Characters
Tilda Imhof
Shift supervisor inside the mountain, hears what no screen shows
Tilda Imhof supervises the shift in the control room of the Dorn power plant, deep inside the mountain. She is short and sturdy, with a broad, calm face and short dark hair with a gray streak. She wears her ear protection around her neck. She has known the plant since she was six and has worked there for 19 years. At the start of a shift she doesn’t look at the screens first; she lays her palm flat against pipe and rock and listens. For a few weeks now, during load changes, she has been hearing a sound that no instrument shows. In her report she calls it a knock. Her mother lives up by the switchbacks, 300 meters below the dam.
First encounter
- First noticed: standing with her back to the glass, one ear tilted slightly, her palm flat on a pipe
- Speaks: tersely, no conditionals, no maybes; “Then I hear that it sounds normal.”
- Object: the ear protection around her neck; her travel mug on a spot on the shelf where the paint has worn off
Connected to
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
- Xaver NaglYoung control room operator who reads off the log
- Dr. Adrian FalkPanel assessor who accepts only what has been measured
- The Plant ManagerDorn power plant manager, clutching his sheet of paper
- Wanda ImhofTilda’s mother, lives 300 meters below the dam
- Dorn Reservoir (Dam and Power Plant)Reservoir, dam, and a power plant deep in the mountain
- UnterdornThe village below the dam, with one bridge out
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.