Everything goes in it.
WATER HOURS — THE FAR END Amended. The far end of Seven draws at the altered hours until further notice. (These have changed before and will change back. Nobody has ever written down how many times.)
SECTOR COUNTER — HOURS As posted. The clerk is behind it. The tin is his own.
HEARING — A STALL ON THE RAMP Listed. Parties to attend.
FOUND — A BAG OF TOOLS
Hand-written, from a household on the second landing. A bag of tools went off a trolley. It will be taken back with nothing said.
Not a claim. Not a complaint. An offer to let the matter end, pinned where the person who needs to read it will walk past it.
RENEWAL OF THE INSTRUMENT — NOTICE OF SITTING
Printed half-sheet, off the chamber clerk’s press. Low on the left, half under the ramp notice. The fold still in it from the office.
The sitting is given as the hundred and first day.
WORKS OFFICE — BOOKING (pinned across the top corner of the half-sheet)
Bloc hold. Third bell.
What the frame is actually saying
The instrument is the thing the Cairn is governed by. Its renewal is the largest open question on the station, and the notice of it is a half-sheet, low on the left, with a works-office booking pinned across the corner of it — because the person reading the frame that morning needed the hour of the bloc hold, and got it, and went and got the card.
The frame does not rank anything. Water hours, a stall, a bag of tools and the constitution of a city of forty thousand are pinned to the same board at the same height, and the one with a booking across it is the one somebody needed today.
Everything on it comes down on the first of the next quarter, whether it has been read or not.