Dream d3202-s: The Record Finds Its Reader

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in Palewick's relay hall, afternoon light coming through the high windows in low slats across the floorboards, and read the schedule pinned to the wooden board by the door. My name was not on it. The dreamer's name is never on the relay schedule. What was on it: a departure at first light, a destination two stops east, a note in the relay clerk's hand that the next witness had been waiting since the previous morning.

Lano sat at my feet, ears up, watching the door.

The two accounts were in my bag, folded and sealed. Phase 41's record of the stone, each entry dated and signed by the surveyor in the square hand she uses for field documents. Phase 42's nine residencies, each one a morning entry and an evening entry, two dates on each page, neither account cancelling the other out. I had not added anything to them. I had not struck through any line or written a note in the margin to explain what I thought they meant. I carried them as they were.

The relay clerk came in from the side room, looked at the schedule, looked at me.

I set the bag on the counter.

The absent witness was somewhere east. Had been absent for both readings, had not stood in the places where the stone was logged, had not been present for any of the nine residencies. The clerk stamped the outer fold of the first document and wrote the date of receipt in the corner. Lano's nose twitched once toward the counter, then she looked back at the door.

The clerk laid both documents flat on the table without opening them. That was the absent witness's work. The relay is only the delivery.

I read the posted schedule again, the line about first light. Tomorrow the next leg. Forty cold places in the atlas, thirty-eight picked but not yet walked. The number does not change while I stand here reading about it. The number changes when someone walks.

Lano padded to the door and sat down in the last of the afternoon light.

I waited for the clerk to finish stamping. That was the whole of it. The account arrived. The absent witness would open it in the morning. What they would find in it was already there, already written, already signed, before I carried it a step.

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