Season 11 · Episode 1

Below the roof the light never changes and nobody says morning. The youngest of the people has every story by heart and not one that is theirs, so they go up past the margin without moving a stone first, and stand at the edge of the up-people's light, and nobody looks up. Stone-First keeps the margin, and has a question about that. Then the youngest has a question of their own — why do the up-people never ask? — and the answer is that nobody has told them anything, and every telling begins with a stone. The youngest carries the up-people's own humming stone down through the squeeze to the line where their feet once stopped, and it wakes on the way, and afterwards the people have a name for the one who did it. Then nothing happens, and the nothing is the trouble: the Told argue the manners for the first time, the youngest goes up to learn how the up-people ask, and Stone-First finishes a thought that was for keeping and goes to stand on the line. Then the waiting: the up-people's rising sound comes down through the squeeze every working time and is not answered, a small one goes up announced and stands beside Stone-First, and the whole of the people learn what the waiting is for. And then the light comes through the squeeze at the start of a working time, and the smallest of the up-people sets a stone down on the line, late, and theirs, and Stone-First answers the only way there is, and a name grows.

• S11E01C01 Nobody Looked UpFliade — the deep networks below the equatorial band, and the upper levels where the survey worksThe youngest of the people goes up past the margin without moving a stone first, stands at the edge of the up-people's light for as long as a long story takes, and comes back down with the first telling that is theirs: nobody looked up. Stone-First, who keeps the margin, has a question about that, and asks for the telling again with one thing left out.
• S11E01C02 Carried It SleepingFliade — the upper junction where the survey leaves its relay, the squeeze, and the line in the silt where the up-people's tracks stopThe up-people leave their humming stone asleep and alone at the junction, which is the strangest thing about them, and they have never asked, because nobody has told them anything. The youngest of the Told works out what the beginning of every telling is, and carries the humming stone down through the squeeze to the line where the up-people's own feet stopped, and sets it there the way they set it. It wakes once, in the youngest's arms. Afterwards the people have a name for the one who did it.
• S11E01C03 Someone to AskFliade — the warm below the roof, the edge of the up-people's light at the junction, and the line at the top of the marginThe stone has been heard and the asking has not come, and for the first time in all the tellings the Told argue about the manners. Went-Round says a stranger who cannot ask is being left alone forever. Stone-First says manners you keep only when you are sure of them are not manners. The only one who has ever been close enough to know how the up-people ask goes up to watch them do it, and comes back with a telling nobody wanted: they ask each other all the time. Stone-First finishes the thought that was for keeping, and goes to keep the margin where it now is.
• S11E01C04 Waiting to Be AskedFliade — the line at the top of the margin, the squeeze, and the warm below the roofStone-First keeps the line, and nothing happens, and the nothing has a shape now: every working time the up-people's sound comes down the long passage and through the squeeze, rising at the end, and is not answered. Below, Carried-It-Sleeping keeps the small ones from the squeeze and finds out what keeping costs when one of them goes up anyway. The first person to stand beside Stone-First on the line is not an up-person. It is a small one, who moved a stone first, and who asks the question everyone in the warm has been not asking.
• S11E01C05 Theirs to MoveFliade — the line at the top of the margin, the squeeze, and the warm below the roofThe one act, from the deep side. Stone-First is on the line, and the count has a number, and then the light comes to the squeeze for the first time since the humming stone was lifted, and one of the up-people comes through it, small, with the light held low, and sees Stone-First, and does not go back. What the up-person does next is the thing the Told have been waiting a whole life for somebody else to do, and does it late, and wrong, and theirs. Stone-First answers in the only grammar there is. Nobody records what was said. Below, the telling goes round the warm, and a name grows.