The South Test Court had put a black line on the floor for Tarin.
“Once setup begins,” Selka said, “you stay behind it.”
“I understand lines.”
“You understand them selectively.”
Sister Vael stood with the safety observer at the red-side barrier. She had no instrument in front of her. That made Tarin more aware of her than the people who did.
The public rig was simple enough to embarrass a complicated lie.
A weighted carriage rested at the top of a steel track. Twenty feet down, the track forked. The left branch ended in a blue arrest bay. The right crossed a red line and struck six thin calibration bulbs.
LATCH-1 and THREAD-1 sat under clear covers at the setup table.
A Court technician—not Tarin—held the bounded recreation record from Chapter 31.
The point was not whether Tarin could make his own pair work.
The point was whether someone else could place it from his record.
The technician broke the seal and began.
Tarin kept his hands behind the black line.
First datum: correct.
Latch face: correct.
Thread offset: two fingers too far toward the outer rail.
Tarin’s mouth opened.
Selka looked at him.
He closed it.
The technician checked the page again, corrected herself without help, and marked the first ambiguity in the margin.
“Placement reproducible from submitted record,” the evaluator said. “One clarification required.”
A sponsor clerk in the gallery wrote something fast.
Tarin bound the cards only after setup was complete. Four Charge left him for the test—two into THREAD-1, two into LATCH-1. His exact remaining pool did not matter to anyone else in the room.
The carriage released.
Steel wheels gathered speed.
THREAD-1 brightened at the first passage mark. The relay reached LATCH-1. The latch caught the declared rail point and forced the carriage into the blue branch.
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It hit the arrest bay hard enough to ring the frame.
All six bulbs remained intact.
The evaluator checked the cards.
“Integrity?”
“Eighty-six. Both.”
Selka compared the external trace to the submitted record.
“Within band.”
The Court recorder began writing the repeatability finding.
Vael raised one hand.
“Second condition.”
Tarin studied her.
The evaluator did too. “Specified?”
Vael slid forward the counter-request attached to Tarin’s public record. “Forced misalignment at the far edge of the submitted tolerance. If the document claims the band, test the band.”
Selka read it and frowned. “The request uses the maximum offset as though maximum and nominal were interchangeable.”
“That is why we test it instead of arguing in correspondence.”
The sponsor clerk leaned forward.
There was the pressure Tarin had been expecting since the public copy appeared: not somebody denying the method, but somebody looking for the point where a true statement became too broad.
The technician reset the rig at the far edge of Tarin’s allowed offset.
Tarin saw the problem before she finished.
The Thread would carry the cue. The Latch would receive it. But the carriage’s first lateral kick would load the anchor before the route correction settled.
His hands stayed behind the line.
“Do you want to amend the record before the run?” the evaluator asked.
Every part of Tarin that hated public failure wanted to say yes.
If he narrowed the band now, nobody would see a bulb break.
If he left it, the record might fail in front of the people waiting to copy it.
Selka said nothing.
Vael watched him.
Tarin pressed his thumbnail into his index finger.
“Run the submitted band.”
The carriage released.
THREAD-1 fired on time.
LATCH-1 caught.
The carriage hesitated between branches, then clipped the red frame.
One calibration bulb shattered.
The sound was tiny.
The gallery reacted as if someone had dropped a sword.
Tarin’s stomach went cold.
The evaluator stopped the rig and looked at him. “Interpretation?”
He could explain the cards. He could explain the angle. He could explain why the nominal setup had worked.
None of that would unbreak the bulb.
“The submitted tolerance is too wide,” he said. “The interaction is repeatable inside the measured central band. The far edge is not supported.”
Selka picked up her pencil. “New boundary?”
Tarin gave the narrower number from the external traces, not from pride.
The technician reset the rig inside it.
Third run.
Blue arrest bay.
No broken bulbs.
Fourth run, with the support rotated.
Blue again.
The evaluator stamped the sheet once over the repeatability block and once beside the revised failure boundary.
The System message landed harder than a clean sweep would have.
Somebody else had built the interaction from Tarin’s record.
Somebody else had also broken it where his record had overclaimed.
Both facts now belonged to the proof.
A second sponsor clerk was already sketching the revised route geometry.
Vael approached the black line after the rig went inert.
“You could have narrowed the band before the failure.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because then I would know it failed and the record would not.”
Vael considered him for a moment. “Better answer than the one you gave me at Quill.”
“That is an aggressively low bar.”
“Progress often is.”
Selka handed Tarin his copy.
Across the top, the Court stamp now sat beside words he had wanted for months:
INDEPENDENT RECREATION VERIFIED.
Below it, someone had attached two requests for counter-tests.
Not sanctions. Not praise.
Questions with signatures.
Tarin folded the copy once and put it in his satchel.
The empty space where SIPHON-0 had been made the papers sit crooked.
He left them that way.
Behind him, the public record stayed under the gallery rail while another operator traced the placement marks without asking Tarin where to put her finger.