particular reason why. They just disgusted him, was all. He was a simple man.
The Wolf of the South and Goodwife Sal were both in the Black File, under DECEASED. Since their bodies had been burned, it was, Lowry supposed, their final resting place. Six years ago, Lowry had been an adviser to an operation that had killed Blood-and-Ashes Morley, at the cost of only forty-six Linesmen, which had earned Lowry himself a footnote in the Black File. Now he was engaged in filing his report on the recent death of Strychnine Ann Auburn. It was an exquisitely tricky business. If all went well, it would earn him a second footnote in the File; however, the slightest trace of vanity or ambition could earn him demotion, disgrace. The Line did not tolerate vanity or ambition in its servants.
SUMMARY
The first joint operation between the forces of the Angelus Engine and the forces of the Dryden Engine since the Razing of Logtown in Year 267 can be judged to have met with total success. Command structures were successfully integrated to ensure effective hierarchy and full obedience while leaving adequate operational independence to ensure prompt and effective action. Casualties were inconsequential. The Dryden Engine’s forces assaulted the enemy’s position and rightly claim a significant portion of the credit for the execution. However, intelligence provided by Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry of the Army of the Angelus Engine proved essential to the success of the operation
However, it is important to note that intelligence operations contributed significantly to the success of the operation. The efficient interchange of information is critical to the Forward Progress of the Line, and though personal ambition is irrelevant to that Progress, a full record must be made. Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry of the Army of the Angelus Engine designed the intelligence-gathering operations which
Sub-Invigilator (Third) Lowry of the Army of the Angelus Engine participated in the intelligence-gathering operations which
The Angelus Engine permitted its personnel to oversee the intelligence-gathering operations that led to the tracking of the Agent, Ann Auburn, aka Strychnine Ann, aka Strychnine Auburn, see 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