Going Postal (39 page)
Adrian tugged at his rope. “Hey, the canvas is stuck,” he announced to the tower in general. “It must have been caught up when we furled it…”
“Oh, I’m sure the Woodpecker will work,” said Moist, plunging on. “It might even damage enough towers for long enough. But Gilt will twist his way out of it. Do you understand? He’ll shout about sabotage!”
“So what?” said Mad Al. “We’ll have this lot back on the cart in an hour and no one will know we were ever here!”
“I’ll climb up and free it, shall I?” said Undecided Adrian, shaking the canvas.
“I said it won’t
work
,” said Moist, waving him away. “Look, Mr. Al, this isn’t going to be settled by fire. It’s going to be settled with words. We’ll tell the world what happened to the Trunk.”
“You’ve been talking to Killer about that?” said Alex.
“Yes,” said Moist.
“But you can’t prove anything,” said Alex. “We heard it was all legal.”
“I doubt it,” said Moist. “But that doesn’t matter. I don’t have to prove anything. I said this is about words, and how you can twist them, and how you can spin them in people’s heads so that they think the way you want them to. We’ll send a message of our own, and do you know what? The boys in the towers will
want
to send it, and when people know what it says they’ll
want
to believe it, because they’ll want to live in a world where it’s true. It’s my words against Gilt’s, and I’m better at them than he is. I can take him down with a sentence, Mr. Mad, and leave every tower standing. And no one will ever know how it was done—”
There was a brief exclamation behind them, and the sound of canvas unrolling quite fast.
“Trust me,” said Moist.
“We’ll never get another chance like this,” said Mad Al.
“Exactly!” said Moist.
“One man has died for every three towers standing,” said Mad Al. “Did you know that?”
“You know they’ll never really die while the Trunk is alive,” said Moist. It was a wild shot, but it hit something, he sensed it. He rushed on: “It lives while the code is shifted, and they live with it, always Going Home. Will you stop that? You can’t stop it! I won’t stop it! But I
can
stop Gilt!
Trust
me!”
The canvas hung like a sail, as if someone intended to launch the tower. It was eighty feet high and thirty feet wide and moved a little in the wind.
“Where’s Adrian?” said Moist.
They looked at the sail. They rushed to the edge of the tower. They looked down into darkness.
“Adrian?” said Mad Al uncertainly.
A voice from below said: “Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Just, you know…hanging around? And an owl has just landed on my head.”
There was a small tearing noise beside Moist. Sane Alex had cut a hole in the canvas.
“Here it comes!” he reported.
“What?” said Moist.
“The message! They’re sending from Tower 2! Take a look—” Alex said, backing away.
Moist peered through the slit, back toward the city. In the distance, a tower was sparkling.
Mad Al strode over to the half-sized clacks array and grabbed the handles.
“All right, Mr. Lipwig, let’s hear
your
plan!” he said. “Alex, give me a hand! Adrian, just…hang on, all right?”
“It’s trying to push a dead mouse in my ear,” said a reproachful voice from below.
Moist shut his eyes, lined up the thoughts that had been buzzing for hours, and began to speak.
Behind and above him, the huge expanse of canvas was just enough to block the line of sight between the two distant towers. In front of him, the Smoking Gnu’s half-sized tower was just the
right
size to look, to the next tower in line, like a bigger tower a long way off. At night all you could see were the lights.
The clacks in front of him shook as the shutters rattled. And now a new message was dropping across the sky…
It was only a few hundred words. When Moist had finished, the clacks rattled out the last few letters and then fell silent.
After a while, Moist said: “Will they pass it along?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mad Al, in a flat voice. “They’ll send it. You’re sitting up in the tower in the mountains and you get a signal like that? You’ll get it away and out of your tower as fast as you can.”
“I don’t know if we ought to shake your hand or throw you off the tower,” said Sane Alex sullenly. “That was evil. What sort of person could dream up something like that?”
“Me. Now let’s pull Adrian up, shall we?” said Moist quickly. “And then I’d better get back to the city…”
A
N OMNISCOPE
is one of the most powerful instruments known to magic, and therefore one of the most useless.
It can see everything, with ease. Getting it to see
anything
is where wonders have to be performed, because there is so much everything—which is to say, everything that can, will, has, should, or might happen in all possible universes—that anything, any previously specified
thing
, is very hard to find. Before Hex had evolved the control thaumarhythms, completing in a day a task that would have taken five hundred wizards at least ten years, omniscopes were used purely as mirrors, because of the wonderful blackness they showed. This, it turned out, is because “nothing to see” is what most of the universe consists of, and many a wizard has peacefully trimmed his beard while gazing into the dark heart of the cosmos.
There were very few steerable omniscopes. They took a long time to make and cost a great deal. And the wizards were not at all keen on making any more. Omniscopes were for them to look at the universe, not for the universe to look back at them.
Besides, the wizards did not believe in making life too easy for people. At least, for people who weren’t wizards. An omniscope was a rare, treasured, and delicate thing.
But today was a special occasion, and they had thrown open the doors to the richer, cleaner, and more hygienic sections of Ankh-Morpork society. A long table had been set for Second Tea. Nothing too excessive—a few dozen roast fowls, a couple of cold salmon, one hundred linear feet of salad bar, a pile of loaves, one or two kegs of beer, and, of course, the chutney, pickle, and relish train, one trolley not being considered big enough. People had filled their plates and were standing around chatting and, above all, Being There. Moist slipped in unnoticed, for now, because people were watching the university’s biggest omniscope.
Archchancellor Ridcully thumped the side of the thing with his hand, causing it to rock.
“It’s still not
working
, Mr. Stibbons!” he bellowed. “Here’s that damn enormous fiery eye again!”
“I’m sure we have the right—” Ponder began, fiddling with the rear of the big disc.
“It’s me, sir, Devious Collabone, sir,” said a voice from the omniscope. The fiery eye pulled back and was replaced by an enormous fiery nose. “I’m here at the terminal tower, sir, in Genua. Sorry about the redness, sir. I’ve picked up an allergy to seaweed, sir.”
“Hello, Mr. Collabone!” yelled Ridcully. “How are you? How’s the—”
“—shellfish research—” murmured Ponder Stibbons.
“—shellfish research comin’ along?”
“Not very well, actually, sir, I’ve developed a nasty—”
“Good, good! Lucky chap!” Ridcully yelled, cupping his hands to increase the volume. “I wouldn’t mind bein’ in Genua myself at this time of year! Sun, sea, surf, and sand, eh?”
“Actually it’s the wet season, sir, and I’m a bit worried about this fungus that’s growing on the omni—”
“Wonderful!” shouted Ridcully. “Well, I can’t stand here and chew your fat all day! Has anything arrived? We are agog!”
“Could you just stand back a little bit further, please, Mr. Collabone?” said Ponder. “And you don’t really need to speak so…loudly, Archchancellor.”
“Chap’s a long way away, man!” said Ridcully.
“Not as such, sir,” said Ponder, with well-honed patience. “Very well, Mr. Collabone, you may proceed.”
The crowd behind the Archchancellor pressed forward. Mr. Collabone backed away. This was all a bit too much for a man who spent his days with no one to talk to but bivalves.
“Er, I’ve had a message by clacks, sir, but—” he began.
“Nothin’ from the Post Office?” said Ridcully.
“No, sir. Nothing, sir.”
There were cheers and boos and general laughter from the crowd. From his shadowy corner, Moist saw Lord Vetinari, right by the Archchancellor. He scanned the rest of the crowd and spotted Reacher Gilt, standing off to one side and, surprisingly, not smiling. And Gilt saw him.
One look was enough. The man wasn’t certain. Not
totally
certain.
Welcome to
fear, said Moist to himself.
It’s hope, turned inside out. You know it can’t go wrong, you’re sure it can’t go wrong…
But it might.
I’ve got you
.
Devious Collabone coughed. “Er, but I don’t think this is the message Archchancellor Ridcully sent,” he said, his voice gone squeaky with nervousness.
“What makes you think that, man?”
“Because it says it isn’t,” Collabone quavered. “It says it’s from dead people…”
“You mean it’s an old message?” said Ridcully.
“Er, no, sir. Er…I’d better read it, shall I? Do you want me to read it?”
“That’s the
point
, man!”
In the big disc of glass, Collabone cleared his throat.
“
Who will listen to the dead? We who died so that words could fly demand justice now. These are the crimes of the Board of the Grand Trunk: theft, embezzlement, breach of trust, corporate murder—
”
Lord Vetinari requests silence • Mr. Lipwig comes down
• Mr. Pump moves on • Fooling no one but yourself
• The bird • The Concludium • Freedom of choice
T
HE
G
REAT
H
ALL
was in an uproar. Most of the wizards took the opportunity to congregate at the buffet, which was now clear. If there’s one thing a wizard hates, it’s having to wait while the person in front of them is of two minds about coleslaw. It’s a salad bar, they say, it’s got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn’t
be
a salad bar, you’re not here to
look
at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth?
The Lecturer in Recent Runes ladled more bacon bits into his salad bowl, having artfully constructed buttresses of celery and breastworks of cabbage to increase its depth five times.
“Any of you fellows know what this is all about?” he said, raising his voice above the din. “Seems to be upsetting a lot of people.”
“It’s this clacks business,” said the Chair of Recent Runes. “I’ve never trusted it. Poor Collabone. Decent young man in his way. A good man with a whelk. Seems to be in a spot of bother…”
It was quite a large spot. Devious Collabone was opening and shutting his mouth on the other side of the glass like a stranded fish.
In front of him, Mustrum Ridcully reddened with anger, his tried-and-tested approach to most problems.
“…Sorry, sir, but this is what it says and you asked me to read it,” Collabone protested. “It goes on and on, sir—”
“And that’s what the clacks people gave you?” the Archchancellor demanded. “Are you
sure
?”
“Yes, sir. They did look at me in a funny way, sir, but this is definitely it! Why should I make anything up, Archchancellor? I spend most of my time in a tank, sir! A boring, boring, lonely tank, sir.”
“Not one more word!” screamed Greenyham. “I forbid it!” Beside him, Mr. Nutmeg had sprayed his drink across several dripping guests.
“Excuse me? You
forbid
, sir?” said Ridcully, turning on Greenyham in sudden fury. “Sir, I am the Master of this college! I will not, sir, be told what to do in my own university! If there is anything to be forbidden here, sir,
I
will do the forbidding! Thank you! Go ahead, Mr. Collabone!”
“Er, er, er…” Collabone panted, longing for death.
“I said carry on, man!”
“Er, er…yes…
there was no safety. There was no pride. All there was was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died—
”
“Is there no law in this place! That is outright slander!” shouted Stowley. “It’s a trick of some sort!”
“By whom, sir?” roared Ridcully. “Do you mean to suggest that Mr. Collabone, a young wizard of great integrity, who I may say is doing wonderful work with snakes—”
“—shellfish—” murmured Ponder Stibbons.
“—shellfish, is playing some kind of
joke
? How dare you, sir! Continue, Mr. Collabone!”
“I, I, I—”
“That is an
order
, Dr. Collabone!”
*
“Er—
blood oils the machinery of the Grand Trunk as willing, loyal people pay with their lives for the board’s culpable stupidity—
”
The hubbub rose again. Moist saw Lord Vetinari’s gaze traverse the room. He didn’t duck in time. The Patrician’s stare passed right through him, carrying away who knew what. An eyebrow raised in interrogation. Moist looked away, and sought out Gilt.
He wasn’t there.
In the omniscope, Mr. Collabone’s nose now glowed like a beacon. He struggled, dropping pages, losing his place, but pressing on with the dogged, dull determination of a man who could spend all day watching one oyster.
“—nothing less than an attempt to blacken our good names in front of the whole city!” Stowley was protesting.
“
—unaware of the toll that is being taken. What can we say of the men that caused this, who sat in comfort around their table and killed us by numbers? This—
”
“I will sue the university! I will sue the university!” screamed Greenyham. He picked up a chair and hurled it at the omniscope. Halfway to the glass it turned into a small flock of doves, who panicked and soared up to the roof.
“Oh,
please
sue the university!” Ridcully bellowed. “We’ve got a
pond
full of people who tried to sue the university—”
“Silence,” said Vetinari.
It wasn’t a very loud word, but it had an effect rather like that of a drop of black ink in a glass of clear water. The word spread out in coils and tendrils, getting everywhere. It strangled the noise.
Of course, there is always someone not paying attention. “And furthermore,” Stowley went on, oblivious to the unfolding hush in his own little world of righteous indignation, “it’s plain that—”
“I
will
have silence,” Vetinari stated.
Stowley stopped, looked around, and deflated. Silence ruled.
“Very good,” said Vetinari quietly. He nodded at Commander Vimes of the Watch, who whispered to another watchman, who pushed his way through the crowd and toward the door.
Vetinari turned to Ridcully. “Archchancellor, I would be grateful if you would instruct your student to continue, please?” he went on, in the same calm tone.
“Certainly! Off you go, Professor Collabone. In your own time.”
“Er, er, er, er, it says further on:
The men obtained control of the Trunk via a ruse known as the Double Lever, in the main using money entrusted to them by clients who did not suspect that—
”
“Stop reading that!” Greenyham shouted. “This is ridiculous! It is just slander upon slander!”
“I’m certain I spoke, Mr. Greenyham,” said Vetinari.
Greenyham faltered.
“Good. Thank you,” said Vetinari. “These are very serious allegations, certainly. Embezzlement? Murder? I’m sure that Mr., sorry,
Professor
Collabone is a trustworthy man”—in the omniscope, Devious Collabone, Unseen University’s newest professor, nodded desperately—“who is only reading what has been delivered, so it would appear that they have originated from within your own company.
Serious
allegations, Mr. Greenyham. Made in front of all these people. Are you suggesting I should treat them as some sort of prank? The city is watching, Mr. Greenyham. Oh, Mr. Stowley appears to be ill.”
“This is not the place for—” Greenyham tried, aware once more of the creaking of ice.
“It is the
ideal
place,” said Vetinari. “It is
public
. In the circumstances, given the nature of the allegations, I’m sure everyone would require that I get to the bottom of them as soon as possible, if only to prove them totally groundless.” He looked around. There was a chorus of agreement. Even the upper crust loved a show.
“What do
you
say, Mr. Greenyham?” said Vetinari.
Greenyham said nothing. The cracks were spreading, the ice was breaking up on every side.
“Very well,” said Vetinari. He turned to the figure beside him.
“Commander Vimes, be so kind as to send men to the offices of the Grand Trunk Company, Ankh-Sto Associates, Sto Plains Holdings, Ankh Futures, and particularly to the premises of Ankh-Morpork Mercantile Credit Bank. Inform the manager, Mr. Cheeseborough, that the bank is closed for audit and I wish to see him in my office at his earliest convenience. Any person in any of those premises who so much as moves a piece of paper before my clerks arrive will be arrested and held complicit in any or all of such offenses as may be uncovered. While this is happening, moreover, no person associated with the Grand Trunk Company or any of its employees is to leave this room.”
“You can’t do that!” Greenyham protested weakly, but the fire had drained out of him. Mr. Stowley had collapsed on the floor, with his head in his hands.
“Can I not?” said Vetinari. “I am a tyrant. It’s what we do.”
“What is happening? Who am I? Where is this place?” moaned Stowley, a man who believed in laying down some groundwork as soon as possible.
“But there’s no evidence! That wizard’s lying! Someone must have been bribed!” Greenyham pleaded. Not only had the ice broken up, but he was on the ice floe with a big, hungry walrus.
“Mr. Greenyham,” said Lord Vetinari, “one more uninvited outburst from you and you will be imprisoned. I hope that is clear?”
“On what charge?” said Greenyham, still managing to find a last reserve of hauteur from somewhere.
“
There doesn’t have to be one!
” Robe swirling like the edge of darkness, Vetinari swung around to the omniscope and Devious Collabone, for whom two thousand miles suddenly wasn’t far enough. “Continue, Professor. There will be no further interruptions.”
Moist watched the audience as Collabone stuttered and mispronounced his way through the rest of the message. It dealt with generalities rather than particulars, but there were dates, and names, and thundering denunciations. There was nothing new, not
really
new, but it was packaged in fine language and it was delivered by the dead:
We who died on the dark towers demand this of you…
He ought to be ashamed.
It was one thing to put words in the mouths of the gods; priests did it all the time. But this, this was a step too far. You had to be some kind of bastard to think of something like this.
He relaxed a bit. A fine, upstanding citizen wouldn’t have stooped so low, but he hadn’t got this job because he was a fine, upstanding citizen. Some tasks needed a good, honest hammer. Others needed a twisty corkscrew.
With any luck, he could believe that, if he really tried.
T
HERE HAD BEEN
a late fall of snow, and the fir trees around Tower 181 were crusted with white under the hard, bright starlight.
Everyone was up there tonight—Grandad, Roger, Big Steve-oh, Wheezy Halfsides, who was a dwarf and had to sit on a cushion to reach the keyboards, and Princess.
There had been a few muffled exclamations as the message came through. Now there was silence, except for the sighing of the wind. Princess could see people’s breath in the air. Grandad was drumming his fingers on the woodwork.
Then Wheezy said: “Was that all real?”
The breath clouds got denser. People were relaxing, coming back to the real world.
“You saw the instructions we got,” said Grandad, staring across the dark forests. “Don’t change anything. Send it on, they said. We sent it on. We damn well did send it on!”
“Who was it from?” said Steve-oh.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Grandad. “Message comes in, message goes out, message moves on.”
“Yeah, but was it really from—” Steve-oh began.
“Bloody hell, Steve-oh, you really don’t know when to
shut up
, do you?” said Roger.
“Only I heard about Tower 93, where the guys died and the tower sent a distress signal all by itself,” mumbled Steve-oh. He was fast on the keys, but not knowing when to shut up was only one of his social failings. In a tower, it could get you killed.
“Dead Man’s Handle,” said Grandad. “You should know that. If there’s no activity for ten minutes when a signature key is slotted, the drum drops the jacquard into the slot and the counterweight falls, and the tower sends the help sign.” He spoke the words as if reading them from a manual.
“Yeah, but I heard that in Tower 93 the jacquard was wedged and—”
“I can’t stand this,” muttered Grandad. “Roger, let’s get this tower working again. We’ve got local signals to send, haven’t we?”
“Sure. And stuff waiting on the drum,” said Roger. “But Gilt said we weren’t to restart until—”
“Gilt can kiss my—” Grandad began, then remembered the company and finished: “—donkey. You read what went through just now! Do you think that bas—that man is still in charge?”
Princess looked out from the upstream window.
“182’s lit up,” she announced.
“Right! Let’s light up and shift code,” Grandad growled. “That’s what we do! And who’s going to stop us? All those without something to do, get out! We are
running
!”
Princess went out onto the little platform, to be out of the way. Underfoot the snow was like icing sugar, in her nostrils the air was like knives.
When she looked across the mountains, in the direction she’d learned to think of as downstream, she could see that Tower 180 was sending. At that moment, she heard the thump and click of 181’s own shutters opening, dislodging snow.
We shift code
, she thought,
it’s what we do
.
Up on the tower, watching the starlike twinkle of the Trunk in the clear, freezing air, it was being part of the sky.
And she wondered what Grandad feared more: that dead clacksmen could send messages to the living, or that they couldn’t.
C
OLLABONE FINISHED
. Then he produced a handkerchief and rubbed away at whatever the green stuff was that had begun to grow on the glass. This made a squeaking sound.
He peered nervously through the smear. “Is that all right, sir? I’m not in some sort of trouble, am I?” he asked. “Only at the moment I think I’m close to translating the mating call of the giant clam…”
“Thank you, Professor Collabone, a good job, well done, that will be all,” said Archchancellor Ridcully coldly. “Unhinge the mechanism, Mr. Stibbons.”
A look of fervid relief passed across Devious Collabone’s face just before the omniscope went blank.
“Mr. Pony, you are the chief engineer of the Grand Trunk, are you not?” said Vetinari, before the babble could rise again.
The engineer, suddenly the focus of attention, backed away, waving his hands frantically. “Please, Your Lordship! I’m just an engineer, I don’t
know
anything—”