About
The story's native informant who never informs. She teaches by use, not by definition — volume, the paper fault book, dock power's stupid price. Her three-clause account of why a works hand keeps paper as well as a terminal ("Terminal knows now. Crystal knows build state. Book knows what happened since.") is the most compressed line in the piece, sits deliberately against Thomas's loosest paragraph, and is the load-bearing statement of the saga's paper/crystal material law. She names short-count for him after he tells four customers he is three rolls short before any of them looks — as a thing he did, not a thing he decided. She does not praise it.
The story's native informant who never informs. She teaches by use, not by definition — volume, the paper fault book, dock power's stupid price. Her three-clause account of why a works hand keeps paper as well as a terminal ("Terminal knows now. Crystal knows build state. Book knows what happened since.") is the most compressed line in the piece, sits deliberately against Thomas's loosest paragraph, and is the load-bearing statement of the saga's paper/crystal material law. She names short-count for him after he tells four customers he is three rolls short before any of them looks — as a thing he did, not a thing he decided. She does not praise it. It takes him three days to work out she was telling him he got away with it. Asked where settled, non-standard comes, she says the route board, does not know when, and has not wondered.