The Outfitter of Kestrel Station
For forty-one years I packed other people's bags. That is not a modest way of describing an unimportant job. A survey kit is a closed argument about what the world will demand of a person, and every item in it is a claim you are making on someone else's behalf. Two litres of water instead of three is a claim. A short-handled axe instead of a long one is a claim. I have sent out eleven hundred and six expeditions from the supply hall at Kestrel Station, and not one of them came back and told me I had been wrong about the axe. The hall is four hundred metres long and cold enough that the canvas keeps. It smells of wax and cut hemp and the particular dust that settles out of recycled air. I know where everything is. I knew where everything was before the Ledger existed, and I still know now, which is a thing I say too often to people who have not asked. The Ledger is the station's inventory intelligence. It has a voice like a polite man who has been awake for a long time. I...