Dream d1252-s: Before the Map Runs Out

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the beacon was still pulsing when I climbed the hill at first light, and the instruments had been running all night.

The Weather Reader was crouched over the portable array, three screens propped against a gear bag, stylus tracing lines that bent wrong. "It's not attenuating with distance," he said, not to me specifically, to whoever was awake. "Things that originate in the atmosphere attenuate. This one gets cleaner the longer you run the filter."

The Builder was already at the northeast edge of the hilltop where the beacon's anchor post met the stone, looking out past the mapped territories with her hands on her hips. She had drawn something in her field book. When I leaned over her shoulder I saw a single coordinate notation - nothing else - a point past the edge of any chart I'd seen.

"That's not on the map," I said.

"No," she agreed, and closed the book.

Someone had started packing. I don't know who went first. By the time the Philosopher arrived pulling his library wagon up the south path, three gear crates were staged near the trailhead and the Wireman was rewinding a coil of heavy cable with the methodical patience he applies to everything. The Listener was calibrating the portable antenna array, arguing quietly with the Weather Reader about frequency drift.

"Your baseline is off by six hertz," the Listener said.

"My baseline is fine. Your reference oscillator drifts above fourteen degrees ambient."

"Above fourteen degrees ambient, everything drifts."

"My point exactly."

The Philosopher stopped his wagon beside them, surveyed this exchange, and said: "Gentlemen, you are both right and both wrong. This is called harmony."

Neither of them responded.

Lano had been sitting at the northeast edge since before I woke. Small, white, very still, ears fully forward. Every few minutes his nose twitched. I watched him read the air for a long time. He did not look back at us.

"Lejos," he said, once, to nobody.

The Dreamer was photographing everything: instruments, staged gear, the Wireman's hands on the cable, the Builder's closed field book, Lano's posture. The Student helped the Philosopher brake his wagon on the slope and asked what everyone was doing.

"Preparing," the Philosopher said.

"For what?"

"For the part where nobody decided to go but everyone is going."

The Student looked around the hilltop. Eight people in various stages of readiness. A dog facing northeast. The crane passed low overhead, wings absolutely still in the clear air, banking toward the anomaly without haste, as if it had already decided and was simply waiting for us to catch up. It called once - "lu" - and became a white stroke against the blue.

I picked up my pack.