Page 8 of Pocket Wife

Corvek’s eyes sharpen. “That map has no registry seal.”

“No,” Lucy says. “It has my grandfather’s notes. And his father’s before him. See this ridge? Helix’s filing calls it East Spur. Nobody here calls it that. East Spur is twelve kilometers north.”

I bend over the map.

The room seems to lean with me. An old farmer on the nearest bench grips a cracked ledger so tightly his knuckles pale, as if the book itself might keep his fields from vanishing.

The hand-drawn boundary follows irrigation canals, stone markers, and an old service road now swallowed by sunwheat fields. I compare it against the Helix projection. At first glance, the corporate map appears cleaner. Digitally aligned. Properly scaled. Official.

Then I see the problem.

The Helix boundary uses the correct coordinate format with the wrong local anchor.

A minor error, if accidental.

A useful error, if not.

“Where did Helix obtain its anchor point?” I ask.

Corvek answers too quickly. “From archived survey data.”

“Which survey?”

“The file will identify it.”

“I am asking you to identify it.”

One of the attorneys begins searching through the stack. Pages shift. A data tab blinks red, then blue. Nobody speaks.

Lucy watches me as if she’d expected me to dismiss the map and was preparing to hate me for it.

I keep my attention on the records.

At last, the attorney says, “The survey reference appears to be incomplete in this copy.”

The benches erupt.

I stand. My height quiets the room faster than my raised hand did. I dislike using physical presence as authority, but order matters. Without it, Helix will call the hearing invalid before midday.

“This proceeding will remain civil,” I say. “Every statement is being recorded. Every document submitted will be examined.”

Lucy steps forward. “And while they are examined? Do families start packing? Do Helix officers measure our fields? Do your laws protect us while you decide whether we matter?”

The question lands where emotion and law meet, and that makes it harder to dismiss.

I turn to Corvek. “Has Helix begun physical site preparation?”

“Preliminary marking only.”

“Define preliminary.”

“Non-invasive survey flags. Drone imaging. Soil assessment.”

“On occupied farms?”

Corvek’s silence supplies enough answer.

I activate my wrist display and open the Authority seal. “Pending review, Helix Extraction Consortium is ordered to halt all expansion activity within the disputed Solaris Valley zone. No survey flags, drone passes, soil extraction, structure tagging, or resident contact regarding relocation terms without written approval from this office.”