Page 145 of Commander’s Mate

And why the difference mattered more than instinct ever could.

The shelf had begun as a place for things no one could bear to throw away.

It had become an argument about what rebuilding meant.

I stood there long after Harper left.

A cracked carving from my mother’s kitchen.

A child’s blade.

A broken ceramic bowl.

Pieces.

Objects survived strangely.

People did not.

Or sometimes they did, and we did not know.

That was worse.

The dead could be mourned.

The missing demanded work.

Harper’s registry had begun as names written because frightened people needed to know they would not vanish into another system.

I had thought of it as administration.

I had been wrong.

The shelf remembered what had been.

The registry insisted on what might still be recovered.

There was a difference.

A dangerous one.

Hope required resources.

Searches.

Ships.

Fuel.

People willing to look after the official search had ended.

I touched the edge of the shelf.

Old Farseek had been military before almost everything else. That had saved us more than once.

It had also taught us to believe organization meant hierarchy.

Commander.