The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman Read Free Book Online

H.22.7, R.251.13, to the town of Corbey, northeast of Gibson City, see L.124.21. Mathematical analysis of the patterns of her attacks located her in the vicinity of Corbey, and questioning of locals provided her precise location. Among numerous personnel whose duty it was to participate in those operations were Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry . . .
    When he’d finally crafted his report—not to his satisfaction, exactly, but to a point where nothing further could be done to protect himself—he delivered it into the pneumatic tube at the far end of the hallway, thrusting it in the decisive way one might thrust a bayonet into someone’s gut. Then he staggered across the littered and crowded and smog-haunted Concourse to his dormitory building. It was cold out, so it was probably night. He took a fistful of sleeping pills and was immediately unconscious.
    In his dreams he saw the Agent, Ann Auburn, once again. She’d been tall, much taller than Lowry, black-skinned, shaven-headed, gold-ringed, strikingly beautiful if you liked that kind of thing, which Lowry did not. A real arrogant bitch. She’d been hiding among sympathizers in Corbey Town, in a loft over a barn like an animal, which had not diminished her arrogance, and had been striking at Line cargo transports along the river and roads. The Dryden Engine’s forces had encircled the town, launched poison-gas rockets, then closed in. Lowry had watched through a telescope from a safe distance as the cornered woman fought her way out snarling and laughing through fire and blood and the billowing blind-eye-white haze of deadly gas, killing and killing until finally her wounds dragged her down, too numerous and too deep for her masters’ power to heal. . . .
    But in his dream he stepped through the ’scope’s crosshairs and was down in the killing ground, walking with the same strutting immunity as the Agent herself.
    Stand down, lads. Let me show you how it’s done.
    He seized her long thin neck and slammed her against a wall. She moaned. He yanked at her hooped gold earrings, and she cried out.
    See, lads? It’s simple. It’s all a question of authority.
    He slapped her, made her nose bleed, made her beg wordlessly.
    You just have to show them who’s in charge.
    Lowry typically didn’t dream, not unless he’d miscalculated the dosage of his various standard-issue performance-enhancing chemicals, and so he experienced it all with shocking intensity and pleasure.

    He woke in a guilty panic. He was alone in the room—the three other men with whom he shared his billet were awake, gone, packed. The room’s narrow window opened over the Primary Concourse, and Lowry knew at once, from the sounds of the machines and crowds, that the Engine had returned. There was no shouting, no cursing, no talking at all; in the presence of the Engine, the Station’s personnel worked in near-silence, in respect or terror or awe. Lowry had been born and raised in the basement levels of Angelus and was as attuned to its crowd noises and machine noises as it was possible to be.
    And the thing itself waited on the Concourse below, its metal flanks steaming, cooling, emitting a low hum of awareness that made Lowry’s legs tremble. . . .
    Quick calculation: He’d slept for rather more than sixteen hours. He was due to report to the staff of the Engine some two or three hours ago.
    He dressed, ran out into the corridor, and threw himself in stumbling terror down the dormitory’s concrete staircase, still fumbling with his spectacles, and stepped out onto the crowded wide-open Concourse, where he was obliged, under the eyes of Authority, to walk, never to run, and to show the proper indifference to his own individual fate.
    Two great busy Halls with roofs of iron girders and dirty green glass processed the Engine’s passengers and crew. One Hall handled civilians and outsiders who’d purchased passage; one handled military personnel. Lowry reported to the latter. He waited, in