The Name Card — Summary

Deshi is one of eleven people whose decisions affect ninety million lives, and he is not sure his decisions are decisions. The regional board for the allocation sits four times a year in Kuala Lumpur; nothing in the provision changes without its vote, and in twenty years it has never voted against a recommendation. He is twenty-six, identified rather than elected, and keeps every printed name card in a drawer.

The papers come three weeks ahead, long and good, prepared by the system the board governs, which is the only way it could work. The recommendation always carries, because the papers are right. Borrowed weight presses exactly as hard as earned weight until the carrier checks who holds the other end. The board’s effect lives in papers the system would have written for nobody, which do not exist. He cannot tell whether he is a check or a witness.

He voted no once, on the transport floor for the delta districts, because he did not believe the model had stood in the street. He lost ten to one. The next quarter the floor moved a little early, and the record cannot separate his vote from the incoming data. A courtesy is not nothing. It is also not a load.

The suspicion did not remove the weight. The sittings feel exactly as they did; he checks less, and cannot say whether that is maturity or collusion. Whether a weight that holds only while its carrier declines to examine it is a weight or a habit is left open. He signs the minutes with a pen, the one object on the table the room does not require. The pen worked. Whether the signature did, the record cannot settle.