Going Postal (14 page)

Meanwhile, the mail down there was moving more prosaically.

Right under the dome was a clock with a face pointing in each of the four directions. As Moist watched it, the big hand clanked to the top of the hour.

A horn blew. The frantic ballet ceased as, somewhere below Moist, some doors opened and two lines of men in
the uniforms, sir, royal blue with brass buttons! You should’ve seen them!
marched in the hall in two lines and stood to attention in front of the big doors. A large man in a rather grander version of the uniform and with a face like a toothache was waiting there for them; he wore a large hourglass hanging in a gimballed brass cage at his belt, and he looked at the waiting men as if he had seen worse sights but not often and even then only on the soles of his enormous boots.

He held up the hourglass with an air of evil satisfaction, and took a deep breath before roaring: “Numbahhh Four Delivereeee…stand!”

The words reached Moist’s ears slightly muffled, as though he was hearing them through cardboard. The postmen already at attention contrived to look even more alert.

The big man glared at them and took another huge gulp of air.

“Numbahhh Three Delivereeee
wait for it, wait for it!…
DELIVAAAAAAAH!”

The two lines marched past him and out into the day.

Once, we were postmen…

I’ve got to find a real stairway
, Moist thought, pushing himself away from the edge.
I’m…hallucinating the past. But I’m standing in the present. It’s like sleepwalking. I don’t walk out onto fresh air and end up as one more chalk outline
.

He turned around and someone walked right through him.

The sensation was unpleasant, like a sudden snap of fever. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is seeing someone’s head walk through yours. The view is mostly gray, with traces of red and hollow hints of sinus. You would not wish to know about the eyeballs.

…face like a mask, sir, like he’d seen a ghost…

Moist’s stomach heaved, and, as he turned with his hand over his mouth, he saw a young postman looking in his general direction with a look of horror that probably reflected the one on the unseen Moist’s face. Then the boy shivered and hurried away.

So Mr. Ignavia had got this far, too. He’d been smart enough to work out the floor, but seeing someone’s head going through your own, well, that could take you the wrong way…

Moist ran after the boy. Up here, he was lost; he must have toured less than a tenth of the building with Groat, the way constantly being blocked by glaciers of mail. There were other stairs, he knew, and they still existed in the present. Ground level, that was the goal, a floor you could rely on.

The boy went through a door and into what looked like a room full of parcels, but Moist could see an open doorway at the far end, and a hint of banister.

He speeded up, and the floor disappeared from under his feet.

The light vanished. He was briefly and horribly aware of dry letters all around him, falling with him. He landed on more letters, choking as dry, ancient mail piled up. For a moment, through the rain of paper, he caught a glimpse of a dusty window half covered with letters, and then he was submerged again. The heap under him began to move, slipping down and sideways. There was the crack of what could have been a door being burst off its hinges, and the sideways flow increased noticeably. He struck out madly for the surface in time for his head to hit the top of a door jamb, and then the current dragged him under.

Helpless now, tumbling in the river of paper, Moist dimly felt the jolt as a floor gave way. The mail poured through, taking him with it and slamming him into another drift of envelopes. The light disappeared as thousands of letters thudded down on top of him, and then sound died, too.

Darkness and silence squeezed him in a fist.

Moist von Lipwig knelt with his head resting on his arms. There was air here but it was warm and stale and wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t move more than a finger.

He could die here. He
would
die here. There must be tons of mail around him.

“I commend my soul to any god who can find it,” he mumbled in the stifling air.

A line of blue danced across his inner vision.

It was handwriting. But it spoke.

“
Dear Mother, I have arrived safely and found good lodgings at…
”

The voice sounded like a country boy but it had a…a
scritchy
quality to it. If a letter could talk, it would sound like that. The words rambled on, the characters curving and slanting awkwardly under the pen of a reluctant writer—

—and as it ran on, another line also began to write itself across the dark, crisply and neatly:

“
Dear Sir, I have the honor to inform you that I am the sole Executor of the estate of the late Sir Davie Thrills, of The Manor, Mixed Blessings, and it appears that you are the sole—
”

The voice continued in words so clipped that you could
hear
the shelves full of legal books behind the desk, but a third line was beginning:

“
Dear Mrs. C. Clarke, I much regret to inform you that in an engagement with the enemy yesterday your husband, C. Clark, fought valiantly but was—
”

And then they all wrote at once. Voices in their dozens, their hundreds, their thousands, filled his ears and squiggled across his inner vision. They didn’t shout, they just unrolled the words until his head was full of sound, which formed
new
words, just as all the instruments of an orchestra tinkle and scrape and blast to produce one crescendo—

Moist tried to scream, but envelopes filled his mouth.

And then a hand closed on his leg and he was in the air and upside down.

“Ah, Mr. Lipvig!” boomed the voice of Mr. Pump. “You Have Been Exploring! Welcome To Your New Office!”

Moist spat out paper and sucked air into stinging lungs.

“They’re…alive!” he gasped. “They’re all
alive
! And angry! They talk! It was
not
a hallucination! I’ve had hallucinations and they don’t hurt! I know how the others died!”

“I Am Happy For You, Mr. Lipvig,” said Pump, turning him the right way up and wading waist-deep across the room, while behind them more mail trickled through a hole in the ceiling.

“You don’t understand! They talk! They want…” Moist hesitated. He could still hear the whispering in his head. He said, as much to himself as for the benefit of the golem, “It’s as though they want to be…read.”

“That Is The Function Of A Letter,” said Pump calmly. “You Will See That I Have Almost Cleared Your Apartment.”

“Listen, they’re just paper! And they
talked
!”

“Yes,” rumbled the golem ponderously. “This Place Is A Tomb Of Unheard Words. They Strive To Be Heard.”

“Oh, come on! Letters are just paper, they can’t
speak
!”

“I Am Just Clay, And I Listen,” said Pump, with the same infuriating calm.

“Yes, but you’ve got added mumbo-jumbo—”

The red fire rose behind Pump’s eyes as he turned to stare at Moist.

“I went…backwards in time, I think,” Moist mumbled, backing away. “In…my head. That’s how Sideburn died! He fell down stairs that weren’t there in the past! And Mr. Ignavia died of fright! I’m sure of it! But I was inside the letters! And there must have been a…a hole in the floor, or something, and that…I fell, and I…” He stopped. “This place needs a priest, or a wizard. Someone who understands this kind of stuff. Not me!”

The golem scooped up two armfuls of the mail that had so recently entombed his client.

“You Are The Postmaster, Mr. Lipvig,” he said.

“That’s just Vetinari’s trick! I’m no postman, I’m just a fraud—”

“Mr. Lipwig?” said a nervous voice from the doorway behind him. He turned and saw the boy Stanley, who flinched at his expression.

“Yes?” snapped Moist. “What the hell do you—what do you want, Stanley? I’m a little busy right now.”

“There’s some men,” said Stanley, grinning uncertainly. “They’re downstairs. Some men.”

Moist glared at him, but Stanley seemed to have finished for now.

“And these men want—?” he prompted.

“They want you, Mr. Lipwig,” said Stanley. “They said they want to see the man who wants to be postmaster.”

“I don’t
want
to be—” Moist began, but gave up. There was no point in taking it out on the boy.

“Excuse Me, Postmaster,” said the golem behind him. “I Wish To Complete My Assigned Task.”

Moist stood aside as the clay man walked out into the corridor, the old boards groaning under his enormous feet. Outside, you could see how he’d managed to clean out the office. The walls of other rooms were bowed out almost to the point of exploding. When a golem pushes things into a room, they stay pushed.

The sight of the plodding figure calmed him down a little. There was something intensely…well, down-to-earth about Mr. Pump.

What he needed now was normal things, normal people to talk to, normal things to do to drive the voices out of his head. He brushed fragments of paper off his increasingly greasy suit.

“All right,” he said, trying to find his tie, which had ended up hanging down his back. “I shall see what they want.”

T
HEY WERE WAITING
on the half-landing on the big staircase. They were old men, thin and bowed, like slightly older copies of Groat. They wore the same ancient uniforms, but there was something odd about them.

Each man had the skeleton of a pigeon wired onto the top of his peaked hat.

“Be you the Unfranked Man?” growled one of them, as he approached.

“What? Who? Am I?” said Moist. Suddenly, the idea of normality was ebbing again.

“Yes, you are, sir,” whispered Stanley beside him. “You have to say yes, sir. Gosh, sir, I wish it was me doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“For the second time: be you the Unfranked Man?” said the old man, looking angry. Moist noticed that he was missing the top joints on the middle fingers of his right hand.

“I suppose so. If you insist,” he said. This didn’t meet with any approval at all.

“For the last time: be you the Unfranked Man?” This time there was real menace in the voice.

“Yes, all right! For the purposes of this conversation, yes! I
am
the Unfranked Man!” Moist shouted. “Now can we—”

Something black was dropped over his head from behind and he felt strings pulled tightly around his neck.

“The Unfranked Man is tardy,” crackled another elderly voice in his ear, and unseen but tough hands took hold of him. “No postman
he
!”

“You’ll be fine, sir,” said the voice of Stanley, as Moist struggled. “Don’t worry. Mr. Groat will guide you. You’ll do it easily, sir.”

“Do what?” said Moist. “Let go of me, you daft old devils!”

“The Unfranked Man dreads the Walk,” one assailant hissed.

“Aye, the Unfranked Man will be Returned to Sender in no short order,” said another.

“The Unfranked Man must be weighed in the balance,” said a third.

“Stanley, fetch Mr. Pump right now!” shouted Moist, but the hood was thick and clinging.

“Mustn’t do that, sir,” said Stanley. “Mustn’t do that at all, sir. It will be all right, sir. It’s just a…a test, sir. It’s The Order of the Post, sir.”

Funny hats
, Moist thought, and began to relax.
Hoodwinks and threats…I
know
this stuff. It’s mysticism for tradesmen. There’s not a city in the world without its Loyal and Ancient and Justified and Hermetic Order of little men who think they can reap the secrets of the ancients for a couple of hours every Thursday night and don’t realize what prats they look in a robe. I should know, I must have joined a dozen of ’em myself. I bet there’s a secret handshake. I know more secret handshakes than the gods. I’m in about as much danger as I would be in a class of five-year-olds. Less, probably. Unfranked Man…good grief
.

He relaxed. He let himself be led down the stairs, and turned around. Ah, yes, that’s right. You’ve got to make the initiate fear, but everyone knows it’s just a party game. It’ll
sound
bad, it might even
feel
bad, but it won’t
be
bad. He remembered joining, what was it, oh yes, The Men Of The Furrow, in some town out in the stalks.
*
He’d been blindfolded, of course, and The Men had made all the horrific noises they could imagine, and then a voice in the darkness had said, “Shake hands with the Old Master!” and Moist had reached out and shaken a goat’s foot. Those who got out of there with clean pants won.

Next day he’d swindled three of his trusting new Brothers out of eighty dollars. That didn’t seem quite so funny now.

The old postmen were taking him into the big hall. He could tell by the echoes. And there were other people there, according to those little hairs on the back of his neck. Not just people, maybe; he thought he heard a muffled growl. But that was how it went, right? Things had to sound worrying. The key was to be bold, act brave and forthright.

His escorts left him. Moist stood in darkness for a moment, and then felt a hand grasp his elbow.

“It’s me, sir. Probationary Senior Postman Groat, sir. Don’t you worry about a thing, sir. I’m your Temporary Deacon for tonight, sir.”

“Is this necessary, Mr. Groat?” sighed Moist. “I
was
appointed postmaster, you know.”

“Appointed, yes. Accepted, not yet, sir. Proof of Posting Is Not Proof of Delivery, sir.”

“What
are
you talking about?”

“Can’t tell secrets to an Unfranked Man, sir,” said Groat piously. “You’ve done well to get this far, sir.”

“Oh, all right,” said Moist, trying to sound jovial. “What’s the worst that can happen, eh?”

Groat was silent.

“I said—” Moist began.

“I was just working that out, sir,” said Groat. “Let’s see…yes, sir. The worst that can happen is you lose all your fingers on one hand, are crippled for life, and break half the bones in your body. Oh, and then they don’t let you join. But don’t you worry about a thing, sir, not a thing!”