Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

Surely this woman’s unhappy marriage must have fostered a sense of life’s unfairness in her. But she was mistakenly transferring this personal grievance to a larger system that did not merit such an attack. It was up to me to persuade her of the wrongness of her perceptions.

I decided to attempt a tactic I had seldom had occasion to employ before.

Standing, I said, “Mrs. Gueths, I would like you to accompany me elsewhere in the Palace, where I can show you something that might convince you of the inaccuracy of your statements.”

This offer obviously proved unexpected. She stood up hesitantly. “I—I can’t imagine what that thing could be.”

“That is precisely why you need to see it with your own eyes. Are you game?”

My last question stiffened her spine and caused her pride to flare. What a woman this was! If only I—

But even the Grand Consistor is subject to the dictates of his personal Template.

“Of course I’m game. Lead on, Mr. Yphantidies, lead on!”

I conducted Margali Gueths to the door of my office, swinging it open for her—just in time to catch Goolsby Roy hurriedly reclaiming his desk chair in the anteroom. Plainly he had been eavesdropping. I could hardly object, since it was precisely such fussy attentiveness that made him such a good assistant—and the habit formed a well-known part of his Template.

“Mr. Roy, please field all matters that arise. Mrs. Gueths and I are going to the Vaults.”

Goolsby’s eyes widened. “Very good, Grand Consistor.”

I conducted Margali Gueths out of the anteroom, whereupon we found ourselves at the head of the busy Travertine Staircase, up and down which dozens of Continuity employees scurried, their arms full of documents.

We went down, saying nothing to each other. My underlings gave respectful nods of their heads as they encountered me. But the deference seemed not to impress Margali Gueths with my stature, but rather render her more disdainful of me.

On the ground level, we crossed three wings of the Palace and approached a door guarded by two doormen. They let us pass, and we descended further, down and down and down a set of steps more utilitarian than the noble public spaces. Here, the employees we encountered were all young messengers shuttling the documents that the more senior Adjudicators and Consistors had requested. Every last one of them practically fainted at seeing their Grand Consistor in their midst. Their reactions made Margali Gueths grin and chuckle ironically.

But her humourous attitude evaporated when we debouched from the stairwell and into the Vaults.

The barrelled ceiling of the Vaults, upheld by an army of regularly spaced pillars, reared some fifteen feet above our heads. No walls interrupted this measureless cavern, but the ranks upon ranks of dark wooden shelving, cresting some distance short of the roof, had a similar effect.

We looked down one aisle. Its terminus was invisible, dwindling to a vanishing point.

“The Vaults,” I said, “underlie the whole plaza above us, and are in a state of constant expansion, spreading out further and further from the Palace. We are well below the lawful level of any other structural foundation. Here we have the complete files on every extant citizen of Hanging Dog, files of which you have seen only the smallest redaction. Each citizen claims a certain number of feet upon the shelves, based on their age, of course. We also continue to maintain all the files of the dead, from the establishment of the Great Continuity to the present. They come in very useful at certain times.”

“I— This is monstrous! It’s a combination of ossuary and prison.”

“Such is your uninformed view, Mrs. Gueths. But perhaps you’d like to see your own file… ?”

This offer startled her. She hesitated. But I knew she could not resist. No one could. She bravely tried to rationalize her reaction.

“This is only my right, I suppose. Everyone should have this opportunity. It should not be something offered only to appease a noisy protestor. Very well, show me my file.”

“Allow me to see your Template synopsis once more, please.”

She passed over the papers from her satchel. I memorized her file number, and we set off.

The labyrinth was laid out logically, and the shelves clearly marked. But still I found myself experiencing a sense of disorientation and timelessness amidst the flickering lamplight. Subtle winds from the ventilation ducts conveyed the illusion that we walked through some artificial forest. Surely Margali Gueths, totally unfamiliar with this environment, must have been experiencing even greater deracination.

After some fifteen minutes of walking, we reached the proper shelf. The shelves were filled with uniform chunky albums bound in black buckram. Their spines bore only alphanumeric designations.

“Yours is there.” I pointed to a shelf up above head height. “You’ll have to use a ladder.”

I indicated a wheeled ladder that ran on a rail. Margali Gueths gamely began to climb. I averted my eyes for a moment, so as not to take advantage of the sight of her shapely calves beneath her long skirt. But then I realized the foolishness of such a nice gesture, given what she was about to encounter in her file.

Margali Gueths came to a halt on a high rung. She pulled down her first album. This action too was predictable: people always felt a nostalgic attraction to their infancy and youth.

The woman cracked the album and began to page through its contents.

At first her expression was fond and serene, as she encountered artefacts and tokens of her long-departed childhood. But this serenity soon vanished, replaced by flushed indignation. Margali Gueths slammed shut the album, reshelved it, then took one from considerably farther down in her sequence. She hastily opened this binder, flipped through its pages, then plucked from it a single large daguerreotype.

The brief flash of the print that I received from my vantage revealed a tangle of -bare fleshy limbs, plainly belonging to more than two persons.

Margali Gueths hastily descended the ladder to stand before me. Gazing at me contemptuously, she snapped the daguerreotype in half with a crisp crack, then snapped the fragments in half, before stuffing them into her satchel, reclaimed from the floor.

Her voice quivered with rage. “How dare you!”

I had anticipated a slightly different first question. But I should have realized that Margali Gueths would choose not to trifle with practicalities, but would rather challenge the moral right of the Grand Continuity to keep such files.

“Not ‘How was this done?’ That is generally what people ask, once they discover the degree to which their lives are transparent. You continue to surprise me, Mrs. Gueths.”

She only glared. “Don’t attempt to placate me, Mr. Yphantidies.”

“I assure you, I would never consider insulting your intelligence with flattery, Mrs. Gueths. But you must allow this unimaginative functionary to follow procedure, and answer the expected question first. That image from your life—one of many, many such—was obtained via the Panocculus, an auditory and viewing machine that allows unimpeded remote access to any spatial location, no matter what conventional barriers exist. The Panocculus is the rock upon which the Grand Continuity rests. Its existence, while not precisely a secret, is not generally touted, and unknown to the hoi polloi. A woman of your class, however, is permitted such knowledge.”

Margali Gueths snorted derisively, but I continued nonetheless.

“Within the Palace, vast banks of Panocculus machines, manned around the clock by an army of trained operators, ceaselessly collect data on the citizenry. But not, of course, for any ignoble or trivial purposes. The operators are bound by the most stringent oaths and penalties from disclosing what they witness. They only record. These frozen moments and conversational transcripts simply help quantify what standard testing already reveals. Your Template is collated not just from cold, abstract data, but from the rough and tumble of your most intimate and commonplace moments. So you see, when the Great Continuity asserts, for instance, that you, Margali Gueths, are incapable of assuming the mantle of your husband’s business, our judgement is based on the deepest knowledge of your behaviour and capabilities.”