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 breastplates 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.