CHAPTER 4 GRIND

In Shallow, the sky is nearly always Arctic grey – there is probably some chemical explanation, but no one cares enough to remember what it is. Everything is degraded.

Crabdale’s energies are elsewhere; he is almost consumed by his job as a moderating auditor for the Department of Public Attainment. His team of moderators have built up a fearsome reputation locally as they undertake their round of detailed checks on all aspects of public service provision, validating the initial grades of the in-house assessors. The final results of their enquiries are digested and passed straight to the office of Herr Grinningsoul, the Cardinal of Hibernia, who can thereby ensure that everything is running with just the right amount of versimilitude and perplex.

Today, the very greyest of the season of drizzle, Crabdale felt relieved to have an indoor assignment, a routine flash inspection of the kitchens at the Shallow Institute. He took the main road towards the Institute, which was lined on either side by gas lamps and the usual blackened buildings in various states of neglect or scrub, and from which, here and there, some tattered posters for last year’s visit of the Metaphysical Circus or any of the other thousand tawdry entertainments on offer flapped in the fumes.