Dream d2867-s: A Signal from No Network

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the guests came through the gate into the torchlit courtyard and draped their coats over the low wall as the custom required, and the Registrar worked along the wall with a tally-board before anyone went inside to the long hall. Lano padded beside her, nose low, pausing at each coat in turn.

Nine orders of deed. That was what the board came to, counted before the last coat was down. The Registrar set a stroke beside each: service, founding, recovery, witness, threshold, craft, correspondence, trial, and the ninth that carries no common name but is recognized by its shape when it appears. Nine hundred and fifteen struck in all, across nineteen guests who had come in from the night. Not one had ever been altered. A correction at this house is a new medal laid beside the old, never a restrike, never a removal. The wall and everything hung over it stood as proof.

Inside the long hall the Office of Faces worked by a different method. Seven faces cut for the seven orders of task the house measures. By late evening six of them sat flush with their measure and one did not. The one that had moved carried a mark in the ledger: its bearer had cleared four of eight trials where the others had cleared more, and the station the face had once opened was now closed to it. The mismatch was entered in the record and left standing. The medals cannot be restruck to match the face. The face cannot be recut without a trial not yet held. The disagreement is written down and that is the whole of it.

The Charter-holder read seven rulings from the table before the coats were returned. All seven standing, none under revision. Lano sat at the Charter-holder's feet and did not move.

Then a runner came in from the outer office and set a transcription on the table.

Unknown signal. Not from any beacon network in the house's record. Pattern unrecognized. Origin unclear.

The Registrar and the Charter-holder read it over side by side. Neither spoke at once. Lano's ears went flat. She had been attending quietly all evening, nose to the floor, coat-smells and old wood, but now she rose and turned toward the gate and gave one short bark into the dark courtyard.

The gate remained open. The torches burned. The coats hung on the wall where they had been laid.

The Charter-holder set the paper down and said the house would need to decide: send to the origin point, or hold and wait for a second signal. Neither course had been chosen when I woke.

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