The first snow fell overnight and quietly covered the ground.
Yevstignei came to the party himself, on a state nag, without permission and without his bottle. Prokop did not recognise him at first. Sober and clean-shaven, the keeper looked much older.
"Heard about the routes being postponed," he said instead of greeting him. "So they won't be done by the deadline, and they'll go in as empty. I know that game. Here."
He took a heavy iron-bound casket from the nag.
The casket held the original field records from twenty years of surveys: rough journals, measurement sheets and sketches bearing names, corrections and stains from bog water. A separate notebook lay on top. In it Yevstignei had listed the sheets that came back from the register with ready-made wording, giving the year and the clerk at the office.
"For twenty years I thought I was keeping these for my own trial," Yevstignei said. "Turns out it was for the review. Take them. I compared the records: the office's ready-made wording appeared on eleven sheets, not only the one for your Burn. Eleven, lad. That isn't haste any more. It's a system."
Prokop spent three days comparing them.
They worked at night, by two candles, in a corner of the winter hut: by day the party was closing down the field season, and there were too many prying eyes around. Kapiton silently issued the drafts from the party's chest, entering the transaction in the record and observing every formality. He did not ask what Prokop was looking for, but made sure the issue was lawful. Frol sat by the door pretending to mend a sound strap, and told everyone who tried to enter the hut the same thing: "Sleeping. Counting. Go."
Prokop took the party's drafts for the past three seasons from Zotik, everything the clerk had carefully kept in waxed wrappers, and laid them beside the fair copies. He knew how to find discrepancies. Now he had to find them not in fathoms, but in the wording.
All the figures matched. The reference points, angles and distances in the fair copy reproduced the draft exactly. Zotik wrote carefully; there was neither forgery nor negligence here.
The names did not match.
In the drafts, each correction bore the name of the man who had made it: Yezhov, Vershinin or the second surveyor. In the fair copies those names had vanished: the register's form required corrections to be entered only as a total. Across three seasons, Prokop counted thirty-six such corrections and as many missing names.
And on one sheet, more than the name had been changed.
In the draft, Pankrat's winter hut by Black Ridge was fixed to an old larch four fathoms away. In the fair copy, the larch had disappeared and the reference point had been moved to the edge of the belt. That small correction was enough to place the winter hut in the middle of state land and make Pankrat a trespasser.
The figure had been changed, but the alteration was unsigned. It was not in Zotik's draft at all. That meant it had appeared in the fair copy after the sheet left the party.
Prokop laid both sheets before Zotik.
For a long time Zotik looked from one sheet to the other.
"That isn't my hand," he said at last.
"It looks like yours."
"We learnt from the same copybooks." Zotik raised his eyes, and for the first time Prokop saw fear in them. "The fair copies were taken to the register office in winter to be checked. That was the rule. The wagoner took them. I handed them over and received them back against an inventory, sheet for sheet."
"Sheet for sheet," Prokop repeated. "But while they were being checked, unsigned corrections in someone else's hand appeared on them."
Zotik said nothing. His hand rose of its own accord to his chest, where he kept the letters and coins for his brother.
"Your brother is in bondage to the office," Prokop said quietly. "I have seen you send him money. I am not asking you anything, Zotik. I am telling you: at the review I will show them the drafts and the fair copies. All thirty-six nameless corrections, and the one with the altered figure. Decide before the review what you will say when they are laid on the table."
Zotik was silent for a long time. Then he drew a letter, worn along its folds, from inside his coat and laid it on the table between the draft and the fair copy.
"My brother writes that he has nearly saved enough to buy his freedom," he said. "Three years of saving. By spring the office will release him for good. If I remain useful until spring." He looked at his clean hands, at the ink callus on his middle finger. "You think I didn't know the names were disappearing from the fair copies. I knew, surveyor. I simply thought: a name isn't a figure, it creates no discrepancy. Who does it hurt?"
"Pankrat," Prokop said.
Zotik put the letter away.
That night a messenger sent by the chief wagoner left the camp: unscheduled, travelling light, on the best horse, bound for the office.
Prokop watched him go from the ridge. There was no point in giving chase: the messenger had already carried away the warning. The office would learn of the comparison and try to reach the drafts. And they would be kept by Zotik, whose brother remained in bondage to that same office.
He returned to the hut and said one thing to Zotik:
"From tonight on, carry them on your person. Not in the chest. On your person."
Zotik looked at him, then at the door beyond which hooves were clattering, and silently transferred the waxed wrappers inside his coat, beside the letters.
Two weeks remained until the review of the sheets. Three until the register's deadline.
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