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“Don't tell them to get on.” Evie caught my sleeve before I reached the glass. “I know what the board says. Look at the boat.”

The departure board had changed from a blank blue rectangle to BOARDING while we were arguing with the help desk. Outside, the ferry still had its gangway raised. A deckhand stood behind the rail with his arms spread, trying to stop the people below from coming any farther.

“Who put that up?” I asked.

“If I knew that, I wouldn't be holding your jacket.” Evie let go and reached for her radio. “Give me the doorway, please. They need to hear me before they decide the crew's just being difficult.”

I opened the dispatch-room door. Her voice carried above the luggage wheels and the repeated high note from a ticket reader nobody had switched off. She told the waiting passengers to stay behind the floor line. Some stopped. The people at the back kept coming until a woman near the front turned sideways and held her bag out to make space.

Cora pushed past me carrying the folding sign we'd been inspecting before the screens went out. She set it across the entrance to the boarding lane, with SERVICE HELD facing the queue.

“That one's working,” she called back. “It'll carry on working if nobody takes it away.”

Evie sent a member of her duty crew to stand beside it. The young man pulled on his reflective vest as he went. He'd had it folded under his arm, ready to leave, and his lunch bag was still on the chair near my foot.

I moved the bag out of the passage. We'd come to watch a routine receiving test: what the public boards showed when the live service feed stopped, and whether the staff could make the fallback information useful. I had a permitted inspection sheet in my pocket. I hadn't expected to need the fallback before we'd finished talking about it.

The ceiling lights hadn't flickered. The ticket reader still complained. Through the glass I could see the ferry's ordinary running lights, but the information terminal beside Evie's elbow had stopped receiving the live updates she used to check the posted arrival and boarding notices.

“Captain's holding until the landing team gives him the clear,” she told us after listening to her radio. “The boat is fine. The landing is fine. We've got two different instructions out there, and I am not sending another load through while the people already there are trying to come back.”

“Can you clear the boarding notice locally?” I asked.

“I could on the old unit. This one lets me select the fallback page. I've selected it.”

She showed me the confirmation on her control panel. The big public board still said BOARDING.

Cora came back without her coat. “Evie, your man down there needs a break. He said he's been waiting for the relief boat since before we arrived.”

“His relief's waiting on the other bank.”

“Then borrow somebody for ten minutes.”

“From where?” Evie took her glasses off and left them hanging against her vest. “I'm asking you a real question. Don't give me the face people give me when they think I've forgotten there are other people in the building.”

Cora pulled the chair away from the door. “I can hold the sign. I can't authorize anybody onto your boat.”

“Good. Hold the sign.”

I went with her. She gave me the side nearest the doorway rather than let me take the whole thing. The metal feet kept catching the mat until we lifted them together. Her recovering forearm stayed close to her body; when I tried to take that end without asking, she shifted the weight into her other hand.

“You can ask,” she muttered. “It's quicker than pretending we're doing a dance.”

“Want me to take it?”

“Yes. Now put it down where they can see the actual words.”

The relieved crew member went to the staff room. Cora stood beside the sign and explained the hold to a family who had come down the ramp after hearing only the end of Evie's announcement. She pointed them toward the seats, away from the lane. I watched the board change the expected departure time while the ferry stayed exactly where it was.

“Lena.” Cora was looking past me. “That picture wasn't there a minute ago.”

Across the river, above the west-bank arrivals entrance, the public display had lit up. It was too far away to read, but the white strip across its top was bright enough to show in the water. On my phone, the civic service page loaded a live picture of the west approach. A bus moved through it, followed by a man pulling a handcart out of the crossing.

Our east-concourse information panel still showed a grey connection symbol. I refreshed the public page and watched the bus disappear at the edge of the picture.

“Maybe they're bringing them back one at a time,” I said.

“Maybe. Ask which one we're waiting for.”

*   *   *

Rafe Tenner arrived with his phone pressed to his ear and a damp line across the shoulders of his company jacket. He stopped outside the dispatch room to finish the call. I could see his mouth moving but couldn't hear the words through the glass. He was the supplier manager we'd dealt with during the review of the consultation figures, and he'd learned to stop promising me a complete answer before he'd heard the question.

He came in and asked Evie what she needed first.

“For that thing to stop sending people toward a boat that isn't boarding.” She pointed at the public screen. “Then I want an arrival feed I can trust. We can manage a hold. We can't manage a hold and your board arguing with us.”

“The restoration team is working on the receiving service.”

“Are they working on the words?”

“I'll ask.”

He didn't leave to ask. He called the restoration desk in front of us, identified the east concourse and passed on Evie's request to remove the boarding notice. While he listened, she used her own radio to arrange an orderly return from the landing. The two conversations kept crossing, and Rafe moved nearer the window so she could hear her crew.

Cora came back carrying a cup with the lid bent into it. “Your man had his break. He's got a sandwich now. I've told him I can't guarantee what kind.”

Evie managed a tired smile. “If it's mine, he'll bring it back.”

“What's in yours?”

“Egg.”

“He'll eat it. He said his mother puts fruit in everything.”

Rafe ended his call. “They can blank the public notice from here. Evie, will you check the confirmation while I stay on the desk line?”

She followed the instruction the desk supplied through him. The word BOARDING disappeared. The screen went blue again, which was an improvement nobody at the procurement demonstration had put in a brochure.

“Thank you,” she told him. “Now I need to know whether we're getting a live return or running the whole shift off voices and feet.”

“They can't restore the affected service yet.”

I held my phone where he could see the west approach. A different bus had come into view. “This one's live.”

“Some public outputs are available.”

“And the west-bank arrivals display is on. What can't they restore here?”

“The desk says the east receiving routes remain unavailable.”

“Unavailable where?” Cora asked. “At the source, in the delivery, or on Evie's wall?”

“I haven't been given that distinction.”

Evie turned from her radio. “Then please stop giving me the sentence as if it answers it.”

He looked toward the control panel. He shifted his phone in his hand, then asked whether our inspection had involved any change to a live route.

“No,” I said. “We'd checked the local guide and the receiving indicators. We hadn't started the observation. Evie's duty team was operating the equipment.”

“I need that in the fault report.”

“Put it in. Also put in what she's just had to do to stop a wrong boarding notice.”

“I will.”

“And the public outputs that are back.”

“Lena, I'm not trying to leave them out.” His voice had risen enough for Cora to stop flattening the cup lid. Then he lowered it. “I've got people asking why I haven't got everyone back on the ferry. I've got the desk asking whether we changed anything. I can send both answers. I can't rebuild the service standing beside this chair.”

Evie moved the chair with her foot. “Sit on it, then. You're blocking my crew.”

He sat. The offer took some of the strain out of his face. Cora passed him the spare paper cup from the stack without filling it for him.

“The water's by the kettle,” she said. “Don't touch the coffee unless you've offended somebody.”

I crouched beside the low receiving cabinet where its status light was visible through the inspection window. I could see power and a lit connection indicator. Neither told me whether the right information had arrived. The label inside named a contractor-managed receiving unit; our sheet permitted observation of the local indicators, not a login to the routing controls behind it.

I wanted the next page. I knew the feeling too well to mistake it for authority.

“Will the restoration team tell us what this indicator means in the current fault?” I asked Rafe.

“I'll include the unit reference.”

“Tell them Evie needs a decision about the shift, not a better description of how sorry we are.”

“I can hear her.”

He drank the water, then went back to his call. I stood slowly; my knee had found every cold patch in the floor.

*   *   *

Hester answered from the review office while I was outside the dispatch room. I kept to the wall so the returning passengers could pass. One man had folded his paper ticket until it was little more than a damp strip. He kept opening it, looking toward the water, then folding it again.

“Have they cleared the unsafe notice?” Hester asked.

“Evie's blanked it with the desk's instruction. The duty crew is holding and redirecting boarding. No engine or gate failure reported to us. The information returns are the problem we've actually seen.”

“And your inspection?”

“Stopped before we began the test. We've got local observations and Rafe's explanation. I want the receiving route covered before somebody calls this a fault in Evie's operation.”

“Send what you observed. I can get the service question to the continuity office. I can't extend your inspection into the supplier's controls over the phone.”

“I know.”

“You sound annoyed with me for knowing it.”

I leaned away from the glass as someone tried to see past my shoulder. “I'm annoyed that we can watch a working picture across the river while she has to borrow a person to hold a sign.”

“That's useful annoyance. Keep it attached to the actual picture.”

“Do you have a contact who can make somebody answer her?”

“I have the continuity duty route. I'll send the immediate service question there and copy the responsible transport manager. Evie's still the one who decides how her staff operate the concourse.”

“All right.”

“And Lena? Don't let the supplier's fault form become the only account of what happened. Ask Evie to retain her ordinary duty entry. Not a statement written to agree with yours.”

I went back to ask her. She had already started it, with her radio lying beside the keyboard. She read me the part she was willing to share for the service question: the lost live information, the misleading boarding notice, the manual hold and the sequence in which she'd cleared the screen.

“I've put the crew arrangement in my own log,” she told me. “You don't need every person's name to say we were short.”

“No. I need the point at which you asked for relief and what you had to do while you waited.”

“Then take that. And put down that the old folding sign was available. I asked for it to stay when they told me the new boards would make it redundant.”

Cora was gathering our inspection tools. “Do you want us to leave it in the same place?”

“Put it where the next shift can find it without asking me at home.”

We carried it to the marked space behind the dispatch desk when the duty crew had replaced it with their larger lane barrier. Cora checked that the folding legs hadn't trapped the strap of Evie's bag. I moved a carton of spare paper so the lettering stayed visible.

“Everybody keeps finding me better ways to use this room,” Evie said. “Nobody finds me a bigger room.”

“You'd fill it,” Cora replied.

“I'd put a chair in it for a person who isn't waiting to go somewhere.”

Rafe came through the door before Cora could answer. “The west route's being brought back into ordinary operation. They're keeping the east information route deferred pending restoration clearance.”

“What clearance?” I asked.

“I don't have the underlying restoration decision.”

Evie rubbed the bridge of her nose, leaving a faint mark from her glasses. “Can I run with the crew I have?”

“Your transport manager has the manual-service question. The company isn't making the boarding decision.”

“Fine. Then get the manager to answer my radio call instead of sending me another page about the company.”

He offered her the duty contact he'd just used. She compared it with her sheet, called and got an answer. I heard only her side. She described her staff, the route she'd cleared and the information she could verify through the landing teams. When she put the radio down, she told us a reduced manual service would begin with the next confirmed crossing. Her relief crew could come over on it.

She let herself sit for the first time since the outage. Cora asked whether Dev's booked transport used the same public information service. Evie said the route desk would know the actual arrangement, and Cora took her phone outside to make her own call.

I stayed beside the door while the first passengers moved down under the crew's direction. The blue screen reflected their coats without telling them anything. Across the river, the west arrivals display changed again.

Rafe had laid the restoration message on the desk. He hadn't tried to hide the word deferred.

“I want the reason for that,” I told him.

“I've asked.”

“When the answer comes, send it through Hester's office. Evie needs it too.”

He put the phone away. “Do you think we want her standing here with a sign?”

“I think somebody has made a choice about what comes back first. I don't know who, and I don't know what they had to work with.”

“Then leave room for the answer.”

I picked up my bag. “That's what I'm trying to get.”

Outside, Cora was still on her call. She held up a finger, listened, then thanked the person at the other end. Dev's transport had been delayed, not cancelled. She wanted to get home before he started explaining to the driver how the old ferry dispatch used to work.

“You'll lose that race,” I said.

“Probably. I can still stop him offering to fix it.” She took her own bag from me. “What did Rafe say?”

“He wants room for an answer.”

“Give him some. Don't give him Evie's whole shift.”

I watched the crew release the next section of the queue. The people moved when someone who could see the landing told them it was safe. I sent Hester the observed sequence, then put my phone away and walked with Cora toward the bus stop.