“Someone who watched you hide the fact that you’ve changed it.”
The guard shifted uneasily. Nessa showed him the photographs of the new brackets. She explained that the display was supposed to use a modern drive system but that Arthur had reused components from the original room. The guard called his supervisor.
Inside the temporary stage area, a worker started the display for a sound check. Painted panels moved slowly around a small paper boat. A group of schoolchildren on a tour stopped to watch from behind a rope. One boy leaned forward, fascinated by the moving stars.
Arthur waved for the worker to continue. June saw a panel travel farther than expected and shouted, “Stop it!”
The worker reached for the control. The motor went quiet, but the panel kept moving, pushed by its own weight. It rolled another six inches and struck a wooden post. The post tipped into the rope barrier, scattering the children backward.
Nobody was hurt. The sound, however, was enough. Arthur stood frozen as the panel rocked against the post.
Lily moved toward the children and helped a teacher guide them away. Daniel called for the power to be disconnected. Nessa kept the crowd back. June stood beside the stage, breathing hard, her eyes fixed on the panel that had not stopped when ordered.
Arthur recovered first. “A minor adjustment,” he said. “We can fix it.”
Walter stepped forward. “We can. But not by pretending it didn’t happen.”
14. THE PUBLIC ROOM
The city representative, a woman named Elena Brooks, asked everyone involved to remain while the installation was inspected. Arthur objected that the preview was private. Elena pointed to the schoolchildren and the unsecured barrier.
“Private or not, you’ve invited the public into a work area,” she said. “Nobody runs that display again today.”
Arthur demanded that June leave. June refused. When he accused her of trying to destroy his reputation, she answered in a voice clear enough for the entire room to hear.
“I have spent twenty years protecting the reputation of a room. I am finished protecting the people who changed it.”
Walter explained the old accident. He described the removed stop, his own silence, and the similar problem he had seen in the new display. He did not claim Arthur had intended to hurt anyone. He said only that Arthur had knowingly traded a safety margin for a more dramatic movement, then failed to tell the people responsible for operating the equipment.
Arthur denied it at first. He insisted the old accident had been unpredictable and the new display was different. But when Elena asked him to identify the engineer who had approved the reused mechanism, he could not. He had designed it himself.
