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By Root 459 0

“I have seen the clacks towers on the far bank of the Kneck,” said Blouse, his eyes lighting up. “Very clever idea, using big shuttered boxes rather than the old-fashioned semaphore arms. And would I be right in my surmise that the box on the top, which opens its shutters once a second, is a kind of system, er, clock that makes certain the whole clacks line keeps in step? Oh, good. I thought so. One beat a second is probably the limit of the mechanisms, so no doubt all your efforts now are concentrated on maximizing the information content per shutter operation? Yes, I imagined that would be the case. As for sending pictures, well, sooner or later all things are numbers, yes? Of course, you would use each of the two columns of four boxes to send a gray code, but it must be very slow. Have you considered a squeezing algorithm?”

De Worde and Chriek exchanged a glance.

“Are you sure you haven’t been talking to anyone about this, sir?” said the writer.

“Oh, it’s all very elementary,” said Blouse, smiling happily. “I had thought about it in the context of military maps, which are, of course, mostly white space. So I wondered if it would be possible to indicate a required shade on one column and, on the other side, indicate how far along that rank that shade would persist. And a delightful bonus here is that if your map was simply in black and white, then you have even more—”

“You haven’t seen inside a clacks tower, have you?” said de Worde.

“Alas, no,” said Blouse. “This is simply ‘thinking aloud’ based on the de facto existence of your picture. I believe I can see a number of other little mathematical, ahem, tricks to make the passage of information even swifter, but I’m sure these have already occurred to you. And, of course, a fairly minor modification could potentially double the information burden of the whole system at a stroke. And, of course, that is without using colored filters at night, which I’m certain even with the overhead of extra mechanical effort would surely increase throughput by—I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

The two men both wore a glazed expression. De Worde shook himself.

“Oh…er, no. Nothing,” he said. “Er…you seem to have got the grasp of things very…quickly.”

“Oh, it was quite straightforward once I started thinking about it,” said Blouse. “It was exactly the same when I had to redesign the department’s filing system, you see. People build something that works. Then circumstances change, and they have to tinker with it to make it continue to work, and they are so busy tinkering that they cannot see that a much better idea would be to build a whole new system to deal with the new circumstances. But to an outsider, the idea is obvious.”

“In politics as well as, er, filing systems and clackses, do you think?” said de Worde.

Blouse’s brow wrinkled.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow…” he said.

“Would you agree that sometimes a country’s system is so out of date that it’s only the outsiders that can see the need for wholesale change?” said de Worde.

He smiled. Lieutenant Blouse did not.

“Just a point to ponder, maybe,” said de Worde. “Er…since you wish to tell the world of your defiance, would you object if my colleague takes your picture?”

Blouse shrugged. “If it gives you any satisfaction,” he said. “It’s an Abomination, of course, but these days it’s hard to find something that isn’t. You must tell the world, Mr. de Worde, that Borogravia won’t lie down. We will not give in. We will fight on. Write that down in your little notebook, please. While we can stand, we will kick!”

“Yes, but, once again, may I implore you to—”

“Mr. de Worde, you have I am sure heard the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword?”

De Worde preened a little. “Of course, and I—”

“Do you want to test it? Take your picture, sir, and then my men will escort you back to your road.”

Otto Chriek stood up and bowed to Blouse. He unslung his picture box.

“Zis vill only take vun minute,” he said.

It never does. But Polly watched in horrified fascination as Otto took picture after picture of Lieutenant Blouse