Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

  Muttering, slightly exaggerated, from the Stonemasons’ and Wainwrights’ delegates. Political committees. Psellus ground on: “I take it you have something positive to propose.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.” Crisestem smiled amiably. “It seems to me that, since we cannot handle this matter directly, we must take a more oblique approach.” He opened his folder and took out a piece of paper, holding it close to his body, as if it was a candle in a stiff breeze. “This came in today, from one of my observers in Forza. Apparently, Duke Valens has taken a hand in the Eremian crisis; he’s sent significant aid to the survivors of Orsea’s army — food, doctors, transport. It would appear that the alliance between Eremia and the Vadani is by no means as brittle as we had assumed.”

  Eyebrows were raised at that; typical of the Tailors to keep back genuinely important news just to gain a brief tactical advantage.

  “That’s an interesting development,” Psellus said.

  “Certainly. Let’s confine ouselves, however, to its relevance to the matter in hand. A closer relationship between the two duchies will inevitably lead to closer commercial ties. We have excellent resources inside the Vadani mercantile. I suggest we use them. We won’t be needing them for anything else; the Vadani will never be a threat to us, they have too much sense. Furthermore, we can place our own people in the Vadani court, to supervise and coordinate operations. No doubt the foreign affairs directorate will be sending diplomats to Duke Valens to find out what lies behind this remarkable display of neighborly feeling. The actual transaction can be managed very well from Civitas Vadanis; if we manage to get Vaatzes out alive, it will be much simpler to bring him home from there. I imagine Valens will be eager to propitiate us, if he’s up to something with his cousin, so we can be confident we won’t be unduly hampered by interference from that quarter. It would appear to be the logical approach.”

  Psellus had, of course, hated the Tailors and Clothiers from birth; they were Consolidationists, the Foundrymen were Didactics, there could be no common ground, no compromise on anything, ever. Even if Manuo Crisestem had been a Foundryman, however, Psellus would still have loathed him with every cell, hair and drop of moisture in his body. “Agreed,” he said. “Do we need to take a formal vote on this? Objections from the floor? Very well, I propose that we minute that and move on to appropriations.” He gazed into Crisestem’s unspeakably smug face and continued: “When do you think you can let us have a draft budget for approval?”

  Crisestem hesitated; he was apprehensive, but didn’t know why. Confused, presumably, by his easy victory — which was understandable, since the Foundrymen had beaten the Tailors to a pulp in every major confrontation that century. “Depends on how much detail you want me to go into at this stage,” he replied. “Obviously, since we’ve only just agreed this, I haven’t done any proper costings; haven’t got a plan I can cost yet, not till I sit down and work it all out.”

  “I think we can all appreciate that,” Psellus said — he knew Crisestem was floundering —“but it goes without saying, time is of the essence. If we reconvened here at, say, this time tomorrow, do you think you could have an outline plan of action with an appropriations schedule for us by then?”

  “I should think so,” Crisestem replied, at the very moment when both he and Psellus realized what had happened. It hadn’t been intentional (if it had been, Crisestem told himself, I’d have seen it coming, read it in his weaselly little face), but it was a good, bold counterattack, what the fencers would call a riposte in straight time. Without formal proposal or debate, Manuo Crisestem had been put in charge of the whole wretched business. If he succeeded, nobody outside this room would ever know who deserved the credit. If he failed, he’d be finished in Guild politics.

  It took a little longer, maybe the time it takes to eat an apple, for the rest of the committee to realize what had just happened. Nobody said anything, of course. It wasn’t the sort of thing you discussed, except in private, two or three close colleagues talking together behind locked doors. In politics, it’s what isn’t said that matters. The fencers say that you never see the move that kills you; in politics also. It appears out of nowhere, like goblins in a fairy tale, but once it’s happened you start to smell of failure. People who used to look at you and see the next director of finance or foreign affairs start turning their speculations elsewhere, and the brief hush when you enter a room has a different, rather more bitter flavor. Of course, Crisestem might succeed. It was more likely than not that he would. But until the job was done and the file was closed, he was a man marked by the possibility of failure, someone who might not be there anymore in six months’ time. In a game played so many moves ahead, someone like that was at best on suspension. He might succeed, at which time he’d be eligible to start again at the foot of the ladder. Meanwhile, he had to face life as a liability in waiting.

  Not such a bad day after all, Psellus thought.

  Any other business; no other business. He confirmed tomorrow’s meeting — they’d be back in the great hall, where they belonged — and closed. The committee stood up slowly, like the audience at the end of a particularly powerful and moving play, taking time to adjust to being back in the real world. Crisestem indulged in the luxury of one swift, ferocious stare. Psellus returned it with a gentle smile, and returned to his chambers.

  Back in his favorite chair, facing the wall with the tarnished but glorious mosaic (Mezentine Destiny as a knight in armor riding down the twin evils of Chaos and Doubt), he reflected on the changed state of play. A fool would still be able to turn this fortuitous victory into a total defeat. A fool would try and take advantage by sabotaging the operation, in the hope of guaranteeing Crisestem’s downfall. It was a sore temptation — he was almost certain it could be done, efficiently and discreetly, one hundred percent success — but it was also the only way he could lose, and losing in this instance would mean disaster. The obvious alternative was to be as helpful and supportive as possible and trust Crisestem to destroy himself. Psellus thought about that. If he had true faith, in the Foundrymen, in the Didactic movement itself, he wouldn’t doubt for a moment that Crisestem would fail (because Didacticism was right, Consolidation was wrong, and good always triumphs over evil). It’d be easy to glide down into that belief; Crisestem was an idiot, no question about that. But he was cunning; his clever encircling maneuver had demonstrated that, even if he had turned his victory into a desperate wire for his own feet.

  Psellus yawned. So what if Crisestem did succeed? He’d get no thanks for it outside the committee because nobody would know it had been him. Inside — well, you never could tell. Psellus was more inclined to believe that they’d remember him walking blithely into the pitfall long after he’d dug his way out clutching a fistful of rubies, but you couldn’t build a policy on a vague intuition. Instead, he considered the worst likely outcome. Crisestem succeeded, thereby increasing his personal prestige inside the committee out of all recognition. So what? Just so long as Psellus kept his nerve and played his moves on the merits rather than through anger or fear, the position at the end would still be pretty much the same as it was right now. Psellus would still have the actual, procedural authority; he’d still see the minutes in draft before each meeting, and be able to make subtle, deft changes to key words under the pretext of proofreading. As for Crisestem, the higher he rose, the further he had to come down when finally he did make a mistake. Tranquility, serenity and patience.

  To take his mind off the problem, Psellus reached for his copy of Vaatzes’ dossier. Age: thirty-four. Guild: Foundrymen’s and Machinists’ (Psellus sighed; one in every barrel). Physical description: he read the details, tried to compile a mental image, but failed. Nondescript, then (except for his height; a tall man, six feet three inches, so among the hill-tribes he’d be a giant). Family: neither parent living — father had been a convener at the bloom mills for thirty years; a wife, Ariessa, age twenty-four, and a daughter, Moritsa, age six — so assuming she was seventee
n when they married, he’d have been, what, ten years older. Psellus frowned. Was there a story behind that? He turned back to the wife’s details. Father, Taudor Connenus, a toolmaker in the ordnance factory. Psellus compared his works number with Vaatzes’ service history. Connenus had worked on Vaatzes’ floor at the time of the marriage, therefore had been his subordinate. And Connenus was no longer a toolmaker but a junior supervisor; likewise Zan Connenus, the wife’s brother, promoted at the same time as his father.

  Psellus closed his eyes and thought about that. A hundred and fifty years ago, yes; it had been quite common back then for men to marry girls much younger than themselves, particularly where the marriage was part of some greater chain of transactions. There had been trouble — he struggled to remember his ancient history — there had been trouble in the Tinsmiths’ Guild over a marriage and the practice had been disapproved (not denounced; it was still perfectly legal, but you weren’t supposed to do it). There had been thirty years or so of compliance, a reaction, a counter-reaction, and then it had ceased to be an issue. At best, then, it was an eccentricity. He made a note to interview the two Conneni, and returned to the dossier.

  Details of the offense: he read the technical data — straightforward enough — and the investigating officer’s notes. The background was pathetic, really; a man wanted to make a nice present for his daughter and allowed his own cleverness to tempt him into disaster. The rest of the section was unremarkable enough, except for one thing that made Psellus raise his eyebrows in surprise.

  Next in the dossier were copies of supervisors’ annual assessment reports, going back twenty years. Psellus sighed, poured himself a small glass of brandy, and made himself concentrate. The picture that began to emerge was of a willing, serious apprentice, a reliable and careful machinist, a good supervisor; resourceful (and look where that had got him), intelligent, a planner; content to do his work to the best of his ability; a quiet man, a family man — rarely took part in social activities except where his status required it; a man who worked late when it was necessary, but preferred to go home on time. There had been no petty thefts of offcuts of material or discarded tools, no reports of private work done on the side; respected by his equals and his subordinates, few friends but no enemies — all those years as a supervisor and nobody hated him; now that was really rather remarkable. A mild man, but he’d married a subordinate’s daughter when she was little more than a child, and promotions had followed. Query: do quiet and mild always necessarily mean the same thing?

  Several pages of details, headed restricted, of his work on ordnance development projects. Psellus nodded to himself; a question which had been nagging him like mild toothache would appear to have answered itself. There were, of course, no Guild specifications for military equipment. It was the only area not covered by specifications, the only area in which innovation and improvement were permitted. Vaatzes, apparently, had been responsible for no fewer than three amendments to approved designs, all to do with the scorpions: an improved ratchet stop, upgrading of the thread on the sear nut axle pin from five eighths coarse to three quarters fine, addition of an oil nipple to the slider housing to facilitate lubrication of the slider on active service. That wasn’t all; he’d proposed a further four amendments which had been rejected by the standing committee on ordnance design. Psellus sighed. Allow a man to get the taste for innovation and you put his very soul at risk. The compliance directorate had considered the issue on several occasions and had recommended a program of advanced doctrinal training to make sure that workers exposed to the danger had a proper understanding of the issues involved; the recommendation had been approved years ago but was still held up in committee. A tragedy. A small voice inside his head reminded him that the training idea had been a Foundrymen’s proposal, and that the subcommittee obstructing it was dominated by the Tailors and the Joiners. He stowed the fact carefully away in his mental quiver for future use.

  Three approved amendments; he thought some more about that. Three amendments by a serving officer. Usually an amendment was held to be the glorious culmination of a long and distinguished career; it was something you held back until it was time for you to retire, and there’d be a little ceremony, the chief inspector of ordnance would shake you by the hand in front of the assembled workforce and present you with your letter of patent at the same time as your long-service certificate. It wasn’t a perfect system, because a man might have to wait fifteen years before submitting his amendment, all that time churning out a product he knew could be improved; but it was worthwhile because it limited exposure to the innovation bug. Only a very few men proposed amendments while they were still working, and nearly all such applications were rejected on principle, regardless of merit. Three, for God’s sake. Why hadn’t he heard about this man years ago? And why, when the facts were here in the file for anyone to see, hadn’t he been put under level six supervision after the first proposal?

  In a sense, Psellus thought, we failed him. He was reminded of the old story about the man who kept a baby manticore for the eggs, until at last one day the manticore, fully grown and reverting to its basic nature, killed him. We let Vaatzes walk this highly dangerous path alone because the amendments were all good, sound engineering, allowing us to improve the performance of the product. Credit for that improvement would’ve gone primarily to the chief inspector of ordnance, and from him to the members of the departmental steering committee. Manticore eggs.

  One last page caught his eye: schedule of items seized by investigators from the prisoner’s house, after his arrest. It was a short list. Usually, when a man came to no good, there’d be pages of this sort of thing — tools and equipment stolen from the factory; the usual depressing catalog of pornographic or subversive literature (always the same titles; the circulating repertoire of both categories was reassuringly small in Mezentia); forbidden articles of clothing, proscribed food and drink, religious fetishes. In this case, however, there were only a handful of items, and none of them was strictly illegal, though they were all disapproved. A portfolio of drawings of yet more amendments to the scorpion (a note in the margin pointing out that the drawings numbered seven, twenty-six and forty-one should be forwarded to the standing committee for assessment, since they appeared to have considerable merit); a book, The True Mirror of Defense — a fencing manual, copied in Civitas Vadanis (private ownership of weapons was, of course, strictly forbidden; whether it was also illegal to read books about them was something of a gray area); another book, The Art of Venery, about hunting and falconry. Psellus smiled; he was prepared to bet that Vaatzes had thought the word venery meant something quite different. Another book: A General Discourse of Bodily Ailments and the Complete Herbal, together with some pots of dried leaves and a pestle and mortar. Psellus frowned. He’d have to check, but he had an idea that the General Discourse was still a permitted text in the Physicians’, so it was against the law for a Foundryman to have a copy. How had he come by it? Did that mean that somewhere there was a doctor with a complete set of engineer’s thread and drilling tables? If so, why?

  He closed the file, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, as though he’d been handling something dirty. A case like this was, of course, an effective remedy for incipient complacency. It was easy to forget how perilously fine was the line between normality and aberration. How simple and straightforward life would be if all the deviants were wild-eyed, unkempt and slobbering, and all the honest men upright and clean-shaven. There wasn’t really anything disturbing about a thoroughgoing deviant; it was inevitable that, from time to time, nature would throw up the occasional monster, easy to identify and quickly disposed of. Far more disquieting the man who’s almost normal but not quite; he looks and sounds rational, you can work beside him for years and never hear anything to give you cause for concern, until one day he’s not at his post, and investigators are interviewing the whole department. Truly disquieting, because there’s always the possibility (orthodox doctrine denies it categorically, but you
can’t help wondering) that anybody, everybody, might be capable of just one small aberration, if circumstances conspired to put an opportunity in their path. If the temptation was strong enough, perhaps even me — Psellus shuddered at the thought, and dismissed it from his mind as moral hypochondria (look at the list of symptoms long enough, you can convince yourself you’ve got everything). It was just as well, he decided, that he wasn’t an investigator working in the field. You’d need to have nerves of steel or no imagination whatsoever to survive in that job.

  He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and waited to see if an image of Vaatzes would form in his mind — he thought of the process as something like what happens to an egg when it’s broken into the frying pan — but all he got was a vague shape, a cutout in a black backcloth through which you could catch glimpses of what lay behind. His best hope of understanding the man, he decided, lay in interviewing the wife. If there was a key to the mystery, either she’d be it or have an idea of where it was to be found. Strictly speaking, of course, none of this was necessary. They weren’t being asked to understand the man, just hunt him down and kill him. Probably just as well. Even so; the pathology of aberration was worth studying, in spite of the obvious danger to the student, or else how could further outbreaks be prevented in the future? Definitely the wife, Psellus decided. She was the anomaly he kept coming back to.

  He stood up, shook himself like a wet dog to get rid of unwelcome burrs of thought. A man could lose himself in work like this, and in his case that would be a sad waste. There were other letters waiting for him; he’d seen them when he came in but forgotten about them while his mind was full of Vaatzes and that dreadful man Crisestem. As was his custom, he broke the seals of all of them before he started to read.

  Two circular memoranda about dead issues; minutes of meetings of committees he wasn’t a member of, for information only; a letter from his cousin, attached to the diplomatic mission to the Cure Doce, asking him to look something up in the Absolute Concordance — some nonsense about the structure of leaves and the diseases of oak-trees; notice of a lecture on early Mannerist poetry; an invitation to speak, from a learned society he no longer belonged to. The sad thing was, if he didn’t get letters like these he’d feel left out, worried that he might be slipping gradually out of favor. He made a note to tell his clerk to check the oak-disease reference; he’d take the speaking engagement; standard acknowledgments to all the rest. So much for the day’s mail — the world bringing him new challenges to revel in, like a cat that will insist on presenting you with its freshly slain mice. Another glass of brandy was a virtual necessity, if he didn’t want to lie awake all night thinking about Vaatzes, and deviance in general. One last note to his clerk: set up meetings with Vaatzes’ wife, father- and brother-in-law. Yes, that was where the answer lay, he was almost certain of that. It would help him make sense of it all if she turned out to be pretty, but he wasn’t inclined to hold his breath.