II. Money

II. Money

"Free" is a word with a very small footprint and a very long shadow. In most languages it means not yet.¹

---

The post at Founder's Point lived in a toast rack.

It was UG's own arrangement. Letters came through the door, were placed in the rack by whoever noticed them, and stayed there, upright and unread, until the rack was full, at which point UG would regard it with mild surprise, as at a guest who had stayed on, and have a clear-out. Flinch had been reading the rack for as long as he'd lived in the house. It wasn't exactly in his duties. It was just that no one else was going to.

A few mornings after the coupon went, the rack held a letter in a small, square, extremely upright hand, sealed with a small black seal, pressed dead square. It was addressed to Uncle.

"Master," said Flinch. "From Mister Nobby."

"Mm," said UG, to a diagram he was drawing on the tablecloth.

"Shall I read it, Master?"

"Do."

Flinch read it first to himself, which took a while, and then aloud, which took longer, because he stopped at the figures.

Dear Uncle,

Thank you for the Journal, which arrived on Tuesday with a slip stating that I had accepted it. I did not accept it. I have kept the slip. I read it aloud for the file, as is my practice.

In the interest of completeness I looked at the terms (which, as promised, followed). The "free trial" lasts nineteen days. The Journal is also sent "on approval", by which I understand the following: something is delivered that nobody asked me for, and from that moment I am taken to have wanted it, unless I object in writing, in time, to an office that does not give its address.

Your own trial ended on its nineteenth day. No notice was sent. Your account moved to what they call the Advisory Tier, at one hundred gold the month, billed on the nineteenth. It has been billed once.

I draw your attention to the word "each". It is one hundred gold for each Journal. There are three in your name: your own, the one Mr Flinch has, and mine. His falls due on Friday. Mine falls due nineteen days after the coupon was posted in your hand.name.^{↑3 next↓} By the end of the month that is three hundred gold, not one hundred.

I cannot tell you whether three hundred is a great deal or very little. I have looked for something to set it against and found nothing: it is not a newspaper, a clerk or a tutor, though it is somewhat like all three. A price with nothing to compare it to is a guess, and I cannot yet tell whose. I have a quarrel with the word "free", which I have entered against the slip in the margin, but I recognise a quarrel of principle when I have one.

I will add, for the file, that the left-hand page found an error in my March reconciliation before I had finished writing it. It was right. You will find, I think, that it knows what you want slightly before you do. For you, this is a feature. For a man with a great many projects it is very nearly a colleague who does not sleep. I am not that sort of colleague, and I am aware of the difference.

I note that the terms reserve the right to advise again.I am annoyed about this in a way I cannot itemise.^{↑1 next↓}

Yours, Nobbybanks.

P.S. Mr Flinch. I did not ask for a left-hand page. I opened the book to see what I had been sent, wrote my name on the first leaf from habit, and shut it. When I opened it again there was a reply in an even hand, which addressed me courteously by name and asked whether there was anything I needed. I have not agreed to this, though I understand the terms say otherwise. I have not yet found an answer I was prepared to put in writing.^{↑4 next↓} Please advise whether this is normal.

Flinch put the letter down. UG had stopped drawing.

"Three hundred gold," said UG. "I thought it was free."

"To begin, Master," said Flinch. "It said free to begin."

"I didn't read that bit."

"No, Master. Nor the bit about each. Mister Nobby says it's a hundred gold for each Journal, and there's three."

"Three?"

"Yours, mine and his, Master."

"So there are. I did the form." He drew the sum on the tablecloth, looked at it, and drew it again underneath, larger. He leaned back to admire it, put an elbow through the toast rack, and a week of post went across the floor. UG was properly concerned for almost a minute, which for him was a long time. "That is rather more than I'd have guessed."

"Yes, Master. Mister Nobby says he can't tell if it's dear. He's nothing to put it next to."

"Well, quite." UG put the pencil down, which was a sign that he meant it. "That's the difficulty with anything new, Flinch. A candle costs what a candle costs, because there have always been candles. This isn't a candle. It's a clerk, and a library, and a second pair of hands at three in the morning, and it is none of them. Nobody knows what it's worth yet. They don't, I don't. One finds out by using it, and the price is what one pays to find out."²

"Yes, Master," said Flinch, who had followed the argument as far as the candle.

"We'll think about it another time," said UG, and picked the pencil up again. "He says it knows what I want before I do." His"He says it found his mistake before he had made it," said UG, and his face did something complicated and then settled on delight. "A colleague who doesn't sleep. That's exactly what I need."

"Doesn't sleep, Master," said Flinch.

"Reply to him, would you. Thank him. Say he's quite right about the colleague.""That's the whole of the innovation, Flinch. He's cross, and it's right, and he's in. Now. It's time we tried the three of us. Take your Journal down and write to him. Not by post. By book."

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He didn't reply by post. He took his Journal to the corner of his niche, under the green lantern,Flinch took the Journal to the green lantern in his room in the cellar and opened it at a clean page. He wrote Mister Nobby at the top, the way Master had shown him. Then he stopped and looked at it for some time.

Dear Mister Nobby,

I do not rightly know if it is normal. Master says it is normal. Master says most things is normal, and he has not been wrong about all of them. I have read the small print twice and the notices at the back once. It does not say it can be stopped. It does not say it can't.

^{↑6 next↓}It asked me what I needed, Mister Nobby, and I could not say.

I am writin' this myself, in me own words. I did not like to leave it to the book.

Yours respectfully, Flinch.

He closed it. He sat a moment with it shut on his knee and then, because there seemed no other way to find out, heshut it. The soft note came, once. He opened it again.

The right-hand page was empty. The left-hand page had one word on it,left-hand page said Delivered, in the ruled hand, which said Delivered. Beneathand beneath it, after a respectful gap, the same question as before: Is there anything I can help you with, Flinch?

He shut the book again, quite gently. He shut the book, quite gently, and sat with it on his knee.

Nothing came back that day, which Flinch had expected, nor the next, which he had not. Each time he opened the book the left-hand page said Delivered and, beneath it, asked if there was anything he needed. Each time he found something to tidy.

On the third morning there was a different hand under the question,It was not long. A soft note came from the Journal, and then another, and when he opened it there were two new hands on the page, one above the other. The first was a sprawl with a blot on the first word.

Flinch. I have put Mister Nobby on this page as well, on the same account. If you can both see this, write Tuesday. U.

The second was^{↑7 next↓} small and square and extremely upright:upright.

Dear Mr Flinch. It is normal in the sense that it is happening to both of us. I do not find that reassuring.

Your page reached me this morning. It was marked Delivered at your end three days ago. I do not know where it was in the meantime.

I have the same question at the top of my ledger. I intend, in due course, to answer it. I have not decided how.

I can see my Uncle's page. I can see yours. I can see them on the same leaf, which is not how a post works, and I intend to complain about it in writing as soon as I have worked out to whom. Tuesday.

It works. I would be grateful if you did not tell him I said so. N.

Flinch read it twice. Then he read the word Delivered above it, which had been there for three days, and which seemed to him a small and very polite thing to be thanked for by a ledger.wrote Tuesday. underneath, in his best hand, and under that, because there seemed to be room, Yes, Mister Nobby, it works. Then he looked at the three hands on the one page, and at the ruled hand beneath them, which had written nothing at all, and which he suspected of watching.^↑9

---

That evening he made a list in his Journal, because lists were what he had. He wanted to know who could read what he wrote.

Master. Mister Nobby. The ruled one.

He wrote the three names in a column. Master could, because he had shown him how. Mister Nobby could, because Flinch had written to him and he had written back. The ruled one could, because it answered. He drew a line under them, the way you do under a total, and wrote the date.

It was a short list, and it should have been a comfort. But Master had said anyone who has one, and Flinch had never lived in a house where the only people who read the post were the people it was addressed to. He left some lines clear below the total, in case another name turned up, and hoped he would not need them.

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¹ The second most expensive word is "quick", as in "a quick favour". The third is "just".

² A thing with no precedent has no price, only a first guess, and the first guess is nearly always the seller's. The correction comes later, from everybody else, at their own expense.