Three Telegrams and Six Hundred Sacks

All three telegrams demanded the same six hundred sacks, and there was only one blank line for which one to send first.

Yun Haejun was a clerk at the telegraph bureau. His job was to copy other men's orders without changing a single character. Which order got sent first was not his job. But if he left the blank empty, the dock laborers at Mapo and the palace garrison would go hungry tonight, and if he filled it wrong, a head would roll before dawn.

He laid the three telegrams side by side next to the transmitter.

The first bore the seal of the Ministry of Taxation. It ordered the army provisions held in the current warehouse. The second carried the military camp's seal and demanded the grain be moved immediately to the inner palace warehouse. The third was stamped with a foreign quartermaster advisor's confirmation seal, instructing that it be handed over at the designated warehouse. The same rice had already been claimed by three different parties as their own.

Twelve minutes to the shift bell.

Haejun looked at the paper before the seals. The Ministry of Taxation's had a round border, the ink still not quite dry. The military camp's had a square outline, the impression unusually deep. The third confirmation seal was smaller and shallower than the other two, but it had dried before the receiving time on the paper. The corner of that sheet was scorched, no bigger than a fingernail, from touching a lamp. Whether the difference meant forgery, he couldn't say. All three might be genuine. When there were three powers, there were three genuine orders.

A sour smell rose from the battery box behind him. The voltage was dropping. There was no time to send long questions down this line and wait for answers.

"Sir."

Telegraph apprentice Jo Dokgu stood in the doorway, wringing out a wet sleeve. He was said to be sixteen, but his starved body looked younger.

"The relay man at Mapo signaled again. The dock workers have gathered in front of the warehouse gate. They say if the rice doesn't come, they'll tip over the cooking pots first."

"And the garrison?"

"Last night's ration was half a bowl. They say if it doesn't come before the shift change today, they can't leave the gate manned."

Haejun checked the remaining battery gauge. One dispatch to Mapo, one to the palace. There was no time for a round trip to confirm anything.

"Dokgu. Which of these three did they teach you to send first?"

The boy looked at the three seals, then dropped his eyes.

"The one with the biggest seal."

"All three are big."

"Then the one that arrived first..."

"They were all received at the same time."

Dokgu had no answer. That was the correct answer. Haejun didn't know either.

Wooden clog heels struck the floor twice outside. Han Seorin pushed the door open. Under her morning coat, damp with fog, a small ledger showed. Instead of a greeting, she counted the telegrams on the table, checked the battery gauge, and finally looked at Haejun's hands.

"You haven't sent it yet."

"Once I send it, I can't take it back."

"If you don't send it, someone else won't be able to take anything back either."

Seorin opened her ledger. Six hundred sacks in the Mapo warehouse. Below that, in different ink: dry rice estimated at four hundred twenty seven sacks, wet sacks need recount.

Haejun asked, "You're saying it isn't six hundred?"

"The ledger says six hundred. What can actually go into the cooking pots, we won't know until we count. There are only eleven carts, and three of them are sitting idle because we can't get feed for the horses on credit. The dock workers' wages are six days overdue."

"So changing the order might not move the rice at all."

"Now you're finally talking like a person instead of the telegraph bureau."

Seorin pressed a fingertip against the line in the military camp's telegram. "Full amount to the inner palace. Who pays for that?"

"The state does."

"Write the date down first, then. The state is the item that arrives last in any ledger."

Haejun didn't smile. Seorin didn't repeat the joke either. Her ledger held the names of cart drivers, the cost of horse feed, the overdue wages by dock crew. Smaller writing than any order, but it was what actually moved the rice.

Nine minutes to the shift bell.

"If we split it between the dock and the garrison, how many sacks can we send?"

"What can be sent and what arrives are different things. First I'll pull out sixty from the dry sacks. Twenty to the dock relief station, forty to the gate shift. The rest gets decided after inspection."

"And the carts?"

"I'll secure them."

"The wages?"

"I can put up collateral, but I don't know if the labor crew will trust it."

"Then why did you come?"

"To see whether you'd really cross the line."

Seorin didn't pick up any of the three sheets. Instead she pointed at the empty priority code box. No ministry had written its own name in that small space. It was the spot built so that if this failed, only the sender's hand would be left holding it.

Haejun picked up the telegraph brush.

"Six hundred sacks from the Mapo warehouse to be sent first for the dock labor crew and palace garrison rations. Only usable quantity to be received after on site inspection. Cart and labor terms guaranteed by the Han Seorin trading house."

Seorin's eyebrows moved. "Cross out the last line."

"You're not guaranteeing it?"

"I am. But if my name alone puts people to work, that's no different from a ministry order. Write it as: carts and labor to proceed after consent from the workers' representatives on site. Wage amounts and payment dates to be entered by them directly."

Haejun stopped his brush. A longer sentence meant more battery drain, and a greater chance a character would break up in transmission.

"With that condition, we'll be late."

"Cutting it only makes it look faster. It'll stall at the dock."

Dokgu, checking the battery box, spoke up. "One long telegram might use up the whole gauge."

Seorin asked at once, "What words can we cut?"

Haejun struck out the justifications. Urgent affairs of state. Relief for the people. Stabilizing military morale. Those went first under his brush tip. What remained was quantity, destination, inspection, consent, payment date. Nothing else.

Forty two characters.

"That works," Dokgu said. "But we won't get a reply."

"There's no time to wait for a reply anyway."

Haejun drew the two strokes for send first in the priority code box. It was not the hand of someone copying a set order, but the hand of someone making one. His fingers trembled, and the last stroke ran a little long.

Seorin asked, "What will you do with the originals?"

The lamp was close by. If he burned the three sheets, it would be hard to prove right away which seal he'd defied. The battery consumption log alone couldn't fully reconstruct the wording he'd sent. It might even buy him time to run.

Haejun pulled the scorched telegram away from the flame.

"I'm not destroying them."

"Then your name stays on record."

"It can't just be a record of who stole the rice. It has to be a record of who demanded the same rice three times."

He layered three sheets of thin paper and copied the original texts along with his own wording. The first copy went into the telegraph bureau's ledger. The second, into Seorin's ledger. He folded the third to hand to Dokgu, then stopped.

The boy pulled his hand back first. "If you give it to me, they'll take it when they catch me."

"Where would be better?"

Dokgu unwound the red thread binding the telegram bundle. He wrapped it once in the reverse of the usual direction, clicked his tongue, and unwound it again.

"The Mapo relay man hides knots better than words. If I add an extra blank digit at the end of the transmission, he'll know to make room for a copy."

Haejun looked at the boy again. Not a child waiting to be told what to do. An operator who kept the line running.

"Do it. But you decide the wording."

Dokgu nodded. The red thread was wound again, but the order of the first knot was different from before.

Four minutes to the shift bell.

Haejun sat down at the transmission key. Dokgu connected the battery, and Seorin went to the window to hand a cart voucher to a runner headed for the dock.

"Take all eleven carts. Leave out the three with no horse feed, and pay extra to bring in two carts from another trading house. Tell Oh Bokrye I'm coming myself."

The runner asked, "Will a government promissory note do?"

"No. Take my silver chest. Don't open the lid, not until you're in front of Oh Bokrye. If even one crew refuses, stop the carts too."

Seorin called down the hall, and the waiting dock runner came in. He handed over a wage note sent by Oh Bokrye. In the blank amount field, Seorin wrote the silver sum, and for the payment date she wrote before sunset today. The runner read both lines aloud, then passed over a list of names, twenty four workers from the east and west loading crews. At the bottom was Oh Bokrye's inked thumbprint.

"Sister Bokrye says if these are the terms, she'll bring two crews together. She said injury pay should be written separately."

Seorin added an injury compensation line and signed it. "The people are secured now too. Take this list and the silver chest together."

The runner said, "This is a heavy loss for her."

"That's why we write down who's paying for it."

She signed the cart voucher and pushed him out the door. The sound of hooves faded into the fog. The meeting wasn't over, but the carts had started moving.

Haejun struck the first signal.

Short and long pulses ran out along the wire. The battery needle dropped with every character sent. On the seventeenth character, the contact sparked. Dokgu reached for the screw bare handed, and Haejun caught his wrist.

"Wrap it in cloth."

"If it cools down, we'll be too slow."

Seorin cut the leather strap from her own ledger and threw it over. Dokgu wrapped his hand and pressed the contact. A burning smell rose. The skin under the boy's thumb reddened and swelled, but the signal kept going.

Thirty ninth character.

Outside, the rope for the shift bell was pulled taut.

Forty second character.

Haejun lowered the final transmission slip. Dokgu added the extra blank digit as promised. The needle dropped below the red line, and the battery box went as quiet as a dead animal.

That was when the shift bell rang.

The transmission was done. There was no taking it back.

Haejun didn't wipe the ink from his palm. In the sender's column of the transmission log, he wrote his own name. Yun Haejun. When Seorin reached to sign below it as a witness, he stopped her.

"You arranged the carts. You don't need to write yourself down as part of the forgery too."

"You want to claim we did this together and then take all the blame alone?"

Seorin pushed his hand away and wrote her own name anyway. But instead of "order approved," she wrote precisely: "present for transport terms."

"Trust isn't a free stamp. I'll only take responsibility for what I actually witnessed."

Haejun didn't correct the wording.

As the bell rang a third time, the new shift clerk walked in. He looked in turn at the dead battery needle, the three unfolded telegrams, and the transmission log.

"What did you send?"

Before Haejun could answer, the receiver on the Mapo line rang once, using the last of its current. It wasn't a confirmation reply. It was a short number sent by the relay man.

427.

Out of six hundred sacks, the rice confirmed dry right now was four hundred twenty seven sacks.

Seorin read the number and closed her ledger. "The carts will fall short first."

The new shift clerk lifted the military camp's sealed telegram. "This priority code. Who wrote it?"

Haejun took his hand off the dead transmitter.

"I did."

The runner who'd rushed toward Mapo had already vanished into the fog near the Han River ferry crossing. But outside the telegraph bureau's door, a faster set of feet had already come to a stop. The tip of an inspection officer's scabbard rapped against the threshold.

"Seal the transmission log."

The arrest warrant he carried bore the same seal, pressed just as deep, as the one that had been stamped hardest into the third of the three telegrams.