Read Online Devices and Desires by K. J. Parker - Free Book Online Page A

so weren’t looking for escaped prisoners
     anymore; besides, he was on a horse, and the prisoner had been on foot. The horse wanted to trot, so the saddle was pounding
     his bum like a trip-hammer. He passed under the gate, and someone called out, but he couldn’t make out the words. Nobody followed
     him. Two murders, possibly three if he’d killed the secretary of the expediencies committee when he hit him with the lampstand,
     and he was riding out of there like a prince going hawking. His head ached where the hair had been pulled out.
    As soon as he was through the gate, he knew where he was. That tall square building was the bonded warehouse, where he delivered
     finished arrowheads for export. The superintendent was a friend of his, sometimes on slow days they drank tea and had a game
     of chess (but today wasn’t a slow day). He was in Twenty-Fourth Street, junction with Ninth Avenue.
    Three blocks down Ninth Avenue was an alley, leading to the back gate of a factory. It was quiet and the walls on either side
     were high; you could stop there for a piss if you were in a hurry. He contrived to get the horse to turn down it, let it amble
     halfway down, pulled it up and slid awkwardly off its back. It stood there looking at him as he picked himself up. Nevertheless,
     he said. “Thanks,” as he walked away.
    The factory gate was bolted on the inside, but he managed to jump up, get his stomach on the top of it and reach over to draw
     back the bolt. The gate swung open, with him on top of it. He slipped down — bad landing — and shut it behind him, trying
     to remember what they made here. At any rate, he was back on industrial premises, where the rules were rather closer to what
     he was used to.
    He was in the back yard; and all the back yards of all the factories in the world are more or less identical. The pile of
     rusting iron scrap might be a foot or so to the left or right; the old tar-barrel full of stagnant rainwater might be in the
     northeast corner rather than the northwest; the chunky, derelict machine overgrown with brambles might be a brake, a punch,
     a roller or a shear. The important things, however, are always the same. The big shed with the double doors is always the
     main workshop. The long shed at right angles to it is always the materials store. The kennel wedged in the corner furthest
     from the gate is always the office. The tiny hutch in the opposite corner is always the latrine, and you can always be sure
     of finding it in the dark by the smell.
    Ziani ducked behind the scrap pile and quickly took his bearings. Ninth Avenue ran due south, so the gate he’d just climbed
     over faced east. He glanced up at the sky; it was gray and overcast, but a faint glow seeping through the cloud betrayed the
     sun, told him it was mid-afternoon. In all factories everywhere, in mid-afternoon the materials store is always deserted.
     He looked round just in case; nobody to be seen. He scuttled across the yard as fast as he could go.
    The geometry of stores is another absolute constant. On the racks that ran its length were the mandatory twenty-foot lengths
     of various sizes and profiles of iron and brass bar, rod, strip, tube, plate and sheet. Above them was the timber, planked
     and unplanked, rough and planed. Against the back wall stood the barrels and boxes, arranged in order of size; iron rivets
     (long, medium and short, fifteen different widths), copper rivets, long nails, medium nails, short nails, tacks, pins, split
     pins, washers; drill bits, taps, dies; mills and reamers, long and short series, in increments of one sixty-fourth of an inch;
     jigs and forms, dogs and faceplates, punches, calipers, rules, squares, scribers, vee-blocks and belts, tool-boats and gauges,
     broaches and seventeen different weights of ball-peen hammers. At the far end, against the back wall, stood the big shear,
     bolted to a massive oak bench; three swage-blocks, a grinding-wheel in its bath, two freestanding