Chapter 47The Other Directions

Qingluan counted the beams of light in the corridor, one by one.

The beams had always been there. Since the first time they came down this path, they had stood on the stone steps, thin, white, each no wider than a finger, rising straight up from the stone to a place no one could see. The face of the steps was cool, but the root of each beam had no temperature at all; she held her palm beside the first one and felt nothing in it. The stone was dry, without a trace of damp. No one had counted them before. This time Qingluan counted.

The first was at her feet. She was crouching, and the light rose from beside her knee and went on up. Her knee pressed on the stone, and the cool came through from it. The second was beside Mitsuki’s shoe, against the toe of her left foot. The third was Jaewon’s, standing under his heel; his light was still raised, and the two lights did not touch. The fourth was beside Swan’s trainer, the tape on her right ankle long since removed; the light passed by the edge of the shoe’s upper without touching the shoe. The fifth was beside Andrew’s army boot, only half a finger from the edge of the step, the furthest out.

She did not count aloud. At the fifth, her eyes stopped on the root of that beam, rested a moment, then came back. All five were white, all thin, each standing by their own feet, one to a person, no one standing in anyone else’s light.

All five were lit beneath their own feet.

Qingluan’s shawl hung down from her shoulder, its end with no points of light left on it, only the weight of the cloth. She did not brush it aside.

Mitsuki stood on her left, looking the same way she was. “Those ones aren’t ours,” she said. Her voice sank, and stopped when it reached the stone.

Then what about the far side of the break?

On the far side of the break, where the steps sank into the dark, lights were coming on. New ones. They had no steps to stand on, and simply stood there in the dark, one, then another, far apart, so thin they could barely be seen. Qingluan counted to the sixth, still lit, and a seventh lit after it. She could not count how many there were in all. She could only see that they were all white, all lit very evenly, not one of them wavering.

Under those beams, she could not see anyone standing.

Whose were those?

She kept the question inside. No one answered from the far side of the break. She reached her hand to the edge of the break, palm down, and touched nothing. There was no wind over there, and no stone, only a very thin layer of cool seeping up out of the dark.

From the dark of the break, a little white light came up. It was the beams that had just lit, shining up, very faint, not reaching their feet. The grain of the stone ran all the way to the edge of the break, every line of it pointing the same way.

How long they stood before the break, no one counted. The edge of the steps was cool; the cool came up through the soles of their shoes, went as far as the knee, and went back. On the far side of the break the beams lit one by one, without a sound as they lit, only a faint sound from the stone, very short.

Andrew did not count. He set the toe of his boot on the edge of the break and looked at the distances between the beams. The distances were the same, evenly far, evenly thin. He drew back his toe and did not say it aloud. That was not how the steps had been laid. The steps had been worn in by feet, one step at a time, and each step was different.

※

What came back from those directions was not pressure.

Not a wave of sound, not a tremor, not something moving under the stone. It was names.

Pressure pushed up from below; first the ears went dull, then they cleared all at once. This was different. It came down from very far away, layer by layer, and every layer was flat, so flat the ears did not even need to shy from it.

One after another. The voice reading names came from beneath those beams, very far off, with no room around it and no echo, landing straight on the ear. The voice was flat, not high, not low, the edge of every word worn equally round. Qingluan tilted her head, turning her ear towards the far side of the break. The voice landed behind her right ear, where that ring was, again and again. Some of the words she knew, some she did not, but every one was a person’s name; one read, a pause, then the next. The pause was as long as the one before. Not one was left out.

There was one name whose first character she knew and whose second she did not. The one she knew, she had seen somewhere, and could not remember where.

The numbers were read too. Oh-oh-three-one. Oh-oh-three-two. Oh-oh-three-three. The numbers went on one by one, not one skipped. She counted along inside, up to a hundred, and they still followed on. At a hundred, she began to wonder how long the string was. She could not see the end of it. In the dark on the far side of the break, the beams were still lighting one by one.

She heard oh-one-three-one clearly. “Oh-one-three-one.” A pause. The name was two characters; she could count them. “A white mark above the left eyebrow, tall, grey coat, standing at the third crossing.” A pause. “Ten past six to twenty-five past six in the morning.” A pause. Only then the next number.

Some names were two characters, some three, one was four. The tail of the last character trailed, and it trailed for the same length as all the others.

She counted the pauses. At three, the next name came. Every time it was three, never once four.

Mitsuki’s throat moved; she made no sound. With every number read, she heard a slot in the card rack bitten into. The sound of the bite was very short. A slot was a quarter of an hour; whichever slot the hole was punched in, the time in that slot was that moment. She did not count the slots, only pressed her fingertips on the knot of cord on the hilt.

Another one. “Oh-one-three-two.” A pause. The name was three characters. “Carrying a flask in the right hand, standing in front of the zebra crossing, waiting for the lights.” A pause. “Two minutes past seven to ten past seven in the morning.”

Where those directions led, she did not know, and no one had ever told her. She only knew that behind every name there was a place, and a person who had to walk across it.

Every beat the same weight, the intervals equal.

Where the one reading the names was, she did not know. No one answered after the names, but behind every name there was a person.

“Too even,” Swan said. Her sibilants were very clean, so clean there was not a single rough edge. She did not turn round, only pressed her pointe shoe harder into the stone; the grain came up through the satin line by line, and she could feel every line underfoot.

“Not one left out,” Andrew said. He said it very briefly, and after it, the breath he took was long.

It was read more clearly than Qingluan had read that night.

That night in the Hall of Harmony, she had read word by word, and each word lit a ring. By the end, her voice had gone a shade hoarse. There was no hoarseness anywhere in this voice. Every word was set at the same height, from the first to the last, and the height never changed.

She remembered what it was she had deleted that time. It was a person’s name. When ‘delete’ went out, a thin light crossed the curtain, as if someone had drawn a ruler across the cells. This voice did not delete. It read, and once it had read one, it set that person in the light, without striking through, without taking back.

※

Jaewon heard that something was wrong first.

Of the five he was the slowest, half a beat behind, and had been ever since the practice room. This time he did not hear late. He was the first to hear it.

That reading did not take breaths.

When a person reads names, by the tenth they always need a breath. However light, the chest moves, the lips close, there is a seam before the next name. That voice had read thirty, and there was no seam for a breath. At fifty, still none. The chest did not rise and fall, the throat did not tighten; every word came out of the same breath, and that breath had no intention of being changed.

He thought of the mirror in the practice room. The person in the mirror was never half a beat late. He had always been late, late for many years, and that little bit of lateness was his own; he had never thought of making it up.

Jaewon counted the beat inside. One, two, three. The voice’s third word had already landed on the third beat while his third beat was still on its way. He counted many times, and every time it was the same. The beat tattoo was lit, lit more slowly than before, slowly enough that even he could see it. His knee moved with it too, a very small movement, the kind from the practice room.

“It doesn’t take a breath,” Jaewon said.

When he had said it, his voice came half a beat after his light. The light was still raised, and in its circle not a speck of dust moved. The lines in the stone were all lit, line by line, not one crooked. The violet core in the break of his earring was not lit; the break faced that way.

He turned his head and looked at Qingluan. Qingluan looked back at him. Neither of them spoke. When he lowered his head he was half a beat late; when she lowered hers she was late too, only by less.

Jaewon’s light was not raised any higher. It stayed there, shining on his feet, and on the edge of the break.

※

Qingluan raised her head and looked at the night side of the Earth for a while.

At the same moment, on that side of the Earth.

She saw, among the nine buildings, the one in Tokyo: just before dawn, on the floor below the main observation deck, one square of light came on.

She could not see the clock faces on the body of Tokyo Tower, nor the hands on the faces. Those clock faces had once all shown the same time, not one face out; she remembered. A slot was a quarter of an hour.

She could not see the square base at the foot of the tower, nor the shutters, still less the duty rota taped inside the glass doors of the observation deck. What she saw was square after square of lights, lined up very neatly in the night before dawn. That one square flickered first, very lightly, then went white. That square’s light lit only its own patch. The other squares were still dark, dark in perfect order, not one a little brighter, not one a little dimmer.

She knew this way of lighting. If someone were clocking in in order, the lights would come on floor by floor going up, and whichever floor they reached, that floor’s time would be that moment. This time she saw only one square.

She saw that the windows of the other eight buildings were all dark. Their tops had been visible for a long time, with lights on them, aerials, lightning rods that people had put up. Above each of the nine buildings, a patch of sky was empty.

From where she watched, that square had lit by itself.

She thought: it was not that the tower had woken; someone inside had pressed something, pressed it very ordinarily. She could not see who that person was, nor where they stood.

She could not see the bus stop sign across the street, nor whether anyone was under it.

She saw a point of car light move along the street, and not stop. Above Tokyo a patch of sky was empty, with nothing hanging in it.

※

She thought: that system was not dead.

She guessed it had changed places, and learned new things too.

She thought: what was reading names beneath those beams, and that square of light in Tokyo, were the same system. She knew that way of lighting. It was no longer in a tower; it was in those beams. She guessed it was also on the wall of some switch room, on a duty rota.

Before, it deleted. She remembered that what she had deleted that time was a person’s name; when ‘delete’ went out, a thin light crossed the curtain, as if someone had drawn a ruler across the cells. She guessed that before deleting, a name had first to be written into a register, line by line, read through once, then struck out. She guessed that in the back half of the register there was a line struck out, struck hard, the words under the line still legible. The lists on the wall, she guessed, were the same: identical headings, only numbers left, sheet after sheet going on, going to the end of the wall, the names already gone.

She thought: now it did not delete. She heard it reading.

As it read, each name was followed by a number. The number was followed by a face: what the eyebrows were like, whether there was a mole at the left corner of the mouth, what colour coat, which crossing they stood at; she could hear it all clearly. It was a face you could recognise someone by. After the face came a stretch of time, from such an hour to such an hour. She guessed it was like the time on the clock faces of Tokyo Tower in the old days, visible to anyone who looked up. She guessed the cards had names on them now too, a number in the top left corner of every one, and after the number, a person.

She saw that on the night side of the Earth the lights of other cities were all on, patch after patch, and what joined them in lines were roads. She could not see whether anyone was looking towards that square.

It did not say why it read. She listened for a long time and did not hear it say why. One read, a pause, the next read. No number was repeated. She had counted inside; each appeared only once. She thought: it put a person in a square where everyone could see, and then read the next.

She remembered the round hole pushed open in the barrage in the Hall of Harmony. Round, its edge frayed, the tear white, pushed open as she spoke those words. She guessed someone had gone to touch that hole, touched it until the pads of their fingers went white, and then wanted to tear it open to see. She looked for a long time and could find no hole in those beams. Every person read out was set into the light; she could not count a single one left behind.

She thought: a face can be recognised. Wherever a person goes, they will be recognised. Others, going by that face, can find them.

Qingluan had seen a face like that. In the Hall of Harmony, a placard floating in mid-air, with a photograph in its top left corner: glasses, chin tucked in two or three degrees, the one from a work ID card. At the time she could not make out the words beneath it.

Qingluan thought of Zhou Sulan. She had heard the name at the door of the sanitation depot, from a man who was smoking; only three characters, nothing else. She had kept those three characters ever since.

Zhou Sulan reached the sanitation depot at ten past four every day, and hung her broom on the fourth hook, slanted end up. These things were never on a list. The old system could not strike them out, and so they had stayed there all along.

She could not see the list in that building in Tokyo. She guessed the numbers on it went on line by line too, not one line struck out, and the last page still blank.

That square of light was still on, and did not go dark again. She could not see anyone going to press it back.

※

“Who goes down first,” Mitsuki said. The end of the sentence sank, and no one took it up.

The five before the break each moved a little. No one said they would go across.

Swan lowered her left arm. The scales on her wrist had receded completely, leaving a faint ring pressed into the skin that took a few breaths to fade. Her right foot still stood on the stone, the sole of the trainer pressing on a line of grain, not moving off it. The satin on her left foot had rubbed a white streak on the stone grain; she did not wipe it. Her movements were very slow, slow enough to be polite, waiting for someone to finish speaking first. She thought of that window in Paris. The person behind the window had not looked up, held a pen, and pressed a square stamp into the box for the issuer; the face of the stamp had no words on it. The sound of it was very heavy, very short.

Mitsuki’s thumb pressed on the guard, pressed down, let go. The guard was cool; it left a very faint white mark on the pad of her thumb that was gone in a few breaths. The crescent-shaped mark under her left eye lit, from the corner of the eye to the cheekbone, then went dark again. The blade had no scabbard; its back lay against her right forearm, and she had not changed hands all the way. She thought of the row of cards in front of the card rack at the company, each card squared off on all four edges, only the holes ragged. She did not think about which slot that hole should have been punched in. Her own card was still in the rack, the clock-out slot empty.

Jaewon pressed out the beat tattoos on the backs of both hands, waited a beat, then lit them again. When the electric violet came on, it was half a beat behind his hands. The old injury on the inside of his knee tightened once; he shifted his weight onto his left leg, settled it, and only then raised his light again. The earring lay against his face, a little cold light in its break.

Andrew drew the dog tag out from under his shirt. The chain lay against his collarbone; one length of it was wound once round his index finger. He turned the tag over and looked at the back. Still blank. The back had no words either, no number, not even a scratch. He said nothing, turned it back, put it back in his shirt, against his collarbone. This tag had no weld marks, and no words. It pressed on his chest, had pressed there a long time, so long he no longer worked out how heavy it was.

Qingluan opened her mouth, and at first made no sound.

Her awakening markings lit from the innermost ring, lit to the second ring, and stopped. She did not let them light any further out.

She glanced at the dark on the far side of the break. In the dark stood a beam of light, thin, white, in a place with no steps.

She was still crouching; her fingers gripped the stone on this side of the break, and with her nail she scratched the first stroke. One horizontal line, very short, uneven in depth, about as long as the one on the thirty-first step. When it was done, she lifted her nail from the stone and looked at the stroke.

She did not know what the person over there was called. For now, she left them a step.

※

Beneath those beams the names were still being read. It did not stop, nor go any faster.

The five took the first step in that direction.

Mitsuki moved first. Her right foot shifted half an inch forward, the toe of her shoe coming down on the edge of the break, not going over. The back of her blade lay against her right forearm, cool. Swan followed half a beat late, pointe shoe down first, trainer after. “I’m only looking. Looking doesn’t count as going across,” Swan said. She did not turn round; her pointe shoe was still on the stone, not lifted. Jaewon took a breath, very lightly, only his chest moving. He lowered his light to shine in front of his own feet, its circle one ring narrower than before. Andrew’s heel came down last, without a sound, his eyes still on that stroke. He measured that step with the toe of his boot. From this side to the edge of the break, it was narrower than every one before. So narrow he did not need to measure to know the next would be narrower still. Qingluan pushed on her knees and stood, drawing her hand back from the stroke. She stood on the last step; its edge was bright, laid only recently.

The edge of the break had not yet been worn round. That stretch was bright; the toe of her shoe did not touch it.

Qingluan looked back once. Thirty-one, forty-four, fifty-seven, seventy, eighty-three. Those strokes were all still there; no one had filled them in, and no one had carved another stroke on them. The edge of the break was still shedding grit, one grain, two, falling into the dark without a sound. She did not crouch again.

The five were crowded onto the last few steps, shoulder close to shoulder.

The break was in front of their feet, narrow, dark beneath, not even footsteps coming back from it.

No one crossed it.

Andrew straightened the chain of his dog tag, so it lay against his collarbone.

That square of light in Tokyo was still on.

That night, she had said one more thing to the tower. It went like this:

“They built the towers to touch the sky. We climb them to let people out.”