Chapter 6: Expired

The morning after Daniels ran out of facts, the annex left things at her door. A piece of bread wrapped in cloth, no note. A small brass screw, machined clean, still warm from somebody's pocket; she could not think what it was for, and then could: he repaired things, and there was nothing to repair. The farmer came last and stood in the doorway without his jar, hands folded in front of him, empty. "Mine hatched," he said. "What was it?" "Don't know yet." He left. Nobody asked her anything. Everybody left something. People who had become paperwork had manners the free world lacked, and this was the whole of the annex's condolence, and it was the best-drafted document she received all week. Then she drafted the petition. She drafted it herself, in fair copy, in the discipline: ruled margins, the citations in order, the hand kept plain and square. A petition for termination of exceptional assessment and release from classification, or closure, discharge, dismissal, or any other procedural death available to the file, brought by the person classified, witnessed below by Lord Daniels, whose jurisdiction remained a matter no office had ever resolved. She had spent a season learning the local currency. Now she spent it. The petitions clerk read it through twice. "This is the best-drafted petition this office has received in a season," he said, meaning it kindly. It landed like a stone. She thanked him. The petition never said why. It did not have to. It was dated, because everything in that building was dated, and anyone who cared to count could count four days back from its date and find an incident report, and nobody would care to count, and the arithmetic would sit there anyway, in the file, forever, the way arithmetic does. Processing…