in which lord vetinari gives advice - mr lipwig’s bad memory - evil
criminal geniuses’ difficulty with finding property — mr groat’s fear of
bathing, and a discussion on explosive underwear — mr pony and his
flimsies - the board debates, gilt decides - moist von lipwig attempts
the impossible
the clocks were chiming seven o’clock. ‘ah, mr lipwig,’ said lord vetinari, looking up. ‘thank you so much for dropping in. it has been such a busy day, has it not? drumknott, do help mr lipwig to a chair. prophecy can be very exhausting, i believe.’
moist waved the clerk away and eased his aching body into a seat.
‘i didn’t exactly decide to drop in,’ he said. ‘a large troll watchman walked in and grabbed me by the arm.’
‘ah, to steady you, i have no doubt,’ said lord vetinari, who was poring over the battle between the stone trolls and the stone dwarfs. ‘you accompanied him of your own free will, did you not?’
‘i’m very attached to my arm,’ said moist. ‘i thought i’d better follow it. what can i do for you, my lord?’
vetinari got up and went and sat in the chair behind his desk, where he regarded moist with what almost looked like amusement.
‘commander vimes has given me some succinct reports of today’s events,’ he said, putting down the troll figure he was holding and turning over a few sheets of paper. ‘beginning with the riot at the grand trunk offices this morning which, he says, you instigated . . . ?’
‘all i did was volunteer to deliver such clacks messages as had been held up by the unfortunate breakdown,’ said moist. ‘i didn’t expect the idiots in their office to refuse to hand the messages back to their customers! people had paid in advance, after all. i was just helping everyone in a difficult time. and i certainly didn’t “instigate” anyone to hit a clerk with a chair!’
‘of course not, of course not,’ said lord vetinari. ‘i am sure you acted quite innocently and from the best of intentions. but i am agog to hear about the gold, mr lipwig. one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, i believe.’
‘some of it i can’t quite remember,’ said moist. ‘it’s all a bit unclear.’
‘yes, yes, i imagine it was. perhaps i can clarify a few details?’ said lord vetinari. ‘around mid-morning, mr lipwig, you were chatting to people outside your regrettably distressed building when’ - here the patrician glanced at his notes - ‘you suddenly looked up, shielded your eyes, dropped to your knees and screamed, “yes, yes, thank you, i am not worthy, glory be, may your teeth be picked clean by birds, halleluiah, rattle your drawers” and similar phrases, to the general concern of people nearby, and you then stood up with your hands outstretched and shouted “one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, buried in a field! thank you, thank you, i shall fetch it immediately!” whereupon you wrested a shovel from one of the men helping to clear the debris of the building and began to walk with some purpose out of the city.’
‘really?’ said moist. ‘it’s all a bit of a blank.’
‘i’m sure it is,’ said vetinari happily. ‘you will probably be quite surprised to know that a number of people followed you, mr lipwig? including mr pump and two members of the city watch?’
‘good heavens, did they?’
‘quite. for several hours. you stopped to pray on a number of occasions. we must assume it was for the guidance which led your footsteps, at last, to a small wood among the cabbage fields.’
‘it did? i’m afraid it’s all rather a blur,’ said moist.
‘i understand you dug like a demon, according to the watch. and i note that a number of reputable witnesses were there when your shovel struck the lid of the chest. i understand the times will be carrying a picture in the next edition.’
moist said nothing. it was the only way to be sure.
‘any comments, mr lipwig?’
‘no, my lord, not really.’
‘hmm. about three hours ago i had the senior priests of three of the major religions in this office, along with a rather bewildered freelance priestess who i gather handles the worldly affairs of anoia on an agency basis. they all claim that it was their god or goddess who told you where the gold was. you don’t happen to remember which one it was, do you?’
‘i sort of felt the voice rather than heard it,’ said moist carefully.
‘quite so,’ said vetinari. ‘incidentally, they all felt that their temples should get a tithe of the money,’ he added. ‘each.’
‘sixty thousand dollars?’ said moist, sitting up. ‘that’s not right!’
‘i commend the speed of your mental arithmetic in your shaken state. no lack of clarity there, i’m glad to see,’ said vetinari. ‘i would advise you to donate fifty thousand, split four ways. it is, after all, in a very public and very definite and incontrovertible way, a gift from the gods. is this not a time for reverential gratitude?’
there was a lengthy pause, and then moist raised a finger and managed, against all the odds, a cheerful smile. ‘sound advice, my lord. besides, a man never knows when he might need a prayer.’
‘exactly,’ said lord vetinari. ‘it is less than they demanded but more than they expect, and i did point out to them that the remainder of the money was all going to be used for the civic good. it is going to be used for the civic good, isn’t it, mr lipwig?’
‘oh, yes. indeed!’
‘that is just as well, since currently it’s sitting in commander vimes’s cells.’ vetinari looked down at moist’s trousers. ‘i see you still have mud all over your lovely golden suit, postmaster. fancy all that money being buried in a field. and you can still remember nothing about how you got there?’
vetinari’s expression was getting on moist’s nerves. you know, he thought. i know you know. you know i know you know. but i know you can’t be certain, not certain. ‘well . . . there was an angel,’ he said.
‘indeed? any particular kind?’
‘the kind you only get one of, i think,’ said moist.
‘ah, good. well, then it all seems very clear to me,’ said vetinari, sitting back. ‘it is not often a mortal man achieves such a moment of glorious epiphany, but i am assured by the priests that such a thing could happen, and who should know better than they? anyone even suggesting that the money was in some way . . . obtained in some wrong fashion will have to argue with some very turbulent priests and also, i assume, find their kitchen drawers quite impossible to shut. besides, you are donating money to the city—’ he held up his hand when moist opened his mouth, and went on, ‘that is, the post office, so the notion of private gain does not arise. there appears to be no owner for the money, although so far, of course, nine hundred and thirty-eight people would like me to believe it belongs to them. such is life in ankh-morpork. so, mr lipwig, you are instructed to rebuild the post office as soon as possible. the bills will be met and, since the money is effectively a gift from the gods, there will be no drain on our taxes. well done, mr lipwig. very well done. don’t let me detain you.’
moist actually had his hand on the door handle when the voice behind him said: ‘just one minor thing, mr lipwig.’
he stopped. ‘yes, sir?’
‘it occurs to me that the sum which the gods so generously have seen fit to bestow upon us does, by pure happenstance, approximate to the estimated haul of a notorious criminal, which as far as i know has never been recovered.’
moist stared at the woodwork in front of him. why is this man ruling just one city? he thought. why isn’t he ruling the world? is this how he treats other people? it’s like being a puppet. the difference is, he arranges for you to pull your own strings.
he turned, face carefully deadpan. lord vetinari had walked over to his game.
‘really, sir? who was that, then?’ he said.
‘one albert spangler, mr lipwig.’
‘he’s dead, sir,’ said moist.
‘are you sure?’
‘yes, sir. i was there when they hanged him.’
‘well remembered, mr lipwig,’ said vetinari, moving a dwarf all the way across the board.
damn, damn, damn! moist shouted, but only for internal consumption.
he’d worked hard for that mon— well, the banks and merchants had worked har— well, somewhere down the line someone had worked hard for that money, and now a third of it had been . . . well, stolen, that was the only word for it.
moist experienced a certain amount of unrighteous indignation about this.
of course he would have given most of it to the post office, that was the whole point, but you could construct a damn good building for a lot less than a hundred thousand dollars and moist had been hoping for a little something for himself.
still, he felt good. perhaps this was that ‘wonderful warm feeling’ people talked about. and what would he have done with the money? he never had time to spend it in any case. after all, what could a master criminal buy? there was a shortage of seaside properties with real lava flows near a reliable source of piranhas, and the world sure as hell didn’t need another dark lord, not with gilt doing so well. gilt didn’t need a tower with ten thousand trolls camped outside. he just needed a ledger and a sharp mind. it worked better, was cheaper and he could go out and party at night.
handing all that gold over to a copper had been a difficult thing to do, but there really was no choice. he’d got them by the short and curlies, anyway. no one was going to stand up and say the gods didn’t do this sort of thing. true, they’d never done it so far, but you could never tell, with gods. certainly there were queues outside the three temples, once the times had put out its afternoon edition.
this had presented a philosophical problem to the priesthoods. they were officially against people laying up treasures on earth but, they had to admit, it was always good to get bums on pews, feet in sacred groves, hands rattling drawers and fingers being trailed in the baby crocodile pool. they settled therefore for a kind of twinkle-eyed denial that it could happen again, while hinting that, well, you never know, ineffable are the ways of gods, eh? besides, petitioners standing in line with their letter asking for a big bag of cash were open to the suggestion that those most likely to receiveth were the ones who had already givethed, and got the message once you’d tapped them on the head with the collecting plate a few times.
even miss extremelia mume, whose small multi-purpose temple over a bookmakers’ office in cable street handled the everyday affairs of several dozen minor gods, was doing good business among those prepared to back an outside chance. she’d hung a banner over the door. it read: it could be you.
it couldn’t happen. it shouldn’t happen. but, you never knew . . . this time it might.
moist recognized that hope. it was how he’d made his living. you knew that the man running the find the lady game was going to win, you knew that people in distress didn’t sell diamond rings for a fraction of their value, you knew that life generally handed you the sticky end of the stick, and you knew that the gods didn’t pick some everyday undeserving tit out of the population and hand them a fortune.
except that, this time, you might be wrong, right? it might just happen, yes?
and this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is hope. it was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. it could be you. but it wouldn’t be.
now moist von lipwig headed along attic bee street, towards the lady sybil free hospital. heads turned as he went past. he’d never been off the front page for days, after all. he just had to hope that the winged hat and golden suit were the ultimate in furniture; people saw the gold, not the face.
the hospital was still being built, as all hospitals are, but it had its own queue at the entrance. moist dealt with that by ignoring it, and going straight in. there were, in the main hallway, people who looked like the kind of people whose job it is to say ‘oi, you!’ when other people just wander in, but moist generated his personal ‘i’m too important to be stopped’ field and they never quite managed to frame the words.
and, of course, once you got past the doorway demons of any organization people just assumed you had a right to be there, and gave you directions.
mr groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said ‘do not enter’, but moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing.
the old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw moist.
‘mr lipwig! you’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? i told them i was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. a bath, sir!’
‘they have to carry you?’ said moist. ‘can’t you walk, tolliver?’
‘yessir, but i fights ‘em, fights ‘em, sir. a bath, sir? from wimmin? oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? i call that shameless! everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! oh, sir! they’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! they gived me a trouserectomy, sir!’
‘please calm down, mr groat,’ said moist urgently. the old man had gone quite red in the face. ‘you’re all right, then?’
‘just a scratch, sir, look . . .’ groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. ‘see?’ he said triumphantly.
moist nearly fainted. the banshee had tried to make a noughts-and-crosses board out of the man’s chest. someone else had stitched it neatly.
‘nice job of work, i’ll give them that,’ groat said grudgingly. ‘but i’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!’
‘are you sure you’re all right?’ said moist, staring at the mess of scabs.
‘right as rain, sir. i told ‘em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. i bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with aggy bossing people around? i bet it is! i bet you really need me, right, sir?’
‘urn, yes,’ said moist. ‘are they giving you medicine?’
‘hah, they call it medicine, sir. they gave me a lot of ol’ mumbo-pocus about it being wonderful stuff, but it’s got neither taste nor smell, if you want my opinion. they say it’ll do me good but i told ‘em it’s hard work that does me good, sir, not sitting in soapy water with young wimmin lookin’ at my rattle-and-flute. and they took my hair away! they called it unhygienic, sir! what a nerve! all right, it moves about a bit of its own accord, but that’s only natural. i’ve had my hair a long time, sir. i’m used to its funny little ways!’
‘hwhat is going on here?’ said a voice full of offended ownership.
moist turned.
if one of the rules that should be passed on to a young man is ‘don’t get mixed up with crazy girls who smoke like a bellows’, another one should be ‘run away from any woman who pronounces “what” with two hs’.
this woman might have been two women. she certainly had the cubic capacity and, since she was dressed entirely in white, looked rather like an iceberg. but chillier. and with sails. and with a headdress starched to a cutting edge.
two smaller women stood behind and on either side of her, in definite danger of being crushed if she stepped backwards.
‘i’ve come to see mr groat,’ said moist weakly, while groat gibbered and pulled the bedclothes over his head.
‘quite impossible! i am the matron here, young man, and i must insist that you leave at once! mr groat is in an extremely unstable condition.’
‘he seems fine to me,’ said moist.
he had to admire the look the matron gave him. it suggested that moist had just been found adhering to the sole of her shoe. he returned it with a chilly one of his own.
‘young man, his condition is extremely critical!’ she snapped. ‘i refuse to release him!’
‘madam, illness is not a crime!’ said moist. ‘people are not released from hospital, they are discharged!’
the matron drew herself up and out, and gave moist a smile of triumph. ‘that, young man, is hwhat we are afraid of!’
moist was sure doctors kept skeletons around to cow patients. nyer, nyer, we know what you look like underneath . . . he quite approved, though. he had a certain fellow feeling. places like the lady sybil were very rare these days, but moist felt certain he could make a profitable career out of wearing a white robe, using long learned names for ailments like ‘runny nose’ and looking solemnly at things in bottles.
on the other side of the desk, a dr lawn - he had his name on a plate on his desk, because doctors are very busy and can’t remember everything - looked up from his notes on tolliver groat.
‘it was quite interesting, mr lipwig. it was the first time i’ve ever had to operate to remove the patient’s clothing,’ he said. ‘you don’t happen to know what the poultice was made of, do you? he wouldn’t tell us.’
‘i believe it’s layers of flannel, goose grease and bread pudding,’ said moist, staring around at the office.
‘bread pudding? really bread pudding?’
‘apparently so,’ said moist.
‘not something alive, then? it seemed leathery to us,’ said the doctor, leafing through the notes. ‘ah, yes, here we are. yes, his trousers were the subject of a controlled detonation after one of his socks exploded. we’re not sure why.’
‘he fills them with sulphur and charcoal to keep his feet fresh, and he soaks his trousers in saltpetre to prevent gnats,’ said moist. ‘he’s a great believer in natural medicine, you see. he doesn’t trust doctors.’
‘really?’ said dr lawn. ‘he retains some vestige of sanity, then. incidentally, it’s wisest not to argue with the nursing staff. i find the wisest course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted. mr groat thinks that every man is his own physician, i gather?’
‘he makes his own medicines,’ moist explained. ‘he starts every day with a quarter of a pint of gin mixed with spirits of nitre, flour of sulphur, juniper and the juice of an onion. he says it clears the tubes.’
‘good heavens, i’m sure it does. does he smoke at all?’
moist considered this. ‘no-o. it looks more like steam,’ he said.
‘and his background in basic alchemy is . . . ?’
‘non-existent, as far as i know,’ said moist. ‘he makes some interesting cough sweets, though. after you’ve sucked them for two minutes you can feel the wax running out of your ears. he paints his knees with some sort of compound of iodine and—’
‘enough!’ said the doctor. ‘mr lipwig, there are times when we humble practitioners of the craft of medicine have to stand aside in astonishment. quite a long way aside, in the case of mr groat, and preferably behind a tree. take him away, please. i have to say that against all the odds i found him amazingly healthy. i can quite see why an attack by a banshee would be so easily shrugged off. in fact mr groat is probably unkillable by any normal means, although i advise you not to let him take up tap dancing. oh, and do take his wig, will you? we tried putting it in a cupboard, but it got out. we’ll send the bill to the post office, shall we?’
‘i thought this said “free hospital” on the sign,’ said moist.
‘broadly, yes, broadly,’ said dr lawn. ‘but those on whom the gods have bestowed so many favours - one hundred and fifty thousand of them, i heard - probably have had all the charity they require, hmm?’
and it’s all sitting in the watch’s cells, thought moist. he reached into his jacket and produced a crumpled wad of green ankh-morpork one-dollar stamps.
‘will you take these?’ he said.
the picture of tiddles being carried out of the post office by moist von lipwig was, since it concerned an animal, considered to be full of human interest by the times and was thus displayed prominently on the front page.
reacher gilt looked at it without displaying so much as a flicker of emotion. then he reread the story next to it, under the headlines:
man saves cat
‘we’ll rebuild bigger!’ vow as post office blazes
$150,000 gift from gods
wave of stuck drawers hits city
‘it occurs to me that the editor of the times must sometimes regret that he has only one front page,’ he observed drily.
there was a sound from the men sitting round the big table in gilt’s office. it was the kind of sound you get when people are not really laughing.
‘do you think he has got gods on his side?’ said greenyham.
‘i hardly imagine so,’ said gilt. ‘he must have known where the money was.’
‘you think so? if i knew where that much money was i wouldn’t leave it in the ground.’
‘no, you wouldn’t,’ said gilt quietly, in such a way that greenyham felt slightly uneasy.
‘twelve and a half per cent! twelve and a half per cent!’ screamed alphonse, bouncing up and down on his perch.
‘we’re made to look fools, reacher!’ said stowley. ‘he knew the line would go down yesterday! he might as well have divine guidance! we’re losing the local traffic already. every time we have a shutdown you can bet he’ll run a coach out of sheer devilment. there’s nothing that damn man won’t stoop to. he’s turned the post office into a . . . a show!’
‘sooner or later all circuses leave town,’ said gilt.
‘but he’s laughing at us!’ stowley persisted. ‘if the trunk breaks down again i wouldn’t put it past him to run a coach to genua!’
‘that would take weeks,’ said gilt.
‘yes, but it’s cheaper and it gets there. that’s what he’ll say. and he’ll say it loudly, too. we’ve got to do something, reacher.’
‘and what do you suggest?’
‘why don’t we just spend some money and get some proper maintenance done?’
‘you can’t,’ said a new voice. ‘you don’t have the men.’
all heads turned to the man at the far end of the table. he had a jacket on over his overalls and a very battered top hat on the table beside him. his name was mr pony, and he was the trunk’s chief engineer. he’d come with the company, and had hung on because at the age of fifty-eight, with twinges in your knuckles, a sick wife and a bad back, you think twice about grand gestures such as storming out. he hadn’t seen a clacks until three years ago, when the first company was founded, but he was methodical and engineering was engineering.
currently his greatest friend in the world was his collection of pink flimsies. he’d done his best, but he wasn’t going to carry the can when this lot finally fell over and his pink flimsies would see to it that he didn’t. white memo paper to the chairman, yellow flimsy to the file, pink flimsy you kept. no one could say he hadn’t warned them.
a two-inch stack of the latest flimsies was attached to his clipboard. now, feeling like an elder god leaning down through the clouds of some armageddon and booming: ‘didn’t i tell you? didn’t i warn you? did you listen? too late to listen now!’, he put on a voice of strained patience.
‘i’ve got six maint’nance teams. i had eight last week. i sent you a memo about that, got the flimsies right here. we ought to have eighteen teams. half the lads are needin’ to be taught as we go, and we ain’t got time for teachin’. in the op days we’d set up walkin’ towers to take the load an’ we ain’t got men even to do that now—’
‘all right, it takes time, we understand,’ said greenyham. ‘how long will it take if you . . . hire more men and get these walking towers working and—’
‘you made me sack a lot of the craftsmen,’ said pony.
‘we didn’t sack them. we “let them go”,’ said gilt.
‘we . . . downsized,’ said greenyham.
‘looks like you succeeded, sir,’ said pony. he took a stub of pencil out of one pocket and a grubby notebook out of the other.
‘d’you want it fast or cheap or good, gentlemen?’ he said. ‘the way things have gone, i can only give you one out of three . . .’
‘how soon can we have the grand trunk running properly?’ said greenyham, while gilt leaned back and shut his eyes.
pony’s lips moved as he ran his eyes over his figures. ‘nine months,’ he said.
‘i suppose if we’re seen to be working hard nine months of erratic running won’t seem too—’ mr stowley began.
‘nine months shut down,’ said mr pony.
‘don’t be a fool, man!’
‘i ain’t a fool, sir, thank you,’ said pony sharply. ‘i’ll have to find and train new craftsmen, ‘cos a lot of the old brigade won’t come back whatever i offer. if we shut the towers down i can use the signallers; at least they know their way around a tower. we can get more work done if we don’t have to drag walking towers and set them up. make a clean start. the towers were never built that well to begin with. dearheart never expected this sort of traffic. nine months of dark towers, sirs.’
he wanted to say, oh, how he wanted to say: craftsmen. d’you know what that means? it means men with some pride, who get fed up and leave when they’re told to do skimpy work in a rush, no matter what you pay them. so i’m employing people as ‘craftsmen’ now who’re barely fit to sweep out a workshop. but you don’t care, because if they don’t polish a chair with their arse all day you think a man who’s done a seven-year apprenticeship is the same as some twerp who can’t be trusted to hold a hammer by the right end. he didn’t say this aloud, because although an elderly man probably has a lot less future than a man of twenty, he’s far more careful of it . . .
‘you can’t do better than that?’ said stowley.
‘mr stowley, i’ll be doin’ well if it’s only nine months,’ said pony, focusing again. ‘if you don’t want to shut down i can maybe get it done in a year and a half, if i can find enough men and you’re ready to spend enough money. but you’ll have shutdowns every day. it’ll be crippled runnin’, sir.’
‘this man von lipwig will walk all over us in nine months!’ said greenyham.
‘sorry about that, sir.’
‘and how much will it cost?’ asked gilt dreamily, without opening his eyes.
‘one way or the other, sir, i reckon maybe two hundred thousand,’ said pony.
‘that’s ridiculous! we paid less than that for the trunk!’ greenyham burst out.
‘yes, sir. but, you see, you got to run maint’nance all the time, sir. the towers have been run ragged. there was that big gale back in sektober and all that trouble in uberwald. i haven’t got the manpower. if you don’t do maint’nance a little fault soon becomes a big one. i sent you gentlemen lots of reports, sir. and you cut my budget twice. i may say my lads did wonders with—’
‘mr pony,’ said gilt quietly, ‘i think what i can see here is a conflict of cultures. would you mind strolling along to my study, please? igor will make you a cup of tea. thank you so much.’
when pony had gone, greenyham said: ‘do you know what worries me right now?’
‘do tell us,’ said gilt, folding his hands across his expensive waistcoat.
‘mr slant is not here.’
‘he has apologized. he says he has important business,’ said gilt.
‘we’re his biggest clients! what’s more important than us? no, he’s not here because he wants to be somewhere else! the damn old revenant senses trouble and he’s never there when it all goes bad. slant always comes out smelling of roses!’
‘that is at least more fragrant than his usual formaldehyde,’ said gilt. ‘don’t panic, gentlemen.’
‘somebody did,’ said stowley. ‘don’t tell me that fire was accidental! was it? and what happened to poor old fatty horsefry, eh?’
‘calm down, my friends, calm down,’ said gilt. they’re just merchant bankers, he thought. they’re not hunters, they’re scavengers. they have no vision.
he waited until they had settled down and were regarding him with that strange and rather terrifying look that rich men wear when they think they may be in danger of becoming poor men.
‘i expected something like this,’ he said. ‘vetinari wants to harry us, that is all.’
‘readier, you know we’ll be in big trouble if the trunk stops working,’ said nutmeg. ‘some of us have . . . debts to service. if the trunk fails for good then people will . . . ask questions.’
oh, those pauses, thought gilt. embezzlement is such a difficult word.
‘many of us had to work very hard to raise the cash,’ said stowley.
yes, keeping a straight face in front of your clients must be tricky, gilt thought. aloud, he said, ‘i think we have to pay, gentlemen. i think we do.’
‘two hundred thousand?’ said greenyham. ‘where do you think we can get that kind of money?’
‘you got it before,’ murmured gilt.
‘and what is that supposed to mean, pray?’ said greenyham, with just a little too much indignation.
‘poor crispin came to see me the night before he died,’ said gilt, as calmly as six inches of snow. ‘babbled about, oh, all sorts of wild things. they hardly bear repeating. i think he believed people were after him. he did however insist on pressing a small ledger on me. needless to say, it is safely locked away.’
the room fell silent, its silence made deeper and hotter by a number of desperate men thinking hard and fast. they were, by their own standards, honest men, in that they only did what they knew or suspected that everyone else did and there was never any visible blood, but just now they were men far out on a frozen sea who’d just heard the ice creak.
‘i strongly suspect that it’ll be a bit less than two hundred thousand,’ said gilt. ‘pony would be a fool if he didn’t leave a margin.’
‘you didn’t warn us about this, readier,’ said stowley resentfully.
gilt waved his hands. ‘we must speculate to accumulate!’ he said. ‘the post office? trickery and sleight of hand. oh, von lipwig is an ideas man, but that’s all he is. he’s made a splash, but he’s not got the stamina for the long haul. yet as it turns out he will do us a favour. perhaps we have been . . . a little smug, a little lax, but we have learned our lesson! spurred by the competition we are investing several hundred thousand dollars—’
‘several hundred?’ said greenyham.
gilt waved him into silence, and continued: ‘—several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening co-operation with the communities we are proud to serve. we fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. that is our mission.’
an awed silence followed.
‘and thus we bounce back,’ said gilt.
‘but you said several hundr—’
gilt sighed. ‘i said that,’ he said. ‘trust me. it’s a game, gentlemen, and a good player is one who can turn a bad situation to their advantage. i have brought you this far, haven’t i? a little cash and the right attitude will take us the rest of the way. i’m sure you can find some more money,’ he added, ‘from somewhere it won’t be missed.’
this wasn’t silence. it went beyond silence.
‘what are you suggesting?’ said nutmeg.
‘embezzlement, theft, breach of trust, misappropriation of funds . . . people can be so harsh,’ said gilt. he threw open his arms again and a big friendly smile emerged like the sun breaking through storm clouds. ‘gentlemen! i understand! money was made to work, to move, to grow, not to be locked up in some vault. poor mr horsefry, i believe, did not really understand that. so much on his mind, poor fellow. but we . . . we are businessmen. we understand these things, my friends.’
he surveyed the faces of men who now knew that they were riding a tiger. it had been a good ride up until a week or so ago. it wasn’t a case of not being able to get off. they could get off. that was not the problem. the problem was that the tiger knew where they lived.
poor mr horsefry . . . there had been rumours. in fact they were completely unsubstantiated rumours, because mr gryle had been excessively good at his job when pigeons weren’t involved, had moved like a shadow with claws and, while he’d left a faint scent, it had been masked by the blood. in the nose of a werewolf, blood trumps everything. but rumour rose in the streets of ankh-morpork like mist from a midden.
and then it occurred to one or two of the board that the jovial ‘my friends’ in the mouth of reacher gilt, so generous with his invitations, his little tips, his advice and his champagne, was beginning, in its harmonics and overtones, to sound just like the word ‘pal’ in the mouth of a man in an alley who was offering cosmetic surgery with a broken bottle in exchange for not being given any money. on the other hand, they’d been safe so far; maybe it was worth following the tiger to the kill. better to follow at the beast’s heel than be its prey . . .
‘and now i realize that i am inexcusably keeping you from your beds,’ said gilt. ‘good night to you, gentlemen. you may safely leave everything to me. igor!’
‘yeth, marthter,’ said igor, behind him.
‘do see these gentlemen out, and ask mr pony to come in.’
gilt watched them go with a smile of satisfaction, which became a bright and happy face when pony was ushered in.
the interview with the engineer went like this:
‘mr pony,’ said gilt, ‘i am very pleased to tell you that the board, impressed by your dedication and the hard work you have been putting in, have voted unanimously to increase your salary by five hundred dollars a year.’
pony brightened up. ‘thank you very much, sir. that will certainly come in—’
‘however, mr pony, as part of the management of the grand trunk company - and we do think of you as part of the team - we must ask you to bear in mind our cash flow. we cannot authorize more than twenty-five thousand dollars for repairs this year.’
‘that’s only about seventy dollars a tower, sir!’ the engineer protested.
‘teh, is it really? i told them you wouldn’t accept that,’ said gilt. ‘mr pony is an engineer of integrity, i said. he won’t accept a penny less than fifty thousand, i told them!’
pony looked hunted. ‘couldn’t really do much of a job, sir, even for that. i could get some walking tower teams out there, yes, but most of the mountain towers are living on borrowed time as it is—’
‘we’re counting on you, george,’ said gilt.
‘well, i suppose . . . could we have the hour of the dead back, mr gilt?’
‘i really wish you wouldn’t use that fanciful term,’ said gilt. ‘it really does not present the right image.’
‘sorry, sir,’ said pony. ‘but i still need it.’
gilt drummed his fingers on the table. ‘you’re asking a lot, george, you really are. that’s revenue flow we’re talking about. the board won’t be very pleased with me if i—’
‘i think i’ve got to insist, mr gilt,’ said pony, looking at his feet.
‘and what could you deliver?’ said gilt. ‘that’s what the board will want to know. they’ll say to me: reacher, we’re giving good old george everything he asks for; what will we be getting in return?’
forgetting for the moment that it was a quarter of what he’d asked for, good old george said: ‘well, we could patch up all round and get some of the really shaky towers back into some sort of order, especially 99 and 201 . . . oh, there’s just so much to do—’
‘would it, for example, give us a year of reasonable service?’
mr pony struggled manfully with the engineer’s permanent dread of having to commit himself to anything, and managed, ‘well, if we don’t lose too many staff, and the winter isn’t too bad, but of course there’s always—’
gilt snapped his fingers. ‘by damn, george, you’ve talked me into it! i’ll tell the board that i’m backing you and to hell with them!’
‘well, that’s very kind of you, sir, of course,’ said pony, bewildered, but it’s only papering over the cracks, really. if we don’t have a major rebuild we’re only laying up even more trouble for the future—’
‘in a year or so, george, you can lay any plans you like in front of us!’ said gilt jovially. ‘your skill and ingenuity will be the saving of the company! now i know you’re a busy man and i mustn’t keep you. go and perform miracles of economy, mr pony!’
mr pony staggered out, proud and bemused and full of dread.
‘silly old fool,’ said gilt, and reached down and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. he pulled out a beartrap, which he set, with some effort, and then stood in the middle of the floor with his back to it.
‘igor!’ he called.
‘yeth, thur,’ said igor, behind him. there was a snap. ‘i think thith ith yourth, thur,’ igor added, handing gilt the sprung trap. gilt looked down. the man’s legs appeared unscathed.
‘how did you—’ he began.
‘oh, we igorth are no thtranger to marthterth of an enquiring mind, thur,’ said igor gloomily. ‘one of my gentlemen uthed to thtand with hith back to a pit lined with thpiketh, thur. oh how we chuckled, thur.’
‘and what happened?’
‘one day he forgot and thtepped into it. talk about laugh, thur.’
gilt laughed, too, and went back to his desk. he liked that kind of joke.
‘igor, would you say that i’m insane?’ he said.
igors are not supposed to lie to an employer. it’s part of the code of the igors. igor took refuge in strict linguistic honesty.
‘i wouldn’t find mythelf able to thay that, thur,’ he said.
‘i must be, igor. either that or everyone else is,’ said gilt. ‘i mean, i show them what i do, i show them how the cards are marked, i tell them what i am . . . and they nudge one another and grin and each one of them thinks himself no end of a fine fellow to be doing business with me. they throw good money after bad. they believe themselves to be sharp operators, and yet they offer themselves like little lambs. how i love to see their expressions when they think they’re being astute.’
‘indeed, thur,’ said igor. he was wondering if that job at the new hospital was still open. his cousin igor was already working there and had told him it was wonderful. sometimes you had to work all night! and you got a white coat, all the rubber gloves you could eat and, best of all, you got rethpect.
‘it’s so . . . basic,’ said gilt. ‘you make money as it runs down, you make money building it up again, you might even make a little money running it, then you sell it to yourself when it collapses. the leases alone are worth a fortune. give alphonse his nuts, will you?’
‘twelve and a half per cent! twelve and a half per cent!’ said the cockatoo, sidling up and down the perch excitedly.
‘thertainly, thur,’ said igor, taking a bag out of his pocket and advancing cautiously. alphonse had a beak like a pair of shears.
or maybe try veterinary work like my other cousin igor, igor thought. that was a good traditional area, certainly. pity about all that publicity when the hamster smashed its way out of its treadmill and ate that man’s leg before flying away, but that was progrethth for you. the important thing was to get out before the mob arrived. and when your boss started telling thin air how good he was, that was the time.
‘hope is the curse of humanity, igor,’ said gilt, putting his hands behind his head.
‘could be, thur,’ said igor, trying to avoid the horrible curved beak.
‘the tiger does not hope to catch its prey, nor does the gazelle hope to escape the claws. they run, igor. only the running matters. all they know is that they must run. and now i must run along to those nice people at the times, to tell everyone about our bright new future. get the coach out, will you?’
‘thertainly, thur. if you will excuthe me, i will go and fetch another finger.’
i think i’ll head back to the mountains, he thought as he went down to the cellar. at least a monster there has the decency to look like one.
flares around the ruins of the post office made the night brilliant. the golems didn’t need them, but the surveyors did. moist had got a good deal there. the gods had spoken, after all. it’d do a firm no harm at all to be associated with this phoenix of a building.
in the bit that was still standing, shored up and tarpaulined, the post office - that is, the people who were the post office - worked through the night. in truth there wasn’t enough for everyone to do, but they turned up anyway, to do it. it was that kind of night. you had to be there, so that later you could say ‘. . . and i was there, that very night . . .’
moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there too, alive and sparkling. it was . . . amazing. they listened to him, they did things for him, they scuttled around as if he was a real leader and not some cheat and fraud.
and there were the letters. oh, the letters hurt. more and more were coming in, and they were addressed to him. the news had got round the city. it had been in the paper! the gods listened to this man!
. . . we will deliver to the gods themselves . . .
he was the man with the gold suit and the hat with wings. they’d made a crook the messenger of the gods, and piled on his charred desk the sum of all their hopes and fears . . . badly punctuated, true, and in smudged pencil or free post office ink, which had spluttered across the paper in the urgency of writing.
‘they think you’re an angel,’ said miss dearheart, who was sitting on the other side of his desk and helping him sort through the pathetic petitions. every half-hour or so mr pump brought up some more.
‘well, i’m not,’ snapped moist.
‘you speak to the gods and the gods listen,’ said miss dearheart, grinning. ‘they told you where the treasure was. now that’s what i call religion. incidentally, how did you know the money was there?’
‘you don’t believe in any gods?’
‘no, of course not. not while people like reacher gilt walk under the sky. all there is, is us. the money . . . ?’
‘i can’t tell you,’ said moist.
‘have you read some of these letters?’ said miss dearheart. ‘sick children, dying wives—’
‘some just want cash,’ said moist hurriedly, as if that made it better.
‘whose fault is that, slick? you’re the man who can tap the gods for a wad of wonga!’
‘so what shall i do with all these . . . prayers?’ said moist.
‘deliver them, of course. you’ve got to. you are the messenger of the gods. and they’ve got stamps on. some of them are covered in stamps! it’s your job. take them to the temples. you promised to do that!’
‘i never promised to—’
‘you promised to when you sold them the stamps!’
moist almost fell off his chair. she’d wielded the sentence like a fist.
‘and it’ll give them hope,’ she added, rather more quietly.
‘false hope,’ said moist, struggling upright.
‘maybe not this time,’ said miss dearheart. ‘that’s the point of hope.’ she picked up the battered remains of anghammarad’s armband. ‘he was taking a message across the whole of time. you think you’ve got it tough?’
‘mr lipwig?’
the voice floated up from the hall, and at the same time the background noise subsided like a bad souffle.
moist walked over to where a wall had once been. now, with the scorched floorboards creaking underfoot, he looked right down into the hall. a small part of him thought: we’ll have to put a big picture window here when we rebuild. this is just too impressive for words.
there was a buzz of whispering and a few gasps. there were a lot of customers, too, even in the early foggy hours. it’s never too late for a prayer.
‘is everything all right, mr groat?’ he called down.
something white was waved in the air.
‘early copy of the times, sir!’ groat shouted. ‘just in! gilt’s all over the front page, sir! where you ought to be, sir! you won’t like it, sir!’
if moist von lipwig had been raised to be a clown, he’d have visited shows and circuses and watched the kings of fooldom. he’d have marvelled at the elegant trajectory of the custard pie, memorized the new business with the ladder and the bucket of whitewash and watched with care every carelessly juggled egg. while the rest of the audience watched the display with the appropriate feelings of terror, anger and exasperation, he’d make notes.
now, like an apprentice staring at the work of a master, he read reacher gilt’s words on the still-damp newspaper.
it was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. oh, yes. you had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency and then sent to walk the gutter for reacher gilt, although ‘synergistically’ had probably been a whore from the start. the grand trunk’s problems were clearly the result of some mysterious spasm in the universe and had nothing to do with greed, arrogance and wilful stupidity. oh, the grand trunk management had made mistakes - oops, ‘well-intentioned judgements which, with the benefit of hindsight, might regrettably have been, in some respects, in error’ - but these had mostly occurred, it appeared, while correcting ‘fundamental systemic errors’ committed by the previous management. no one was sorry for anything because no living creature had done anything wrong; bad things had happened by spontaneous generation in some weird, chilly, geometrical otherworld, and ‘were to be regretted’.*
* another bastard phrase that’d sell itself to any weasel in a tight corner.
the times reporter had made an effort but nothing short of a stampede could have stopped reacher gilt in his crazed assault on the meaning of meaning. the grand trunk was “about people” and the reporter had completely failed to ask what that meant, exactly? and then there was this piece called “our mission” . . .
moist felt the acid rise in his throat until he could spit lacework in a sheet of steel. meaningless stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. oh, the grand trunk was for everything, from life and liberty to mum’s home-made distressed pudding. it was for everything, except anything.
through a pink mist his eye caught the line: ‘safety is our foremost consideration’. why hadn’t the lead type melted, why hadn’t the paper blazed rather than be part of this obscenity? the press should have buckled, the roller should have cleaved unto the platen . . .
that was bad. but then he saw gilt’s reply to a hasty question about the post office.
reacher gilt loved the post office and blessed its little cotton socks. he was very grateful for its assistance during this difficult period and looked forward to future co-operation, although of course the post office, in the real modern world, would never be able to compete on anything other than a very local level. mind you, someone has to deliver the bills, ho ho . . .
it was masterly . . . the bastard.
‘er . . . are you okay? could you stop shouting?’ said miss dearheart.
‘what?’ the mists cleared.
everyone in the hall was looking at him, their mouths open, their eyes wide. watery ink dripped from post office pens, stamps began to dry on tongues.
‘you were shouting,’ said miss dearheart. ‘swearing, in fact.’
miss maccalariat pushed her way through the throng, with an expression of determination.
‘mr lipwig, i hope never to hear such language in this building again!’ she said.
‘he was using it about the chairman of the grand trunk company,’ said miss dearheart, in what was, for her, a conciliatory tone of voice.
‘oh.’ miss maccalariat hesitated, and then remembered herself. ‘er, in that case . . . perhaps a teensy bit quieter, then?’
‘certainly, miss maccalariat,’ said moist obediently.
‘and perhaps not the k-word?’
‘no, miss maccalariat.’
‘and also not the l-word, the t-word, both of the s-words, the v-word and the y-word.’
‘just as you say, miss maccalariat.’
‘“murdering conniving bastard of a weasel” was acceptable, however.’
‘i shall remember that, miss maccalariat.’
‘very good, postmaster.’
miss maccalariat turned on her heel and went back to haranguing someone for not using blotting paper.
moist handed the paper to miss dearheart. ‘he’s going to walk away with it,’ he said. ‘he’s just throwing words around. the trunk’s too big to fail. too many investors. he’ll get more money, keep the system going just this side of disaster, then let it collapse. buy it up then via another company, maybe, at a knock-down price.’
‘i’d suspect him of anything,’ said miss dearheart. ‘but you sound very certain.’
‘that’s what i’d do,’ said moist, ‘er . . . if i was that kind of person. it’s the oldest trick in the book. you get the punt— you get others so deeply involved that they don’t dare fold. it’s the dream, you see? they think if they stay in it’ll all work out. they daren’t think it’s all a dream. you use big words to tell them it’s going to be jam tomorrow and they hope. but they’ll never win. part of them knows that, but the rest of them never listens to it. the house always wins.’
‘why do people like gilt get away with it?’
‘i just told you. it’s because people hope. they’ll believe that someone will sell them a real diamond for a dollar. sorry.’
‘do you know how i came to work for the trust?’ said miss dearheart.
because clay people are easier to deal with? moist thought. they don’t cough when you talk to them? ‘no,’ he said.
‘i used to work in a bank in sto lat. the cabbage growers’ co-operative—’
‘oh, the one on the town square? with the carved cabbage over the door?’ said moist, before he could stop himself.
‘you know it?’ she said.
‘well, yes. i went past it, once . . .’ oh no, he thought, as his mind ran ahead of the conversation, oh, please, no . . .
‘it wasn’t a bad job,’ said miss dearheart. ‘in our office we had to inspect drafts and cheques. looking for forgeries, you know? and one day i let four through. four fakes! it cost the bank two thousand dollars. they were cash drafts, and the signatures were perfect. i got sacked for that. they said they had to do something, otherwise the customers would lose confidence. it’s not fun, having people think you might be a crook. and that’s what happens to people like us. people like gilt always get away with it. are you all right?’
‘hmm?’ said moist.
‘you look a bit . . . off colour.’
that had been a good day, moist thought. at least, up until now it had been a good day. he’d been quite pleased with it at the time. you weren’t supposed ever to meet the people afterwards. gods damn mr pump and his actuarial concept of murder!
he sighed. oh well, it had come to this. he’d known it would. him and gilt, arm-wrestling to see who was the biggest bastard.
‘this is the country edition of the times,’ he said. ‘they don’t go to press with the city edition for another ninety minutes, in case of late-breaking news. i think i can wipe the smile off his face, at least.’
‘what are you going to do?’ said miss dearheart.
moist adjusted the winged hat. ‘attempt the impossible,’ he said.
