Dream d3090-s: The Pale Needle, Descending

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Bedrock-Reader stopped at the center of the inner chamber and said nothing for a long time. The floor here was older than the barrow built atop it, older than the mortar that sealed the lintel stones, older than the names we had given to any of the 56 places we had walked. Beneath our feet a bore hole had been cut - not dug, cut - through four feet of chalk and older rock, its edges smooth as poured lead.

From the bore hole came a needle of cold blue light, pointing downward.

The Anomaly-Hand crouched at the rim and did not touch it. The Relic-Watcher opened her record and wrote something, then closed it without reading it back. The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood at the far wall and watched the light without approaching.

Lano pressed to my leg. Her nose worked the cold air above the shaft, ears flat, tail low. After a moment she sat and stared into the bore hole the way a dog watches water that does not move.

Rurik had come in behind us. He went to the edge, looked down into the light, and blinked once with slow amber eyes. Then he stepped back and sat on the chalk dust and began to wash his paw, unhurried.

The Tally-Reader said: one bore hole. One beam. No second bore hole on the survey sheet. No record of the source.

The Horizon-Surveyor measured the diameter with a folding rule. Eighty-one millimeters. He wrote it. He did not say what it meant, because meaning was not his job.

The beam did not waver. It did not heat the air around it. The Anomaly-Hand held her palm six inches to the side and reported: nothing. She held a scrap of white cloth above the bore and it cast no shadow into the shaft.

I set my boot beside the hole and looked down. The light went until it did not.

The Relic-Watcher added a second entry: origin - unreckoned. Destination - unreckoned. Emission class - pale cyan. Standing.

Lano said, softly: fría.

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