The Aurora Borealis Keeps Its Lament novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Hearing

The satellite screen in the mess hall had not been switched on since the autumn.

The radio operator coaxed it awake at half past four in the morning, while the pilot stood by the door with his arms crossed and the whole station crew crowded the benches.

Nobody had gone to bed.

"The director signed on what Doctor Lorca told him," I had said to the chief an hour before. "If it was wrong, he deserves to hear it before the plane leaves. You can give him that much."

The chief had looked at the countersigned sheet for a long time.

Then he had said, "Switch it on."

The screen cleared, and the director appeared in his office in the Capital, in a dark jacket, a lamp behind him.

"I'm told this is urgent," he said.

"It is," said the chief. "Quiroga has the floor."

I had a stack of paper on the table and the tape machine at my elbow.

I did not have notes.

I had read Sabina's draft so many times that I knew it by heart.

"Sir, I'll be quick," I said. "Doctor Montalvo's paper has a table that gives the peak at twenty-one fourteen. The station log says twenty-one forty-one. His own recording of that night says twenty-one forty-one."

I pressed the key.

Iker's voice filled the hall, exact and tired.

The director frowned.

"Table five," I said. "Eight point three in the draft. Three point eight in the log, and on the tape."

I played it too.

I played a third, and a fourth.

When the machine fell silent, nobody on the benches was looking at their food.

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