They set up the post on the boundary of Burn in spring, after the snow had melted.
The post was plain, hewn timber, with a fresh sheet beneath a small hood. The sheet recorded everything the chamber had given force in law: the settlement of Burn, eighteen households according to the old record, and the boundaries established by testimony. Below came the names of the witnesses: Sekleta, the miller's widow; the man from the wagon train; the old woman who remembered the stoves. Above them, in the place reserved for the keeper of the boundary, the first name was Evlampy Vershinin, schoolmaster.
Sekleta came to the post with a loaf of bread, bustling about as though it were a house-warming. She stood there a while, sounded out what she could, and asked Prokop to read the rest. He did.
"There now," she said. "And they would keep on about a locality, a locality."
A young surveyor passing through came up to the post with a brand-new compass, checked it against the sheet, nodded in satisfaction and said to his companion:
"Burn. Restored settlement, according to the register."
He had called Burn a settlement, not burnt-over ground.
Sekleta watched him go and said nothing. For twenty years she had corrected everyone who spoke of her village with a small letter. Now there was no one left to correct. She stood by the post, holding the bread to her breast, and kept silent.
Prokop opened the chest for the last time at the boundary.
The petitions were no longer needed. On top, Prokop placed his father's handmade map: the street, the yards, the school and the well, drawn in the uneven hand of a teacher who loved this land but could not draw a proper plan. There was nothing left to petition for. For the first time in twenty years, Prokop closed the chest without pain.
Pankrat sent a string of dried fish with the wagon train and word that the winter hut still stood, the trap lines were intact and his name had been entered on the sheet. He expected Prokop back in summer to measure farther on. And he added that the surveyor should eat a proper meal first.
Kapiton was never put forward for a reward: his surname simply did not appear on the lists accompanying the register. The senior topographer said he had carried the consequences of another man's haste for eleven years, and now the burden was lighter. In spring he applied for a new belt running towards the ocean and stated in his petition that he was willing to measure baselines with the former porter Vershinin: his hand had been tested.
Frol made it to retirement: the remaining eight hundred versts ended at the gates of Pereymishche. He handed in the chain against the inventory and stayed at the stockade as keeper of the review tables. He said that after thirty years he was used to keeping count, and here the tables and documents needed counting.
Tyko stayed with the register as a clerk's apprentice. People said the governor went on recalling over dinner how the boy had compared the two hands. Tyko now copied the thirty-one names into the inventory of the blank belt, with official precision and no mistakes in the clan names. "Someone has to read their fair copies," he sent word through Ayga. "And I know both scripts."
Little was known of Prosha, Zotik's brother. After the review, the office was reckoning its losses and refused to release him, so the purchase of his freedom was delayed. Zotik wrote a petition to have his brother transferred to state service with the survey and took it round to every official himself. Without waiting to be asked, Prokop signed as guarantor: after the chamber's ruling, his signature once again had force in law.
The clan returned to its autumn route.
Prokop came to the encampment over the last crusted snow, with a plane table on his back.
After the hearing, Prokop's seal was returned to him. He accepted it: the survey was not over, and the ruling on the blank space still had to be put into practice. At the outermost tent he stopped and took off his hat.
Saltu came out to him himself. Prokop held out a knot of old harness: three straps with their ends hanging down, the clan has passed, do not follow.
The old man took the knot and turned it about in his dark fingers. Then he untied it and retied it differently: short, with the ends pointing up and inwards.
"The sign for a camp," Ayga said from behind his shoulder. "The clan is staying. Come near."
Saltu hung the knot on the middle pole at the height of a raised hand and went back into the tent without looking round. With that sign, the elder had said all he wished to say.
That evening, by the fire, Ayga recited the names.
Her mother and grandmother had done the same: in the presence of the younger ones, they recited the whole autumn route aloud, day by day, so that the names would not be forgotten. Prokop sat across the fire and listened to the familiar names: Hungry Spring Riffle, Where-They-Waited-for-the-Wind, Seven Smokes, Rotten Water.
She did not stop at the thirty-first name.
"White Verst," Ayga said evenly, in the same counting voice. "One day's journey that is not on the sheet. The name is kept by Prokop, the teacher's son. He received it before the chamber, in the presence of witnesses. He answers with all he has."
The younger ones repeated the name after her, as they repeated every name along the route.
Prokop went still. His name had been entered not in the register, nor in a journal, nor on a return, but in the memory of the clan.
"You have the face of a man bent over papers again," Ayga said without looking at him. Now she no longer hid the warmth in her voice. "Do not frown. That is no way to sit by a fire."
"I am learning."
"Learn faster. In spring we shall travel your White Verst, keeper. A route with a name must be travelled, or it will be forgotten."
Late that night, in the tent by the light of a fat lamp, Prokop unfolded the old sheet he had carried at the bottom of the chest all this time. The sheet was older than the Unified Survey, and beyond the eastern ridge it showed a sea.
The single register was complete. At the very edge of the map remained a blank space bearing Prokop's name. And the sea beyond the ridge had not yet been surveyed or given to anyone.
Not surveyed did not mean empty. Prokop now knew that more surely than anyone in the empire.
Prokop rolled up the sheet and put it back at the bottom.
The sea was not going anywhere. Prokop knew how to wait now.
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