Carried-It-Sleeping (Pandoid, the deep networks)

Carried-It-Sleeping was lying in the middle with the small ones, half in the old ones' argument and half in the game, which is a good place to lie, because you hear a thing from two sides at once without having to go round it.

The game went the way it went. A line of stones across the floor. One small one standing on it, the way Stone-First stands. The rest bunched below, all one warm piece, so you could not tell which. A hand to a stone. Once, well. Someone is coming. A step back. The one on the line answering, with a stone, and then saying who it was.

Said who it was.

Carried-It-Sleeping had heard that a hundred times by now and had never once heard it. The one on the line answered with a stone, and then the one on the line said a thing. Standing on the line. Every time. They had been doing it since the game began, at the foot of the shelving, and in front of the whole warm when Went-Round had them show it, and nobody had thought anything of it, because it was the small ones, and it was a game.

Stone-First had never watched the game played. Stone-First had been on the line the day it was shown, hearing the stones and nothing else, and the line is where Stone-First is. Carried-It-Sleeping knew that the way you know the shape of the warm.

"The one on the line says who it was," said Carried-It-Sleeping, out loud, to the old ones, which Carried-It-Sleeping had now done twice in one telling and would be told about later.

The argument stopped.

"What?" said Stone-First.

"In the game. The one on the line answers with a stone, and then says who knocked. That is how you stay on the line or come off it. They say it from the line. They have always said it from the line."

Stone-First looked at the small ones. The small ones, who had not been listening to the old ones at all, looked back, and saw that something was wanted, and did what they always did, which was all explain at once.

"Show me," said Stone-First, when it had sorted itself out, in exactly the voice Went-Round had used some tellings before, and the warm heard it and did not say so.

They made a line across the open floor. One stood on it, very straight, with the whole body still, and was more pleased about that than about anything, because Stone-First was watching. The rest bunched. A hand went to a stone.

It stayed there.

The warm went still, without meaning to, old ones and all. Carried-It-Sleeping felt it go, piece by piece, the way the small ones leave the middle: nobody deciding to, everyone doing it. The hand stayed on the stone, and the smallest let everyone wait, for as long as it takes to say a name, and longer, and Stone-First-Who-Waited, who has waited longer than anyone below the roof for anything, stood in the amber and waited for a small one to move a stone, and Carried-It-Sleeping saw Stone-First find out what that was like from the other side.

Then it moved. Once. So well the ground said it the way it says it for Stone-First.

"The smallest," said the one on the line, before the sound had finished, standing on the line, out loud, to everyone, and was right.

"Who is that?" said Stone-First, which was a strange thing to ask, because Stone-First knew who the smallest was. But that was not what Stone-First had asked.

"The one who keeps a hand on it," said the small ones, all together, the way they said it every time.

Carried-It-Sleeping heard it go by. The small ones had said it in front of the whole warm now, with Stone-First listening, and Stone-First had heard it, and the old ones had heard it. None of them said it back. It was the small ones' still. It had not gone round.

Stone-First stood in the amber for as long as it takes to say a name, with the whole body still, the way Stone-First stands on the line, and the warm waited to see what Stone-First would say about a thing said from a line, and Stone-First did the thing Stone-First does, which is nothing, and then:

"Play it again."

They played it again. The one on the line answered with a stone, and said who it was, from the line, and was wrong, and came off, pleased. Stone-First watched the whole of it and said nothing else, and did not say the other thing again, and Went-Round, on the far side of the amber, did not say anything either, which for Went-Round is the same as saying a great deal.