Microsoft Word - Dan Abnett - Ravenor - 2 - Ravenor Returned.doc by <C0E4ECE8EDE8F1F2F0E0F2EEF0>

Author:<C0E4ECE8EDE8F1F2F0E0F2EEF0> [<C0E4ECE8EDE8F1F2F0E0F2EEF0>]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-01T17:33:07+00:00

Dan Abnett «Ravenor Returned»

Inside the stone hallway, the massed footsteps echoed like rain. The flow of workers began to subdivide into the warren of side corridors and passages, heading for their appointed stations and departments. More instructions rang from the ceiling speakers.

Patience saw PDF guards watching over various junctions, weapons slung, but they were not checking papers. Wall-mounted optic scanners at each doorway or hall-mouth read every worker permit that passed through, marking each one with a flashbulb flicker and a tonal ping, logging them into the system.

Patience saw the brief flash as her own permit was read. She began following the indicator signs for D:G/F1.

The tide began to thin out. The hallways had once been carpeted, but the pile had been eroded back to frayed matting like the bed of a dry stream. The air smelled of dry dust and static, and the photovoltaic lamps cast everything in a tobacco-coloured stain. She passed by the doorways of large cogitation chambers, glimpsed the endless rows of clerks at stations, heard the seamless clattering sound of ten thousand fingers striking keys.

In the hallway, quill servitors scuttled past, copy boys ran through carrying despatch boxes, gaggles of scribes hurried to meetings with transliterators and cipherists, gatherers pushed their heavily-laden basket trolleys, tech adepts shuffled along, hefting tool crates, heading for the latest repair. The walls were lined with the twisting branching tubes of the pneumatic despatch system. Every few seconds, there was a burp of air as another message cylinder rushed past inside one of the tubes.

Patience arrived at the entrance to department G/Fl. The optic scanner flash-pinged her again as she entered, and a hololithic sign lit up with the words WAIT HERE.

She waited. Beyond the doorway, she could see the huge chamber, high-ceilinged, gloomy, lit by the enormous hololithic display screen at the far end, swirling with green data-forms, and by the rows of individual desk lights on the scribe stations. There were at least a dozen rows, an aisle between each, and Patience counted something in the order of a hundred stations in each.

There was a cacophony of rattling keys. Copy boys and gatherers moved up and down the aisles, delivering and collecting files.

Servo-skulls drifted down the aisles like bees hunting pollen.

+Throne. I'll go mad in a place like this.+

+The beating heart of the Imperium.+ I sent back. +But for the ceaseless work of the Administratum, civilisation as we know it would grind to a halt.+

+What, are you recruiting for them now?+

She looked round, back out into the hallway. In the wall directly opposite the department entrance was a shrine alcove where the blessed seniors of the Administratum performed the hourly rites to bless and favour the work of the scribes.

+That's odd, don't you think?+ she sent.

The alcove was dusty, as if it hadn't been used in a while. There was no water in the placatory dish, and the sheaves of herbs were limp and desiccated.

+I agree.+

'Junior Scribe Merit Yevins?'

Patience turned. An elderly female, an ordinate, approached. She was robed and hunched, her claw hands blue with ink-stain that would never wash out.

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