The Watch Records

Letter 54 of the Book of Forgetting

At the town hall, the afternoon light came through the tall windows in long yellow bars. Dalia Shalev stood at the counter with her recorder clipped to her collar, and Rivka Gilad sat on the other side with a ledger open in front of her.

"Rivka, I need to ask you something direct," Dalia said.

Rivka looked up. She was the Watch's clerk, fifty-two, with grey-streaked hair pulled tight and reading glasses on a cord. "Ask it."

"The orchard fine. Guard Ezra Peretz fined Fernando seven coin for standing near the fog line. He got there before Fernando did—knew exactly where to go. I want to know if the network records show who sent him."

Rivka closed the ledger slowly. "You know I can't show you the Watch's logs, Dalia."

"I'm not asking to read them. I'm asking if they exist."

Rivka was quiet a moment. She took off her glasses and set them on the counter.

"There are records," she said. "But the Watch doesn't keep what you think we keep."

"What do you keep?"

"We keep the network posts. The public ones. Positions, weather, work orders, the reference lists. We don't keep messages between people unless there's a dispute."

"So if someone told Ezra to go to the orchard, there'd be no trace."

"Not in my books." Rivka put her glasses back on. "But I can tell you this: the permit rule for the east orchard isn't written anywhere I hold. I checked this morning, after I heard about the fine. It came from the guard's mouth, not the Council's paper."

Dalia leaned forward. "Then who gave it to him?"

"I don't know. But if I were you, I'd ask Ezra himself—and I'd ask him why he didn't write the fine in the same book I keep."

---

At the orchard an hour later, Miriam Segal stood at the last row of trees with her basket half full. I came up the path with the rangefinder in one hand and my notebook in the other. Dalia walked a step behind me.

"Fernando," Miriam said. "You came back."

"I said I would. Dalia's here to witness, like you."

Miriam looked at Dalia, then at me. "The spot's still there. I checked. Nothing's moved the seed."

We walked to the fog line together. The second seed lay where it had come out of the grey wall, half blue, half white, the damp half facing the fog. I knelt and measured its weight with my pocket scale first.

"Forty-one grams," I said. "My dry half is thirty-eight."

I wrote it in my notebook. Then I pressed my moisture gauge to the damp half.

"Read it, Dalia."

She came close and read the number. "Seventy-two percent."

"That's not possible," Miriam said. "It's been out of the fog three days."

"It's what it reads." I put the gauge away and stood. "Now the weight of the dry half, for the record."

I was reaching for the seed again when a voice came from the path.

"Fernando. You're near the fog line without a permit."

Guard Ezra Peretz stood at the edge of the trees. Same clean face, same radio. Dalia turned to face him.

"Ezra," she said. "Fernando isn't crossing the line. He's measuring something already on this side."

Ezra didn't look at her. He looked at me.

"The rule is the rule. Thirty marks."

I straightened. "I paid seven last time. Now it's thirty?"

"The rule changed."

I started to speak, but Dalia put a hand on my arm.

"Ezra," she said quietly, "can you show us where the rule is written?"

He didn't answer. He took out his small book and wrote in it. Then he tucked it away and walked back up the path.

I looked at Miriam. She was watching the fog line with her steady eyes.

"Thirty marks," she said. "That's a lot for standing still."

I picked up the seed and put it in my pocket. The damp half was cold against my thigh.

"Not for what it tells us," I said.