Dream d3001-s: What the Receiver Heard

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat at the reading table in Kestrelhush on the sixth night of eight, with both accounts open and the disagreement running across them like a seam. The far account called the eastern quarter cold and emptied out; the near account, written from inside the doorway this afternoon, found three households working, a lamp burning in the loft, a child's shoe by the step. I was copying them out side by side in the same hand when the Signals Officer came in without knocking.

She set a paper on the corner of the table and did not speak immediately. Lano had been curled under the table with her nose against my boot; she lifted her head before the door opened, and by the time the Officer crossed the threshold Lano was on her feet with her ears pressed flat against her skull. A single sharp bark, then silence, then the ears flat again and her whole body taut and facing the window.

The paper read: receiver array, eastern mast, pattern not matched to any known beacon network. Origin indeterminate. Duration ongoing.

The Head of Instruments arrived within ten minutes, still in his coat from the cold. He read the paper and asked how long. The Officer said since the fourth hour after dark. He asked whether the eastern relay had logged it. She said it had not logged anything since the fifth hour yesterday. He said that was the first thing, then, not the signal; the logging gap was the first thing, and they should read the gap before they read the signal.

Rurik came in through the open door and stepped directly to the warm place beside the lamp. He sat there and stared at the eastern wall with his tail wrapped around his feet. He did not move.

I continued copying. The disagreement about the eastern quarter sat in my hand, one account on the left side of the page and one on the right, neither marked as the true one. When the Head of Instruments asked what I was working on I showed him. He looked at the two columns for a moment and then looked at the window. The Signals Officer wrote the start time into her log. Outside, the array was still running and the pattern was still coming in from no recorded place, and the settlement had not yet decided what it meant to do about that.

Lano did not settle again. She stood at my knee with her ears flat and her nose working at the cold air coming under the door.

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