Chapter 3: Elena's Library

Morning in Haven Falls smelled like woodsmoke and river mud. The smoke came from the cooking fires that lit before dawn in every sector, and the mud came from the river that still ran through the old downtown, brown and swollen after rain, carrying whatever the upriver settlements chose not to keep. I'd learned not to think too hard about the river.

I walked to Elena's before the sector market opened. The streets were occupied only by the early risers: the water carriers moving their barrel carts from the collection points, the bread sellers setting up their stalls, the militia patrol that covered the commercial district in two-man teams, slow and deliberate, their presence more symbolic than functional at this hour. I kept my hands visible and my pace even. The patrol's sector markings were the red-and-grey of the First Council Division, which meant they had nominal authority over my sector by the terms of the compact that Haven Falls ran on. I had no particular quarrel with the First Division, and they had no particular interest in me. I was a known quantity: Dex Carver, sector seven scavenger, fixed address on Prentiss, no outstanding debts to the council, no gang affiliations. The patrol's lead man gave me a nod as I passed. I returned it.

The library was a three-story brick building that had survived the post-Quiet fires better than most of the surrounding structures, probably because the surrounding structures had burned as windbreaks. It sat on the corner of Market and Eleventh like an anchor, its windows boarded below the second floor and glassed above with salvaged panes of unmatched thickness and color. Elena had done the glazing herself, or supervised it. I knew because she'd told me once, with a particular satisfaction, that she'd matched the thermal properties of the glass deliberately to keep the upper floor warm in winter.

She was already up. The smell of real coffee — something, I realized, that I still associated with the before, even though I'd been four years old — met me at the side door that she kept unlocked during business hours. It was barely business hours, but Elena kept her own schedule.

"Dex," she said, from behind the long table she used as a dispatch desk. The table was covered in paper: route maps, message logs, the cipher sheets she used for sensitive deliveries. She had three couriers in the room with her, two of them still pulling their jackets on, one of them already heading for the door. She looked at me, read something in my face, and said to the couriers: "Route two runs first. The north sector pickup can wait until midday."

They left. Elena poured a second cup of coffee from a dented pot and slid it across the table to me.

"Sit," she said.

I sat. I took the coffee. I didn't drink it immediately because the cup was too hot and because I wanted to watch her face when I told her.

"I picked up a signal last night," I said. "3847 kilohertz."

She didn't react. She was writing something on a slip of paper, her handwriting fast and small. "What kind of signal?"

"Military frequency. Pre-Quiet command band." I paused. "CW. Morse. Clean carrier, no drift. Repeated three times over four minutes."

She stopped writing.

"Automated?" she asked. She still wasn't looking at me.

"Possibly. Possibly not. The rhythm was consistent enough to be a loop, but it was also consistent enough to be someone who's been keying Morse for thirty years."

Elena set down her pen. She looked at me then, and I saw what I'd expected to see — not surprise, exactly, but a particular stillness. The stillness of a person calibrating how much to reveal.

"What did it say?" she asked.

I told her.

The stillness intensified. She picked up her coffee cup and held it without drinking. She was looking at a point past my left shoulder, the way she always looked when she was thinking through something uncomfortable, putting it in order before she spoke.

"Seven words," she said.

"Seven words. Repeated three times."

"And you're certain about the frequency."

"I'm certain."

She set the cup down. "How long have you had that receiver running?"

"Two years at this configuration. The coil's new. I finished winding it last month."

"And in two years you've never picked up anything on that band."

"Nothing. It's been dead. Like everything else in that range."

Elena stood up. She went to the window that faced the street and looked out through the gaps in the boarding. There was nothing to see except the alley and the partial wall of the building opposite, but she looked anyway. It was a reflex she had, checking exits and sight lines. Old militia habit. I had them too.

"Drop it," she said.

I hadn't wanted to expect it.

"Elena."

"I mean it, Dex." She turned from the window. Her face had closed in the way it sometimes did — the way it had done when the militia had given orders she disagreed with but couldn't openly refuse. A careful blankness that meant she was managing something she wasn't saying. "Whatever you picked up, whatever it says, you don't know who sent it or why. You don't know if it's accurate. You don't know if it's a trap."

"A trap," I said. "For what purpose?"

"I don't know. That's the point. You don't know either."