Going Postal (41 page)
He felt her draw nearer.
“It’s not a lie,” she said. “It’s what ought to have been true. It pleased my parents.”
“Do
they
think it’s true?”
“They don’t want to think it isn’t.”
No one does. I can’t stand this
, Moist thought. “Look, I know what I’m like,” he said. “I’m not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I’m not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I’m still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can’t tell. I mess with people’s heads—”
“You’re fooling no one but yourself,” said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.
Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving
on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn’t seem to work anymore, the flair wasn’t there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn’t seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—
And an angel appeared.
“What just happened?” said Miss Dearheart.
Perhaps you do get two…
“Only a passing thought,” said Moist. He let the golden glow rise. He’d fooled them all, even her. But the good bit was that he could go on doing it, he didn’t have to stop. All he had to do was remind himself, every few months, that he could quit anytime. Provided he knew he could, he’d never have to. And there was Miss Dearheart, without a cigarette in her mouth, only a foot away. He leaned forward—
There was a loud cough behind them. It turned out to have come from Groat, who was holding a large parcel.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir, but this just arrived for you,” he said, and sniffed disapprovingly. “Messenger, not one of ours. I thought I’d better bring it straight up, ’cos there’s something moving about inside it…”
There was. And airholes, Moist noted. He opened the lid with care and pulled his fingers away just in time.
“
Twelve and a half percent! Twelve and a half percent!
” screamed the cockatoo, and landed on Groat’s hat.
There was no note inside, and nothing on the box but the address.
“Why’d someone send you a parrot?” said Groat, not caring to raise a hand within reach of the curved beak.
“It’s Gilt’s, isn’t it,” said Miss Dearheart. “He’s
given
you the bird?”
Moist smiled. “It looks like it, yes. Pieces of eight!”
“
Twelve and a half percent!
” yelled the bird.
“Take it away, will you, Mr. Groat?” said Moist. “Teach it to say…to say…”
“‘Trust me’?” said Miss Dearheart.
“Good one!” said Moist. “Yes, do that, Mr. Groat.”
When Groat was gone, with the cockatoo now balancing happily on his shoulder, Moist turned back to the woman.
“And tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll
definitely
get the chandeliers back!”
“What? Most of this place doesn’t have a ceiling,” said Miss Dearheart, laughing.
“First things first. Trust me! And then who knows? I might even find the fine polished counter! There’s no end to what’s possible!”
And out in the bustling cavern, white feathers began to fall from the roof. They may have been from an angel, but were more likely to be coming from the pigeon that a hawk was just disemboweling on a beam. Still, they
were
feathers. It’s all about style.
S
OMETIMES THE TRUTH
is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.
Lord Vetinari stood at the top of the stairs in the Great Hall of the place, and looked down on his clerks. They’d taken over the whole huge floor for this Concludium.
Chalked markings—circles, squares, triangles—were drawn here and there on the floor. Within them, papers and ledgers were piled in dangerously neat heaps. And there were clerks, some working inside the outlines and some moving noiselessly from one outline to another bearing pieces of paper as if they were a sacrament. Periodically, clerks and watchmen arrived with more files and ledgers, which were solemnly received, assessed, and added to the relevant pile.
Abacuses clicked everywhere. Clerks padded back and forth, and sometimes they would meet in a triangle and bend their heads in quiet discussion. This might result in them heading away in new directions or, increasingly, as the night wore on, one clerk would go and chalk a new outline, which would begin to fill with paper. Sometimes an outline would be emptied, rubbed out, and its contents distributed among nearby outlines.
No enchanter’s circle, no mystic’s mandala was ever drawn with such painfully meticulous care as the conclusions being played out on the floor. Hour after hour, it went on, with a patience that at first terrified and then bored. It was the warfare of clerks, and it harried the enemy through many columns and files. Moist could read words that weren’t there, but the clerks found the numbers that weren’t there, or were there twice, or were there but going the wrong way. They didn’t hurry. Peel away the lies, and the truth would emerge, naked and ashamed and with nowhere else to hide.
At three
A.M.
, Mr. Cheeseborough arrived, in a hurry and bitter tears, to learn that his bank was a shell of paper. He brought his own clerks, with their nightshirts tucked into hastily donned trousers, who went down on their knees alongside the other men and spread out more papers, double-checking figures in the hope that if you stared at numbers long enough, they’d add up differently.
And then the Watch turned up with a small red ledger, and it was given a circle of its own, and soon the whole pattern re-formed around it…
It wasn’t until almost dawn that the somber men arrived. They were older and fatter and better—but not showily, never showily—dressed, and moved with the gravity of serious money. They were financiers, too, richer than kings (who are often quite poor), but hardly anyone in the city outside their circle knew them or would notice them in the street. They spoke quietly to Cheeseborough as to one who’d suffered a bereavement, and then talked among themselves, and used little gold propelling pencils in neat little notebooks to make figures dance and jump through hoops. Then quiet agreement was reached and hands were shaken, which in this circle carried infinitely more weight than any written contract. The first domino had been steadied. The pillars of the world ceased to tremble. The Credit Bank would open in the morning, and when it did so, bills would be honored, wages would be paid, the city would be fed.
They’d saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever—provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look.
This is known as Finance.
On the way back home to a simple breakfast, one of them dropped by the Guild of Assassins to pay his respects to his old friend Lord Downey, during which visit current affairs were only lightly touched upon. And Reacher Gilt, wherever he had gone, was now certainly the worst insurance risk in the world. The people who guard the rainbow don’t like those who get in the way of the sun.
T
HE FIGURE IN THE CHAIR
did not have long hair, or an eyepatch. It didn’t have a beard or, rather, it wasn’t intending to have a beard. It hadn’t shaved for several days.
It groaned.
“Ah, Mr. Gilt,” said Lord Vetinari, looking up from his playing board. “You are awake, I see. I’m sorry for the manner in which you were brought here, but some quite expensive people wish to see you dead and I thought it would be a good idea if we had this little meeting before they did.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” said the figure. “My name is Randolph Stippler, and I have papers to prove it—”
“And wonderful papers they are, Mr. Gilt. But enough of that. No, it is about angels that I wish to talk to you now.”
Reacher Gilt, wincing occasionally as the aches from three days of being carried by a golem made themselves felt, listened in mounting puzzlement to the angelic theories of Lord Vetinari.
“—brings me on to my point, Mr. Gilt. The Royal Mint needs an entirely new approach. Frankly, it’s moribund and not at all what we need in the Century of the Anchovy. Yes, there is a way forward. In recent months, Mr. Lipwig’s celebrated stamps have become a second currency in this city. So light, so easy to carry, you can even send them through the mail! Fascinating, Mr. Gilt. At last people are loosening their grip on the idea that money should be shiny. Do you know that a typical one-penny stamp may change hands up to twelve times before being affixed to an envelope and redeemed? What the Mint needs to see it through is a man who understands the
dream
of currency. There will be a salary and, I believe, a hat.”
“
You
are offering me a
job
?”
“Yes, Mr. Stippler,” said Vetinari. “And, to show the sincerity of my offer, let me point out the door behind you. If at any time in this interview you feel you wish to leave, you have only to step through it, and you will never hear from me again…”
Some little time later, the clerk Drumknott padded into the room. Lord Vetinari was reading a report on the previous night’s secret meeting of the Thieves’ Guild
inner
inner council.
He tidied up the trays quite noiselessly, and then came and stood by Vetinari.
“There are ten overnights off the clacks, my lord,” he said. “It’s good to have it back in operation.”
“Indeed, yes,” said Vetinari, not looking up. “Otherwise how in the world would people be able to find out what we want them to think? Any foreign mail?”
“The usual packets, my lord. The Uberwald one has been most deftly tampered with.”
“Ah, dear Lady Margolotta,” said Vetinari, smiling.
“I’ve taken the liberty of removing the stamps for my nephew, my lord,” Drumnott went on.
“Of course,” said Vetinari, waving a hand.
Drumknott looked around the office and focused on the slab where the little stone armies were endlessly in combat. “Ah, I see you have won, my lord,” he said.
“Yes, I must make a note of the gambit.”
“But Mr. Gilt, I notice, is not here…”
Vetinari sighed. “You have to admire a man who
really
believes in freedom of choice,” he said, looking at the open doorway. “Sadly, he did not believe in angels.”
TERRY PRATCHETT’s
novels have sold more than thirty-five million (give or take a few million) copies worldwide. He lives in England. Visit his website at
www.terrypratchettbooks.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
An international stamp of approval
for bestselling author
PRAISE
TERRY PRATCHETT
and
GOING POSTAL
“A top-notch satirist.”
Denver Post
“Terry Pratchett may still be pegged as a comic novelist, but…he’s a lot more. In his range of invented characters, his adroit storytelling, and his clear-eyed acceptance of humankind’s foibles, he reminds me of no one in English literature as much as Geoffrey Chaucer. No kidding.”
Washington Post Book World
“It’s the perfect time to read Terry Pratchett’s
Going Postal…
Given his prolificacy and breezy style, it’s easy to underestimate Pratchett…He’s far more than a talented jokesmith, though. His books are almost always better than they have to be, and
Going Postal
is no exception.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Terry Pratchett is difficult to review because you want to offer up your favorite scenes and allusions…Pratchett revels in pricking pomp and assurance…He can move from farce to sadness in seconds.”
New York Times Book Review
“Pungent, satiric fantasy…In this novel you’ll find dedicated golems, a wheel that defies geometry, and lots of undelivered mail—plus the goddess of kitchen drawers. Read and laugh.”
Reno Gazette-Journal
“Terry Pratchett seems constitutionally unable to write a page without at least a twitch of the grin muscles…[But] the notions Pratchett plays with are nae so narrow or nae so silly as your ordinary British farce. Seriously.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
“A first-class delivery from an old master.”
Daily Mail
(London)
“This stand-alone novel happily reunites the reader with some of Ankh-Morpork’s recurring characters…while primarily introducing new characters, new situations, and new laughs. New (and twisted) one-liners, newer (and more twisted) punch lines…Welcome back to Discworld, Pratchett’s favorite comedy playground…Laughing at (or with) the Postal Service never felt so good!”
Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader
“It’s a weird (Disc) world after all, and not miles away from our own.”
Fort Myers News-Press
(FL)
“We are all going postal…but only Terry Pratchett can make us laugh about it…Delightful…The plot, though it rattles along, is secondary to the pleasures of the writing…Pratchett’s joy in his creations, in jokes, puns, the idea of letters and language itself makes
Going Postal
one of the best expressions of his unstoppable flow of comic invention.”
Times of London
“Pratchett’s latest special-delivery delight, set in his wonderfully crazed city of Ankh-Morpork…Readers will cheer…Thanks to the timely subject matter and Pratchett’s effervescent wit, this twenty-ninth Discworld novel…may capture more of the American audience he deserves.”
Publishers Weekly
(* Starred Review *)
“His inventiveness—with people, with plots, with things—is seemingly inexhaustible…Pratchett always gives you more than you dare expect…Pratchett can make you giggle helplessly and then grin grimly at the sharpness of his wit…He knows that terrible things exist and happen, and he invents a benign otherworld in which we can face them, and laugh.”
A.S. Byatt
“Read it and laugh, but don’t forget your brains.”
Locus