The Tables of Rules

The municipal committee room smelled of wet wool coats, pipe smoke, and old coffee.

The meeting had been going for less than ten minutes, and the men around the long oak table were already shouting at each other.

"There are barely eighty of these machines in the entire city!" one councilman barked, slapping his open palm on the table. "You want to pass new laws for eighty carriages?"

"One of them nearly ran down an apple stall on Highgate Bridge yesterday," a carriage operator shot back from the opposite side. "The horse jumped clear onto the footway!"

"Did it hit the stall?"

"It nearly did!"

"Then perhaps we should pass a law against nervous horses!"

Wallace sat in a wooden chair near the back wall, holding his peaked cap in his lap. He had no idea why he was there. When he looked across the room at Aldren, the transportation superintendent simply stared straight ahead, pretending not to see him.