThe flattest, most legitimate object she had ever seen. A man in it, entirely ordinary, employed and paid and mildly careless with a torque gauge.2·04Youre the FifthChapter III · GoneAnd the arithmetic comes out wrong. She stands in a doorway with her hand on the frame.
2·05Three LinesChapter IV · The RequirementAn object image and an hour of a woman's life. The form is never legible.2·06CongratulationsChapter IV · The RequirementThe hour was not an accident and she knew exactly what it was. A director with a finding on her file, walking into her own institute's records office to ask for the file of a man who left before the turn of the year.2·07Everybody KnowsChapter IV · The RequirementA neighbor sitting on a step with her shoes off, having decided to say something.
1·06A Perfect HoleChapter V · A Perfect HoleEleven days of work to establish that nobody did anything wrong. The sheets are on a knee with a stone on them because of the wind.2·08Eleven Ordinary People Each Doing the Correct ThingChapter V · A Perfect HoleAn object image of a bureaucratic impossibility. Three forms from three institutions, each pointing at one of the others. Nothing untrue is written anywhere.
2·09Ask Me the Good QuestionChapter VI · The Fifteen SecondsHe has brought the whole of it out in four crates and has been sitting on one for two hours.
2·10Three SkiesChapter VII · The Fixed AmountThree star fields on one plate. The third must look like a real observation of real stars and simply be wrong — a distribution that is off, not a mess.2·11Eleven Inches ApartChapter VII · The Fixed AmountRender the trace, not the realization. Two lines together, then a clean constant offset for a bounded interval, then together again.2·11Eleven Inches ApartChapter VII · The Fixed AmountRender the trace, not the realization. Two lines together, then a clean constant offset for a bounded interval, then together again.2·12She Sat Down on the FloorChapter VII · The Fixed AmountTwenty-one years of an anomaly with her surname on it. She does not remember standing up, and then she is on the floor with her back against a bench leg.
1·10A Number from a Common Room on a PlateauChapter VIII · What Is in the Third CrateTwenty-one years after the first time she did this. A sheet in each hand, an appalling hour, and a doorway.2·13Keep the SheetChapter VIII · What Is in the Third CrateAnd she has it read before she reaches the biology building. Four markers in the long tail that nobody looks at.2·14The Bottom of the Third BoxChapter VIII · What Is in the Third CrateThe best work she has ever done, which cost her a career, a friend for a decade, and the only genuine intimacy she had with the natural world.
1·07She Took Her Boot Down AgainChapter IX · The Thing Val Does Not DoThe most precise image of the pregnancy in the book and it is about a boot. No hands on bellies anywhere.1·08Better Than They Had Ever BeenChapter IX · The Thing Val Does Not DoOn the science she gave everything she had. Two people arguing properly, which is the warmest thing in the book.1·09The List She Does Not ProduceChapter IX · The Thing Val Does Not DoNo contact. Eleven lines in a drawer — three sets of rooms, a woman at the city registry, a physician, four evenings a week — and nine weeks of the most disciplined not-producing of her life.
1·11Shes Right to AskChapter X · Three ExplanationsA junior at the far end of a room for two hours who has not yet learned to leave a thing in the air, and a woman who answers it completely.2·15Three ExplanationsChapter X · Three ExplanationsFour hours, one table, three incompatible explanations, and a junior at the far end writing everything down.
1·12A Long Letter is a Letter Asking the Reader to Feel SomethingChapter XI · OssenEditing as an act of friendship, conducted on a wall in the wind.1·13The Answer is NoChapter XI · OssenNo contact. One line, opened standing up in a yard, regretted immediately.
2·16A Materials NotebookChapter XIII · A Materials NotebookKyra picks up the cup and puts it down again fast enough that Val looks at her. It is a completely ordinary cup.2·17Three Groups of FiguresChapter XIII · A Materials NotebookThree groups, deliberately illegible, in an older hand than everything else in the book. One is a point on a plateau to four figures. One is a building emptied twenty years ago. One is not a place.
1·14Two Rooms the Same DayChapter XIV · Two RoomsNo contact — this is the image of them not being in the same place. One city flat with six people in it and one campus flat with two, eleven miles apart, on the same day, and neither of them sends.2·18On the LandingChapter XIV · Two RoomsA man sitting on a landing with his back against a wall for an afternoon, being reachable. The door stays shut.2·19DontChapter XIV · Two RoomsShe came because a woman at the institute went to the link without being told to. Brisk, slightly bullying, entirely present, and she talks about her garden for an hour and eleven minutes.
1·15Give Her HereChapter XV · Genie and KalAn absurd afternoon. Between them: eleven books, four physicians' sheets, two mothers' worth of instruction, twenty years of training in the observation of living systems, and none of it survives contact with a fortnight-old who has decided something.1·16One BasketChapter XV · Genie and KalThe image the whole series rests on. One basket. Two children. And the decision made over it, later, in one sentence and a half.2·20Thats the Same Child TwiceChapter XV · Genie and KalShe never once in her life knew that she had said the only true thing anyone said in that house for eleven years.
2·21Three May ComeChapter XVI · The Second LetterFour months to write and not one line of it is cruel. Kyra reads it twice on the wall with the wind taking the corner of it.
1·17Dont Say Anything Kind to Me Between Here and the YardsChapter XVII · The High PlaceNo contact. They are going to miss the coach and Val does not mention it. Don't say anything kind to me between here and the yards. — I wasn't going to.1·18A Hundred and Nine People Along the WallsChapter XVII · The High PlaceNo platform, no chair, nothing to stand behind, and a sheet in her pocket that she leaves there. The witness is at the back counting, because counting is the only thing available to her.2·22They Use it for StoresChapter XVII · The High PlaceTwenty years, a plateau that does not change, and a prefabricated building with half a new roof.2·23Four Lines at the EyesChapter XVII · The High PlaceThe only ageing in this entire file, and it is four lines. She has decided in advance to be exactly and precisely correct with everybody for the whole of the visit.2·24Nine Crates and No CoatChapter XVII · The High PlaceTwo hours early, already in possession of the loadmaster's opinion about the third attitude thruster.2·25Nobody SatChapter XVII · The High PlaceEstablish the room before the woman walks into the middle of it. A hundred and nine people and an empty floor.2·26Which CupChapter XVII · The High PlaceIt was not a shouting. They asked questions, one at a time, from wherever they happened to be standing, without heat and without hurry, and waited for the answers.
1·19You Rebuilt itChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingTwenty-one years of an anomaly with her surname on it, sourced at last, on the floor of a stone room. The object does not glow.1·20It Says Its HisChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingThe last line of the book. Three people and a woman on the bottom step, and eleven small marks standing very slightly proud of a black surface.1·20It Says Its HisChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingThe last line of the book. Three people and a woman on the bottom step, and eleven small marks standing very slightly proud of a black surface.1·20It Says Its HisChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingThe last line of the book. Three people and a woman on the bottom step, and eleven small marks standing very slightly proud of a black surface.2·27Eleven Stone StepsChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingNot concealed in any way. A nine-hundred-year-old house with a byre attached, and eleven people who moved out for the day and are standing around outside in the wind being polite.2·28Four Thousand Years of SedimentChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingThere is very little in it, which is the thing none of them expected. The bowl with a repair in it is the whole emotional content.2·29Do Not Touch itChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingThe single most important image in the file and it must be entirely inert. No glow, no hum, no light of its own, no floating. A broken piece of engineering on a bed of small dressed stones.2·30Four Thousand Years Plus or Minus a Century and a HalfChapter XVIII · Under the HoldingNine hours in a stone room, a woman on the bottom step who would not leave the store open and unattended and would not make anybody move.
THE INTERVALStudies & Variants
Alternates, studies and loose plates.
Card on the TableUntitledDoor at the Third HourUntitledEleven InchesUntitledLong WindowUntitled · v2Long WindowUntitled · v3Long WindowUntitledMiddle of the FloorUntitledOne BasketUntitledRiver Path Longer Legs Narrower HipsUntitledRiver Path Tied Back HairUntitledSix MilesUntitledTwo Bags on the StonesUntitledTwo ColumnsUntitledUnder the YardsUntitled · v2Under the YardsUntitledWall at Water HouseUntitledThecardonthetable Untitled DryhairUntitled Dryhair
