Pledge Market · June 24, 2230 · Early afternoon · A parallel street story
Mavis Scrip had circled the offer in red because it was good.
The Little Red Receipt had circled her name in red because it was paid for.
By the time a customer laid both sheets on her table, the circles seemed to be arguing without human assistance.
“This one says six suppers for the price of five,” the customer said, touching Mavis's sheet. “This one says you get a coin for sending me.”
“Both correct.”
“Then which one is the warning?”
The customer was called Yara. She cleaned storage rooms on a short contract and had enough money today to avoid deciding about supper six separate times. That was worth something to her. So was knowing whether a missed work bell could move the time at which she collected the food.
Mavis showed her the referral mark at the foot of the buyer sheet. It was there. Mavis used a clean, tiny hand, and the mark occupied almost none of the paper otherwise devoted to protecting people from small print.
“I disclosed the arrangement,” she said.
Yara bent down. “It improves when you know where it is.”
The Little Red Receipt copy showed a payment entry from the stall account: SCRIP — INTRODUCTIONS — SIX COINS. Beneath it, the anonymous caption asked whether hungry people were reading reviews or being delivered.
Mavis disliked delivered. It made the readers sound like sacks and herself like a driver without the dignity of a cart. She had spent much of yesterday persuading a pensioner not to trade a serviceable pan for a promise that expired before its kitchen reopened. No payer had bought that advice.
The six coins were real. They represented six completed referrals to the supper stall. The copy did not contain the second page of the arrangement, where the stall agreed to give each referred buyer written redemption terms and a copy of the price. Mavis thought that mattered.
Yara thought the food getting cold mattered.
“Will you come there with me?” she asked. “You can explain the circles on the way.”
Mavis could not leave her table unattended. The copies sold there helped pay for the paper on which she criticized other people's arrangements. A boy offered to mind it for a coin. She accepted, then disliked how quickly her defense had acquired an expense.
At the supper stall, the keeper, Dol, was pouring lentils into a clean pan. He served people whether they arrived with Mavis's recommendation or their own appetite. The smell was encouraging. Yara asked for the six-supper strip and read it while he continued working.
Each supper had to be collected during the last half of the afternoon bell. Uncollected portions could be sent with another person carrying the strip. They could not be rolled into the following day.
Yara's cleaning shift sometimes ran late. She did not have someone to send. The discount was good for a person with a predictable afternoon and useless on the day the storage keeper discovered another room.
Mavis pointed to the sentence in her review that said FIXED COLLECTION WINDOW. It was larger than the referral mark but smaller than the red circle.
“I read it,” Yara said. “It didn't sound like the reason not to buy.”
Dol could hold one meal later if she told him before the bell. He could not hold all six indefinitely. He bought fuel and grain for a small number of pans; unsold food did not become yesterday again when a customer arrived tomorrow.
Nobody was concealing that from her now. It was still a reason to keep her money.
Yara bought one supper at the ordinary price. Dol tore a single strip. He gave no referral coin to Mavis because their agreement applied only to the six-meal bundle.
Mavis looked at the one portion. Yara would pay more if she returned six times. The other choice might have cost her two missed meals. Advice needed to contain both possibilities without making its reader live inside a footnote.
On the walk back, Yara asked whether Mavis would call the offer bad now.
“No. You aren't the only customer.”
“That is what I wanted to hear before I became the example.”
She took her supper to a low wall. Mavis went back to find the boy had sold three sheets and charged a fourth customer for reading one in place. She returned that coin. He had interpreted mind as an unusually broad license.
For the next printing, Mavis lifted the collection window beside the price. She put the referral payment immediately beneath it, in letters that did not require the reader to bend. She kept the favorable assessment for buyers who could use the window. The sheet was less handsome. It required her to remove a joke about inspectors.
She missed the joke more than she expected.
Then she carried the complete agreement to the contract wall. The Little Red Receipt's copy had no return address. There was no operator to confront, only sheets put up by hands she had not seen. She could publish an answer beside it; she could not command a retraction from a wall.
Her first draft began MALICIOUS OMISSION. Abegale, passing with a delivery folder, read the words and stopped.
“Do you know why the second page is missing?”
“No.”
“Then that is another missing page.”
Mavis asked her to check the copy against the agreement. Abegale did, without endorsing the offer. The payment entry was accurate. The missing conditions existed. Neither fact established that every referral was good advice.
Mavis crossed out malicious.
She posted the second page with the buyer's written-terms requirement visible, then her enlarged disclosure. She did not copy Yara's name, work or purchase onto either sheet. The woman had asked for supper, not enrollment in a public defense.
Dol came by later and saw the revision. He disliked having the collection restriction so near the price. Mavis asked whether it was false. He said no, which was not the same as liking it.
Their referral arrangement remained in force. He would consider renewing it after its present run. She would have six coins less if he did not, and would still need paper. She left the large sentence where it was.
By late afternoon, somebody had penciled a new question under the Little Red Receipt copy: WHERE IS PAGE TWO? An arrow pointed to her addition. Mavis did not know whether the anonymous account had seen it or whether another reader had simply brought a pencil.
She recognized the improvement without claiming the correction.
When Yara passed again, her bowl was empty. Mavis offered the revised sheet without charge. Yara read the top half standing upright, nodded, and declined to carry it.
“I have today's food,” she said. “Tomorrow can ask me itself.”