The Quartermaster's Book — Atlantis Inventory

THE ATLANTIS INVENTORY · DELIVERED, NOT KEPT

The Quartermaster's Book

Everything the city holds that a Work can pledge or burn. Counted once, by a man leaving. Kept thereafter by those who stayed.

I counted your house before I left it. Not because I doubted you — because nobody had, and a thing uncounted is a thing that goes missing without anyone being able to say when. You will find below every item in Atlantis that a Work may pledge or burn. You will also find, at the back, a shorter list of what I refuse to count, and I will thank you not to start.

A few lines are blank. That is not carelessness. There are counts in this city I could not take honestly — the drone magazines cannot be read by a man who is not a scientist, and your only scientist is behind Genii doors. I have left those lines open. Fill them when you can, beneath, never over.

This book is now yours. I will not update it, I will not correct it, and I will not be consulted on it — a quartermaster who is not present is not a quartermaster, he is a rumour. What you write in it is true because you wrote it. What you fail to write in it is gone.

THE HAND-OVER

“A ledger kept by the man who is leaving is a memoir. A ledger kept by the men who are staying is a government. I am handing you the second one. It will be heavier than it looks.”

— L.F., aboard the Silver Surfer, on the delivery of this book

PART I The Keeping of the Book

Six rules. They are the whole system; the rest is arithmetic.

RULE
ONE	Three states, and no fourth. Every counted line stands as FREE, PINNED, or SPENT. Free is available. Pinned is promised to an open card. Spent is gone.
TWO	Pinned returns; spent does not. Ships, platforms, and people are pinned — when the card closes they come home. Ordnance, charge, and compound are spent — when the card closes they are simply less. Declare which at the moment of pledging, aloud, before the watch turns.
THREE	Nothing is pinned twice. Ambition queues; it does not argue. A line already promised cannot be promised again, however good the second reason.
FOUR	Wound a pinned line and everything pinned to it stalls at once. One hurt courier, and three Works stop breathing together. This is not cruelty; it is the reason the book is public.
FIVE	If a Work cannot pledge it or burn it, it is not in the book. It is scenery. Do not count scenery, or you will spend your evenings counting instead of governing.
SIX	Append only. A count that changes is a new line under the old one, dated. Nothing in this book is ever erased. A crossed-out number is a lie with a witness.

THE CREED — WHERE COUNTING STOPS

Guns are free. Wars are not.

No Work in Atlantis has ever stalled for want of a rifle, a ration, or a radio, and none ever will. See Free Stock. What costs is the commitment — the hands that carry the rifle, the charge that opens the gate, the goodwill spent on the far side of it.

PART II Hands — The Souls of the City

Four hundred souls and one. Departments are pledged as departments; named hands are pledged by name. A department whose Head is pinned may be held by a deputy, never advanced (SO-1.3).

DEPARTMENT	SOULS	NAMED HANDS	STATE
Command	4	Un (Cinco). Daniels stands as second, unofficially. One kept seat, empty.	FREE
Military	180	Mj. Lorne, Head. Chief Rainbow, deputy — leads the Gate Teams; also holds the Armory title and the office of Head Torture Officer.	FREE
— the Cincos	6	Premier gate team. Led in person by Un.	PINNED — Cards 03, 04
— gate teams, others	18	Three standing teams under Rainbow.	FREE
Science	62	Dr. Radek, Head. Deputy VACANT. Montgomery, Chief Backup Scientist, acting in his absence.	HEAD PINNED — Card 01
Medical	40	Dr. Carson Beckett, Head, light duty. Deputy VACANT. Keely, Hoffan chemist, resident — not a deputy, holds none of his authority.	PINNED — Card 02
Botany	9	Dr. John Daniels, Head. Deputy VACANT. One junior berth held open.	PINNED — Work Order 1
Couriers	10	Dave, Head. Eight deputies. The office of COURIER ONE stands apart from the man holding it and survives him.	FREE
Genii Liaison	0	Office empty. Head and deputy both VACANT.	—
Unchaired	96	Engineering, galley, environmental, the watch. They answer to whoever asks first, which is the problem.	FREE
TOTAL	401	Four hundred, and Un, who counts himself separately and is not wrong to.

READ THE STATE COLUMN PLAINLY

Four of the seven chairs are pinned or headless at this moment. Three have no deputy at all. You are not short of people. You are short of people who are free — and those are different shortages with different cures.

PART III Power — The Stores

III.i  THE CHARGE

LINE	COUNT	NOTE	STATE
ZPM — the Shield's Heart	1	Recovered from the child-world. Near dead. Good for almost nothing except powering a shield exactly like the one it was pulled from. Spends once.	FREE
Naquadah generators	2	City load-bearing. Pledging one dims something else; say what, aloud, at the pledge.	FREE
Naquadah, raw	———	Line open. See the note below this table before you write in it.	—
City systems — shield	1	Pledged only by the Council, never by a department. Raising it is a Work in itself.	FREE
City systems — the gate	1	Never pinned. If the gate is unavailable, that is a squall, not a stake.	UNCOUNTED
Transport ring platform	0	Reserved — Card 09. One platform per Great Work, five watches each. Solar-system range. Nothing to count until one stands.	RESERVED

A STANDING ORDER ON THE NAQUADAH LINE

This book does not leave the city. It is not carried through the gate, it is not read aloud to a guest, and it is not shown to an ally, however warm. There is a word on the page above that our friends in the underground do not know exists, and the day they learn it is the day their little project stops being little. Count it if you must. Carry it nowhere.

III.ii  THE AIR

LINE	COUNT	NOTE	STATE
Jumper One	1	Flying. Pinned, never spent — it comes home or it is a wound.	FREE
Jumper Two	1	Flying.	FREE
Jumper Three	1	Down on the child-world. Montgomery and two soldiers walking to it. Flying again, or honest salvage.	PINNED — Card 05
Jumper Four	1	In the bay, sound, and unflown — no second pilot rated. A hands problem wearing a power problem's coat.	FREE*
UAV	4	Spent, not pinned. What goes up is not assumed back.	FREE

III.iii  THE GATE KIT

LINE	COUNT	NOTE	STATE
MALP	6	Seven were brought. One sits on the child-world where the shield killed it. A MALP is spent the moment it goes through — if it rolls back, count that a gift.	FREE
MALP, lost	1	Child-world. Recoverable by salvage — a Small Work, one watch, if anyone thinks it worth the walk.	SPENT
Beacons	3	One deployed on the child-world for the Catch. Calling a hive is cheap; being answered is not.	PINNED — Card 03
Portable EMP	0	None held. The one in play belongs to a planet, not to us.	—

III.iv  THE ARMORY

LINE	COUNT	NOTE	STATE
Drones	unread	The magazines cannot be counted by anyone who is not a scientist, and the scientist is behind Genii doors. Line open. Until it is read, no Work may pledge drones — you cannot promise what you cannot count.	UNREADABLE
C4, blocks	40	Always spent, never pinned. Nothing brought back from a demolition was ever counted an asset.	FREE
Tranquilizer guns	5	All five committed to the Catch. Stun weapons will not serve where a shield is running — this is why the five matter.	PINNED — Card 03
Tranquilizer doses	24	Spent. Medical will not make more quickly, being otherwise engaged.	PINNED — Card 03
Containment cell	1	One room in the city will hold a thing that does not want holding. One. Rainbow's charge.	PINNED — Cards 03, 07
The Littlemaker device	1	Francis Littlemaker's trigger. Promised out. It is the only thing of ours in that compound besides the man.	PINNED — Card 01

III.v  MEDICAL & COMPOUND

LINE	COUNT	NOTE	STATE
Hoffan compound, test doses	3	Not field-ready. Not mass-produced. Three is what Keely could make from what Hoff would part with.	PINNED — Card 02
Infirmary beds, critical	8	Never pledged to a Work. Counted so that when they fill, you know what filled them.	HELD

PART IV Free Stock — What Is Never Counted

These lines have no number and never will. They cannot be pinned, cannot be spent, and cannot be the reason a Work stalls. If a scene wants one, it has one.

Small arms · ammunition · body armour · rations · water · radios · rope, lamps, tents, and the ordinary furniture of walking through a gate · medical field kits · tools · paper, ink, and the record itself · Dr. Daniels' pipeweed, which he insists is a botanical asset and which no one has had the heart to enter.

WHY THE LIST IS SHORT AND STAYS SHORT

“A council that argues about bullets has stopped governing and started shopping. Give them the bullets. Charge them for the war.”

Adding a line to Free Stock is a Council decision and goes on the record. Removing one is too — and should frighten you.

PART V The Three Roads Back

Spent is spent. There are exactly three ways a number in this book goes up again, and none of them is waiting.

ROAD ONE — WORKS & STANDING

Make it, or be given it. A Work can produce a store the way it produces anything else — declared, pledged, counted in watches. A people can hand you one, and what a people hands you is priced in Standing, which is not written in this book and never will be. You will know the price by how they look at you afterward.

ROAD TWO — SALVAGE

Go and fetch it. Any line marked SPENT that still physically exists somewhere may be recovered by a Small Work — one watch, hands named, with the usual risk of finding that somebody else fetched it first. This is how the dead MALP comes home, and how Jumper Three does, and how most of what you lose will.

ROAD THREE — THE SHIP FROM HOME

The only real refill. A resupply out of Earth restores whole categories at a stroke — the sort of arrival that makes a quartermaster weep. It is not on any calendar you keep, it cannot be hastened by a Work, and it will arrive at the least convenient hour in the history of this expedition, because that is when ships arrive. Plan as though it is not coming. Be glad when it does.

Three roads, and two of them are just work. I would not have it otherwise, and neither, on reflection, will you.

PART VI Custody of the Book

Counted and closed by L. Fishman, master of the Silver Surfer, on the eve of his departure. Relinquished entire. There is no second copy and no man at sea to check it against.

ASSUMED BY

SIGNED — SEATED AS UN, CHAIR OF THE COUNCIL

WITNESSED — DATE OF THE WATCH

THE OPEN LINES — TO BE FILLED BENEATH, NEVER OVER

Drones — unreadable until a scientist is free.
Naquadah, raw — open, and carried nowhere.
Jumper Four — free in the bay, unflown for want of a rated pilot.
Transport ring platform — reserved against Card 09; nothing to count until one stands.

“I have told you what you have. I have not told you what to do with it. That is the difference between a quartermaster and a king, and you are neither yet — you are a man with a book.”

— L.F., aboard the Silver Surfer

APPEND-ONLY · CORRECT BENEATH, NEVER ERASE