Making Money (45 page)

“Gladys, the thing about books…well, the thing…I mean just because it’s written down, you don’t have to…that is to say, it doesn’t mean it’s…what I’m getting at is that every book is—”

He stopped. They believe in words. Words give them life. I can’t tell her that we just throw them around like jugglers, we change their meaning to suit ourselves—

He patted Gladys on the shoulder. “Well, read them all and make up your own mind, eh?”

“That Was Very Nearly Inappropriate Touching, Mr. Lipwig.”

Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression.

“Er, only for Ms. Flout, I expect,” he said, and went to grab a Times before they were all stolen.

It must have been another bittersweet day for the editor. After all, there can only be one front page. In the end he’d stuffed in everything—the “I do believe it is pineapple” line, with a picture showing the dripping Lavishes in the background and, oh yes, here was Pucci’s speech, in detail. It was wonderful. And she’d gone on and on. It was all perfectly clear, from her point of view: she was right and everyone was silly. She was so in love with her own voice that the watchmen had to write down their official caution on a piece of paper and hold it up in front of her before they towed her away, still talking…

And someone had got a picture of Cosmo’s ring catching the sunlight. It was near perfect surgery, they said down at the hospital, and had probably saved his life, they said, and how had Moist known what to do, they said, when the entirety of Moist’s relevant medical knowledge was that a finger shouldn’t have green mushrooms growing on it—

The paper was twitched out of his hands.

“What have you done with Professor Flead?” Adora Belle demanded. “I know you’ve done something! Don’t lie.”

“I haven’t done anything!” Moist protested, and checked the wording. Yes, technically true.

“I’ve been to the Department of Postmortem Communications, you know!”

“And what did they say?”

“I don’t know! There was a squid blocking the door! But you’ve done something, I know it! He told you the secret of getting through to the golems, didn’t he!”

“No.” Absolutely true.

“He didn’t?”

“No. I got some extra vocabulary, but that’s no secret.”

“Will it work for me?”

“No.” Currently true.

“They’d only take orders from a man? I bet that’s it.”

“I don’t think so.” True enough.

“So there is a secret?”

“It’s not really a secret. Flead told us. He just didn’t know it was a secret.” True.

“It’s a word?”

“No.” True.

“Look, why won’t you tell me? You know you can trust me!”

“Well, yes. Of course. But can I trust you if someone holds a knife to your throat?”

“Why should they do that?”

Moist sighed. “Because you’ll know how to command the biggest army there has ever been! Didn’t you look around outside? Didn’t you see all the coppers? They turned up right after the hearing!”

“What coppers?”

“Those trolls re-laying the cobbles? How often do you see that happening? The line of cabs that aren’t interested in passengers? The battalion of beggars? And the coach yard around the back is full of hangers-on, lounging about and watching the windows. Those coppers. It’s called a stakeout, and I’m the meat—”

There was a knock at the door. Moist recognized it; it sought to alert without disturbing.

“Come in, Stanley,” he said. The door opened.

“It’s me, sir,” said Stanley, who went through life with the care of a man reading a manual translated from a foreign language.

“Yes, Stanley.”

“Head of stamps, sir,” said Stanley.

“Yes, Stanley?”

“Lord Vetinari is in the coach yard, sir, inspecting the new automatic pick-up mechanism. He says there is no rush, sir.”

“He says there is no rush,” said Moist to Adora Belle.

“We’d better hurry, then?”

“Exactly.”

“R
EMARKABLY LIKE
a gibbet,” said Lord Vetinari, while behind him coaches rumbled in and out of the fog. “It will allow a fast coach to pick up mailbags without slowing,” said Moist. “That means letters going from small country offices can travel express without slowing the coach. It could save a few minutes on a long run.”

“And, of course, if I let you have some of the golem horses the coaches might travel at a hundred miles an hour, I’m told, and I wonder if those glowing eyes could see even through this murk.”

“Possibly, sir. But, in fact, I already have all the golem horses,” said Moist.

Vetinari gave him a cool look, and then said, “Hah! And you also have all your ears. What exchange rate are we discussing?”

“Look, it’s not that I want to be Lord of the Golems—” Moist began.

“On the way, please. Do join me in my coach,” said Vetinari.

“Where are we going?”

“Hardly any distance. We’re going to see Mr. Bent.”

T
HE CLOWN WHO
opened the little sliding door in the Fools’ Guild’s forbidding gates looked from Vetinari to Moist to Adora Belle, and wasn’t very happy about any of them.

“We are here to see Dr. Whiteface,” said Vetinari. “I require you to let us in with the minimum of mirth.”

The door snapped back. There was some hurried whispering and a clanking noise, and one half of the double doors opened a little way, just enough for people to walk through in single file. Moist stepped forward, but Vetinari put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pointed up with his stick.

“This is the Fools’ Guild,” he said. “Expect…fun.”

There was a bucket balanced on the door. He sighed, and gave it a push with his stick. There was a thud and a splash from the other side.

“I don’t know why they persist in this, I really don’t,” he said, sweeping through. “It’s not funny and it could hurt someone. Mind the custard.” There was a groan from the dark behind the door.

“Mr. Bent was born Charlie Benito, according to Dr. Whiteface,” said Vetinari, pushing his way through the tent that occupied the Guild’s quadrangle. “And he was born a clown.”

Dozens of clowns paused in their daily training to watch them pass. Pies remained unflung, trousers did not fill with whitewash, invisible dogs paused in mid-widdle.

“Born a clown?” said Moist.

“Indeed, Mr. Lipwig. A great clown, from a family of clowns, who have worn the Charlie Benito makeup for centuries. You saw him last night.”

“I thought he’d gone mad!”

“Dr. Whiteface, on the other hand, thinks he has come to his senses. Young Bent had a terrible childhood, I gather. No one told him he was a clown until he was thirteen. And his mother, for reasons of her own, discouraged all clownishness in him.”

“She must have liked clowns once,” said Adora Belle. She looked around them. All the clowns hurriedly looked away.

“She loved clowns,” said Vetinari. “Or should I say, one clown. And for one night.”

“Oh. I see,” said Moist. “And then the circus moved on?”

“As circuses do, alas. After which I suspect she rather went off men with red noses.”

“How do you know all this?” said Moist.

“Some of it is informed conjecture, but Miss Drapes has got a lot out of him in the last couple of days. She is a lady of some depth and determination.”

On the far side of the big tent there was another doorway, where the head of the Guild was waiting for them.

He was white all over—white hat, white boots, white costume, and white face—and on that face, delineated in thin lines of red greasepaint, was a smile belying the real face, which was as cold and proud as that of a prince of Hell.

Dr. Whiteface nodded at Vetinari.

“My lord…”

“Dr. Whiteface,” said the Patrician. “And how is the patient?”

“Oh, if only he had come to us when he was young,” said Whiteface, “what a clown he would have been! What timing! Oh, by the way, we do not normally allow women visitors into the Guild, but in these special circumstances we are waiving this rule.”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Adora Belle, acid etching every syllable.

“It is simply that, whatever the Jokes For Women group says, women are just not funny.”

“It is a terrible affliction,” Adora Belle agreed.

“An interesting dichotomy, in fact, since neither are clowns,” said Vetinari.

“I’ve always thought so,” said Adora Belle.

“They are tragic,” said Vetinari, “and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.”

“Where do the squeaky balloon animals fit in?” said Moist.

“I have no idea. But I understand that when the would-be murderers broke in, Mr. Bent strangled one with quite a lifelike humorous pink elephant made out of balloons.”

“Just imagine the noise,” said Adora Belle cheerfully.

“Yes! What a turn! And without any training! And the business with the ladder? Pure battle-clowning! Superb!” said Whiteface. “We know it all now, Havelock. After his mother died, his father came back and, of course, took him off to the circus. Any clown could see the boy had funny bones. Those feet! They should have sent him to us! A boy of that age, it can be very tricky! But no, he was bundled into his grandfather’s old gear and shoved out into the ring in some tiny little town, and well, that’s where clowning lost a king.”

“Why? What happened?” said Moist.

“Why do you think? They laughed at him.”

I
T WAS RAINING,
and wet branches lashed at him as he bounded through the woods, whitewash still dribbling from his baggy trousers. The pants themselves bounced up and down on their elastic braces, occasionally hitting him under the chin.

The boots were good. They were amazing boots. They were the only ones he’d had that fitted.

But Mother had brought him up properly. Clothes should be a respectable gray, mirth was indecent, and makeup was a sin.

Well, punishment had come fast enough!

At dawn he found a barn. He scraped off the dried custard and caked greasepaint and washed himself in a puddle. Oh, that face! The fat nose, the huge mouth, the white tear painted on—he would remember it in nightmares, he knew it.

At least he still had his own shirt and drawers, which covered all the important bits. He was about to throw everything else away when an inner voice stopped him. His mother was dead and he hadn’t been able to stop the bailiffs taking everything, even the brass ring Mother polished every day, he’d never see his father again…he had to keep something, there had to be something, so that he might remember who and why he was and where he’d come from and even why he’d left. The barn yielded a sack full of holes; that was good enough. The hated suit was stuffed inside.

Later that day he’d come across some caravans parked under the trees, but they were not the garish carts of the circus. Probably they were religious, he thought, and Mother had approved of the quieter religions, provided the gods weren’t foreign.

They gave him rabbit stew. And when he looked over the shoulder of a man sitting quietly at a small folding table, he saw a book full of numbers, all written down. He liked numbers. They’d always made sense in a world that didn’t. And then he’d asked the man, very politely, what the number at the bottom was, and the answer had been, “It’s what we call the total,” and he’d replied, “No, that’s not the total, that’s three farthings short of the total.” “How do you know?” said the man, and he’d said, “I can see it is,” and the man had said, “But you only just glanced at it!” and he’d said, “Well, yes, isn’t that why?”

And then more books were opened and the people gathered round and gave him sums to do, and they were all so, so easy…

It was all the fun the circus couldn’t be, and involved no custard, ever.

H
E OPENED HIS
eyes and made out the indistinct figures.

“Am I going to be arrested?”

Moist glanced at Vetinari, who waved a hand vaguely.

“Not necessarily,” said Moist carefully. “We know about the gold.”

“Mr. Lavish said he would let it be known about my…family,” said Mr. Bent.

“Yes, we know.”

“People would laugh. I couldn’t stand that. And then I think I…you know, I think I convinced myself that it was all a dream? That provided I never looked for it, it would still be there.” He paused, as if random thoughts were queuing for the use of the mouth. “Mr. Whiteface has been kind enough to show me the history of the Charlie Benito face…” Another pause. “I hear I threw custard pies with considerable accuracy. Perhaps my ancestor will be proud.”

“How do you feel now?” said Moist.

“Oh, quite well in myself,” said Bent, “whoever that is.”

“Good. Then I want to see you at work tomorrow, Mr. Bent.”

“You can’t ask him to go back so soon!” Miss Drapes protested.

Moist turned to Whiteface and Vetinari. “Could you please leave us, gentlemen?”

There was an affronted look on the chief clown’s face, which was made worse by the permanent happy smile, but the door shut behind them.

“Listen, Mr. Bent,” said Moist urgently. “We’re in a mess—”

“I believed in the gold, you know,” said Bent. “Didn’t know where it was, but I believed.”

“Good. And it probably still exists in Pucci’s jewelry box,” said Moist. “But I want to open the bank again tomorrow, and Vetinari’s people have been through every piece of paper in the place, and you can guess what kind of mess they leave. And I want to launch the notes tomorrow, you know? The money that doesn’t need gold? And the bank doesn’t need gold. We know this. It worked for years with a vault full of junk! But the bank needs you, Mr. Bent. The Lavishes are in real trouble; Cosmo’s locked up somewhere; Mr. Fusspot’s in the palace; and tomorrow, Mr. Bent, the bank opens and you must be there. Please? Oh, and the chairman has graciously barked assent to putting you on a salary of sixty-five dollars a month. I know you are not a man to be influenced by money, but the raise might be worth considering by a man contemplating a, ah, change in his domestic arrangements?”