The Escapement e-3

by K. J. Parker

  He was having trouble breathing. In which case, we aren't the authors of Specification. We're just thieves, like Ziani Vaatzes, who stole designs from our betters, which is the greatest sin. In which case…

  Before he realised what he was doing, he was on his feet and running: down the passageway, recklessly fast down the worn steps of the back stair, into the middle quadrangle, across the lawn where Necessary Evil used to meet, up more stairs, along more passages, to the door of the records office; through that into the entrance lobby; where there was a wall with a niche in it about four feet up from the floor, and in the niche…

  "Chairman Psellus." He recognised the voice (alarmed; shocked; well, understandable. Not every day the ruler of the City bursts into your office like a madman). "Is there anything I can help you with?"

  "Yes." He was short of breath, and the word came out creased. "This thing here."

  As he lifted it out of the niche in the wall, he couldn't bring himself to call it by its name. A name, a common noun, carries deadly implications of identity. Call it what it is-a padlock-and it's identified; a padlock is a specific identified object, which means it must conform to Specification. Or…

  "Ah, yes." The chief archivist relaxed very slightly. "That."

  Psellus forced himself to breathe. "It was dug up in the flowerbed outside, wasn't it? When the drains were laid."

  The archivist smiled, a little awkwardly. "That's right," he said. "Just before my time, actually, but my predecessor was there when it was found. It was knocking about in a drawer for ages, but I thought it'd be nice to put it up somewhere on display. There are so few old things from before the City was built, it's a shame to-"

  "From before the City was built," Psellus repeated, laying down each word like a blow. "You're sure about that."

  "Oh yes." The archivist nodded enthusiastically. "We can tell, because it was found under the thick seam of ash about three feet down; and we know the ash was left over from the destruction of the earlier city that was built on this site; we aren't certain how long-"

  "Thank you," Psellus said. "Please go away."

  When he was alone, he sat down on the edge of a table, the thing resting on the palm of his hand. The touch of it disgusted him; not because the thing itself was repulsive, but because of the guilt that came with it, like an infection. It was a padlock; corroded, rusted shut, the rivets and plates welded into a solid lump (pressure of time, like the weight of the sea). He knew it was a padlock, because there was the loop, and there was the casing that housed the mechanism; but the shape and the size were different from any type approved by the Guilds. In which case…

  (He shuddered, and it seemed to hop off his hand like a frog on to the floor.)

  In which case. This was the original specification, and the padlocks the Cutlers' Guild made nowadays were different, and the difference was abomination; the deadliest sin. We came here (the thought ploughed up his mind) and we found a city of men, where they made things, and we burnt the city and we changed the specifications, just like Ziani Vaatzes, and so everything we've done and said ever since must, logically, have been evil…

  He didn't know how long he sat there, staring at the thing on the floor; it had him pinned down, he daren't move because of it. He thought: perhaps there's a pattern, a type, a specification for the death of cities. Perhaps all cities are a mechanism, of which Ziani Vaatzes and his equivalents throughout time are the escapement, transmitting the energy of the motive components to the delivery system-engines, sappers, fire-to complete the task for which the mechanism was designed, namely its own destruction. Perhaps that's what cities and societies are for, to destroy themselves; just as a tree sheds leaves that rot into mould to nourish the roots. In which case, the fall of Mezentia is the necessary evil. Perhaps (he didn't like the conclusion, but he really had no choice) all evil is necessary.

  But evil ought to be opposed, which is why we have laws and specifications and Compliance and war engines and armies. So perhaps it's necessary that we should oppose evil, and equally necessary that we should always lose.

  Perhaps the only way to win the war is to lose it.

  Ziani Vaatzes.

  He stood up, laughed aloud and kicked the padlock across the floor. It skittered, hit a chair leg and vanished under a cabinet. The idea taking shape in his mind was so monstrous that he could scarcely believe he was allowing himself to consider it. But it made sense, when nothing else did, and it was all there in two words, so familiar he'd long since stopped asking himself what they actually meant: necessary evil.

  For the first time in many years, he felt inspired, bursting with energy. Naturally, having found the answer, he wanted to dash out and start putting it into practice, straight away, before he lost his nerve. But he forced himself to stay calm. Just because it was the right thing to do, it didn't necessarily follow that it'd be easy. He could still fail, and that would be disastrous. He felt the passion inside him sublimate, into a kind of serene determination. It could be done. He could do it. But it had to be done right. First rule of all the craft and artisan Guilds: the easiest way to do anything is properly.

  So he walked slowly back to his office, the long way round, pausing to admire the Founders' Monument in the centre quadrangle. It too was so familiar that he'd stopped seeing it years ago; he remembered that when he first set eyes on it, as a young trainee clerk just starting in Clerical Support, he'd thought it was crude and ugly, and the head of the allegorical figure of Perfection in the centre of the group was too big for her body-but, needless to say, he'd never dared say it to anybody. Now he looked at it again, and yes, he'd been quite right. The head was much too big. The Artists' had established the true ratio two hundred years ago. The head should be precisely one-eighth of the length of the body. Perfection, on the other hand, had a head like an oversized watermelon, and the expression on her face was little short of idiotic. It was so perfect, he could almost believe it was deliberate.

  But it wasn't, of course, so he went back to his office, closed the door, took a clean, new sheet of Type Sixteen paper, and wrote on it:

  Lucao Psellus to Ziani Vaatzes, greetings. While he was doing that, an Aram Ghantat working party was unloading the wagons that had arrived from Civitas Vadanis.

  They had to use the crane to lift the worms off. The crane had been General Daurenja's idea; he'd designed it and supervised its construction, and it worked extremely well. The frame, counterweight and bearings were salvaged from a wrecked trebuchet, to which he'd fitted a new, reinforced arm with a chain and hook in place of the throwing net. Once it had been hauled into position, and the arm was directly over the thing that needed to be lifted, the counterweight was wound up to its maximum height, bringing the arm down low enough for the hook to reach the transfer straps or carrying ring. Once it had been secured and the chain ratchet locked, the weight was released, lifting the arm and the cargo up into the air. All that remained after that was to drive the unloaded wagon out of the way and slowly feed out the chain until the cargo was resting on the ground.

  As well as the worms themselves, the wagons carried a number of stout oak posts, thick as a man's waist, nine feet long, fitted at the top with pulleys, cogs and a ratchet. Once they'd been craned off the wagons, they were lowered on to flat wheeled trolleys, to which teams of a dozen mules were harnessed. They were pit mules taken from the silver mines, where they were used to haul the ore carts up the shafts to the bulk elevators. Even so, the sappers had a hard time trying to get them down into the machine trench. They dug their heels in and started up a long, exasperating chorus of brays, creaks and whines, until someone hit on the idea of walking in front of them with a bucket of crushed oats. After that, the only difficulty was the very real threat to the bucket-carrier, who didn't dare stumble and fall as he walked backwards down the trench holding out the bucket, for fear he'd be trodden on and squashed to death under the trolley wheels. A team of sappers marched behind; they were wearing the heavy-duty helmets and breastpla
tes that caused so much frustration to the lunchtime snipers on the embankment, and in addition to their usual gear, they were carrying crowbars, sledgehammers and sacks.

  The observers on the embankment had been wondering why the sappers had widened the trench about ten yards from the end nearest to them. The answer was quite prosaic. It was nothing more than a lay-by, somewhere to turn the trolleys once the posts had been unloaded. The mules were sent back, and the sappers dragged the posts the rest of the way. Something about the manner in which they set about the job must have bothered the artillerymen; in spite of their earlier discouragements, they got out their bows and started shooting, though now they weren't calling out bets and nominating their targets. They managed to hit one sapper in the hollow of the elbow joint and another in the thigh, but nobody claimed the shots or yelled out congratulations. Meanwhile, the sappers were digging out post-holes, five feet deep, through the topsoil and down into the dense red Mezentine clay. Behind them, other men were emptying the sacks, which turned out to contain sand and cement, and mixing up concrete.

  A captain of artillery (Lucuo Dozonas of the Clockmakers' Guild, only recently promoted) ordered his crew to span and load their scorpion. Several people pointed out that this was directly against orders, but he didn't even reply. Since he was still quite new to all this, he had to get out his book of elevation and windage tables before he could wind in the settings. Fortunately, since the head of the trench was so close to the edge of the flooded ditch, he knew roughly what the range was. He gave the order to loose, and watched the bolt lift into the air. At first he thought he'd overshot, but the trajectory decayed and the bolt dropped, the sun flashing briefly on its point, glanced off one of the gabions and hit a man bringing up a pail of water. He was wearing one of those breastplates, but the bolt went through as though it was just a shirt.

  Dozonas hesitated, well aware that everybody was looking at him. "Fine," he snapped, in a rather shaky voice. "Span and reload."

  Before his scorpion could loose again, four or five others had beaten him to it. Then the short-range mangonels opened up, throwing bricks and rubble. Before too long, they'd killed half a dozen sappers and wounded twice as many again, but the working parties hardly seemed to have noticed. They'd finished digging the holes; they were scooping in the concrete and manhandling the posts upright, with the machinery at the top. One scorpion bolt-pure luck-hit one of the posts dead centre, splitting it neatly up the middle. That seemed to bother the sappers far more than their dead and dying. They piled up more gabions and moved the shield trolley a few inches.

  To get the posts into the holes, the sappers had to stand upright, giving the Archery Club something to aim at. Most of the arrows that connected with the target skittered off the heavy helmets (someone had consulted a dictionary; the proper technical term was cabassets), but eight kills were later confirmed, another three claimed but disputed. The posts reared up and dropped into the holes, with guy-ropes to hold them up straight. One scorpion crew managed to shoot the winch-and-ratchet arrangement off one of them; it took sixteen shots, and they were officially reprimanded for wasting ammunition. The next morning, they saw that the mechanism had been replaced during the night. "It was a wonderful bonus when they started shooting at us," said General Daurenja, sharpening a pen with a little blue-bladed knife. "I thought they had more sense, but apparently not. Now we know exactly how many scorpions and mangonels they've got up there, and precisely where they are." He tested the point of the pen with his finger; just right, apparently. "It doesn't matter for the next stage, of course, but it'll be a great help when we come to take the embankment."

  The Aram Chantat liaison nodded gravely. "Most satisfactory," he said. He was trying not to stare, but he couldn't help watching Daurenja fiddling with the pen. Such small, delicate movements, such precision in such a trivial cause; and (he wasn't at all sure what to make of it, though it made him feel slightly queasy) such complete confidence each time he cut. He wondered if surgery was yet another of the general's accomplishments. "However, I didn't come here to talk about that."

  "No." Daurenja looked up at him; his eyes were pale, almost empty. "You want to know what I'm going to do now that Valens has come back."

  "Yes."

  Daurenja dipped his head in acknowledgement. "Surely that's up to you," he said. "You make the decisions, after all. If you feel Duke Valens is better at this than I am, naturally you'll want the best man for the job. If you want me to stay on, I'll stay on."

  The liaison kept his face straight and blank. "If I decide otherwise?" he said.

  "Then I hope you'll let me carry on making myself useful," Daurenja replied. "That's all I ask."

  "That's all," the liaison said.

  "Well, yes, of course." The glow of sincerity in his eyes was as perfect as his cutting. "If you're interested in what motivates me, it's quite simple. I'm a man of various talents, and my aim is to use them as advantageously as possible. After years of wandering around indulging my intellectual curiosity, I want to make something of myself. I flatter myself that I have a certain amount to offer, and I'm prepared to work hard to earn whatever I'm given. That's it, essentially. Please don't think I'm complicated, because I'm not."

  The liaison found that he didn't want to look at the general's face. "I was led to believe that you're rather more than what you say," he said quietly. "I have it on good authority that you have developed a new weapon, and it was this weapon that Engineer Vaatzes had in mind when he recommended you to us so vehemently. I gather he believes it's crucial to the success of the entire venture. Is that true?"

  "Absolutely," Daurenja replied. "But I don't need to be in command to deploy it. In fact, doing this job means I haven't been able to spend as much time as I'd have liked getting it ready. But I was asked to do this job, and I accepted, so…" The liaison heard the creak of a chair but didn't look round. "Like I said, it's entirely up to you whether I carry on here or not. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it."

  The liaison stood up. He really didn't want to be in a confined space with this man any more. "We would be grateful if you would continue to lead the army for the time being," he said. "We feel that Duke Valens is still weak from his injury, and should not be required to exert himself unduly until his recovery is complete. However, we will require further information about this weapon, so that we can decide how best to use it. You will be so good as to arrange a demonstration as soon as reasonably possible."

  "With respect." There was an edge to his voice now; no, not quite that. It put the liaison in mind of the way the fine feather of a cutting edge curls over on itself when it's inadvertently struck against something hard; still sharp, but distorted. "I've avoided conducting tests so far because I want to make sure the enemy don't find out anything about the weapon until we actually use it against them in earnest. With the best will in the world, if we test it, they'll find out. The same goes-no offence-for telling you any more about it. I know you wouldn't tell anybody, but you can't control the information once you've passed it on to your superiors. I'm sorry, but I really must insist. At the moment, the only people besides myself who know what it is or what it does are the duke and Ziani Vaatzes. And if it means you don't want me to stay on as general, well, like I just told you, I could use the extra time."

  "I understand." The urge to leave was too strong. He stumbled towards the tent-flap, like a diver trying to reach the surface before he lost control of his breath. "I need to confer with my superiors. I'll let you know what they decide."

  Outside in the fresh air, he took a moment to pull himself together. Try as he might, he couldn't account for the panic (no other word for it) he'd just experienced. He knew there were people who went to pieces in closed spaces. He wasn't one of them, but now he reckoned he could understand how they felt.. Quite ridiculous, of course, and he was properly ashamed of himself, but the feeling had been too strong to ignore. As he walked away (and each step he took eased the pressure in his mind), he tried to a
nalyse it. Not anger; not fear. The nearest he could get to it was disgust, but there wasn't anything about the general that could have provoked him so violently. He knew Daurenja had an unsavoury reputation: he was violent and licentious, like so many of these city-dwellers; there was talk of murders and violence towards women. Not that; he was certain of it. He disapproved of such conduct, naturally, but he knew he was capable of putting it out of his mind when he was dealing with foreign leaders. Consider Duke Valens, for example. He'd killed Duke Orsea just so he could take his wife. Even if what they said about Daurenja was true, it could hardly be worse than that.

  About a hundred yards away to his left, they were dragging tarpaulins over the machines the duke had brought with him from Civitas Vadanis, which he assumed were the famous worms (strange name) he'd heard so much about. Partly from curiosity and duty, partly to help clear his head, he changed direction and headed towards them.

  Heavy carriages, made of big square oak beams, fitted with solid wheels; the sides boarded in to head height with oak planks two inches thick. As a result he couldn't see inside to examine the mechanism. Ten yards away, the machines looked like ordinary conventional battering rams, except that the ram wasn't tipped with a spike or a beak. Instead, he saw four rounded steel blades sticking out of a central boss like the petals of a flower. Their shape made him think of windmills, except that the blades were twisted, and reminded him of the claws of a bird.