On December 3 she went down to the special services department for pure-tone audiometry; the report was two pages, one per ear, a stamp in the lower-right corner of each; she squared the two pages and glanced at the characters on the stamps, did not turn them over to look at the rows of figures on the back, folded them once, put them into the kraft envelope, and pressed them down on top of that map at the bottom. The morning of December 12 was the bus; the station had granted her three days of personal leave, and in the leave slip's "reason" column she herself had written "private"; when she'd written it the division chief paused over it, said nothing, and signed.
The day before departure, a call came from the district bureau.
The caller was the third-floor duty officer, a young voice, his questions complete: three days out of region, destination without signal coverage, one registered acquirer, one accompanying guardian — transfer to the legal section or not, send staff along or not.
She said: no staff.
He said: then file it as a change of exposure environment.
She said: nothing's changed.
She said: the destination has no signal; exposure cannot occur.
He paused; the sound of pages turning.
He said: a comrade at the bureau raised it — is entering the Silent Zone a kind of intervention.
She read him the line on Attachment 2. Zhou Yu's handwriting: "no non-therapeutic intervention shall be carried out" — brackets — a thumbprint riding the seam. She read it unhurried, and when she'd finished said: taking her to a place with no signal is written into no list of interventions. To stop it, first show harm.
His end paused again.
He said: then all you need is to register it.
She said: register it.
When she'd hung up she dug out the photocopy of Attachment 2 — the original sat in the agreement, and the agreement in the second layer of the tin cabinet at home — folded into four, and slipped it into the inner pocket of her own bag. She didn't know what use carrying it was. She carried it.
Two receipts were tucked in the soft notebook, one the archive room's retrieval slip, one the ethics committee's rejection receipt. While packing she drew the retrieval slip out and looked: on its back was a registration page newly added by the archive room, the borrowing log behind the J-7-013 card, and in November one line had been added: the thirtieth, surname He, the unit column stamped with the bureau organ's seal. The seal was blue, stamped square.
She looked two seconds, clipped the page back where it had been, and did not copy it.
On the evening of the 11th she went over to watch Zhou Shu pack. Zhou Shu packed slowly: two pieces of clothing, the water bottle, the charging cable, and the last thing in was that green-covered Little Dictionary of Children's Tongue, the old edition, its edges furred. She asked what she was bringing it for.
Zhou Shu said: to have it.
She said nothing more. The earphones went in last, laid on top, the cord wound.
Her own bag she packed fast: the soft notebook, two pens, the leather case of the handheld field-strength meter, a sheaf of photocopies of Zhou Yu's self-test materials — four quarters, four tests, all below the detection limit. She went through the sheaf from the top. The four numbers printed evenly, two places past the decimal. On the last page she wrote one character in pencil — keep — and when she'd written it remembered this was a photocopy, that written it wouldn't stay; she rubbed the character out with the eraser, and when it was rubbed out a ghost of it was still on the paper.
On the morning of the 12th she saw them to the airport. Zhou Shu carried the backpack, the bottle standing in the side pocket, the earphones on her head — that CH1-L/CH2-R pair, long since recovered, since then lying at the bedside, brought out to wear today. At security Zhou Yu set the backpack on the belt, and the tape measure inside was asked for, looked at, and put back. Zhou Shu turned her head and looked at her once — not a goodbye kind of look, a headcount kind; having counted, she turned back.
She had only bought her ticket as far as the prefectural city. This stretch had been settled when the tickets were booked: she would come along as far as the county town, and not go up the mountain. That she was coming as far as the county town she had not explained to Zhou Yu, and Zhou Yu had not asked.
They landed at the prefectural city, changed to the long-distance bus, three hours to the county town. The county town had one main street, one bridge, and at the bridgehead stood the guesthouse. Two stories, wood windows, the red paint peeling, one bed and one table in the room, a sheet of glass pressed on the table, and under the glass a price list and a handwritten sheet of service hours. The thermos was full, cloth wrapped over its stopper.
Downstairs Zhou Yu bargained with the charter driver. When he'd finished he handed her a slip of paper, two lines on it, one the surname of the family in the mountains — Yang — and one an eleven-digit mobile number.
He said: if three days go by without one phone call, you dial this.
She said: one a day.
He said: up there there aren't any. I walk half a li up the slope, there's a big rock, and on the rock one bar.
He said: one bar will call out.
He said: calling in, not necessarily.
When the bus pulled out Zhou Shu sat in the back row by the window, earphones still on. She stood outside the window and did not raise her hand. The bus turned past the bridgehead; she went back to the guesthouse, spread the itinerary sheet, the size of a desk calendar, on the glass, and with the pencil drew a box around each of the three days.
The first night's call came at six fifty-one, the voice breaking up, Zhou Yu speaking with his mouth pressed close to the phone.
Everything he spoke of was things. A wood house, second floor, the fire pit below, an old dog by the fire pit, yellow. The householder's surname was Yang; in the daytime Boss Yang had shown him two houses. One had two post feet gone soft; one was good, the posts old fir, and knocked they sounded solid. The water was piped down from the mountain, the plastic pipe laid above ground; it froze in winter and would need burying. The village school sat past the pass, a forty-minute walk, the road slippery in winter.
She said: and her.
He said: asleep. Slept eleven hours.
He said: two bowls of rice in the morning.
He said: she lined the pebbles from the windowsill up in a row, seven of them.
She said: did she speak.
He said: she spoke.
She said: saying what.
He said: she said one of the dog's ears is hot and one is cold.
The line went quiet two seconds. He said: signal's failing. And rang off.
She entered these items in the soft notebook, entering things and hours, same as he'd spoken them, one to a line: fire pit. old dog, yellow. post feet. plastic pipe. eleven hours. two bowls. pebbles, seven. one ear hot, one cold.
The second day she walked the county town on her own. In her bag she carried the station's handheld field-strength meter, the spare unit, registration tag number seven, signed out from Xiao Cai before leaving. Guesthouse windowsill: three bars. Bridgehead: one and a half. The guesthouse's fourteen-inch television, switched on, snow, the needle up half a bar, switched off, fell back. She copied all the numbers into the notebook, and at the end added one line: lower than at the station.
In the forenoon she went through Zhou Yu's sheaf of self-test materials one more time in the room. Four quarters, below the detection limit, the paper printed, one table line joined crooked, and the crooked square was exactly spring. She checked it once against a ruler and put the ruler away. The desk calendar hadn't come along; she drew the three days onto a page of the soft notebook, one square to a day, and ticked a square when a day was done.
In the afternoon she went to the co-op by the bridgehead and bought a pair of children's socks, dark blue, weighed on the scale, two liang. The clerk asked how old the child was; she gestured; the clerk reached under the counter for another pair, thick ones, and said the mountains are cold, wear these. She bought both pairs. Back at the guesthouse she stuffed the socks into her own bag, for no reason; stuffed was stuffed.
In the afternoon she drew that A4 map out from under the bottom of the kraft envelope and spread it on the glass. The three pencil circles were still there, the third pressed down on the ink. The patch inside the circles — she looked a while at the mountains out the window; the mountains lay south of the town, and in the fog you couldn't tell the layers apart. She folded the map back, along its old creases, and returned it to the bottom of the envelope.
The second night's call was short, under two minutes.
What he spoke of was still things. The old dog was nine, brought back from the col by Boss Yang's son. Two slabs of cured pork hung from the beam over the fire pit, kept for New Year; Boss Yang had taken one down and sliced it, and Zhou Shu ate three slices. Boss Yang's house had two children, the older away in the prefectural city at school, the little one running everywhere chasing the dog, and the dog ignored him.
He said: the house is sound.
He said: the water's good.
She said: and her.
He said: no talking today.
He said: the pebbles got a new arrangement.
She said: and words.
He said: none.
He said: back to the county town tomorrow at noon.
And rang off.
The first night, six minutes; the second, under two. In the soft notebook she set the two numbers down side by side, and wrote no reason why.
On the third day the arrangement was noon at the bridgehead, lunch together, the afternoon bus. Eleven o'clock, they hadn't come. She dialed Zhou Yu's number, off. Half past eleven, dialed again, still off. One thing had been settled beforehand: before setting down the mountain, he would call her once from the rock. She waited to a quarter to twelve, then dialed Boss Yang's number off the slip.
Boss Yang had a big voice; behind him came the sound of wood being split.
He said: Engineer Zhou? He's here.
He said: up with the kid at the threshing ground since early, says they're watching the fog.
He said: sure, come on up yourself, the road's clear.
She chartered a car. Twenty minutes of asphalt out of the county town, then stone-chip road, the fog clinging to the mountainside, the car going a stretch and the fog giving way a stretch. At the valley mouth the driver pulled up.
The driver said: no signal in there. I'll wait here.
The driver said: one hour.
The crossing was a row of stone piers, the water loud, the piers shifting underfoot. Out on the piers she stopped and looked at her watch: eleven fifty. Past them the road turned to dirt, harvested fields on both sides, firewood stacked along the field ridges, stacked neat, heap upon heap, plastic sheeting over the tops, stones pressing it down. A few empty bean-pole frames stood in the fields. The fog had half lifted; across the way you could see the wood houses on the opposite mountain, three stories, black tile, half of one roof still spread with glutinous rice not yet taken in. Under the eaves of the nearest house hung strings of chilies, red, half of one string dried. She walked a stretch and stopped a stretch, and with each stop the mountains went one layer quieter, quiet until at last only her own footsteps were left; she set her steps down lighter, and light, she could still hear them.
The threshing ground lay in front of the wood houses, a patch of ground leveled hard. Zhou Shu sat on a long bench at its edge, her back to this side, her face toward the valley mouth.
She was speaking.
Lin Wanzhao stopped at this end of the field ridge.
Of those sounds she could not have named one. She couldn't hear meaning, couldn't hear tune — she remembered someone saying on the phone, this much only, I can hear; she didn't have even that. What she had was a watch. She pushed her sleeve up and looked at it.
First passage, forty-one seconds.
Stop. She counted: twelve seconds.
Second passage, twenty-odd seconds, the back half dropping low, dropping until the last sound gathered in, gathered even.
Zhou Yu stood by the porch post, phone held out sideways, elbow braced on the post, the man borrowed from the post. The dog sat at the foot of the bench, head tipped up watching Zhou Shu's mouth, watched a while, then laid its head back down on its forepaws.
When the second passage was done, Zhou Shu turned her head and saw her.
Zhou Shu said: Mom.
She said: what time is it.
Zhou Shu said: I heard the car.
She walked over. On the bench, besides Zhou Shu, lay her backpack and that pair of earphones, the cord wound. She came up to the bench and stopped two steps short.
She said: what did the other side say.
Zhou Shu said: the other side didn't say.
Lin Wanzhao said: then you—
Zhou Shu said: it was me talking.
Lin Wanzhao said: to who.
Zhou Shu looked down at the ground by her foot; on the ground lay one pebble, a little way off from the row the others made. With the toe of her shoe she nudged it over, nudged it even.
Zhou Shu said: to it.
Lin Wanzhao said: it can hear?
Zhou Shu said: don't know.
Lin Wanzhao said: then how did you know it was your turn.
Zhou Shu said: it was my turn to talk.
When she'd said it she stood up, bent, and lifted the backpack onto one shoulder. The bottle in the side pocket swayed.
Lin Wanzhao turned to look at Zhou Yu. Zhou Yu took the phone down off the post, and only when its screen had gone dark did he put it in his pocket.
She said: you recorded it.
Zhou Yu said: recorded it.
Zhou Yu said: my hand shook stopping it, and I pressed replay.
Zhou Yu said: pressed it over again.
Boss Yang came out of the house with the fire tongs; seeing her, he shifted the tongs to the other hand. He said come in and warm up, the fire's high. She said no, they were catching a bus.
He said: the kid sits here at this hour every day.
He said: three days now. I figured the kid was watching fog.
He glanced toward the long bench, tucked the tongs under his arm, and said fog's nothing to look at, the same every day.
She didn't answer. She took the bottle Zhou Shu had left on the bench, unscrewed it and screwed it back, tightened it, and slid it into the side pocket of the pack. Something hard was caught in the bottom of the pack; through the cloth she pressed it once, and it was that green dictionary, its corners stiff. She also tucked in one of the pairs of socks, the thick pair, tucked beside the dictionary.
On the way down the fog closed in a little more. Zhou Shu fell asleep in the back seat, asleep within ten minutes of getting in, slept with the earphones on. Zhou Yu sat up front, telling the driver which stretch to pass on. When he'd finished he turned his head back, his voice held down.
He said: the house — I want to settle it.
He said: the deposit's not much.
She said: did you ask her.
He said: I asked her whether it's nice here.
He said: she said, one of the dog's ears is hot and one is cold.
He said nothing more. Crossing the stream the car jolted twice; Zhou Shu's head knocked the glass, and she reached out a hand to cushion it, but the hand arrived after the knock; Zhou Shu didn't wake.
Out of the valley mouth, sighting the signal tower, the driver pulled over once and said there was a speed check ahead. After pulling back onto the road he lifted his chin at a gap in the roadside.
The driver said: this valley, a crew came the year before last. Carrying frames, set up half a month.
She asked: what frames.
The driver said: three legs, a dish on top. Said they were going to measure everything.
She asked: measure out what.
The driver said: how would I know. Out-of-province plates.
When he'd said it the driver turned the heater up a notch. Zhou Yu didn't turn his head.
They were back in the county town by four. Evening bus; in the two waiting hours she settled Zhou Shu to sleep in the guesthouse and sat at the table herself, transferring the recording from Zhou Yu's phone to her own laptop. Three takes: one of forty-one seconds, one of twenty-six, the silent stretch between them twelve. She put on the station earphones and listened from the top.
The voice was Zhou Shu's. The articulation slower than usual, the final sounds gathered even. In the first passage one place broke off half a beat and went on, and the sound it went on with sat a little higher than what came before. The second passage's back half dropped, dropped until it gathered in. In the background the firewood sounded once in the pit, and once the dog's chain knocked the bench leg.
She couldn't hear anything beyond that.
She brought the recording into the station's comparison software and ran it through a spectrum. Flat. Underneath there was none of that underhum layer, not one bar of it, same as when she'd switched the handheld on at the threshing ground in daylight — power on, the needle dropping to the noise floor, no movement; she had stood a minute and a half, and for a minute and a half it had not moved.
In the soft notebook she wrote: December 14, clear. Forty-one seconds, twenty-six seconds, interval twelve seconds.
When she'd written it she turned back a page and looked at the two call lengths she had noted the day before, six minutes, under two. Under those two numbers she added today's three, and when she'd added them set the pencil down.
Zhou Shu slept on the bed, the quilt covering only half of her. Lin Wanzhao went over and pulled the quilt up, up to the shoulder; the earphones she didn't touch; not good to move.
She went back to the table and drew the map out again, spread it on the glass. The three pencil circles, the third pressed down on the ink. She took the pencil and put one dot inside the circle.
When the dot was down she folded the map back along its old creases, slid it back into the kraft envelope, and set it at the very bottom.
There was no snow out the window; the mountains stood dark. She switched off the guesthouse television, and what was left in the room was the thermos leaking air, a hiss, a hiss.