Translator absent

The meeting was scheduled for ten. By eleven the protocol officer had confirmed, via the uplink, that the translator had not checked out of the saturation station at Liminal Threshold Marker IX. By eleven-fifteen we had the information that she had checked out, but not into the bell. At eleven-thirty we were operating on the formal assumption of a deferred meeting. This is the correct procedure. It is written in the liaison protocols that the Court contributed to drafting. A meeting without a translator is not a meeting; it is a gathering of people who cannot speak to one another, and that is a different thing entirely.

I am not the translator. I have passable conversational Pelagine — enough to follow a slow exchange, enough to recognise whether the register is formal or working — but I am not certified, and certification matters here because what is said at these meetings becomes part of the record, and the record belongs to both parties in a way that informal Pelagine does not. I have never claimed otherwise.

So we waited.

The bell held position at the meeting coordinate. My colleague read through survey documents. The pilot ate something from a sealed pouch and watched the gauges. I watched the porthole.

The water at two hundred and twenty metres, in this section, carries a particular quality of suspended sediment — fine enough to diffuse the work-lights into a general mild glow rather than beams. Not dark. Not bright. A quality of evenly distributed grey that makes distances ambiguous. The Marker IX structure is visible from here as a set of reference lights, red-white-red in the standard pattern, holding their position with the indifference of installed things.

At eleven-forty, two Court emissaries passed the porthole. I recognised the configuration — the travel arrangement, the movement pattern — from briefing materials, though I would not claim to have recognised individuals. They were heading somewhere perpendicular to us. They did not signal. This was not a slight; the meeting was deferred and the protocol had moved to a different phase and they were operating in that phase. Everything was proceeding correctly.

At twelve-fifteen we received formal confirmation of rescheduling. A date, roughly three weeks out. Subject to translator availability.

The pilot brought the bell around and we began the ascent. My colleague made the appropriate log entries. I had nothing to log that was not already covered. The empty water had been empty water; the absence of the meeting was its own kind of event, bureaucratically contained.

We ascended on schedule. The grey brightened. The surface arrived in the usual way.

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M. Vael, post-ascent, Marker IX station, Threshold sector.