Work Text:
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ENTRY: 19850317-004
SITE: CLOVERPATCH BUTTE [CLP-03]
43.8358795°N 122.5463426°W
1117m / GRAVEL ACCESS FS#5824-124
FREQ: 7.183 MHz / 40m / CW
LUNAR: SHANTAR MONTH DAY 29
WANING FULL MOON
RELAY: IDEKA → ALY → WAGON TRAIN → NEPTUNE
PATH: 0.82 / RESPONSE PROB 0.67
PROP MIN:3.7 SEC
SAP: PASSIVE
CHESS: e4.
EXPECTED DURATION: 5 MIN.
WKA9Y 17 MAR 1985 / 1512 LOCAL
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A pencil held by the wrinkled left hand scratches notes into a lined notebook folded in half and resting on a leg. WKA9Y’s gray-blue eyes framed in an ash blonde long textured fringe skim over the page. Her writing hand grasps the top notebook labeled “v0.3,” flips back a few pages, consults some math and flips back, correcting a number. Her right arm is resting on the dove blue windowsill of a T1 Westfalia camper. The right hand idly grasps a cylinder of ash that used to be a freshly lit cigarette between index and middle finger, still as death and its filter white as snow, unsmoked. Her face is fixed in a scowl of concentration, body leaned with the specific gravity of a woman who’s been lost in thought.
“Counterpoise to northwest.” A voice lightly tinged with vocal fry informs through the cracked rain-spattered window toward her.
That voice belongs to Braided Threads, WKA9Y’s Cliath protege. The ash cylinder tumbles off the filter and down the window sill. She glares at it just a moment, before opening the door to let the ash fall the rest of the way out. She tucks the dead butt into her breast pocket.
“Terrain break. Away from the road.“ the other woman continues.
“Ksht, FB.” WKA9Y acknowledges, already making a note of it in her book before looking up.
Her eyes are on the other Glass Walker, scrutinizing her as she trudges through a wintry mix and cinches a stabilizing wire on an antenna. Seven meters of pole, wire angled northeast, tied off on a branch at four meters. The correct branch, WKA9Y watches through the windshield long enough to confirm, then returns to the notebook.
The younger Theurge returns to the van smelling like fir sap and cedar tips. WKA9Y sits more fully upright, fishing under the seat for a bottle of amber fluid with spices and leaves dispersed throughout. She carefully pours it into a shot glass and passes it to Braided Threads, who even more carefully marches it out to a nearby rock and leaves it there in offering, undrank. She continues in a clockwise circle, slowly awakening the spirit within the Antenna. WKA9Y peels herself from the passenger seat and climbs into the back with her notebooks clamped under one arm and pencil tucking into the breast pocket of her unbuttoned flannel. Large clumpy snow the size of cornflakes falls in brief stints in between rainfall as Braided Threads returns.
“Hey, with this Rain and Snow do we really need to do the Rite of Cleansing too?”
“What do you think?” WKA9Y gruffs as she takes a seat at a desk in front of a bank of radios.
“I think….yes? … Yes? Yes. The rain and snow is pure and can be used. But the Rite itself still has to be performed. You don’t see snow cleansing cities.” she concludes. WKA9Y opens the notebook back up and makes another note.
Braided Threads works around her mentor, carefully avoiding touching her as she opens a drawer in the Westfalia’s cedar cabinets and retrieves various rite components. WKA9Y scowls over at the Cliath's arm, then scoots out of the way, letting her past to the radio equipment built into what used to be a kitchenette.
Most of it was standard shortwave hardware. Modern, even. Save for one piece at the center—the hunk of metal that takes up most of the rack—an ancient-looking shortwave transmitter. Half of its original labels scratched are off or covered in black plastic labeling with mixed English, Polish, and Cyrillic labels that the Cliath memorized and translated over the last two-and-a-half seasons.
The radio is the oldest thing in the van.
Not Domovoi—Domovoi is the van’s Hearth Patron, which is a different category of old. The radio predates Domovoi The Van by forty years and two continents and it still works, which is more than can be said for several countries it has passed through. It sits, Soviet vactrols glowing amber behind ventilation slots, warming up. In 1985 it is already a relic, and slowly coming up to operating temperature.
“Counterpoise length,“ WKA9Y says, without looking up from the propagation notebook.
“Thirty meters northwest. Follows the contour.” A pause, breath fogging. “Why northwest specifically?”
“What does northwest give us.”
Silence before Braided Threads replies. “Terrain break. The ridge drops off. Less ground reflection interference on the return path.” Another pause. “And it keeps the wire away from the gravel road.”
“Why does matter?”
“Vehicle ignition noise. Even parked, residual. Distance attenuates it.” The mallet again. One-two. “Also Domovoi has opinions about wires near the road.”
“Come inside and make kanapki while sap warms. Maybe Braided Threads warms too.”
Tapping her boots on the tires to knock off ice before getting in the back, the Cliath fusses for a bit before the Cliath offers WKA9Y a folded piece of bread and a glob of pimento cheese, who accepts and devours it in two bites without looking up. The Cliath makes one for herself, and the two of them spend the next several minutes in silence. This moment is what they have been working toward for eight months. The calculation of an Umbral Ship Sept’s transit path. WKA9Y taught her all of it, piece by piece, in the specific way she teaches which is: here is the problem, here is why it is interesting, figure out the next step and show your work. Braided Threads has shown their work, repeatedly, corrected repeatedly, and has arrived at tonight with a model they built themselves and a transmission they have rehearsed until they can key it in their sleep.
"Your K-factor?" WKA9Y utters between bites.
The Cliath considers, "If the Sap doesn’t count, its just me on the Composite Variable Layer. I did the geometry myself."
"Have you figured out what this rank challenge is?"
"It's about whether I understand the architecture well enough that I don't need help from spirits alone."
WKA9Y makes another note.
“Neptune's current elevation—Hey! Dziewczyna!” WKA9Y barks at Braided Threads, who had momentarily zoned out staring at the speaker above her. She suddenly blinks back into focus, and looks around with brief disorientation before she answers from memory.
"Twenty-three degrees above horizon from this position. Rising. Will be at upper transit—" she checks her own notebook, which she has open in her jacket pocket, "—in two minutes."
"Why upper transit?"
"Best radiation angle for the propagation path. Below twenty degrees we lose too much signal to atmospheric absorption. Above forty we're shooting past the World Tree's natural angle of connection from this site." She makes another set of half-sandwiches. "The window for optimal geometry is about eight minutes either side of upper transit."
"Our window?" WKA9Y is still taking notes and talking with her mouth full.
"Sixteen minutes maximum effective operating time. Less if conditions degrade." She fits a third section. "But Wagon Train's transit was calculated at—"
"Your calculate."
The Cliath pauses. Looks at WKA9Y. "Now?"
"You have orbital data, OP. Just compensate for a week. And be quick about it"
The Cliath has the orbital data. She calculated it herself last week, checked it four times, has it in the notebook. But doing the calculation verbally, in the field, while setting up equipment, is different from doing it at a table. She does it. Out loud, step by step: the ship's last known position from the Umbral Pilot contact Anton provided, velocity estimate, the geometry of the signal cone, the World Tree propagation angle, where those two paths intersect and for how long.
"4 minutes 41.6354 seconds."
“Ksht. FB.” the older woman acknowledges.
The Cliath puts the headphones on. Adjusts them. Listens to the band.
"Noise floor is low,” Braided Threads says,
“QRN minimal. Band is open."
"Conditions on the World Tree path?"
She listens in a different way. Not to the electromagnetic spectrum. To what the radio is doing underneath the electromagnetic spectrum.
"...is clear. The sap is—it almost feels like the frequency band before a very good contact. Like the channel is already listening."
"Is good description," WKA9Y says, which is the highest praise Braided Threads has received in eight months.
At 1547—Neptune hour onset, confirmed against her protege's calculation—WKA9Y takes the SPL reading. She looks at the meter. Looks at the tubes. The warm-up cycle is not complete. The sap has no reason to be active. She writes: SAP INITIATED 1553 / WARM-UP INCOMPLETE / FST TIME OBSERVED and underlines it.
WKA9Y pulls out an iambic paddle, plugs it in, turns a knob at the front all the way counter clockwise and slides it across the table toward Braided Threads.
"Your contact, Cliath." Braided Threads’ heart skips a beat as she looks at the brass key. She turns the repeat knob at the front all the way counterclockwise and begins. She touches the paddles, and the radio begins transmitting Morse Code. The two vertical paddles barely move when her fingers touch them:
CQ CQ CQ WAGON TRAIN WAGON TRAIN DE NK7BRT BRAIDED THREADS CLIATH HOMID THEURGE GLASS WALKER RND_INT ENTERING YOUR PROTECTORATE PSE RESPOND K
The band hisses. Traffic in a dozen languages, none of it this. BT doesn't move. WKA9Y watches the SWR meter. 1.2:1. The signal is going where it was pointed. SPL: 54.3.
“Receiving—yes. We are receiving. QR...sorry. Standby.” a voice comes on and just as briefly cuts out. A signal returns. QSA 4, Doppler drift. A voice, not Morse—someone too surprised for the key.
“Braided Threads, this is Reaches-the-Unreachable-Star Athro Umbral Pilot Captain of Sept of the Wagon Train. State your position and purpose.”
43AAA8358795 DEG N 122AAA5463426 DEG W 1117M FS NUM 5824-124 7AAA183 MHZ 40m CW GAIAN REALM. CONDITIONS WINTRY MIX. U R 1ST DRK UMBRA CONTACT W SHRTWV. CONFIRM YOUR COORDINATES PSE. RST HW
THIS IS MY RANK CHALLNGE
WEATHER REPORT PSE RST K
There is almost a half minute of silence, save for the scratch-logging by WKA9Y, whose eyes are glued on the younger Theurge operating her equipment with all the scrutiny of a fretful wolf mother. The scowl, however, remains.
“Who is currently overseeing this rank challenge?”
NK7BRT DE WKA9Y OP ELDER THEURGE SIGNAL RIDER SUKA ARBTR OF RITES IDEKA
THE CONTACT IS HERS K
Another pause, and the original voice returns. “Ah... coming in QSA 3, ESS spectroradiometer reads Weaver web density is moderate, Wyld activity also moderate in this sector, Luna's light is strong, there is — there is significant spirit traffic toward Neptune's domain, we don't know why. Pass our congratulations on to the Fostern.“
WKA9Y DE NK7BRT OP THX 4 CNFRM 8 MNTHS PREP K
“Cheers Braided Threads, we’re all real impressed out here. All Good?”
NK7BRT DE WKA9Y PSE ACT AS REPEATER TWRD NEPTUNE I HAVE APPOINTMENT K
Another pause. Longer. Braided Threads is already outside the van punching the air and playing an air guitar celebrating.
The ship: "You want us to relay to Neptune's domain."
R K
"From the Gaian Realm."
R K
"We can give you four minutes to adjust course—"
NEGATIVE IS 4 MINUTES 41.6354 SECONDS PSE CONFIRM ADJUSTED COURSE BEARING 337 MARK 12 K
Silence. The ship doing math.
"FB, WKA9Y-rhya. Adjusting to 337 mark 12. We will relay. We want to know what happens."
R FB U WILL HEAR K
She dials the keyer to 42 WPM, picks up the chess notebook, and opens it to page one.
SHANTAR OPYUF DE WKA9Y PSE AA I WANT TO PLAY CHESS K
Four seconds.
R
QSA 5. Received. Clear as day. The SPL meter: 58.4. It didn’t even ramp. A state change, one clock cycle. The sap didn't respond to her key going down.
It responded to the incoming signal.
She is already writing:
1. e4.
***
The window reads 4:08 when Shantar plays it.
5. a6
The pencil stops.
“Kzt.” WKA9Y clucks.
Her mouth does something that isn't quite a smile. In Białystok her father has a bottlecap where the black bishop should be and he is explaining the Sicilian defense with the patience of a man who knows his daughter will only need to hear it once.
"Sicilian,"
“What?” her mentee is already back in the van.
WKA9Y gestures To the radio. “Kssht! Najdorf!”
She keys her response. 4:03 on the window.
The next move comes back. She plays her mother's handwriting on a scrap of paper—resistor values of her first radio—the smell of flux and cold winter coming through a gap in the wall where she solders as a child.
8. Qxb2.
The poisoned pawn. Black's queen lunging behind White's lines to take material it has no business taking.
“Oh-ho. Really now?”
WKA9Y makes the sound of someone hoping for a hard problem and finding that the problem is harder than hoped.
“She's my Tal.”
3:53. She leans forward without knowing she's leaning forward. The scowl is still there—it's always there—but its changed completely. Pencil scratching continues, but not from WKA9Y. Braided Threads has been reading WKA9Y's face for eight months. She has never seen it look like this.
Receptive. That's the word she'll reach for later. Like something that is usually braced has stopped bracing.
WKA9Y turns the dial on the WPM for the key all the way open. The messages all have 4 seconds between them due to astrological distance but little else, but the messages themselves come as bursts of code from both the operator and Shantar that sound fast enough to almost be a digital garble. Move 9. Move 10. The sketched board building toward something she can feel the shape of, six moves out, clear as a circuit.
Move 14 and the position is what she calculated. The pawn structure shattered, the bishop pair, the attack clean and inevitable.
She’s winning. Braided Threads can feel it the way you know without being told that one person is finding their footing and the other is losing theirs.
3:23. Move 14 and the dot disappears.
“Kzt.”
One dot. Gone.
PSE RPT K
Bf4 K
Legal. QSA 5. WKA9Y had counted five “dots” in the code. She miscounted. She files Bf4 away in her mind palace to think about what it did and plays g3.
Braided Threads has a gridded notebook open on her knee, pencil moving. She draws the bishop on f4. Studies it. Draws a small arrow.
Move 21 and the trailing -.-. WKA9Y parses it as prosign. 2:43. Braided Threads' pencil hovers over the grid — she caught it too, the same ambiguity, king move or over-signal — and marks it with a small question mark she doesn't mention.
Move 23. Qh6. Braided Threads draws the queen's new square and her eyebrows go up. Even on her rough grid she can see it. Two threats. Nowhere to go.
2:28.
HH HH
An error in translation. WKA9Y's hand comes off the key, and Braided Threads looks at her while the gears turn. 2:23. Shantar re-sends. Braided Threads draws the new defense. Studies it, and looks at WKA9Y's face. The scowl has done something she can't name—tightened somehow—without changing.
Move 25. The call-sign bleed hits mid-transmission, a fragment of terrestrial traffic chewing through the signal. 2:13.
PSE RPT
Rf2
That time it was clean. Braided Threads moves the rook to f2. Draws the attack line forward.
28. Be2#.
Braided Threads draws it. Looks at the board. Looks at where the bishop is. Looks at where it had to come from for this to be legal. She looks at WKA9Y, then back at the board. WKA9Y is stock-still. Her mentee holds her breath and looks at her grid. At the bishop. At f4, where she drew it. At e5, where it has to have been for any of this to work.
“I think—“she starts. Quiet.
“I think I had the bishop wrong. Move 19. I had it on f4 but for this to work it had to be on e5 this whole—” She stops. “I mis-tracked it. I'm sorry."
WKA9Y looks at the grid for several seconds.
"No. That’s what I remember too." She pulls the propagation notebook across, opens it to the solar activity column.
Secondary log, running parallel all session — Anthelios readings cross-referenced against CME window data. She taps a reading. 1557 LOCAL. ELEVATED.
"Ksssht. Delete that. I read it same way." She taps it again.
"Is interference. Move 19 was QRN. Single dot loss. Classic CME artifact. FB, OP."
"Right," Braided Threads repeats carefully to her Mentor. "CME."
WKA9Y pulls the paper tape from IDEKA's punch and unfurls it across the desk.
42 45 35 0D
She stops.
B. e. 5. Carriage return.
She looks at the tape for a long time. Then she opens the log and draws two columns in the margin. No headers. Just the numbers:
GAME AS LOGGED GAME PER IDEKA
19. Nd2 Bf4 19. Nd2 Be5
25. Rf3 Rf2 25. Rf3 Ne2
She runs down the RST column. Move 1 through 25, incoming. QSA 5. QSA 5. QSA 5. Solid. Her outgoing: fluctuating. Normal. QSB on three. QRN on one.
A CME event would have hit both directions equally.
She looks at the CME reading. Looks at the tape. Looks at the column of QSA 5 entries that runs clean and unbroken from move 1 to move 25 in one direction only. The CME reading stays in the notebook. She doesn't cross it out. She wrote it because she believed it and the log is what she believed and when. Her trembling hand reaches past the iambic paddle and picks up the old-fashioned straight key.
SHANTAR OPYUF DE WKA9Y
Slower now. Each character formed by hand.
PSE CONFIRM MV 18 BLK / BE5 NO?
Four seconds. QSA 5.
R BF4 CONFIRM K
SHANTAR OM DE WKA9Y
UR SIG NR 1 THRU 25 QSA 5 K
Seventeen seconds. Then from Shantar’s end:
HIHIHI
Braided Threads is as still as a rabbit. Laughter. WKA9Y’s teeth are audibly grinding. Each tap on the key is more a jab.
S H A N T A R D E W K A 9 Y < A A >
N W I U N D E R S T A N D UR Q K
Four seconds. Laughter rings out from the vactrols in the radio as it directly addresses the elder.
RK 73 88
WKA9Y looks at it. Rook takes King. Best regards. Love and kisses.
Picks up the straight key one last time.
K U R W A M A S Z < A A >
P I E R D O L S I E < A A >
3 0 S K
She sets the key down and lets out a slow breath, closing her eyes and those hackles that had been raised suddenly deflate as she reaches out and turns the radio off. The tubes cool through amber toward dark and the humming fades out. She picks up the pimento cheese jar — the last of it — and finishes it with her finger, standing, looking at the bracket where the radio sits.
Braided Threads still hasn't moved.
"Wait." Her voice is careful.
"That's it?"
"That's it, Fostern. Everyone in the Tribe will know your deeds by next full moon."
WKA9Y reaches into her breast pocket for a cigarette. Finds the dead butt from four hours ago, burned to nothing before being smoked. She looks at it and puts it back.
"Pack up. Then gas station. Then home."
While Braided Threads breaks down the antenna, WKA9Y jots down two words at the end of the log, in the dark, by feel, closes it, puts it back under the seat, then steps out to help the Fostern break down the kit.
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ENTRY: 19850317-004 [POST-TX]
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GAME AS LOGGED GAME PER IDEKA/TAPE
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1. e4 c5 1. e4 c5
2. Nf3 d6 2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 cxd4 3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 Nf6 4. Nxd4 Nf6
5. Nc3 a6 5. Nc3 a6
6. Bg5 e6 6. Bg5 e6
7. f4 Qb6 7. f4 Qb6
8. Qd2 Qxb2 8. Qd2 Qxb2
9. Rb1 Qa3 9. Rb1 Qa3
10. f5 Nc6 10. f5 Nc6
11. fxe6 fxe6 11. fxe6 fxe6
12. Nxc6 bxc6 12. Nxc6 bxc6
13. e5 dxe5 13. e5 dxe5
14. Bxf6 gxf6 14. Bxf6 gxf6
15. Be2 Bd6 15. Be2 Bd6
16. O-O Bc7 16. O-O Bc7
17. Ne4 O-O 17. Ne4 O-O
18. Qe3 Re8 18. Qe3 Re8
19. Nd2 Bf4 * 19. Nd2 Be5
20. Nf3 Bd7 20. Nf3 Bd7
21. Kh1 Qb4 21. Kh1 Qb4
22. Ng5 Re7 22. Ng5 Re7
23. Qh6 [HH] Rd7 23. Qh6 Rd7
24. Qg6+ Kh8 24. Qg6+ Kh8
25. Rf3 Rf2 * 25. Rf3 Re2
26. Rg3 Re1+ 26. Rg3 Re1+
27. Rxe1 Qxf1+ 27. Rxe1 Qxf1+
28. Kxf1 Be2# 28. Kxf1 Be2#
* CME ARTIFACT / QRN / SINGLE DOT LOSS
[HH] OPERATOR ERROR / RE-TRANSMIT
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RESPONSE TIME: 4.0 SEC
PROP MINIMUM: 3.7 SEC
DELTA: +0.3 SEC
SAP AT 1553: ACTIVE / WARMUP INCOMPLETE
SAP AT 1609: SINGING / INCOMING SIGNAL
[NOT BY MY KEY]
[BY HER]
SAP_ROUTING: ACTIVE
OPERATOR_INTEGRITY: NULL
BRAIDED THREADS: FOSTERN / NK7BRT
WKA9Y 17 MAR 1985 / 1923 LOCAL
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