At 8:12 in the morning the night clerk at the Bits Exchange in Manehattan took a desk note across the filing counter. Twelve pages. No prospectus. No fee card. The note was from Ada Marlow's counting room on Third Wharf. It said Reedloft would sell shares before the last lamp of Leaf-Fall.
Clover Margin came on at 9:00. She is the day clerk at Window Three. She logged the note at 9:05 and left it in the tray marked "not a filing."
"I can stamp a form," she said. "This has a date and no form."
Reedloft is the wire arm of Calder Lamp & Barge. The house began with lamp oil and canal barges. It now holds the crystal relays between towns, the slate counters in the shop rows, and the cloud lofts that keep the town rolls. A message from a mill counter to a sister two districts over goes on a Calder crystal. The morning rate is posted on the relay door.
Page 1 of the note calls a sale "likely." Page 4 sets the price of the whole company at 143 billion bits on the low line and 146 billion bits on the high line. The same page sets the amount to be sold at 3.8 billion bits. The rest stays with Calder.
The gap between the two lines is 3 billion bits. The piece on offer is 3.8 billion.
The public share sits in a box on page 4. The heading reads "Friendly Portion." On the low line the portion is two and two-thirds in the hundred. On the high line the same 3.8 billion buys a thinner slice, since the company is marked dearer and the shares for sale stay put.
The Palace Commerce desk has a draft seal. Pell Ames, deputy for the Harmony Seal, sent it down at 11:20. The draft is six lines. Line 4 says the valuation "may be recognized as harmonious with the note." Line 5 says the seal will carry the date the note already chose. The draft cites Ada Marlow as its source.
No pony from Calder Lamp & Barge came to Window Three. At 1:10 a junior from the house office on Salt Lane read one sentence from a card. "The house notes the note." He left the card. He would not give his name. Clover Margin filed the card under correspondence.
Dusty Verdict sits two corridors over, at the petitions desk. A paper from Holt Quill had been waiting since yesterday. Holt Quill keeps the west counter of the relay in Mill Siding. He pays Calder every week so the counter can pass a sack list and a family line. He asked whether a sale of the relays changed the rate on his door.
Verdict read the note, the petition, and the seal draft.
"The rate card is still the rate card," he said. "The sale paper does not amend it. I told him so at 2:05."
Holt Quill spoke from Mill Siding, on the relay he rents.
"They are selling 3.8 billion bits of the switch and keeping the switch," he said. "I already pay four bits in the thousand to send a sack list. The card says my money to buy the paper has to clear on their crystal."
Paragraph 6 of the draft card says payment clears on the Reedloft relay. The posted morning rate is four bits in the thousand. On a full take of 3.8 billion bits, that is a passage fee of 15.2 million bits, paid to Calder for carrying Calder's purchase money. Ada Marlow lists the fee under "ordinary transmission." The fee stays inside the 3.8 billion.
Window Three closes at 4:00. At 3:50 Clover Margin's prospectus tray was empty. Verdict wrote 15.2 million in the margin of Holt Quill's petition, logged the seal draft as "price taken from an outside note," and set the petition on top of the draft. The 3 billion bits between the low line and the high line stay with Calder on either figure.
At 4:02 the night clerk locked the tray. The seal draft stayed under Holt Quill's petition. Pell Ames's office sent a second slip at 4:17. It asked Window Three to move the draft to the top. The slip had no form number. Clover Margin had already signed out.
Verdict left a line on the night board at 4:20. "Order of papers is the order they were set. A slip waits on a form number." The board is read at 6:00 by the next clerk. The 15.2 million stays in the margin until a prospectus arrives or Holt Quill withdraws the petition.
