Going Postal

by Terence David John Pratchett

  ‘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 the
se 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.