Cristall smiled privately, and then turned to follow him down the hallway to the back of the house. She glanced into a cluttered room in passing, probably the office Svorlin had mentioned, judging from the furnishings. "You asked about my interest in Gregory Davis," she said, descending the two steps into the sunny den.
"Actually," he said after holding eye contact for a moment, "I was surprised you even knew about him. Is it personal? The congressman who helped me bury the guy took some satisfaction in digging his grave. Said it gave him a sense of closure." He pointed at an ugly conversation set by the big window. "Is wine okay? He left me a ton of it."
She set her pack down beside the chair, and watched while he uncorked a bottle of something neither of them would have been able to afford, and filled two glasses. "I discovered who he was while preparing the economics seminar I teach for the city. The subject is hard for most people to grasp, so I've gone out of my way to make it real for them, to put some flesh behind all those antiseptic terms we've been bludgeoned with over the years."
"Yeah," he said, handing her a goblet. "I know what you mean. It's been murder... I mean, it's been difficult figuring out what all those papers he left behind are all about. Fortunately, he also had some reference books, so I can look stuff up easily enough. Still, it's not exactly my field."
"Oh? What did you do before the meltdown?"
Svorlin shrugged. "Software. Tech stuff. There isn't a lot of call for that sort of work right now, though. Anyone with working computers is going to be stuck with whatever programs they've got, at least for a while. There isn't any new development going on except for the open source projects, and even those are hobbled by problems with the Internet. If it weren't for the Ham Radio guys' do-it-yourself packet network, we wouldn't have gotten what backbones we have hooked up again after the telcos went all twitchy."
She stared at him like he was signing in Swahili.
"Um," he said sheepishly, "that didn't mean a lot to you, did it."
"No, but it did give me a good feel for what my own students are up against. Thanks."
"What's your seminar about?"
Cristall fished around in her pack for a moment, and handed him a crisp light blue ten-angel note. "LA Scrip. Have you gotten any yet?"
He examined it and handed it back. "The city's printing money now? What's it worth in dollars?"
"It's not convertible. Scrip's a whole different kind of money. I guess you could say it's the modern-day equivalent of the old Greenbacks. They're issued by the city in exchange for work performed for the common good. So I get paid in these for teaching people what they are. Which is poetic, really, because unless I do that, they really aren't worth anything. People have to be willing to use them as money for them to be money."
"I don't get it. If that bill represents ten angels worth of labor, what kind of labor was it, and how to I convert that to the kind of work that I do? I mean, some labor's more valuable than others, isn't it?"
"Not if it's performed for the common good. Scrip's egalitarian."
Ryan took a thoughtful sip of wine. "Okay. I'm lost. I get that you traded an hour of your time for some number of those angels, but how do you buy bread with it? What's an hour of your time worth in terms of apples?"
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