Dream d3221-s: Smoke From No Known Fire

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was crossing the charcoal yard at the edge of Ashholt with the record folded inside my coat. The ground was grey underfoot and the air tasted of old burning. A smoking mound stood to my left and I did not slow down to look at it. The smell of cold ash does not belong in the record. I moved through quickly.

Lano was at my right side, her nose working. She did not investigate the mound. She kept pace with me, which is not usually her way in a yard full of smells.

Rurik had gone ahead. I could see him on the fence rail at the far side, watching us cross. His tail was still.

The relay station at Ashholt is a single room above the cooperage, reached by an outer stair. The relay clerk was already at the window when I came up. She had a lamp going even though it was mid-morning, which is how I knew something had come in.

I set the record on the table, the two accounts kept in the order they were made: the surveyor's stone-entries first, then the interval log. The clerk did not touch them yet. She was watching the apparatus on the shelf behind her.

She said: the night receivers picked something up. Not a known signal. Not from the beacon network. The pattern does not match anything in the index.

I looked at the apparatus. It was quiet now. She said it had been quiet for the last hour.

Lano had come in behind me. Her ears went flat. She stood in the middle of the room and gave one short bark, low, not aimed at anything in the room. Then she was still, nose toward the window.

The clerk asked: investigate or ignore.

I said I did not know. I said that was not a question I could answer from here.

She wrote something in her own log. She wrote the time and the date and a description of the signal's duration. She did not write what the signal meant because she did not know. She drew a line under it.

Then she picked up the record I had brought and began to read. The absent witness was not yet there. They would arrive in the evening, the clerk said. She would leave the record with them. I had done my part.

Outside, the charcoal yard was still smoking. Rurik dropped from the fence rail and went under the cooperage without looking back. Lano stayed close to me on the stair. I could still taste ash on the back of my teeth.

The signal in the apparatus had no name yet. Nobody had decided what to do with it. The record sat on the table waiting for someone who had not been there for either reading.

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