Chapter 96: The Twenty-Second
Ilma Serreth lodged the review at twenty past nine in the morning and Mataon was not there, because she had asked him not to be.
He heard about it from Tal, on the flats, at about noon.
"Your supervisor’s put a paper up."
"How do you know?"
"Because the ganger’s brother works the sorting room and there’s a run on Sarrow this morning," said Tal, and went back to the barrow. "Nine years I’ve been on crews in this district. Nobody’s ever put a paper up about us before."
Mataon dug for another hour and then had to stop and stand still for a while.
The transfer order arrived on the twenty-third and it was the most ordinary document he had ever been handed.
*Notice of allocation. The subject named is allocated to public works at Ardenmoor, effective on receipt. Travel allowance: sixteen days at the standing rate. Non-attendance is a breach of maintenance and is added to the line.*
The young clerk gave it to him across the fourth counter with a face like a man delivering a coffin.
"It’s real," he said. "I checked it four times and got Vellow to check it once. Subjects get allocated. It’s the commonest paper in this building. There’s no appeal and there never has been, because who appeals against being told where to work."
"Who issued it?"
"Your office of record."
"When?"
The clerk looked at the date and did not want to say it.
"The nineteenth," said Mataon.
"The nineteenth."
"Three days before Serreth lodged."
"Yes."
Mataon put the notice down on the counter and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"He’s not reacting," he said. "Everybody in this square is going to say he’s reacting and he isn’t. He wrote this before there was anything to react to."
"Then what’s it for?"
"It’s a summons that doesn’t have to call itself one."
They argued about it on the step, and it was the third time in a year that Mataon and Barni had properly argued.
"It’s a trap," said Barni.
"Probably."
"You’ve spent nine months telling every clerk in this country that procedure is the only thing keeping anybody honest, and a man has just used procedure to put you in a cart to a place where nobody knows your name."
"Yes."
"And you’re going."
"I’m going," Mataon said, "because the alternative is a breach of maintenance. It goes on the line. So every day I stand here being clever costs somebody a figure. And because Ardenmoor is where I was going anyway, and he knows that, and he has arranged for me to arrive there at the state’s expense with a document in my hand saying I am supposed to be there."
Barni sat down.
"Say the part you’re not saying."
"He could have sent me anywhere. There are four districts and eleven public works and I have read the schedule of all of them." He turned the notice over. "He sent me to the shelf."
Serreth would not see him for two days and then sent word that he could come at six, after the counters closed.
She had a room upstairs, past the examination room, smaller than Rethe’s and with a better window.
"Four pages," she said. "I told you the fourth draft was short. It came out at four pages because I had to set out the class of error and the concession and the standing orders, and I could not find a way to do it in three, and I read it aloud to myself eleven times."
"Did they take it?"
"Marrow Hill took it at twenty past nine on the twenty-second and gave me a receipt and the district officer did not look at me." She sat back. "He said one sentence. *You have done that properly.* It’s the worst thing anybody’s ever said to me, because he meant it, and he still won’t be able to do a thing for me afterwards."
"What happens now?"
"It goes to the centre in the general return with everything else. Then they have to produce their schedule practice. Not the schedule. The practice — how they raise a claim, how they review one, what they do when somebody dies." She turned her hand over. "It’s a smaller question than yours and there’s a great deal more inside it."
"How long?"
"There’s no period on a review. That’s the one thing I couldn’t fix." Serreth said it without complaint. "It gets answered when the centre gets to it. I’ve seen one take four months and I’ve seen one sit for six years. There’s no clock and nothing I can do to start one."
Mataon sat with that.
"So it might be six years."
"It might be six years, and I’ve already paid for it in full."
"That’s a bad trade."
"It’s the only one on the table and I made it." She got up and went to the window. "Now. Your allocation."
"You’ve seen it."
"I’ve had a copy since the morning it landed, because I’m the supervisor and everything about you crosses my desk twice." She looked out at the square. "I’ll say one thing about it and then I’d like you to go, because I’ve got a great deal of tidying to do and I’d rather cry after you’ve left."
"Go on."
"In nine years I’ve processed about eleven hundred allocations. Clerks write them in batches to fill a works order, and they go wherever the labour’s short." Serreth turned round. "Ardenmoor hasn’t been short of labour in four years. I checked the returns. Somebody wrote a works order for one man."
***
He left Sarrow on the twenty-fifth of Sylphenia in a cart with six other allocated men and a driver who did not speak.
The crew came down to the road. Nobody had asked them to. Tal shook his hand and said nothing at all about lines. The barley woman gave him something wrapped in cloth and would not say what it was and it turned out to be most of a loaf.
Rethe did not come.
The widow did, and stood at the back where he would not see her until the cart had started moving, and lifted one hand about six inches, and put it down again.
[Sarrow — 22-25 Sylphenia, 335 A.Z. — Days 249-252]
[Review on own motion LODGED, Marrow Hill, 22 Sylphenia, 09:20. Four pages. Receipt issued.]
[No period runs on a review. Answered when the centre reaches it. Precedent: four months to six years.]
[NOTICE OF ALLOCATION — subject allocated to public works at Ardenmoor. Effective on receipt. No appeal exists.]
[Issued 19 Sylphenia — THREE DAYS BEFORE the review was lodged.]
[No labour shortage at Ardenmoor in four years. The works order covers one man.]
[Feat recognised — reading an order by its date instead of its content]
[PER +1 → 43]
[Level 37 — held]
[STR 22 · AGI 19 · END 31 · INT 42 · PER 43 · WIL 48]
[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 208]
[Distance to Ardenmoor: sixteen days at the standing rate.]
***
Orvek would not be left, and there was no procedure for that either, so he walked beside the cart.
He was fifty-one and his knee was eleven years past its best and he did nine miles the first day without writing a single word about it.
On the second evening he got the slate out.
*You are being taken to him.*
"I know."
*You are pleased.*
"I’m nothing of the sort."
Orvek looked at him for a long moment and then wiped it and wrote again, and it was the closest to angry Mataon had ever seen him.
*You have wanted a room with that man in it since Coldwell. You have been careful not to say so, because Barni would take it off you. I am not Barni.*
Mataon read it twice.
"All right," he said. "Yes."
*Then say the whole of it, the way you make everybody else.*
"I want to sit down opposite him and ask him what he thinks he’s doing, and I have wanted that for four months, and I have made three separate decisions about the forty-four with that want sitting underneath them." He put his hands on his knees. "And I don’t know how much of it was the forty-four and how much of it was that. I’ve checked. I can’t get to the bottom of it. And a man who can’t get to the bottom of his own reasons is exactly the sort of man that office was built to eat."
Orvek nodded once, and wiped the slate, and put it away, and did not write anything else that night.
In the morning it said, on the corner, in letters that had been there a while:
*Better. Now go and meet him.*