Administrator Of A Broken World

The answer came into Sarrow on the fifth of Frostmere in a plain wrapper with no district cover on it, and the counter clerk nearly sent it back.

He brought it up instead because the seal was retained. A retained seal is one of about four things at that counter that stops a man doing the easy version.

At the desk she took it standing. Then she sat down.

She put it on the desk and looked at it before she opened it. She wiped her hands on her skirt first, and was cross with herself, and did it anyway.

Four sheets. Good paper. The first was a covering note of eleven lines and the other three were ruled in a hand she did not know, and at the top of the first sheet, where an office writes where it is, somebody had written two words.

**Grey Sallow.**

She read the eleven lines before she looked at anything else.

*The requisition is answered.*

*It is answered because it names the document. This office has had four applications in twenty-two years and none of them named anything, and a request that does not name a document is not a request this office can lawfully meet, whatever it may deserve.*

*The sixth column is set out overleaf as it stands at the date below. It is not a copy of the schedule and I have not sent the schedule, and I have not been asked for it.*

*I have entered nothing to make it read better.*

*Office of record, retained. 18 Ravenmark 336.*

There was no name.

There was a seal. The seal said what the office was and nothing at all about who held it, and that was correct. She noted in the margin of her own file that it was correct. Then she put the note face down and squared it with the edge of the desk.

Then she turned to the three ruled sheets.

For four hours after that she did not get up. She lit the lamp at some point and could not afterwards remember doing it. The clerk came up twice and went away both times without saying anything, and she did not hear him either time.

***

The sixth column is the record of the state of the person at the last date the office had information.

Four hundred and six rows. Number, then state, then date. No names anywhere, because a sixth column does not carry names, and she had known that and had still expected them.

Three hundred and seventy-one of the rows said the same thing.

*No information since 313.*

Not similar things. The same thing, in the same words, with the same year, three hundred and seventy-one times, down three sheets in a hand that never once got tired or careless or shorter.

Twice she counted them through.

The first count she did with her finger and lost it at two hundred and nine. The second time she got the straightedge out of the drawer and a soft pencil and made a small mark in the margin every ten rows. It took her an hour and eleven minutes.

Then she sat back and looked at the ceiling of the room she had refused a district to keep.

In 313 the office had stopped being told things.

Somebody had gone on writing the column anyway for twenty-three years.

Thirty-four rows were different. Those had states in them, and dates, and the dates were recent — the newest was 12 Ravenmark of this year, six days before the note was signed.

And the thirty-fifth different row was at the bottom of the third sheet and had no number at all.

To the thirty-four she went first, in order. The bottom row was going to be there afterwards. She wanted to be able to say she had done the work first, and she wrote the time at the top of her own note so that she could prove it.

*Held. 334.*

*Working. Ashvale. 331.*

*Removed to Coldwell. Died. 325.*

*Working. Quarry. 12 Ravenmark 336.*

At that one she stopped for a while.

Twice she read it, and then read the two rows above it, and then read it again. Under the row she laid the straightedge. Then she took it away and put her thumb there instead, and that was worse.

Then she went and got Rethe out of an examination. In nine years she had never done that. It cost her an apology to a party she did not know and a second one to the party's man, and she made both of them properly and did not hurry either.

Then she brought Rethe up the stair without explaining. She put the third sheet in front of her and said nothing at all.

Rethe read it standing, the way she read everything.

"Three hundred and seventy-one dead files."

"They're not dead. He's kept the column."

"He's kept a column that says *nothing has happened* three hundred and seventy-one times." Rethe put her glasses up. "That's not a record. That's a man ruling lines."

"Then look at the thirty-four."

Rethe looked at the thirty-four.

It took her about a minute and a half, and Serreth watched her get to it, and knew the exact moment because Rethe's hand came away from the paper.

"These are the ones somebody's told him about."

"Yes."

"Not the ones he's gone and found. He hasn't left that road twice a season in twenty-two years and you can't collect a state off thirty-four people across a whole country from a lane in Ardenmoor." She put the sheet down. "Somebody writes to him."

"Thirty-four somebodies, or one somebody who knows thirty-four things. And I can't tell which from a column, and neither can he, and I'd guess he's wondered."

"And this one." Rethe had her finger on it. "*Working. Quarry.* Six days before he signed. Who is that?"

"I'm not going to say."

"You've gone the colour of the paper."

"I'm still not going to say, and you'd rather I didn't, and in about a year you'll thank me."

She took the sheet back and held it against her chest.

"But I'll tell you the part that matters and it isn't who. That row is current because the man in it has spent a year putting documents into offices. Every time he files something, a clerk somewhere writes down where he was. He has been making his own sixth column for twelve months and he has no notion he was doing it."

Rethe sat down. She also never did that.

"The thirty-four are the ones who leave a trace."

"The thirty-four are the ones who are still *doing* something a clerk has to write down." Serreth was looking at the sheet and not at her. "Three hundred and seventy-one people stopped doing anything a clerk had to write down in 313, and that's not because they died. Nobody dies in one year. It's because in 313 something changed about who was obliged to report them."

***

The bottom row she left until the counters had shut and the stair was quiet. At the time she was aware of doing it. She did it anyway, and she wrote down that she had done it, because a reviewing officer who hides her own conduct from her own file has started the thing she is paid to stop.

No number. No line reference. Set slightly in from the margin, in the same hand as the other four hundred and six, at the foot of the third sheet.

*As at today's date: well.*

Sitting there she read it eleven or twelve times. Then she turned the sheet over to see whether anything was written on the back. Nothing was. She turned it again and put it flat and squared it to the edge of the desk with both hands, and then noticed she had done that, and left it alone.

Every other row in the document was a third-person entry about somebody else, made from a report, at a date in the past. Four hundred and six of them, and the newest of those was six days old, and the oldest was twenty-three years.

The bottom row was in the present tense.

It was a man entering his own state, on his own schedule, in his own hand, at his own counter, with nobody to report it to him and nobody to report it to.

She sat with her hands flat on either side of the sheet. The lamp wanted trimming and she did not trim it. Somewhere below her the clerk locked the street door and went home, and she heard the bolt, and she stayed.

The obvious question was whether it belonged in the answer at all. It was not part of the sixth column as requisitioned. It had no number. It could be struck as surplus and nobody in Deuna would ever say she had been wrong to strike it.

At about eleven she got up. Then she trimmed the lamp. She put the three ruled sheets in the review file in order and tied it with the district tape, and then untied it and checked the order and tied it again.

She washed the pencil dust off her fingers in the basin on the landing. Then she came back and sat down.

At the desk she wrote the endorsement out twice and burned the first one.

*Received 5 Frostmere 336. Answer complete. Four sheets. Entered whole. The unnumbered entry at the foot of sheet three was made by the office without being asked, and the reviewing officer declines to strike it.*

Then she wrote to Ardenmoor, and it was two lines, and it took her the rest of the evening.

*He answered. He answered because you named it, and he says so in the second sentence, and he says nobody has named anything in twenty-two years.*

*I am not going to send you the column in a letter. Three hundred and seventy-one of the rows say no information since three hundred and thirteen. Thirty-four do not. You are one of the thirty-four, and you have been writing that row yourself all year without knowing it, and I would like you sitting down when you read what he put at the bottom.*

[Sarrow — 5-9 Frostmere, 336 A.Z. — Days 442-446]

[THE ANSWER ARRIVED 5 Frostmere. Plain wrapper, no district cover, retained seal. Four sheets of good paper.]

[HEADED **GREY SALLOW** — an address that is not Ardenmoor and not Dunnock Mill. No name anywhere in the document. The seal states the office and not the holder, and that is correct.]

[COVERING NOTE: answered because the requisition NAMED the document. Four applications in twenty-two years, none of which named anything. The schedule was not sent and was not asked for. *I have entered nothing to make it read better.* Signed 18 Ravenmark 336.]

[THE SIXTH COLUMN — 406 rows. Number, state, date. No names.]

[371 rows: *No information since 313.* Identical wording, identical year, in an unbroken hand.]

[34 rows carry current states. Newest 12 Ravenmark 336 — six days before signing.]

[SERRETH'S READING: the 34 are the ones who still do something a clerk must write down. Mataon's row is current BECAUSE he has spent a year filing documents. He has been generating his own sixth column without knowing it.]

[In 313 something changed about who was obliged to report. Somebody has ruled the column anyway for twenty-three years.]

[THE UNNUMBERED ROW at the foot of sheet three, not requisitioned, set in from the margin, same hand:]

[*As at today's date: well.*]

[The only present-tense entry in the document. A man entering his own state, on his own schedule, with nobody to report it to him and nobody to report it to.]

[ENDORSED AND ENTERED WHOLE. Serreth declines to strike it as surplus. She wrote the endorsement twice and burned the first.]

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