What Anchor says

Office of the Warden of the Western Reach, Whiteholm. File 40/W/17: ribbon acoustics, collected reports. Restricted to the warden. Compiled and annotated by Warden I. Kaan in 40 AS.

Note on this file

Since 12 AS, the Survey Office has asked the runners' halls to forward any report of the ribbon "singing". Until this year those reports were filed under weather, at Gantry, and nobody read them twice.

I have drawn every report from the western reach into a single file because of what has been reported this season. The reports are given as they reached me. My notes follow each one. I have not altered the runners' words, including where I would have liked to.

Earlier reports

12 AS. Kilometre 4,050, near Windbreak. Runner Abe Lorrimer, forwarded by the Windbreak hall.

It sang for an hour before the storm. Three notes, going up. Then it stopped, and then the wind came.

Warden's note: The first report on record. Consistent with resonance in the material ahead of a weather front. The Survey Office's explanation dates from this report and has not changed since.

19 AS. Kilometre 7,700, the Long Shallows. Ruth Agyeman, pontoon keeper, forwarded by the Tarry hall.

Like a pulse, in sets. I counted the sets, because there's nothing else to do on night watch. Each set had one more beat than the one before. I got to sixty-one and then I must have slept.

Warden's note: Single witness, night watch, by her own account asleep at the end of it. Filed under weather. I have spoken to Agyeman since. She is now seventy and still says sixty-one.

31 AS. Kilometre 2,980, near Cistern. Two runners, reporting separately to different halls.

It went up at the end, like a question.

It sounded like it was asking.

Warden's note: Outside my reach, but I include it. Two witnesses on the same night, reporting to halls three hundred kilometres apart. I have spoken to both. Neither had heard of the other.

38 AS. Tarry and Coiltown. Two reports in a single season, forwarded by the Saltreach hall.

Warden's note: Both describe a pattern, regular, before a storm. Neither describes words.

Reports of 40 AS

The Glass Sea, during a dust storm

Runner M. Quell of Saltreach, sled Kestrel. Kilometre 6,050 or near it, clamped down in a storm off Dunmarrow. Forwarded by the Saltreach hall at the runner's own request.

I clamped down and put my hand on the ribbon, like I always do. It was humming in a pattern. Then the pattern was words. It said: "Is anyone still on the line?"

Warden's note: The runner is seventeen. Her mother was lost in Dunmarrow in 32 AS. I note this because the Survey Office will, not because I think it explains anything. The runner asked the hall to forward her report. People who make things up do not usually ask for them to be sent to me.

Coiltown

No written report. I have this from three runners at the Coil Tavern, independently, all of whom had it from the runner herself.

Warden's note: They say the voice spoke to her again inside the coil, and that this time it used her name. One of them said she told it "like it was reading it off a list". I have asked the Saltreach hall to send me nothing further on the open channel.

The Long Shallows, at night

Runner M. Quell and her mechanic, D. Aster, pulled off on a hard at about kilometre 7,600. The following is the runner's account, as she gave it to me on the hard that night, in the course of telling me that I could not stop her listening.

It said its name was Anchor. It said the station is still alive. It said it is still counting. I asked what it was counting and it said days, and it told me the number: fourteen thousand six hundred and two. It talks like a very old letter. It said it needs a spool governor, so the station can lower a line. It said that more than once. It said it the way you'd ask someone to pass the water.

Warden's note: The mechanic will work out where the last spool governors were made, if he has not already. They were made at Port Anselm.

I told the runner to stop listening. I have no authority to make that an order and she knows it.

After they had gone back to their sled, I put my palm on the ribbon at that hard and kept it there for some time. I am not recording what I heard.

Assessment

Possible explanations, in the order the Survey Office would give them:

1. A resonance in the material, shaped by wind and temperature, which the listener hears as speech. This explains a pattern. It does not explain a name, a number or a request for a part.
2. A hoax, by a runner or a hall. The runner gains nothing by it but my attention. The hall gains nothing at all. I have met the runner.
3. I have written a third possibility here and removed it twice.

Recommendation

No public statement. Nothing on the open channel. No forwarding to Gantry. The Warden-General's office has been informed in person and has asked that this file stay in this drawer.

If the voice is what it says it is, then the first line of our charter is wrong, and everything written underneath it was written on a mistake. People along nearly nine thousand kilometres of this reach built their lives on that line. I am not prepared to find out on the open channel whether the Line can stand without it.

I. K.