The form took Elias twenty-two minutes, which was nineteen more than it required.
It was the Council's standard sheet for a provisional appointment, three pages of boilerplate older than anyone now on the Council, and he had cut it to one. What survived was a frame: a heading, a line for the appointee's name, a space for the term, and a column headed Responsibilities. Under that he had written three lines, read them once, and refused to read them again. A man who kept rereading his terms would start defending them.
Below the column ran the categories of what the Council could give in return, each ruled off under its own heading with nothing yet beneath it. Below those lay a wide, unruled space marked Conditions.
