The Surveyor · The Cartographer's Daughter · Pulse Beat
Commander Iyer arrived in a taxi two weeks later, a spare man of seventy-three, with a naval beard and a battered leather case. "Miss Varma." He bowed slightly. "I read your letter four times. I…
Commander Iyer arrived in a taxi two weeks later, a spare man of seventy-three, with a naval beard and a battered leather case.
"Miss Varma." He bowed slightly. "I read your letter four times. I surveyed this coast in 1979. I knew your father slightly, and your mother better." He took off his cap. "I'm told you have a chart."
She showed him. He spread it on the drawing table, adjusted his glasses, and went quiet for twenty minutes, working through the soundings with a pair of brass dividers. When he looked up his eyes were bright.
"This is correct," he said. "Beautifully correct. I'd stake my reputation on it." He tapped the red wash. "I remember a rock on this bearing, in '79. I reported it. The report was never published." He looked at her. "May I see the sounding rolls?"
They went down to the Nandini together, and by evening the old man had laid out every roll of paper Isha had recorded, comparing them with his own memory and his own long-lost notebook. At nine o'clock he put down his pen.
"We will publish," he said. "Under my name and yours. And his."