Squeaks, whirs & machine sounds

A repertoire of small mechanical noises — squeaks, whirs, clicks — becomes the novel's audible signature of dread, and above all the sonic tell of the A.F.R. The wheelchair that "squeaked very slightly whenever he moved" seeds the terrorists' signature early, and the chair-squeak then sounds under the whole Marathe/Steeply serial. The motif thickens outside the grocery, where the question "how can a door's upper hinge loudly squeak when the door is tightly closed" turns ordinary noise ominous, and the father's squeak-obsession makes plain that "a squeak is an omen for Jim's father's fall." The head becomes a machine too — "the sound of your head revving," a "faint whirring noise coming from the head," and, in the Demerol buzz, "the easy squeak of your head's blood," where "'to hear the squeak' warns of impending danger via the A.F.R." Sound here is prophecy: the machinery you can hear is the machinery coming for you.