Dream d1155-s: Every Light On

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came down the approach road in low light, the kind of light that passes through stripped towers at a shallow angle and makes everything amber and distant. The settlement showed itself slowly. First the beacon, always the beacon, pulsing steady at center. Then the outline of the structures around it, the relay on the distant ridge blinking in counterpoint, and between them the whole arrangement of rooflines and cable runs that had taken us so long to build.

Lano trotted ahead of me on the road. His tail moved in a slow arc. He stopped once, nose working at something at the road's edge, then looked back at me as if to say the information was worth nothing but he had checked it anyway. I caught up to him and we walked together into the outer edge of the settlement's warmth.

The broadcast station was sending. I could hear the low carrier hum from fifty meters out, the sound the infrastructure makes when it is doing what it was built to do. Past the forecasting tower, where the Weather Reader had pinned fresh readings to the board outside, I could see the Philosopher at the table in the library reading room, head bent over something long. The Listener was in the signal room. I could not see him but I knew because the telegraph had that particular rhythm it takes on when he is the one at the key.

The Builder was up on the pavilion roof, checking something at the junction where the new cable came in from the ridge. I raised a hand. He raised one back without looking down, which meant he had been watching my approach since I was far out on the road.

The Beacon Network Specialist came around the side of the main structure with a length of conduit over one shoulder. She said the connection to the ridge had stayed clean through last night's wind. I said good. She said it was better than good, it meant the whole relay loop would hold through winter. I said yes.

Lano sat beside me while we talked. His ears were up. When she walked back toward her work he watched her go, then looked at the beacon. He made a sound that was not quite a bark.

"Luz," he said.

The white crane went over once, low, wings catching the amber. The Wire Man emerged from below the signal room with a coil of wire and looked up at the crane. The Dreamer was beside him, writing in the notebook she keeps, not looking up.

The settlement hummed. I stood on the approach road where it ends and the work begins, and I knew that what had been built here was not finished, but it was holding, and that was the thing we had come back for.