“Here and there, now and then.” She waves a hand. “You know how it is. You?”
“Same.”
She shoots me a grin, as if she knows I’m playing her game. She’s said many times that she knows something’s up with me, some secret she’s not privy to. That would make me nervous if I got the sense she was digging for answers. After all, sheisa journalist, by practice if not by trade. But my sense is that this is a secret she’ll let me keep, as long as I let her keep all of hers, which seems fair.
It’s a clear night, crisp and decently lit with stars just visible through the smoke of a thousand fires keeping a thousand lodgings warm—or warm enough. We weave through a few neighborhoods before she slows.
“Here we are,” she says.
I look around, but I’m not even sure I recognize the area. She leads me to a building with no obvious storefront... and no obvious front door. We go to the side entrance, and she raps a few times in a pattern.
“Secret entry code,” I say, and then stop myself before adding a period-inappropriate “Cool.”
A moment later, there’s a snick, and I notice a peephole on the solid door. Another moment passes, and a lock clangs. Then the door opens a few inches, and the unmistakable smell of ink rushes out.
“You have something for me, boy?” a voice rumbles.
“Questions,” Jack says cheerfully. “I have questions.”
The door slams shut. Jack only sighs and knocks again. When it opens, it’s a scant inch, and the voice rumbles, “You come here with a stranger and questions? You’re lucky I don’t set Blackie on you.”
“Have you seen these?” Jack waves one of the pamphlet installments of Gray’s adventures. “I have it on good authority that the scribe is looking to change presses.”
There’s a pause. It’s long enough that I’m concerned, but Jack only waits.
“You know the writer?” the voice says.
“Would you like a peek at the next installment to prove it?”
More silence. The peephole snicks open again.
“Miss Mallory?” the voice says.
Thankfully, I don’t jump, though I will give Jack shit for not warning me. Or actually, maybe I won’t, because she probably thought I’d figure it out as soon as she waved around that pamphlet.
“Yes, the pamphlet is about the adventures of Dr. Gray and his lovely assistant, Miss Mallory,” Jack says breezily.
“I mean, is that Miss Mallory with you?”
Jack looks over at me and blinks, as if in surprise. Then she laughs. “Heavens, no. Miss Mallory with me? A pleasant thought. She sounds a right perfect little morsel. This one is a right perfect pain in the arse.”
I’m allowed to glare at her for that, and I do, but the door also opens to let us in, as if the person on the other side suspects I’m “Miss Mallory,” but they aren’t pushing for a positive ID.
The door opens into darkness. We slip inside, and I see the owner of the voice, a stout woman with her arms crossed over her chest. I glance around for the dog, Blackie, and instead see a hulking guy with jet-black hair and an equally black beard, his arms also crossed. The woman leads us past him, and I swear he growls... until I look up at him from under my lashes. Then his broad face colors, and he tips his grimy hat with a few mumbled words.
The woman takes us into what is obviously the print room, given the two printing presses. That’s where my attention goes: to those presses.
My parents talk of their childhoods, with no computers, just typewriters and mimeograph machines, and that’s always been hard for me to fathom. How do you write an essay if you can’t just pull up the file and edit it into submission? What if you need more than one copy? You couldn’t even go to the library and use the copy machine.
I remember once when they were explaining these concepts to me, and I blurted, “But what about books?” How did you produce a thousand copies of a book without printers? Did they live back in that time I’d seen in old movies, with massive printing presses and movable type? They’d thought that was hilarious... and then gently explained all the steps between ancient printing presses and modern ones.
Here, I expect to see one of those massive beasts that would take up an entire room. Instead, there are two presses. Both are much smaller than I expected, maybe double the size of those old library copy machines from my youth.
The room is cavernous, and I see what looks like living quarters to one side. The rest is boxes. Some seem to be finished products, and I squint into one and see flyers for a workers’ rights movement. And in the one beside it... fancy pamphlets arguingagainstthe dangers of granting workers more rights.
“Your friend there should keep her eyes to herself,” the woman rumbles.
“Occupational hazard,” I say with a smile, mostly to watch her pause to decipher that very modern phrase. When she does, she eyes me. “You really are Miss Mallory, then? Of the stories?”
