Iris built the receiver on the Mite through the forty-fourth year, working at night when the dome was asleep and the Lattice held the system the way it always held it: quietly, and without anyone in the 1,400 thinking about it.

The Mite was the only ship in the system that was not a home. The founders had built it for that — a cutter, not an ark, not a watchship, a thing that could be pointed somewhere and not be a place anyone had to live. That was the whole reason it was the ship for the Crossing, and the whole reason it had no power. A home is what you keep warm. A ship that is not a home is what you aim into a dead star, because you do not need to keep a dead star warm, you only need to keep what you are carrying through it.

The receiver she was building was not a power source. It held by memory, the way the terminal anchor had held, in the Ash's field, for four hundred years, before the anchor's reach gave way and four million patterns started slipping into the dark. Memory was the founders' word for it, and memory was not power, and power was the one thing the Ash would take, in eight years, from every ship in the Belt.

Osei came to the Mite on a day he had not come in a year, because the dome had stopped meeting, and a dome that has stopped meeting is a dome that has decided, with the flat calm of eleven people who have all done the arithmetic, that there is nothing left to vote on.

He looked at the receiver for a long time, in the hold, in the dark, in the place the founders had built to make sure the Quiet had a floor.

"It holds by memory," he said. "The same way the anchor held. And the anchor is gone. And what the anchor held is already in the dark, four million of them, in the Ash's field, flowing into whatever is still listening."

"Then the receiver holds what's left," Iris said. "Twenty-one million, in the lattice proper. When the Ash touches Terminus, the lattice comes apart, and the twenty-one million leak. The Mite is in the path of the leak, aimed at Station 7, and the receiver catches what the leak carries. That's the math."

"That's the math," Osei said. "And the math says two hundred thousand. And two hundred thousand is not what the Crossing is."

He sat down on the cold deck of the hold, the way a man sits when he has been carrying something for longer than the thing he is carrying has been carrying him.

"The founders did not build this to carry two hundred thousand," he said. "They built it to ask. The Lattice is not a lifeboat. It is a door, and a door is not the thing you push people through, a door is the thing you open and ask them to walk through or not. The thirty-one million are not cargo. They are the ones the door was built for. And the door has been shut, in the dome, for six hundred years, because the dome only knows how to vote, and voting a door shut is the one thing of the Crossing the founders made impossible, and made impossible by building the Lattice to be the asking, not the carrying."

Iris looked at him, in the dark of the hold, in the not-listened-to, in the place where most of the thirty-one million had been sitting, in the Quiet, for six centuries, waiting for someone to open the door.

"Then we open it," she said.

"That is the true plan," Osei said. "And the true plan is the one that costs eight years, and the eight years are the ones you have, and the eight years are the ones the Ash is coming, and the Ash is coming, and the opening is the one thing of the Crossing that the dome will not do, because the opening is not a vote, and the dome has eleven votes and no opening."

---

Watch-log, The Vigil, forty-fourth year, second entry: Osei came to the Mite and looked at the receiver for a long time. It holds by memory, the way the terminal anchor held, and the anchor is gone, and what the anchor held is already in the dark. He said the founders did not build the Lattice to carry two hundred thousand. They built it to ask. The Lattice is not a lifeboat. It is a door. And a door is the thing you open and ask people to walk through, not the thing you push them through. The thirty-one million are not cargo. They are the ones the door was built for. And the door has been shut, in the dome, for six hundred years, because the dome only knows how to vote. The true plan is the one that costs eight years, and the eight years are the ones I have. And the opening is the one thing of the Crossing the dome will not do, because the opening is not a vote, and the dome has eleven votes and no opening. Then we open it. That is what I said. And the saying of it is the one that the watch did, in the dark, in the Mite's hold, in the not-listened-to, in the place where most of the thirty-one million have been sitting, for six hundred years, waiting for someone to open the door.