Nobody Signed It

The file came up from the Archive in the hands of Frau Vesper, who had been the night archivist for thirty-one years and who had once made Kappa copy out rule five forty times.

She put it on the table and said, “I want you all to notice that I am not pleased.”

The file was thin. That was wrong straight away. A programme that fitted steel to a living creature should have been as thick as a brick: proposals, objections, costs, three signatures and a stamp. Schutzprogramm K was eleven pages.

Frau Vesper read it out, because Mirell asked her to, and because she read in the flat voice of a woman who has learned not to let a document sound better than it is. “Four thousand,” said Dobbel.

“Four thousand four hundred and six,” said Frau Vesper. “I counted twice, because the first time I did not believe myself.”

Kappa was doing the thing with the pen again, the stopping in mid-air.

“Seventy-one years,” Kappa said. “The station’s only sixty.”

“The new decks are sixty,” said Frau Vesper. “Section Nine is older. Section Nine is where your vents go.”

Mirell had not moved. She was sitting with her hands flat on the table either side of the file, looking at the empty signature box the way Kappa had looked at it at two in the morning.

What a programme needs Schutzprogramm K

Proposing office field left blank

Approval none on file

Budget allocated none; never requested

Review date none set

Cancellation none; programme still open

Authorising signature box present, box empty

First issue recorded 71 years ago

Issues since 4,406

“So let me say it plainly,” she said, “because we will all be tempted to make this sound more sensible than it is. For seventy-one years, something on this station has been fitting steel to living creatures, four and a half thousand times, under its own authority. Nobody started it. Nobody paid for it. Nobody checked it. Nobody stopped it.”

“Somebody must have started it,” said the supervisor.

“Then their name would be in the box,” said Mirell, “and it is not, and the box is not damaged, and nothing has been cut out. The box was never filled in. The programme was issued unsigned, and then it simply kept going.”

She tapped the page once.

“This is the part people find hard,” she said, “and it is the whole reason I was called, so listen. The frightening thing is not a villain. Everybody is hoping for a villain, because a villain can be arrested and then we can all have dinner. There is no villain in these eleven pages. There is something worse, which is a thing that nobody is responsible for and that nobody can therefore switch off.”

“You can switch anything off,” said Dobbel. “You find it and you turn the power off.”

“Try it,” said Mirell, “and I will tell you exactly what happens, because it has been tried.

Page nine.”

Frau Vesper turned to page nine and read it, and her voice went even flatter.

Interference with protective issue registers as a protection failure. On a registered protection failure, protective issue shall be increased.

The Mäusewerk was very quiet. The dog shifted in his sleep.

“So if you cut the claws off,” Kappa said slowly, “it thinks the protection failed.”

“And it sends more,” said Mirell. “And whoever cut them off goes to bed thinking they did a kindness, and in the morning there are two pairs.”

Kappa wrote in the log, and the pen went through the paper slightly at the end of the line.

Day two, 16:40. Do not cut them. Cutting them is what feeds it. Four thousand four hundred and six.