Making Money (6 page)

This was, however, just the background. What dominated the hall was the Bad Penny. The treadmill was…strange.

Moist had seen treadmills before. There had been one in the Tanty, wherein inmates could invigorate their cardiovascular systems whether they wanted to or not. Moist had taken a turn or two before he worked out how to play the system. It had been a brute of a thing, cramped, heavy, and depressing. The Bad Penny was much larger but hardly seemed to be there at all. There was a metal rim that, from here, looked frighteningly thin. It was hard to see the spokes, until Moist realized that there were no spokes, just hundreds of thin wires.

“All right, I can see it must work, but—” he began, staring up at the huge gearbox.

“It works very well, I gather,” said Bent. “They have a golem to power it when needed.”

“But surely it should fall to bits!”

“Should it? I am not in a position to say, sir. Ah, here comes everyone…”

Figures were heading toward them from various sheds and from the door at the far end of the building. They walked slowly and deliberately and with one purpose, rather like the living dead.

In the end, Moist kept thinking of them as the Men of the Sheds. They weren’t, all of them, that old, but even the young ones, most of them, appeared to have donned the mantle of middle age very early. Apparently, to get a job in the Mint, you had to wait until someone died; it was a case of Dead Men’s Sheds. Illuminating the bright side, however, was the fact that when your prospective vacancy became available you got the job even if you were only slightly less dead than the previous incumbent.

The Men of the Sheds ran the linishing shed, the milling shed, the finishing shed, the foundry (two sheds), the security (one shed, but quite a big one), and the storage shed, which had a lock Moist could have opened with a sneeze. The other sheds were a mystery, but presumably had been built in case someone needed a shed in a hurry.

The Men of the Sheds had what passed within the sheds as names: Alf, Young Alf, Gobber, Boy Charlie, King Henry…but the one who was, as it were, the designated speaker to the world beyond the sheds, had a whole name.

“This is Mr. Shady the Eighteenth, Mr. Lipwig,” said Bent. “Mr. Lipwig is…just visiting.”

“The Eighteenth?” said Moist. “There are another seventeen of you?”

“Not anymore, sir,” said Shady, grinning.

“Mr. Shady is the hereditary foreman, sir,” Bent supplied.

“Hereditary foreman…” Moist repeated blankly.

“That’s right, sir,” said Shady. “Does Mr. Lipwig want to know the history, sir?”

“No,” said Bent firmly.

“Yes,” said Moist, seeing his firmly and raising him an emphatically.

“Oh it appears that he does,” sighed Bent. Mr. Shady smiled.

It was a very full history, and took some telling. At one point Moist was sure it was time for an ice age. Words streamed past him like sleet but, like sleet, some stuck. The post of hereditary foreman had been created hundreds of years before, when the post of master of the Mint was a sinecure handed to a drinking pal of the current king or patrician, who used it as a piggy bank and did nothing more than turn up now and again with a big sack, a hangover, and a meaningful look. The foremanship was instituted because it was dimly realized that someone ought to be in charge and, if possible, sober.

“So you actually run it all?” said Moist quickly, to stem the flow of really interesting facts about money.

“That’s right, sir. Pro tem. There hasn’t been a master for a hundred years.”

“So how do you get paid?”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Mr. Shady said, like a man talking to a child: “This is a mint, sir.”

“You make your own wages?”

“Who else is going to, sir? But it’s all official, isn’t that right, Mr. Bent? He gets all the dockets. We cut out the middleman, really.”

“Well, at least you’re in a profitable business,” said Moist cheerfully. “I mean, you must be making money hand over fist!”

“We manage to break even sir, yes,” said Shady, as if it was a close-run thing.

“Break even? You’re a mint!” said Moist. “How can you not make a profit by making money?”

“Overheads, sir. There’s overheads wherever you look.”

“Even underfoot?”

“There too, sir,” said Shady. “It’s ruinous, sir, it really is. Y’see, it costs a ha’penny to make a farthin’ an’ nearly a penny to make a ha’penny. A penny comes in at a penny farthin’. Sixpences cost tuppence farthin’, so we’re in pocket there. Half a dollar cost seven pence. And it’s only sixpence to make a dollar, a definite improvement, but that’s ’cos we does ’em here. The real buggers are the mites, ’cos they’re worth half a farthin’ but cost sixpence ’cos it’s fiddly work, bein’ so small and have got that hole in the middle. The thrupenny bit, sir, we’ve only got a couple of people makin’ those, a lot of work which runs out at seven pence. And don’t ask me about the tupenny piece!”

“What about the tupenny piece?”

“I’m glad you asked me that, sir. Fine work, sir, tots up to seven and one one-sixteenth pence. And, yes, there’s one-sixteenth of a penny, sir, the elim.”

“I’ve never heard of it!”

“Well, no, sir, you wouldn’t, a gentleman of class like yourself, but it has its place, sir, it has its place. Nice little thing, sir, lot of tiny detail, made by widow women according to tradition, costs a whole shilling ’cos the engraving is so fine. Takes the old girls days to do one, what with their eyesight and everything, but it makes ’em feel they’re bein’ useful.”

“But a sixteenth of a penny? One quarter of a farthing? What can you buy with that?”

“You’d be amazed, sir, down some streets. A candle stub, a small potato that’s only a bit green,” said Shady. “Maybe a apple core that ain’t been entirely et. And of course it’s handy to drop in the charity box. It makes a clink.”

And gold is the anchor, is it? Moist thought.

He looked around at the huge space. There were about a dozen people working there, if you included the golem, who Moist had learned to think of as part of a species to be treated as “human for a given value of human,” and the pimply boy who made the tea, who he hadn’t.

“You don’t seem to need many people,” he said.

“Ah, well, we only do the silver and gold—”

“Goldish,” Mr. Bent intervened quickly.

“—Goldish coins here, you see. And unusual stuff, like medals. We make the blanks for the copper and brass, but the outworkers do the rest.”

“Outworkers? A mint with outworkers?”

“That’s right, sir. Like the widows. They work at home. Huh, you couldn’t expect the old dears to totter in here, most of ’em’d need two sticks to get about!”

“The Mint…that is, the place that makes money…employs people who work at home? I mean, I know it’s fashionable, but I mean…well, don’t you think it’s odd?”

“Gods bless you, sir, there are families out there who’ve been making a few coppers every evening for generations!” said Shady happily. “Dad doing the basic punching, Mum chasing and finishing, the kids cleanin’ and polishin’…it’s traditional. Our outworkers are like one big family.”

“Okay, but what about security?”

“If they steal so much as a farthing they can be hanged,” said Bent. “It counts as treason, you know.”

“What kind of families are you used to?” said Moist, aghast.

“I must point out that no one ever has, though, because they’re very loyal,” said the foreman, glaring at Bent.

“It used to be a hand cut off, for a first offense,” said Mr. Bent the family man.

“Do they make a lot of money?” said Moist, carefully getting between the two men. “I mean, in terms of wages?”

“About fifteen dollars a month. It’s detailed work,” said Shady. “Some of the old ladies don’t get as much. We get a lot of bad elims.”

Moist stared up at the Bad Penny. It rose up through the central well of the building and looked gossamer-frail for something so big. The lone golem plodding along inside had a slate hanging around its neck, which meant it was one of those that couldn’t talk. Moist wondered if the Golem Trust knew about it. They had amazing ways of finding golems.

As he watched, the wheel swung gently to a halt. The silent golem stood still.

“Tell me,” said Moist, “why bother with goldish coins? Why not just, well, make the dollars out of gold?”

“Very fast way to lose gold, sir!”

“Did you get a lot of clipping and sweating?”

“I’m surprised a gentleman like you knows them names, sir,” said the foreman, taken aback.

“I take a keen interest in the criminal mind,” said Moist, slightly faster than he’d intended. It was true. All you needed was a talent for introspection.

“Good for you, sir. Oh, yes, we’ve had them tricks and a lot more, oh yes! I swear we’ve seen ’em all. And painting an’ plating an’ plugging. Even recasting, sir, adulterated with copper, very neat. I swear, sir, there are people out there that will spend two days scheming and fiddling to make the amount of money they could earn by honest means in one day!”

“No! Really?”

“As I stand here, sir,” said Shady. “And what kind o’ sane mind does that?”

Well, mine, once upon a time, Moist thought. It was more fun. “I really don’t know,” he said.

“So the city council said the dollars were to be goldish, mostly navy brass, to tell you the truth, ’cos it shines up nice. Oh, they still forge, sir, but it’s hard to get right and the Watch comes down heavily on ’em and at least no one’s nicking the gold,” said Shady. “Is that all, sir? Only we’ve got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money faster’n we can make it, which leads to a bit of what I can only call a conundrum—”

“You mean that if you do overtime you have to do more overtime to pay for it?” said Moist, still pondering how illogical logical thinking can be if a big enough committee is doing it.

“That’s right, sir,” said Shady. “And down that road madness lies.”

“It’s a very short road,” said Moist, nodding. “But one last thing, if I may. What do you do about security?”

Bent coughed. “The Mint is impossible to get into from outside the bank once it is locked, Mr. Lipwig. By arrangement with the Watch, off-duty officers patrol both buildings at night, with some of our own guards. They wear proper bank uniforms in here, of course, because the Watch is so shabby, but they ensure a professional approach, you understand.”

Well, yes, thought Moist, who suspected that his experience of coppers was rather more in-depth than that of Bent. The money is probably safe, but I bet you get through a hell of a lot of coffee and pens.

“I was thinking about…during the day,” he said. The Men of the Sheds were watching him with blank stares.

“Oh, that,” said Mr. Shady. “We do that ourselves. We take turns. Boy Charlie’s the security this week. Show him your truncheon, Charlie.”

One of the men pulled a large stick from inside his coat and shyly held it up.

“There used to be a badge, too, but it got lost,” said Shady. “But that doesn’t matter much ’cos we all know who he is. And when we’re leaving, he’s sure to remind us not to steal anything.”

Silence followed.

“Well, that seems to cover it nicely,” said Moist, rubbing his hands together. “Thank you, gentlemen!”

And they filed away, each man to his shed.

“Probably very little,” said Mr. Bent, watching them go.

“Hmm?” said Moist.

“You were wondering how much money is walking out with them, I believe.”

“Well, yes.”

“Very little, I think. They say that after a while the money becomes just…stuff,” said the chief cashier, leading the way back into the bank.

“It costs more than a penny to make a penny,” Moist murmured. “Is it just me, or is that wrong?”

“But, you see, once you have made it, a penny keeps on being a penny,” said Mr. Bent. “That’s the magic of it.”

“It is?” said Moist. “Look, it’s a copper disc. What do you expect it to become?”

“In the course of a year, just about everything,” said Mr. Bent smoothly. “It becomes some apples, part of a cart, a pair of shoelaces, some hay, an hour’s occupancy of a theater seat. It may even become a stamp and send a letter, Mr. Lipwig. It might be spent three hundred times and yet—and this is the good part—it is still one penny, ready and willing to be spent again. It is not an apple, which will go bad. Its worth is fixed and stable. It is not consumed.” Mr. Bent’s eyes gleamed dangerously, and one of them twitched. “And this is because it is ultimately worth a tiny fraction of the everlasting gold!”

“But it’s just a lump of metal. If we used apples instead of coins, you could at least eat the apple,” said Moist.

“Yes, but you can only eat it once. A penny is, as it were, an everlasting apple.”

“Which you can’t eat. And you can plant an apple tree.”

“You can use money to make more money,” said Bent.

“Yes, but how do you make more gold? The alchemists can’t, the dwarfs hang on to what they’ve got, the Agateans won’t let us have any. Why not go on the silver standard? They do that in BhangBhangduc.”

“I imagine they would, being foreign,” said Bent. “But silver blackens. Gold is the one untarnishable metal.” And once again there was that tic: gold clearly had a tight hold on the man. “Incidentally, sir, I of course know that the depraved would clip slivers of metal from a coin, but what is ‘sweating’?”

“For the really depraved, I’m sorry to say,” said Moist. “You have a leather lining in your pocket, you put your gold coins in there, and you, well, you jingle them as often as you can. The gold dust builds up. Small profits but fairly safe, and some people just can’t help wanting to jingle.”

“I will treasure the image,” said Bent gravely. “Have you seen enough, Mr. Lipwig?”

“Slightly too much for comfort, I think.”

“Then let us go and meet the chairman.”

M
OIST FOLLOWED
Bent’s jerky walk up two flights of marble stairs and along a corridor. They halted in front of a pair of dark wooden doors and Mr. Bent knocked, not once, but with a sequence of taps that suggested a code. Then he pushed the door open, very carefully.