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"Wakey's not so file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt (55
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt bad. If I were him,
I wouldn't act any different. But he ran your number today, guv'nor, and
pulled a stack on you nine inches high. You've some talkative friends, you do,
Mr. Mallory."
"Did he now?" Mallory said, forcing a smile. "That file must make interesting
reading. I'd surely like a look at it."
"I do suppose that intelligence might find its way to improper hands," the boy
allowed. "Of course, 'twould be worth a fellow's job, if he were caught at
it."
"Do you like your work, Mr. Tobias?"
"Pay's not much. Gas-light ruins your eyes. But it has advantages." He
shrugged again, and pushed his way through another door, into a clattering
anteroom, three of its walls lined with shelves and card-files, the fourth
with fretted glass.
Behind the glass loomed a vast hall of towering Engines -- so many that at
first Mallory thought the walls must surely be lined with mirrors, like a
fancy ballroom. It was like some carnival deception, meant to trick the eye --
the giant identical Engines, clock-like constructions of intricately
interlocking brass, big as rail-cars set on end, each on its foot-
thick padded blocks. The white-washed ceiling, thirty feet overhead, was alive
with spinning pulley-belts, the lesser gears drawing power from tremendous
spoked flywheels on socketed iron columns. White-coated clackers, dwarfed by
their machines, paced the spotless aisles. Their hair was swaddled in wrinkled
white berets, their mouths and noses hidden behind squares of white gauze.
Tobias glanced at these majestic racks of gearage with absolute indifference.
"All day starin'
at little holes. No mistakes, either! Hit a key-punch wrong and it's all the
difference between a clergyman and an arsonist. Many's the poor innocent
bastard ruined like that . . . "
The tick and sizzle of the monster clockwork muffled his words.
Two men, well-dressed and quiet, were engrossed in their work in the library.
They bent together over a large square album of color-plates. "Pray have a
seat," Tobias said.
Mallory seated himself at a library table, in a maple swivel-chair mounted on
rubber wheels, while Tobias selected a card-file. He sat opposite Mallory and
leafed through the cards, pausing to dab a gloved finger in a small container
of beeswax. He retrieved a pair of cards. "Were these your requests, sir?"
"I filled out paper questionnaires. But you've put all that in Engine-form,
eh?"
"Well, QC took the requests," Tobias said, squinting. "But we had to route it
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to Criminal
Anthropometry. This card's seen use -- they've done a deal of the sorting-work
already." He rose suddenly and fetched a loose-leaf notebook -- a clacker's
guide. He compared one of Mallory's cards to some ideal within the book, with
a look of distracted disdain. "Did you fill the forms out completely, sir?"
"I think so," Mallory hedged.
"Height of suspect," the boy mumbled, "reach . . . Length and width of left
ear, left foot, left forearm, left forefinger."
"I supplied my best estimates," Mallory said. "Why just the left side, if I
may ask?"
"Less affected by physical work," Tobias said absently. "Age, coloration of
skin, hair, eyes.
Scars, birthmarks . . . ah, now then. Deformities."
"The man had a bump on the side of his forehead," Mallory said.
"Frontal plagiocephaly," the boy said, checking his book. "Rare, and that's
why it struck me.
But that should be useful. They're spoony on skulls, in Criminal
Anthropometry." Tobias plucked up the cards, dropped them through a slot, and
pulled a bell-rope. There was a sharp clanging. In a moment a clacker arrived
for the cards.
"Now what?" Mallory said.
"We wait for it to spin through," the boy said.
"How long?"
"It always takes twice as long as you think," the boy said, settling back in
his chair. "Even if you double your estimate. Something of a natural law."
Mallory nodded. The delay could not be helped, and might be useful. "Have you
worked here long, Mr. Tobias?"
"Not long enough to go mad."
Mallory chuckled.
"You think I'm joking," Tobias said darkly.
"Why do you work here, if you hate it so?"
"Everyone hates it, who has a spark of sense," Tobias said. "Of course, it's
fine work here, if you work the top floors, and are one of the big'uns." He
jabbed his gloved thumb, discreetly, at the ceiling. "Which I ain't, of
course. But mostly, the work needs little folk. They need us by the scores and
dozens and hundreds. We come and go. Two years of this work, maybe three,
makes file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt (56 of 178)
[1/14/03 11:24:14 PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt your eyes and your
nerves go. You can go quite mad from staring at little holes. Mad as a dancing
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