Heineman closed his eyes, and strange hooked patterns crawled across his field of vision. Those fragmentary dream-images echoed the secret shorthand of the accountants of the Family Jubiladilia. Their significance was archaeological: they were pieces of a past life lived long, long ago, in the distant ages of a scholarly civilization, in the time before he became a wreck-diver. To Heineman's distress, he could not read that oh-so-familiar shorthand. Its shapings had become glyphs, strange ideograms in a dead tongue. He had lost the learning. He tried to pick up a pen to practice, but his hands had turned to rocks. [EoH Ch3]
Then, copying the relaxed manner of the more experienced interrogators from the inland revenue service, Heineman began to pump Arigato for information about Gospodin Bak. Occasionally he doodled idly on a piece of paper. At least, he seemed to doodle: actually, he was making notes in the traditional private shorthand of the accountants of the Family Jubiladilia, which was indecipherable to all outsiders (including those who were tax collectors). [NoP Ch6]
So saying, he noted the date and the participants. Atlanta saw he was using Crisp, the civil service shorthand, rather than the secret Family shorthand. Crisp was used to record trials at the Court of Justice. Atlanta found herself disconcerted. [WoH Ch13]