Making Money (48 page)

She advanced. The heels helped, of course, but Spike could move like a snake trying to sashay, and the severe, tight, and ostensibly modest dresses she wore left everything to the imagination, which is much more inflammatory than leaving nothing. Speculation is always more interesting than facts.

“What are you thinking about right now?” she said. She dropped her cigarette stub and pinned it with a heel.

“Piggy banks,” said Moist instantly.

“Piggy banks?”

“Yes, in the shape of not so much a pig as the bank and the Mint. To teach the kiddies the habits of thrift. The money could go in the slot where the Bad Penny is—”

“Are you really thinking about money boxes?”

“Er, no. I’m flirting with risk again.”

“That’s better!”

“Although you must admit that it’s a pretty clev—”

Adora Belle grabbed Moist by the shoulders.

“Moist von Lipwig, if you don’t give me a big wet kiss right now—Ow! Are there fleas down here?”

It felt like a hailstorm. The air in the vault had become a golden mist. It would have been pretty, if it wasn’t so heavy. It stung where it touched.

Moist grabbed her hand and dragged her out as the teeming particles became a torrent. Outside, he took off his hat, which was already so heavy that it was endangering his ears, and tipped a small fortune in gold onto the floor. The vault was already half-full.

“Oh no,” he moaned. “Just when it was going so well…”

W
HITENESS, COOLNESS
, the smell of starch.

“Good morning, my lord.”

Cosmo opened his eyes. A female face, surrounded by a white cap, was looking down at him.

Ah, so it had worked. He had known it would.

“Would you like to get up?” said the woman, stepping back. There were a couple of heavily built men behind her, also in white. This was just as it should be.

He looked down at the place where a whole finger should be, and saw a stump covered in a bandage. He couldn’t quite remember how this had happened, but that was fine. After all, in order to change, something had to be lost as well as gained. That was fine. So this was a hospital. That was fine.

“This
is
a hospital, yes?” he said, sitting up in the bed.

“Well done, Your Lordship. You are in the Lord Vetinari ward, as a matter of fact.”

That is fine,
Cosmo thought.
So I endowed a ward at some time. That was very forward-looking of me.

“And those men are bodyguards?” he said, nodding at the men.

“Well, they are here to see that no harm comes to you,” said the nurse, “so I suppose that’s true.”

There were a number of other patients in the long ward, all in white robes, some of them seated and playing board games, and a number of them standing at the big window, staring out. They stood in identical poses, their hands clasped behind their backs. Cosmo watched them for some time.

Then he stared at the small table where two men were sitting opposite each other, apparently taking turns to measure each other’s foreheads. He had to pay careful attention for some time before he worked out what was going on. But Lord Vetinari was not a man to jump to conclusions.

“Excuse me, nurse,” said Cosmo, and she hurried over. He beckoned her closer, and the two burly men drew nearer, too, not taking their eyes off him.

“I know those people are not entirely sane,” he said. “They think
they
are Lord Vetinari, am I right? This is a ward for such people, yes? Those two are having an eyebrow-raising competition!”

“You are quite right,” said the nurse. “Well done, my lord!”

“Doesn’t it puzzle them when they see one another?”

“Not really, my lord. Each one thinks he’s the real one.”

“So they don’t know that
I
am the real one?”

One of the guards leaned forward.

“No, my lord, we’re keeping very quiet about it,” he said, winking at his colleague.

Cosmo nodded. “Very good. This is a wonderful place to stay while I’m getting better. The perfect place to be incognito. Who would think of looking for me in this room of poor, sad madmen?”

“That’s exactly the plan, sir. Well done!”

“You know, some sort of artificial skyline would make things more interesting for the poor souls at the window,” he said.

“Ah, we can tell you’re the real thing, sir,” said the man, winking at his colleague.

Cosmo beamed. And two weeks later, when he won the eyebrow-raising competition, he was happier than he’d ever been before.

T
HE
P
INK
P
USSY
C
AT
Club was packed again tonight…except for seat seven (front row, center).

The record for anyone remaining in seat seven was nine seconds. The baffled management had replaced the cushions and the springs several times. It made no difference. On the other hand, everything else was going so inexplicably well lately. There seemed to be a good atmosphere in the club, especially among the dancers, who were working extra hard now that someone had invented a currency that could be stuck into a garter. Noisy drunks fell silent, disrespectful punters were hurrying frantically out of the door even before the bouncers got to them. The whole place was running like a clock, the management concluded, and it somehow had to do with that empty seat. Well, a happy house was worth a seat, especially in view of what had happened when they tried to take the damn thing away…

Hemlines as a measure of national crisis (page 64): The author will be forever grateful to the renowned military historian and strategist Sir Basil Liddell Hart for imparting this interesting observation to him in 1968. It may explain why the mini-skirt has, since the ’60s, never really gone out of style.

Students of the history of computing will recognize in the Glooper a distant echo of the Phillips Economic Computer, built in 1949 by engineer turned economist Bill Phillips, which also made an impressive hydraulic model of the national economy. No Igors were involved, apparently. One of the early machines is on display in the Science Museum, London, and a dozen or so others are on display around the world, for the interested observer. And finally, as ever, the author is grateful to the British Heritage Joke Foundation for its work in ensuring that the fine old jokes never die…