***
Ran-Del had never been late for work without advance notice before. Jena tweaked him happily when he arrived, and Guillermo made a suggestion to account for Ran-Del’s lateness that made Ran-Del blush. Thelma caught sight of his red face and started in on him, too.
“So,” she said cheerfully, “when do we get to meet your wife, Ran-Del? I’m dying to see the woman who can tame a wild man.”
“I’d just like to meet a woman who likes to make love in the morning,” Guillermo said. “Where’d you find yours, Ran-Del?”
Mortified, Ran-Del turned his head away and didn’t reply.
Without warning, Clara Rangoon stuck her head out of the door to Georges’ office. “Run along,” she scolded. “You’ve all got work to do, and I want to talk to Ran-Del for a moment.”
Ran-Del walked into the office expecting her to ask him questions about Francesca, but instead, Clara took a seat behind the desk and said, “How’s the reading going, Ran-Del?”
“All right.”
Clara smiled. “Really?”
“No,” Ran-Del said abruptly, happy for the chance to unburden his feelings. “It’s not going well at all, Clara. I see no point in it, and it hurts my eyes to sit and stare at a book reader. I wish everyone would just forget about my learning to read.”
Clara opened a drawer in the desk and rooted around in it. She pulled a dusty object from the back of a drawer and handed it to Ran-Del. “Here, try this instead?”
Ran-Del took the thing from her, wondering what it was. It was heavier than he had expected. “What is it?”
“It’s a book,” Clara said, “an old fashioned kind of a book made of paper pages. Over a millennium ago, before there were book readers, this is the only kind of book there was. It doesn’t require a power supply or anything but enough light to see by and a knowledge of the printed word.”
“How do you work it?” Ran-Del asked, letting the pages flit through his fingers.
“You don’t work it,” Clara said. “There are no buttons or switches. You simply start at the first page, read it, turn it over, read the back, and keep going until you get to the end of the book.”
“Really?” Ran-Del said, intrigued by the simplicity of it. Except for the uniformity of the letters, this was something a Sansoussy could have made.
“Really,” Clara said. “Why don’t you try it, Ran-Del? It was written a long, long time ago, and it may be hard for you to understand because the story is set on Terra, but it’s still a good story.”
Ran-Del closed the book and turned it over in his hands. It was so much bulkier than a reader that it had an almost satisfying heft to it. He stared at the one word title until he had sounded it out. “Kidnapped?”
Clara nodded. “It’s an adventure story. Take it home and try it. It’ll be more work than what you’ve been reading, but it’ll be more reward, too.”
“Thank you, Clara.” A smiled played on Ran-Del’s face. He didn’t want to tell her why he found the book’s title so amusing, but he planned on sharing the joke with Francesca.
Clara laid a hand on his arm. “Is everything else all right, Ran-Del?”
Ran-Del was surprised at her concern. “Why, yes, Clara. Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
She squeezed his arm. “I don’t know.” She sounded vague, rather like Ran-Del’s grandmother when she couldn’t remember where she had put something. “Just a feeling, I suppose. Take care of yourself, Ran-Del.”
The Sixth Discipline Page 69