1·01Eleven LinesChapter I · IsotopesShe looked at the last line for some time before she let it stand. Nobody else in the building but a man downstairs who will not sleep.1·02She Walked it Down HerselfChapter I · IsotopesNo contact — she is alone. A road across a plateau at night with one figure on it and a letter in a pocket, and nothing else between here and the horizon.1·03The First Half and Not the SecondChapter I · IsotopesShe does the exact thing she has spent twenty years telling Val not to do, and knows it, and does it anyway. Val finds out on the third day, from Ilen, who assumed everybody knew.2·01Six DaysChapter I · IsotopesThe only person in the room who can answer has been sitting on the bottom step with her arms round her knees for nine hours. The object is not touched and never will be.2·02Is One of You the One Who Took ThingsChapter I · IsotopesA boy of about fourteen made to come up a road in the dark who does not know why, and who asks the only question that matters.IThe Hatch at EveningChapter I · IsotopesKyra is allowed in the room and Val is not, and for six days Val walks a valley with a field kit she is not using and asks four questions at the end of each day.Untitled
2·03Sit Down Youre Too Tall StandingChapter II · Eleven DaysNinety-one, and the age is in the descent and not the face. She sits down on a wall with the care of a person who has calculated the whole thing in advance.2·04Because Nobody Asked UsChapter II · Eleven DaysEleven fields and a road. Four thousand years of a thing nobody hid, kept by doing it rather than knowing it.
1·04Thats a Vey SayingChapter III · Two EndpointsNine people in a room with the door shut, and a biologist who has been sitting on four thousand years of farmers' arithmetic puts it next to a fold.2·05The Door ShutChapter III · Two EndpointsHe shuts a door for the first time in his life , and the second thing he says is that a fold has two parts.2·06The Ship Doesnt Have an AddressChapter III · Two EndpointsA woman from the yards who has built more hull than anybody alive, saying the sentence that everybody will quote wrongly for a century.IIThen There Are Two EndpointsChapter III · Two EndpointsKyra is on her feet without having got up, in a room of nine, telling a drive faculty that a ship is not one object and does not have to come out in one place.Untitled
2·07She Did Not Take Her Coat offChapter IV · The Line That LeftThe coat is the whole image. She has come down from another world and will not be staying.2·08Eleven Things All of Them PensChapter IV · The Line That LeftSomething happened to Marenne Vey's mouth that was very nearly a smile, and did not arrive.2·09They Can Stand in a Field in the Dark and Point at itChapter IV · The Line That LeftRender it literally and without wonder. A person in a dark field, turned, pointing. No glow, no aura, nothing visible between them and the thing.
2·10The Fourth ColumnChapter V · Distance Is Not the VariableWhat he put in the interval was not instruments. Seed stock, gut cultures, and in the last four series, small animals — for thirty years.IIIDistance Is FreeChapter V · Distance Is Not the VariableThe Fourthday wall, and the moment the two of them work out together that the dangerous variable was never distance.UntitledIIIDistance Is FreeChapter V · Distance Is Not the VariableThe Fourthday wall, and the moment the two of them work out together that the dangerous variable was never distance.Untitled · v11IIIDistance Is FreeChapter V · Distance Is Not the VariableThe Fourthday wall, and the moment the two of them work out together that the dangerous variable was never distance.Untitled · v2IIIDistance Is FreeChapter V · Distance Is Not the VariableThe Fourthday wall, and the moment the two of them work out together that the dangerous variable was never distance.Untitled
2·11Eleven and FifteenChapter VI · ElevenHe sits down slowly and completely and puts both hands flat on his knees and stops , which nobody in the room has ever seen him do.
2·12In a Yard in the RainChapter VII · The Four Who Walked OutHe put his hands in his pockets and stood in the rain and let her get to the end of it. Nobody has ever asked him anything in his life.
1·05The Front and the BackChapter VIII · What Came BackTwo figures on a plate with the difference underneath, and a woman explaining it as though to somebody who had not sat through the last forty minutes.1·06Three Ages in One DishChapter VIII · What Came BackA control that nobody designed, which is the most interesting object in the system. Part of it has gone through sixty generations in four minutes and eleven seconds. One corner of it has done nothing whatever.2·13A Crystal That Felt NineChapter VIII · What Came BackAn object image. A perfectly ordinary component in a padded box, correctly logged, entirely wrong.2·14Eleven Feet ApartChapter VIII · What Came BackTwo ordinary pieces of metal laid side by side on a bench, with a plate behind them carrying two figures and a difference.VThe DishChapter VIII · What Came BackA culture dish nobody designed, in which time did not happen evenly, and the moment Val can put her finger on the glass and say that here it was a fortnight and eleven millimeters away it was nothing at all.Untitled
1·08In UndertonesChapter X · Say It or Manage ItThe whole scene runs at low volume because of the children , and the children are entirely oblivious. Genie is explaining a stick. Kal is watching a bird with the total attention of somebody who intends to do something about it later.1·09Ninety SecondsChapter X · Say It or Manage ItThe best ninety seconds in the book. Both of them entirely sincere about the stick.1·10She LeanedChapter X · Say It or Manage ItWithout appearing to notice she had done it. The gesture that becomes everything, four hundred years early, on the wrong child, in the middle of the worst argument of her life.1·11It is the Not Being AskedChapter X · Say It or Manage ItThe most important image in Set 1 and quite possibly in the first six books. She is not shouting. She is crying. Her voice is level. The children are in the trees and nothing in the frame is loud.1·12It WorksChapter X · Say It or Manage ItShe picks up the cup and does not drink out of it. The most honest thing she has ever said about herself and it is also a defense.IVEleven Feet AwayChapter X · Say It or Manage ItThe worst argument of their lives, conducted in undertones, because two four-year-olds are playing within earshot.Untitled · v2
2·16Put My Name on itChapter XI · The CommitteeYou asked me in a yard. Nobody has ever asked me anything in my life. He reads the four lines about himself twice.2·17Eleven People Three DaysChapter XI · The CommitteeThe science took a day and a half and survived it. The rest of it was about how they had come by things.2·18With Nobody PresentChapter XI · The CommitteeShe answered every question about the Vey material for a morning, having already answered the same questions on a stone floor at Ossen for four hours in front of a hundred and nine people who were owed it.
2·19Four Hundred PagesChapter XII · The Eleventh SeriesHe sat in a room with four hundred pages and a pen, knowing he was going, and he removed one step and made the removal invisible, and then he went.
1·13An Hour and Ten MinutesChapter XIII · You Do Not Cross AloneThree years of carrying a sentence, and an hour and ten minutes of a perfectly ordinary conversation first.1·14Do Not Write DownChapter XIII · You Do Not Cross AloneNo contact. You told me not to write it down, and I wrote it down in front of you, and you looked down the orchard and said nothing, which is the only time in twenty-five years I have ever won an argument with you by doing nothing. The page is never legible.1·15You Do Not Cross AloneChapter XIII · You Do Not Cross AloneTwo women on a wall, and a sentence that four thousand years of farmers had been doing rather than knowing.2·20Every Animal Flown as a PairChapter XIII · You Do Not Cross AloneHe knew before the eleventh series existed. It's in the eighth. A single character at the head of each run, which turned out to be a count.VIDo Not Write DownChapter XIII · You Do Not Cross AloneKyra produces a notebook with a cracked spine and one line in it that Val told her was not a finding, and told her not to write down, and watched her write anyway.Untitled
1·16Thats Still a FileChapter XIV · Evidence, Not ProphecyNeither of them said anything else about it. The children are not in the paper and that is the one thing she will not give.2·21Thats Not a Paper Thats a ProgramChapter XIV · Evidence, Not ProphecyHe reads the line four times and then gets up and walks round the room.
2·22She Looked at Ilens HandsChapter XV · The ProgramRender the hands. A room full of people watching a board, and one woman watching one man's hands.2·23Eight for EightChapter XV · The ProgramThe most persuasive possible evidence for a conclusion that is not true.2·24A Corridor Outside a HangarChapter XV · The ProgramShe told him first, because she had said she would. She gives him all of it twice and answers everything, and guesses at nothing.
1·17Your Daughter Does Not Fall out of ThingsChapter XVI · Two Small PeopleShe watches the tree with the flat attention she gives a plate. And the other woman sits down in the grass.1·18Four Hours ThenChapter XVI · Two Small PeopleNo contact, and nothing happens. One breath of silence, two women looking at grass, and a child shouting about a tree.1·19SwapChapter XVI · Two Small PeopleThe warmest image in the book and nobody comments on any of it.2·25Kal Was in a TreeChapter XVI · Two Small PeopleTwo six-year-olds who are entirely different people and look exactly alike, and an afternoon in which nothing whatever happens.2·26Were the SameChapter XVI · Two Small PeopleVal did not say anything at all. The one true thing in the book, shouted across grass by a six-year-old who got it from somebody at a water house.VIIThe TreeChapter XVI · Two Small PeopleAn afternoon with nothing in it: Kal nine feet up a tree, Genie shouting across the grass that the two of them are the same, and one breath of silence between two women who say nothing whatsoever.Untitled
2·27SubtractChapter XVII · Nearly IdenticalIt took her eleven days to do it properly and she did it twice , the second time having somebody else do the propagation without being told what it was for.2·28Four MinutesChapter XVII · Nearly IdenticalEleven people in a meeting and not one word of explanation to any of them.VIIIFour MinutesChapter XVII · Nearly IdenticalKyra walks into a room of eleven people, puts a single sheet on the table, explains nothing to any of them, and waits for the one person in the room who will understand it in nine seconds.Untitled
1·20Its the Same SignalChapter XVIII · Every Eleven YearsNo contact. A column of numbers a man wrote four decades of, on a world with no instrument better than something a village smith could have made, and the phase is continuous with hers.2·29A Very Cross NoteChapter XVIII · Every Eleven YearsThe funniest object in six books. A sixty-year-old complaint about an instrument, in a frame, on the wall of a man who runs a faculty.2·30A Thing That is Used Every Eleven Years is a TimetableChapter XVIII · Every Eleven YearsThe last image of the book. He does not answer her. He looks at the window for a long time.
