Going Postal (3 page)

He risked a look behind him when he reached the back gate to the stables. There was a red glow in his room. Surely they weren’t torching the place over a matter of a few dollars? How stupid! Everyone
knew
that if you got lumbered with a good fake you palmed it off onto some other sucker as soon as possible, didn’t they? There was no helping some people.

His horse was alone in the stable, and seemed unimpressed to see him. He got the bridle on, while hopping on one foot. There was no point in bothering with a saddle. He knew how to ride without a saddle. Hell, once he’d ridden without pants, too, but luckily all the tar and feathers helped him stick to the horse. He was the world champion at leaving town in a hurry.

He went to lead the horse out of the stall, and heard the clink.

He looked down and kicked some straw away.

There was a bright yellow bar, joining two short lengths of chain with a yellow shackle attached, one for each leg. The only way this horse would go anywhere was by hopping, just like him.

They’d clamped it. They’d bloody
clamped
it…

“Oh, Mr. Lipppppwig!” the voice boomed out across the stable yard. “Do You Want To Know The
Rules
, Mr. Lipwig?”

He looked around in desperation. There was nothing in here to use as a weapon, and in any case weapons made him nervous, which was why he’d never, ever carried one. Weapons raised the ante far too high. It was much better to rely on a gift for talking his way out of things, confusing the issue, and, if that failed, some well-soled shoes and a cry of “Look, what’s that over there?”

But he had a definite feeling that while he could talk as much as he liked, out here no one was going to listen. As for speeding away, he’d just have to rely on hop.

There
was
a yard broom and a wooden feed bucket in the corner. He stuck the head of the broom under his armpit to make a crutch, and grabbed the bucket handle as heavy footsteps thudded toward the stable door. When the door was pushed open, he swung the bucket as hard as he could, and felt it shatter. Splinters filled the air. A moment later, there was the thump of a heavy body hitting the ground.

Moist hopped over it and plunged unsteadily into the dark.

Something as tough and hard as a shackle snapped around his good ankle. He hung from the broom handle for a second, and then collapsed.

“I Have Nothing But Good Feelings Toward You, Mr. Lipwig!” boomed the voice cheerfully.

Moist groaned. The broom must have been kept as an ornament, because it certainly hadn’t been used much on the accumulations in the stable yard. On the positive side, this meant he had fallen into something soft. On the negative side, it meant that he had fallen into something soft.

Someone grabbed a handful of his coat and lifted him bodily out of the muck.

“Up We Get, Mr. Lipwig!”

“It’s pronounced Lipvig, you moron,” he moaned. “A V, not a W!”

“Up Ve Get, Mr. Lipvig!” said the booming voice as his broom/crutch was pushed under his arm.

“What the hell
are
you?” Lipwig managed.

“I Am Your Parole Officer, Mr. Lipvig!”

Moist managed to turn around, and looked up, and then up again, into a gingerbread man’s face with two glowing red eyes in it. When it spoke, its mouth was a glimpse into an inferno.

“A golem? You’re a damn
golem
?”

The thing picked him up in one hand and slung him over its shoulder. It ducked into the stables and Moist, upside down with his nose pressed against the terra-cotta of the creature’s body, realized that it was picking up his horse in its other hand. There was a brief whinny.

“Ve Must Make Haste, Mr. Lipvig! You Are Due In Front Of Lord Vetinari At Eight O’clock! And At Vork By Nine!”

Moist groaned.

“A
H
,
M
R.
L
IPWIG
. Regrettably, we meet again,” said Lord Vetinari.

It was eight o’clock in the morning. Moist was swaying. His ankle felt better, but it was the only part of him that did.

“It walked all night!” he said. “All damn night! Carrying a horse as well!”

“Do sit
down
, Mr. Lipwig,” said Vetinari, looking up from the table and gesturing wearily to the chair. “By the way, ‘it’ is a ‘he.’ An honorific in this case, clearly, but I have great hopes of Mr. Pump.”

Moist saw the glow on the walls as, behind him, the golem smiled.

Vetinari looked down at the table again, and seemed to lose interest in Moist for a moment. A slab of stone occupied most of the table. Little carvings of dwarfs and trolls covered it. It looked like some kind of game.

“
Mr.
Pump?” said Moist.

“Hmm?” said Vetinari, moving his head to look at the board from a slightly different viewpoint.

Moist leaned toward the Patrician and jerked a thumb in the direction of the golem.

“
That
,” he said, “is
Mr.
Pump?”

“No,” said Lord Vetinari, leaning forward likewise and suddenly, completely and disconcertingly, focusing on Moist. “
He…
is Mr. Pump. Mr. Pump is a government official. Mr. Pump does not sleep. Mr. Pump does not eat. And Mr. Pump, Postmaster General,
does not stop
.”

“And that means what, exactly?”

“It means that if you are thinking of, say, finding a ship headed for Fourecks, on the basis that Mr. Pump is big and heavy and travels only at walking pace, Mr. Pump will follow you. You have to sleep. Mr. Pump does not. Mr. Pump does not breathe. The deep abyssal plains of the oceans present no barrier to Mr. Pump. Four miles an hour is six hundred and seventy-two miles a week. It all adds up. And when Mr. Pump catches you—”

“Ah, now,” said Moist, holding up a finger. “Let me stop you there. I
know
golems are not allowed to hurt people!”

Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. “Good heavens, wherever did you hear that?”

“It’s written on…something inside their heads! A scroll, or something. Isn’t it?” said Moist, uncertainty rising.

“Oh, dear.” The Patrician sighed. “Mr. Pump, just break one of Mr. Lipwig’s fingers, will you? Neatly, if you please.”

“Yes, Your Lordship.” The golem lumbered forward.

“Hey! No! What?” Moist waved his hands wildly and knocked game pieces tumbling. “Wait! Wait! There’s a
rule
! A golem mustn’t harm a human being or allow a human being to come to harm!”

Lord Vetinari raised a finger. “Just wait
one
moment, please, Mr. Pump. Very well, Mr. Lipwig, can you remember the next bit?”

“The next bit? What next bit?” said Moist. “There isn’t a next bit!”

Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow.

“Mr. Pump?” he said

“—‘Unless Ordered To Do So By Duly Constituted Authority,’” said the golem.

“I’ve never heard
that
bit before!” said Moist.

“Haven’t you?” said Lord Vetinari, in apparent surprise. “I can’t imagine who would fail to include it. A hammer can hardly be allowed to refuse to hit the nail on the head, nor a saw make moral judgments about the nature of the timber. In any case, I employ Mr. Trooper the hangman, who of course you have met, and the City Watch, the regiments, and, from time to time…other specialists, who are fully entitled to kill in their own defense or in protection of the city and its interests.” Vetinari started to pick up the fallen pieces and replace them delicately on the slab. “Why should Mr. Pump be any different just because he is made of clay? Ultimately, so are we all. Mr. Pump will accompany you to your place of work. The fiction will be that he is your bodyguard, as befits a senior government official. We alone will know that he has…additional instructions. Golems are highly moral creatures by nature, Mr. Lipwig, but you may find their morality a shade…old-fashioned?”

“Additional instructions?” said Moist. “And would you mind telling me exactly what his additional instructions are?”

“Yes.” The Patrician blew a speck of dust off a little stone troll and put it on its square.

“And—?” said Moist, after a pause.

Vetinari sighed. “Yes, I
would
mind telling you exactly what they are. You have no rights in this matter. We have impounded your horse, by the way, since it was used in the committal of a crime.”

“This is cruel and unusual punishment!” said Moist.

“Indeed?” said Vetinari. “I offer you a light desk job, comparative freedom of movement, working in the fresh air…no, I feel that my offer might well be unusual but…cruel? I think not. However, I believe down the cellars we do have some ancient punishments which are
extremely
cruel and in many cases quite unusual, if you would like to try them for the purposes of comparison. And, of course, there is always the option of dancing the sisal two-step.”

“The what?” said Moist.

Drumknott leaned down and whispered something in his master’s ear.

“Oh, I apologize,” said Vetinari. “I meant, of course, the hemp fandango. It is your choice, Mr. Lipwig. There is
always
a choice, Mr. Lipwig. Oh, and by the way…do you know the
second
interesting thing about angels?”

“What angels?” said Moist, angry and bewildered.

“Oh dear, people just don’t pay attention,” said Vetinari. “Remember? The first interesting thing about angels? I told you yesterday? I expect you were thinking about something else. The
second
interesting thing about angels, Mr. Lipwig, is that
you only ever get one
.”

CHAPTER 2

The Post Office

In which we meet the staff • Glom of Nit
• Dissertation on rhyming slang
• “You should have been there!” • The dead letters
• A golem’s life • Book of Regulations

T
HERE WAS ALWAYS
an angle. There was always a price. There was always a
way
.

And look at it like this
, Moist thought:
Certain death had been replaced with uncertain death, and that’s an improvement, isn’t it?
He was free to walk around…well, hobble, at the moment. And it was just possible that somewhere in all this was a profit. Well, it
could
happen. He was good at seeing opportunities where other people saw barren ground. So there was no harm in playing it straight for a few days, yes? It’d give his foot a chance to get better, he could spy out the situation, he could make
plans
. He might even find out how indestructible golems were. After all, they were made of pottery, weren’t they? Things could get broken, maybe.

Moist von Lipwig raised his eyes and examined his future.

The Ankh-Morpork Central Post Office had a gaunt frontage. It was a building designed for a purpose. It was, therefore, more or less, a big box to employ people in, with two wings at the rear, which enclosed the big stable yard. Some cheap pillars had been sliced in half and stuck on the outside, some niches had been carved for some miscellaneous stone nymphs, some stone urns had been ranged along the parapet, and thus Architecture had been created.

In appreciation of the thought that had gone into this, the good citizens, or more probably their kids, had covered the walls to a height of six feet with graffiti in many exciting colors.

In a band all along the top of the frontage, staining the stone in greens and browns, some words had been set in letters of bronze:

“‘NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLO M OF NI T CAN STAY THESE MES ENGERS ABO T THEIR DUTY,’” Moist read aloud. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The Post Office Was Once A Proud Institution,” said Mr. Pump.

“And
that
stuff?” Moist pointed. On a board much further down the building, in peeling paint, were the less heroic words:

DONT ARSK US ABOUT: rocks troll’s with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs. Cake Huje green things with teeth Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows Rains of spaniel’s. fog.

Mrs. Cake

“I Said It
Was
A Proud Institution,” the golem rumbled.

“Who’s Mrs. Cake?”

“I Regret I Cannot Assist You There, Mr. Lipvig.”

“They seem pretty frightened of her.”

“So It Appears, Mr. Lipvig.”

Moist looked around at this busy junction in this busy city. People weren’t paying any attention to him, although the golem was getting casual glances that didn’t appear very friendly.

This was all too strange. He’d been—what, fourteen?—when he’d last used his real name. And heavens knew how long since he’d gone out without some easily removable distinguishing marks. He felt naked. Naked and unnoticed.

To the interest of no one whatsoever, he walked up the stained steps and turned the key in the lock. To his surprise, it moved easily, and the paint-spattered doors swung open without a creak.

There was a rhythmic, hollow noise behind Moist. Mr. Pump was clapping his hands.

“Well Done, Mr. Lipvig. Your First Step In A Career Of Benefit Both To Yourself And The Well-being Of The City!”

“Yeah, right,” muttered Moist.

He stepped into the huge, dark lobby, which was lit only dimly by a big but grimy dome in the ceiling; it could never be more than twilight in here, even at noon. The graffiti artists had been at work here, too.

In the gloom he could see a long, broken counter, with doors and pigeonholes behind it.

Real pigeonholes. Pigeons were
nesting
in the pigeonholes. The sour, salty smell of old guano filled the air, and, as marble tiles rang under Moist’s feet, several hundred pigeons took off frantically and spiraled up toward a broken pane in the roof.

“Oh shit,” he said.

“Bad Language Is Discouraged, Mr. Lipvig,” said Mr. Pump behind him.

“Why? It’s written on the walls! Anyway, it was a
description
, Mr. Pump! Guano! There must be tons of the stuff!” Moist heard his own voice echo back from the distant walls. “When was this place last open?”

“Twenty years ago, Postmaster!”

Moist looked around.

“Who said that?” he said. The voice seemed to have come from everywhere.

There was the sound of shuffling and the click-click of a walking stick, and a bent, elderly figure appeared in the gray, dead, dusty air.

“Groat, sir,” it wheezed. “Junior Postman Groat, sir. At your service, sir. One word from you, sir, and I will
leap
, sir,
leap
into action, sir.” The figure stopped to cough long and hard, making a noise like a wall being hit repeatedly with a bag of rocks. Moist saw that it had a beard of the short, bristled type, which suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog.

“
Junior
Postman Groat?” he said.

“Indeedy, sir. The reason being, no one’s ever bin here long enough to promote me, sir. Should be Senior Postman Groat, sir,” the old man added meaningfully, and once again coughed volcanically.

“
Ex-postman Groat” sounds more like it
, Moist thought. Aloud he said, “And you work here, do you?”

“Aye, sir, that we do, sir. It’s just me and the boy now, sir. He’s keen, sir. We keeps the place clean, sir. All according to Regulations.”

Moist couldn’t stop staring. Mr. Groat wore a toupee. There may actually be a man somewhere on whom a toupee works, but whoever that man might be, Mr. Groat was not he. It was chestnut brown, the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong style, and, all in all, wrong.

“Ah, I see you’re admirin’ my hair, sir,” said Groat proudly, as the toupee spun gently. “It’s all mine, you know, not a prunes.”

“Er…prunes?” said Moist.

“Sorry, sir, shouldn’t have used slang. Prunes as in ‘syrup of prunes,’ sir. Dimwell slang.
*
Syrup of prunes: wig. Not many men o’ my age got all their own hair, I expect that’s what you’re thinking. It’s clean living that does it, inside and out.”

Moist looked around at the fetid air and the receding mounds of guano.

“Well done,” he muttered. “Well, Mr. Groat, do I have an office? Or something?”

For a moment, the visible face above the ragged beard was that of a rabbit in a headlight.

“Oh, yes, sir,
tech’n’ly
,” said the old man, quickly. “But we don’t go in there anymore, sir, oh no, ’cos of the floor. Very unsafe, sir. ’Cos of the floor. Could give way any minute, sir. We uses the staff locker room, sir. If you’d care to follow me, sir?”

Moist nearly burst out laughing.

“Fine,” he said. He turned to the golem. “Er…Mr. Pump?”

“Yes, Mr. Lipvig?” said the golem.

“Are you allowed to assist me in any way, or do you just wait around until it’s time to hit me on the head?”

“There Is No Need For Hurtful Remarks, Sir. I Am Allowed To Render Appropriate Assistance.”

“So could you clean out the pigeon shit and let a bit of light in?”

“Certainly, Mr. Lipvig.”

“You
can
?”

“A Golem Does Not Shy Away From Work, Mr. Lipvig. I Will Locate A Shovel.” Pump set off toward the distant counter, and the bearded junior postman panicked.

“No!” he squeaked, lurching after the golem. “It’s really not a good idea to touch them heaps!”

“Floors liable to collapse, Mr. Groat?” said Moist cheerfully.

Groat looked from Moist to the golem, and back again. His mouth opened and shut as his brain sought for words. Then he sighed.

“You’d better come down to the locker room, then. Step this way, gentlemen.”

M
OIST BECAME AWARE
of the smell of Mr. Groat as he followed the old man. It wasn’t a bad smell, as such, just…odd. It was vaguely chemical, coupled with the eye-stinging aroma of every type of throat medicine you’ve ever swallowed, and with just a hint of old potatoes.

The locker room turned out to be down some steps into the basement, where, presumably, the floors couldn’t collapse because there was nothing to collapse into. It was long and narrow. At one end was a monstrous oven, which, Moist learned later, had once been part of some kind of heating system, the Post Office having been a very advanced building for its time. Now a small round stove, glowing almost cherry-red at the base, had been installed alongside it. There was a huge black kettle on it.

The air indicated the presence of socks, cheap coal, and no ventilation; some battered wooden lockers were ranged along one wall, the painted names flaking off. Light got in, eventually, via grimy windows up near the ceiling.

Whatever the original purpose of the room, though, it was now the place where two people lived; two people who got along but, nevertheless, had a clear sense of mine and thine. The space was divided into two, with a narrow bed at either end. The dividing line was painted on the floor, up the walls, and across the ceiling. My half, your half.

So long as we remember that, the line indicated, there won’t be any more…trouble.

In the middle, so that it bestrode the boundary line, was a table. A couple of mugs and two tin plates were carefully arranged at either end. There was a salt pot in the middle of the table. At the salt pot, the line turned into a little circle to encompass it in its own demilitarized zone.

One half of the narrow room contained an overlarge and untidy bench, piled with jars, bottles, and old papers; it looked like the work space of a chemist who made it up as he went along, or until it exploded. The other had an old card table, on which small boxes and rolls of black felt had been stacked with slightly worrying precision. There, on a stand, was also the largest magnifying glass Moist had ever seen.

That side of the room had been swept clean, the other was a mess that threatened to encroach over the Line.

Unless one of the scraps of paper from the grubbier side was a funny shape, it seemed that somebody, with care and precision and presumably a razor blade, had cut off that corner of it that had gone too far.

A young man stood in the middle of the clean half of the floor. He’d obviously been waiting for Moist, just like Groat, but he hadn’t mastered the art of standing to attention or, rather, had only partly understood it. His right side stood considerably more to attention than his left side, and, as a result of this, he was standing like a banana. Nevertheless, with his huge, nervous grin and big, gleaming eyes he radiated keenness, quite possibly beyond the boundaries of sanity. There was a definite sense that at any moment he would bite. And he wore a blue cotton shirt on which someone had printed
ASK ME ABOUT PINS
!

“Er…” said Moist.

“Apprentice Postman Stanley,” mumbled Groat. “Orphan, sir. Very sad. Came to us from the Siblings of Offler charity home, sir. Both parents passed away of the Gnats on their farm out in the wilds, sir, and he was raised by peas.”

“Surely you mean
on
peas, Mr. Groat?”

“
By
peas, sir. Very unusual case. A good lad if he doesn’t get upset, but he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning.”

“Er…perhaps,” said Moist. He turned hurriedly to Stanley. “So you know something about pins, do you?” he said in what he hoped was a jovial voice.

“Nossir!” said Stanley. He all but saluted.

“But your shirt says—”

“I know
everything
about pins, sir,” said Stanley. “Everything there is to know!”

“Well, that’s, er—” Moist began.

“Every single fact about pins, sir,” Stanley went on. “There’s not a thing I don’t know about pins. Ask me anything about pins, sir. Anything you like at all. Go on, sir!”

“Well…” Moist floundered, but years of practice came to his aid. “I wonder how many pins were made in this city last ye—”

He stopped. A change had come across Stanley’s face; it smoothed out, lost the vague sense that its owner was about to attempt to gnaw your ear off.

“Last year the combined workshops (or ‘pinneries’) of Ankh-Morpork turned out twenty-seven million, eight hundred and eighty thousand, nine hundred and seventy-eight pins,” said Stanley, staring into a pin-filled, private universe. “That includes wax-headed, steels, brassers, silver-headed (and full silver), extra large, machine- and handmade, reflexed and novelty, but not lapel pins, which should not be grouped with the true pins at all, since they are technically known as ‘sports’ or ‘blazons,’ sir—”

“Ah yes, I think I once saw a magazine or something,” said Moist desperately. “It was called, er…
Pins Monthly
?”

“Oh dear,” said Groat behind him. Stanley’s face contorted in something that looked like a cat’s bottom with a nose.

“That’s for
hobbyists
,” he hissed. “They’re not true ‘pinheads’! They don’t
care
about pins! Oh, they
say
so, but they have a whole page of needles every month now. Needles? Anyone could collect needles! They’re only pins with holes in! Anyway, what about
Popular Needles
? But they just don’t want to know!”

“Stanley is editor of
Total Pins
,” Groat whispered behind Moist.

“I don’t think I saw that one—” Moist began.

“Stanley, go and help Mr. Lipwig’s assistant find a shovel, will you?” said Groat, raising his voice. “Then go and sort your pins again until you feel better. Mr. Lipwig doesn’t want to see one of your Little Moments.” He gave Moist a blank look.

“—they had an article last month about
pincushions
,” muttered Stanley, stamping out of the room. The golem followed him.