Dream d3137-s: A Brief Accord of Clocks

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we climbed the roof stair in the early part of the watch, the Tally-Reader first, then the Horizon-Surveyor with the long rule tucked under one arm, and I came last with Lano at my heels and Rurik somewhere ahead of us, already perched on the iron rail before we reached the top landing.

From the roof, Larkmarket spread itself in pale morning light, and above it the clock faces on the north and east facades showed the same hour - an agreement the Horizon-Surveyor remarked on without looking up from the sheet, noting only that it was temporary. The disc hung clear, and the shadows it cast were steady enough to read.

The Tally-Reader was already making her count when she stopped. She looked at the gauge mounted to the side housing of the generator box, then she looked at it again. Her voice when she spoke was level: the fuel reserve had dropped to its lowest mark. Not empty. Low. She marked the figure in the column she keeps for it, and she did not round it down.

Lano had been nosing along the parapet ledge, but she stilled. Her ears went flat. She turned from the ledge and stood with her forelegs braced, watching the door back to the stair, and she let out one short bark - not at anything visible, at the weight of the thing we had just heard. I set my hand on her back and she stayed still under it, but her eyes kept moving.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum had been standing near the north housing, where the unreckoned machinery breathes behind a grille. He said: the salvage yards had been picked as far as the Horizon-Surveyor's line, and beyond that line the survey was not settled. The settlement would have to go further.

The Anomaly-Hand traced a pale cyan seam in the coping without comment. The Bedrock-Reader, who had not spoken yet, looked up from the stratum notes and said only: the sub-foundation draw-off is not rated for extended running at low supply.

A cloud crossed the disc. The two clock faces went into shade together, and when the shadow moved, the eastern face read one minute ahead. The brief agreement had passed.

The Horizon-Surveyor folded the sheet along the measurement line that marked where the survey ended. The road beyond it was unallotted, untimed, unspoken. Rurik pressed flat against the iron rail, tail low, watching nothing in particular with amber eyes.

The Tally-Reader wrote the fuel figure a second time in red beneath the first.

We did not start anything. We stood on the roof with the true count recorded and the disc half-shrouded, and the road out further than the sheet had ever reached.

---