Page 40 of Mongrels United
Grady opened the top of the flat block, wrapping it right around so it lay at the back of the rest of it. She tilted the block to show him the exposed top. The white surface was crossed with fine lines and between the lines was something that he might have called letters, only they were not letters he’d ever used. “Is that…code?” He put it together with the stylus object. “You wrote that? Oh…that’s paper, isn’t it?”
Grady used her thumb against the edge of the block and it separated into hundreds of sheets of paper, fanning with a soft whirring noise. “This is a writing pad. That is a pen.” She pointed to the stylus. Then she opened the pad halfway through the stack of sheets and pushed them over the back of the hinged joint as she had the cover. The paper she exposed had no writing on it, but the fine lines remained.
She settled the pad on the table and picked up the stylus. Pen. “Even if your hackers broke into the Bridge network—and they’d have to be very, very good to pull that off—but if they did, they would find no records about what we are going to discuss. It will only exist here on these pages, and I will be locking the box away when we’re done today.”
Nash watched, fascinated, as she used the stylus to write more of the odd letters. They formed under her hand almost the way an artist painted.
“I’ve never seen text like that.”
“This is called cursive writing,” Grady said. “It isn’t code. It is the same language and alphabet that you are used to, but the letters are designed so you can write them all at once without lifting the pen, which makes handwriting faster to produce than if the words were printed.”
“Printed?” He was feeling ridiculously ignorant, now.
“The text you read every day, on all screens, anywhere, is printing. Look.” She turned the pad a little and wrote quickly, but lifting the pen between each letter.
Nash Hyson.
“Yeah, I can read that. It looks a bit different from text on screens, but it’s readable.”
“Not all text on all screen is the same, either. That is called printing. Butthisis your name in cursive. Watch how I do it.” She wrote his name again, this time without lifting the pen.
Nash traced the letters. The N flowed into the A, which ran upward to an S that was like no S he’d ever seen, but he had to assume that was what it was. The H was almost the same as printing, except for a little loop at the top, which he realized was part of the letter so that the pen didn’t have to be lifted up.
“You and your father learned how to write like this, why?” Nash asked, tracing out the formation of “Hyson” in cursive lettering. There was an elegance about the writing that printing lacked.
“My father learned of theories that the physical act of writing makes learning more thorough and efficient. The hand-eye coordination is part of it. To write out something yourself makes the words stick in your memory.” She smiled as she moved the top sheet to the back of the pad, exposing another clean sheet. “Plus, there is an intimacy to writing when you know only you will ever see it, on a page which you can touch, and only you can touch.”
“Page,” he repeated. That was the name of sheets of paper in ancient-styled codex. He remembered that from history lessons as a child. Pages were sheets of paper in any bound form, then. “So you write just to learn better? For a minute I thought you were about to tell me that it was something to do with your father’s Enough ethic, that writing on paper was humble.”
Grady stiffened. It was subtle, but the sudden blankness in her eyes betrayed her. “Let’s not get into politics, Nash. We’re clearly on opposing sides.” The stiffness in her voice held disappointment.
“Hey, I’m not into politics ofanystripe,” he rushed to assure her.
“No?” Her tone was definitely cooler now. Almost chilly.
“No,” he said firmly. “Does that look on your face mean you think I’m lying?”
“I don’t think you’re lying. I think you don’t properly understand what politics really is.”
“It’s who’s got the real power,” he said flatly. “And I’m never going to be captain, so I don’t bother with it.”
“It’s more than that,” she replied. “Just by choosing not to vote, by ignoring what happens on the Bridge, you’re making a political choice. Politics is part of the air you breathe and the food you eat. Politics put them there for you to consume.” She drew in a breath and sat up straighter. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Let’s move on.”
He held out his hand. “No. Explain it to me. No one can hear us. You can expose my ignorance and flay it to death.”
Grady pressed her lips together for a moment. “You don’t think much of Enough ethics, clearly. That means you’re a Must-Have.”
He flinched. “I’m notanything.”
“You’re rich, Nash. You mix with the type of people who think acquiring as much money and things as possible is the only point of living.”
He shook his head. Slowly. “I’m just making a living, that’s all.”
“You could live on the money in your spreadsheet for the rest of your life,” Grady pointed out. “Why do you need to make any more?”
He stared at her. “What else would I do?”
Grady considered him for a long moment. “But that’s the whole point,” she said gently. “All your businesses and your money and the buildings, the possessions…you can’t leave them behind, when you die. You can’t give them to anyone. They all get turned back to the ship. You’ll leave nothing but a stained reputation that will soon be forgotten.”
