The Hard Stone
This is how it looks. It is not a map.
They come along the shore at the second high water and are gone by the third. You will hear them before the fog clears.
When the year thins the edge walks down and the green goes after it. Some afternoons the dry ground lifts and blows for a few kadd. Sit it out.
The figure records a condition. The condition is no longer in force. The bodies act upon the figure; they do not maintain it. The figure turns with the ground.
The ground is drawn at the height it stands. Nothing is raised for the eye. How high is not stated, because no baseline has been supplied.
The line is drawn for the distance it is read from. Closer in, the Office draws more of the ground, and nothing it drew from farther out is taken away.
The tide passes through the ground twice in a turn, and the basins fill and empty on it. Tollun passes over once in three thousand kadd, against the ground, and puts a slower swell under the daily one. Tollun is nearer than it was. No date is supplied.
At the north shore of the water that holds mell the tide arrives as a front, when dessum’s swell and tollun’s stand together or near it. The Office enters where the front was, in kadd. It does not enter its height.
Dessum and tollun are drawn where they stand over the ground now, and the ground turns under them. The clock this page keeps is the Office’s arithmetic. The count is Hesk’s, and the two are not entered as the same thing. Tollun’s lit part is stated in tenths, and whether it is filling or emptying. When dessum’s swell and tollun’s stand together the page says so. They stand together twice in a turn, for some ten kadd, and the basins are fullest then. The Long Sitting is not this.
The year is twenty-three thousand four hundred kadd. The ground dessum stands over moves north and south through it, and the page states whether dessum is nearing or receding and the kadd to the passage. At near passage the fog is supplied hardest, and every standing level stands a little higher. The Office has entered the Long Sitting on the date of SLV-0111, and for that day the body is drawn not turning. The Correspondent has not confirmed it.
Light on the body casts no edge. The sun is broad and the air is thick, so day gives way to night over some fifty degrees of ground, and the night is not black. Nothing on Slarvathia has an outline, and neither does its night. Down is not toward the centre and varies with where one stands, by as much as nine degrees; the Bureau’s compass records this. Rest on any ground and the Office sets a station there. Beside the reading it draws a staff set square to the floor and a plumb line hung from the staff’s head, which does not fall along the staff, and it states the angle between them. The mark on the ground points the way the line swings. The angle is nothing on the three axes and greatest between them. The figure alone accounts for what is drawn. What the turning adds to it is not stated, because no baseline has been supplied. The Office states the tide on that ground as well: rising, at its highest, or falling, and the kadd until it turns. How high is not stated, for the same reason.
The axis the body turns about is drawn through the poles. It is the shortest of the three, and a body turns steadily about its longest or its shortest and not about the one between: set turning about the middle axis it does not keep to it. A wobble, had this body one, would finish in a few turns and not in an age. None is recorded. The Office has looked for it.
Pale ground is fog. It is not weather. It rises through the floor where the tide opens it, dessum’s and tollun’s together, and it goes where the body sends it, which is not always where the floor leans. Nothing the ground sends up passes the haze. It stands under it. Six bodies are supplied from below. They are entered and three are named. One stands on the highest ground on the body, which fog does not do, and nothing leaves it. It is entered as wrong and left. Where a body turns, the Office draws lines of equal thickness through it. The turning draws them out.
Two bodies of standing fog are held at the poles. They are not supplied at present, except at their margins. They are the lowest ground on the body, and the Office records that they are where the mechanism puts them. Standing fog is drawn to its level. A level is not a latitude, and the shore does not keep to one. The level is drawn as a surface. It is rounder than the figure, so it does not lie along the ground it covers, and the southern body reaches furthest north where the figure is narrowest.
The floor opens along the parallels. The Office has found no fissure that does not.
One region is surveyed. The count is taken at Hesk, and the Office marks the ground it is taken on. Its ground answers on this page and will hand you the sheet, which is this figure at scale: press in at the limit, or touch the surveyed ground, and the Office issues it on the spot you were reading. The interior is not resolved at this scale. It is resolved on the sheet. The Bureau's own areas, and the times between them, say how long and never where. Draw back and tollun is drawn. The Office holds one paper on it: Form 21, Enclosure B.
| Pass | Entry |
|---|---|
| 0107 | Far side recorded as unsurveyed. |
| 0118 | Fog recorded on the high ground at the far tip of the long axis. Fog does not stand on high ground. Recorded as wrong. |
| 0135 | Fog on the high ground recorded again. The previous entry stands. This entry stands. |
| 0147 | Far side recorded as held. The entry of pass 0107 stands. |
| 0156 | Far side resolved to this scale and shown. No entry withdrawn. |
| 0159 | A drawing of the body from tollun received. Provenance not established. It shows the far side. It is correct. |
| 0189 | Night drawn on the body. No light has been recorded on the unlit half. The Office has looked. |
| 0195 | The body resurveyed, far side included. The ground is drawn as the fog has cut it, and the boxes assigned to the Bureau’s areas are set again on it. The survey of pass 0156 stands. |
| 0198 | The floor recorded open between the two still bodies. At both ends it does not keep to the parallels. The entry that the floor opens along the parallels stands. |
| 0210 | The boxes assigned to the Bureau’s areas are marked on the figure, each where this Office set it. No name is entered against them. |
| 0213 | Recorded south of surrat: a floor let down within a ring, and standing fog within the ring at its own level. Five rings of the same kind are recorded elsewhere, worn, one of them open to the sea. What left them is entered where it stopped. Nothing is entered as having risen. The Correspondent’s term for the first is entered in Form 12; no name is entered against the others. |
| 0216 | Disturbances recorded on the surface of the standing fog, in both seas and within the ring south of surrat, each moving against the drift. Paths entered along the shores, not attributed. Standing things entered where the towers stand, each to the plumb, no plinth found. Shadows entered on the ground with nothing returned above them. No subject resolved. Scale not established. |
| 0219 | Recorded at the summits of the far tip and on the rims of both seas: white on the ground’s faces turned into the drift, more of it as dessum recedes. A direction is entered where it stands. No cause is entered. The standing levels are entered higher toward near passage and lower away from it. No bow has been recorded in the fog. The Office has looked. |
| 0219 | Five bodies of fog entered turning: mell, the body at the far tip and the southern sea one way; the southern body and the northern sea the other. Each turns whole at its heart and slower toward its edge, and what it carries is drawn out along the turning. A direction is entered for each. No cause is entered. |
| 0225 | White recorded on the ground at the shores of the standing levels, as far up as the levels stood in the year. It is not withdrawn as the levels fall. A line is entered at the highest. No cause is entered. |
| 0225 | Glitter recorded in the air just over the ice fog, close in and by day. It hangs. It is not recorded as falling. No cause is entered. Cf. Film |
| 0231 | Light recorded on the unlit half, at the standing fog. The entry at 0189 stands. |