Aside from the engines, the most puzzling thing that emerges is the fact that Marlet could disappear so completely into an arm of his own Government. It turned out that the Armories and the front organization, the Office of Procurement, were operating virtually without any supervision whatsoever.
In the eighty years or so in which the Armories operated as a separate agency, it would appear that the Office had simply been created and then immediately submerged from the sight of men. Toriman had given Limpkin comparatively little to go on in the creation of the rechanneling arm of the Admiralty; in fact, the General's instructions on this point were not only limited but also rather confusing in their omission of certain broad points of policy which anyone else would have considered absolutely necessary, while dwelling at great length on apparently minute details (such as the location of its base, the modification of which so upset Moresly).
In the absence of direct instructions, Limpkin had no choice but to turn over all management to Moresly; the only communications with the Government being a bimonthly progress report and the annual "Budget, Capability, & Necessity Report." The public at large, regardless of class, knew nothing of its existence let alone its function.
Left alone, the Armories formed a tight, closed society long before the Technos at the Yards even began to approach such an end. Leadership was centralized within the physical limits of the caves; the Admiralty saw a total of seven different signatures affixed to the reports and budget requests, and it saw four of these men appear in its offices on official missions. Of course, no one outside of the Armories had any way of knowing that all seven of the names and all four of the faces belonged to Moresly, Toriman's man.
The caves that actually made up the Armories had originally been part of a nation called the Aberdeen; its caves, tunnel, and vaults not only occupied the cliffs bordering the Tyne, but honeycombed the plains above the river for a distance of nearly ten miles inland. Formed in an era when nuclear warfare was enjoying particular popularity, its ambitious founders had proposed to construct an entire country below the ground. The Armories were as far as they got before internal strife and newly developed radiations made the tunnels useless: but this was many ages ago, when the weapons and concepts of the First World were still very much in evidence.
As weaponry and diplomacy reverted to more primitive forms, the Armories acquired enormous value as one of the outstanding fortresses of the age. It has been estimated that over a score of major wars had been fought with possession of the Armories as their sole object. The caverns had lately been occupied by the old Garilock Empire; Yuma, sensing the progressive senility of that nation, acquired the complex through the judicious use of Plague carriers. They in turn were followed by the Caroline and Moresly.
Under the successive hands of these many conquerors, the Armories had been expanded and strengthened in the best manner that the age would allow, into a construction that could have rivaled even the Yards. In its seemingly endless corridors could be found rolling mills, warehouses, machine shops, barracks; in short, all the ugly machinery required to give the caverns the name they went by.
Before the war with Yuma, most of the First World vintage glories of the Armories had passed into legend; many of the tunnels were by then either sealed off and forgotten, or the stresses of heavy-handed statesmanship and time had caved them in. While the Armories still retained enough of their former volume and appointments to make an impression on contemporary eyes, most of the caverns' riches lay walled up and protected behind tons of rock. It is easy to see, then, why Limpkin thought he was turning over a devastated shell to Moresly, the war having wiped out the only readily accessible portion.
Not only did the Admiralty grant or rather forfeit complete freedom to the Armories, but it allowed the front agency to operate in a similar manner. The Office of Procurement did maintain an office in the capital, but it was located in a run-down mansion in the secluded Knightsbridge section outside the city walls.
The behavior of the O.P. is quite enlightening when considered in conjunction with future events. While on the one hand it went to great lengths to isolate itself from the Government, it was constantly trying to integrate elements of the People into its ranks; these initiates were not told about the reality of the Victory, but they were drawn into what the Government often criticized as "overly frank relationships with members of the Techno class, thus defeating the aim of instillation of a sense of veneration in the People for members of the aforementioned class."
Organizing his People from the Yards, Rome also felt the need to keep in touch with the masses in the capital. A dispatch was sent back to his newly-appointed lieutenant, a man named Crownin who said that Tenn had sent him; at Rome's request, Crownin established his Palace of the People across from the Admiralty on George Street. Two years later, this Crownin was appointed as a "liaison officer" between the Office of Procurement and the People; again, it is strange that no one in the Government was puzzled by this curious arrangement or by the sudden move of the Palace of the People from its George Street storefront to an old mansion in Knights-bridge, right next door to the O.P. office. The conclusions to be drawn should have been painfully obvious, but if anyone had arrived at them they either kept them to themselves or met the same fate as Vennerian and Kort.