The 6th of Intas - Morning
The bell stops its incessant ringing. This is worse.
He lays the books open, tucks in working documents and drafts of drafts between relevant pages. Closes the books less gently than he likes , puts them in an uncomfortable stack into the safe. No time to reset the combination. The time for that has come and gone. He curses under his breath, nothing too vulgar. It is still early. He’ll work up to paint-peeling oaths by evening. The heavy metal door of the safe clangs shut. The mechanisms slide into place. A solid, satisfying sound. He spins the combination dial once, twice, three times. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. Every time it ends on a prime number. He curses again, this time it is more vulgar, and spins the dial again,it stops on some meaningless multiple of three. Nothing significant about eighteen. He will have let it stay.
At the door he checks his reflection in the cloudy, flaking mirror. Shrikeweed looks back at him from behind the dust and flawed silvering. The reflection looks terrible, washed out. The red-brown hair needs a trim, the ends are beginning to curl rather more than is proper. He’ll make an appointment tomorrow. The barber, at least, is a consummate professional and knows how to keep silent. He runs his hand over his hair, pushing it into something almost presentable, snatches off his reading glasses, and smooths down the sidewhiskers. Then, with an arch of the brow and a quirk of the lip, he puts on his public face and slips out into the corridor.
The indigo door closes behind him. He slides the first key into the lock, turns it. The mechanism clicks. The second keyhole slides into view. He locks this with a second key. He turns the handle, once, twice, three times. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, and clockwise again. The door remains shut.
Seven minutes. It takes no more than seven minutes to get from his office to anywhere in the Chancery. He checks his watch, thirty four minutes past eight. He will be late. This is going to be an unbearable day.
Footfalls echoing in the high corridors, his own and others. They move about, still with morning faces. Some, on their way to offices. Off to hide among the paperwork and be forgotten for a time. Others to meetings, working sessions, or to carry news. He hunches his shoulders, compacting himself into as small a space as possible and rushes on.
“Mr Shrikeweed!” The voice, pinched, nasal, papery, and familiar, calling from an alcove. “Mr Shrikeweed, sir! Glad to have caught you so early. I was on my way to your office just now, thought I’d catch you before the day slipped away. It’s going to be a busy day sir, very busy. I have three meetings with the legislative staff before noon. Then a working session with some monetary beetle from the Treasury. Who schedules these things? I’ll never know. Seems they spring up like mushrooms, of their own accord. How I’m going to get it all done and explain it, clocks and hourglasses, explain it. . . ”
“Walk with me Wiggins.” The younger clerk stops his yammering and follows. “What’s all this about?”
“The financial score for the proposed privatization of tax collection.”
“Mannering-Phipps' pet project? We killed that last year. I killed it.”
“It’s back from the dead sir. Landed on my desk last night.”
“Then we’ll kill it again. I’m not going to have the bean-counters at Treasury thinking they can begin undermining the Service like this. Today its tax collection, but tomorrow, who knows. This has to be stopped”
“Treasury does claim it will save money.”
“Save money? When has Treasury ever cared about saving money? No, they just want to look their they’re saving money. Efficiencies” he spits the word out like it is poison. “Then they can pat themselves on the back, give massive off-the books kickbacks to tax farmers, and then take their over-larded backsides off for an early lunch.”
Skrikeweed rounds a corner and heads toward the main hall. Wiggins follows in his wake. More people flowing in, the volume of noise rising. A press of clerks at the foot of the stairs. Shrikeweed pushes through, barely slowing in his strides. Wiggins struggles against the press. He has not yet learned the trick to moving at speed through the Chancery. The press clears, and Wiggins shoots forward like a rejected melon seed.
“Sir? Where are we going?”
“I, Wiggins, have been summoned.”
Wiggins swallows, purses his lips. “The Perpetual Permanent Secretary?”
“Herself.” Another corridor, narrower, tiled in black and something that may once have been white. The ring of their steps is louder here. “I fear I’m for it Wiggins.”
“They can’t give you the sack!”
“They can, Wiggins. Either that or promote me. I’m not sure which is worse. ” Along another hall, past offices and meeting rooms. Worn furniture and slowly dying plants on either side. Mind racing, his fate just minutes before him, he does what comes naturally to calm his nerves. He goes back to work.
“Why is Mannering-Phipps Folly with us again?”
“Treasury seems to think they need our sign-off before they go make up whatever fiscal nonsense sounds prettily in the ears of the Exchequer.”
“Treasury and can make up their own numbers. That’s what they’re there for.” Shrikeweed turns the corner abruptly, making for another flight of stairs.
Wiggins pulls a notebook out of an inner pocket, riffles through the pages, and almost walks into the polished wood newel-post. “They seemed confused, sir. About the calculations.” Wiggins tries to regain himself, teeters for a moment, and then follows upward. “There was a minute.”
“A minute.” Shrikeweed now takes the stairs two at a time, rushing past elderly archivists, junior secretaries, and a minor flood of emanuenese.
“Yes sir, a minute.”
“Was it one of our minutes?”
“Yes sir. It seems Mr Levesque was convinced that there was a problem in the drafting of the language for the around the revenue projections. The numbers fail to add up, and beginning next year . . .”
“Calendar, not financial?”
“Calendar, yes.”
Shrikeweed grins.
“Mr. Shrikeweed sir?”
“Does Levesque like fruit?”
“Fruit, sir?” Bafflement makes its advance across Wiggins’ face.
“Yes, Wiggins, fruit. Pears, grapes, berries, and the like.”
“I suppose so, sir. I, that is, what? Fruit sir?”
“That minute may well have helped prevent this ghastly measure from ever seeing the light of day. Send Mr Levesque a fruit basket in thanks. Or a fine cheese. Anything, Wiggins. Just make sure he knows his efforts are appreciated.”
Wiggins takes out his notebook again, scribbles down a memo, and waits, poised. “Then what sir?”
He stops short, turns, and looks at Wiggins. He can feel the the predatory grin spreading over his face like a sunrise. “Then, Wiggins, you tell the idiots from Treasury that they will need our sign off, yes. They’ve forgotten that the calendar exists, again. Tell your monetary beetle this: we’ll fix their mistake, redraft their bill, and keep their incompetence among ourselves. But for the duration of this stupidity Treasury is paying you the full rate for a rush job on top of your usual salary.”
“Mine, sir?”
“Yes, Wiggins. Yours. You have the meeting. It’s your bailiwick.” Wiggins stands still for a moment, and Shrikeweed watches the clerk’s eyes move back and forth. Probably tallying his sudden windfall.
“Oh, right, thank you Mr Shrikeweed.”
“Then, when you’ve sorted that. Send it for interdepartmental review.”
“What departments sir?”
“Any and all that come to your mind. The more the merrier.”
A small smile begins to form on Wiggins face. The review will take weeks. More than enough time to undermine it. “I’ll set to it at once, sir!”
“Carry on, Wiggins.”
The younger clerk departs, gliding down the stairs with growing ease. Shrikeweed pauses a moment, checks his watch. Forty-one minutes past eight. No escaping it now. He is late.
The door to the Perpetual Permanent Secretary’s office, unassuming and dark green in color. He knocks, and tries to form his apology. Nothing suitable comes to mind. One does not keep the Perpetual Permanent Secretary waiting.
“Enter.” The voice is mellifluous. How can a single word be mellifluous? Yet it is. Shrikeweed reaches for the handle, turns it once, clockwise, then catches himself before he can complete the gesture. The door swings in, and he follows along with it.
Pale morning light streaming in from the wide windows. The colors in the room are muted, washed out. It does the space no justice. Carpets look faded and old, woodwork lacks depth. It is like the room is painted on the air. Even the Perpetual Permanent Secretary looks less that fully formed.
She nods, and gestures Shrikeweed towards a chair. “Please, do sit.” He sits. The chair is uncomfortable and wobbles slightly. Fantastic, every leg is a different length. A chair for interrogations. “You’ll have coffee.” It is not a question, not a nicety. It is an order. He will have coffee. He hates the Secretary’s coffee. It is weak, insipid, wan; rather like the morning light.
The Secretary rings a bell. It is a morning for bells. A moment passes in uncomfortable silence, and a servant enters by a discrete door. A silver pot and two coffee cups occur upon the Secretary’s desk. The silent servant pours coffee the color of an old puddle, and then vanishes from the room. Shrikeweed sits, motionless, waiting. The Secretary raises her cup, takes a sip, breathes in.
“Well Shrikeweed.” Her face is ageless, moodless, unfathomable.
“Madame Secretary.” He follows the tone, setting aside feeling and affect. Here he is function, not a man.
“Your name has been appearing rather more often in my memos than I am accustomed.”
He reaches back into his memory, replaying the last quarter of the year, and can find no memorable, catastrophic errors. A few failures, of course, and setbacks, but nothing to warrant this chair and this interrogation. “Madame Secretary, this is not a development I had foreseen. My work . . .”
“Has been exemplary. And that, Mr Shrikeweed, is precisely why your name keeps surfacing. There is a situation.” She pronounces that last word as though it is something rotten, diseased, unwholesome. “Are you at all acquainted with Incumbent Vauquelin?”
“I am, madame. Not well. We’ve perhaps dined together at the Pendulum once or twice. Certainly I know the man enough to make civil movements in his direction and inquire about meaningless pleasantries. I believe he is fond of opera.”
“Are you fond of opera, Mr Shrikeweed?” Still that same level tone, that same expressionless face. What was the purpose of that question? No bills before the Council have anything to do with opera. No regulation of ticket prices, no ordinance forbidding wicks from performing heroic roles. Nothing.
“I have been known to attend an opera from time to time.”
The Secretary nods.
“Mr Shrikeweed, we are concerned about the Incumbent. His fellows in the Council are worried about the Incumbent. The staff is worried about the Incumbent. There are rumors Mr Shrikeweed.”
“I am aware, Madame Secretary, that the Incumbent has been unwell. A nervous disorder was mentioned by some, a stroke by others. I do not pretend to know the precise cause of his malady, only that it has been the subject of remark and some speculation.”
“His health is, of course, a concern. The health of all members of the King’s Council is of concern. But no, Mr Shrikeweed, the concern raised to us by his colleagues and staff is that he is not sound.”
Shrikeweed draws in a sharp breath through his teeth. “I’m appalled.” There have been unsound Incumbents before. They are never easy to deal with. Most have been rendered moot but the Civil Service, their ‘eccentricities’ carefully fenced in by reams of paperwork and miles of red tape. It is nothing to celebrate.
“It is appalling, yes.” The Secretary raises her coffee cup to her lips, takes another long, slow sip. “Recommendations?”
“General assessment by the Service. Monitoring for a period of time. His attention to be directed in non-controversial directions. Assignment to the Committee for Agrarian Festivals.” He recalls the conversation from earlier, smiles. “Perhaps a lengthy fact-finding mission regarding corruption at the Royal Opera?
“Is there corruption at the Royal Opera Mr Shrikeweed?”
“Madame Secretary, if there is but one constant in the universe it is that corruption can always be found if one looks hard enough .”
“Excellent. Excellent Mr Shrikeweed. You post as assessor will commence immediately.”
“Madame Secretary,” he nearly rises in his chair. “The legislative review for the Joint Committee on Public Safety is still outstanding. I have a number of legal knots to untie, recommendations to make. Drafts that need redrafting.”
“Mr Shrikeweed. This is not a request. This is not a trivial matter. Today, Mr Shrikeweed, you are to create yourself as the Legislative Councilor to the Incumbent. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Madame Secretary.”