Making Money (15 page)

Moist relaxed. “You couldn’t knock out an omelet for me, could you?” he said.

The chef looked panicky.

“That’s eggs, right?” he said nervously. “Never really got involved with cooking eggs, sir. He has a raw one in his steak tartare on Fridays and Mrs. Lavish used to have two raw ones in her gin and orange juice every morning, and that is about it between me n’ eggs. I’ve got a pig’s head sousing if you’d fancy some of that. Got tongue, hearts, marrowbone, sheep’s head, nice bit o’ dewlap, melts, slaps, lights, liver, kidneys, beccles—”

In his youth, Moist had been served a lot off that menu. It was exactly the sort of food that one should serve to kids if one wanted them to grow up skilled in the arts of bare-faced lying, sleight of hand, and camouflage. As a matter of course, Moist had hidden those strange, wobbly meats under his vegetables, on one occasion achieving a potato twelve inches high.

Light dawned.

“Did you cook much for Mrs. Lavish?” said Moist.

“Nossir. She lived on gin, vegetable soup, her morning pick-me-up, and—”

“Gin,” said Peggy firmly.

“So you’re basically a dog chef?”

“Canine, sir, if it’s all the same to you. You may have read my book? Cooking with Brains?” Aimsbury said this rather hopelessly, and rightly so.

“Unusual path to follow,” said Moist.

“Well, sir, it enables me to…it’s safer…well, the truth is, I have an allergy, sir.” The chef sighed. “Show him, Peggy.”

The girl nodded, and pulled a grubby card out of her pocket.

“Please don’t say this word, sir,” she said, and held it up.

Moist stared.

“You just can’t avoid it in the catering business, sir,” said Aimsbury miserably.

This wasn’t the time, really wasn’t the time. But if you weren’t interested in people, then you didn’t have the heart of a trickster.

“You’re allergic to g—this stuff?” he said, correcting himself just in time.

“No, sir. The word, sir. I can handle the actual alium in question, I can even eat it, but the sound of it, well…”

Moist looked at the word again, and shook his head sadly.

“So I have to shun restaurants, sir.”

“I can see that. How are you with the word…leek?”

“Yes, sir, I know where you’re going, I’ve been there. Far leek, tar lick…no effect at all.”

“Just garlic, then—oh, sorry…”

Aimsbury froze, with a distant expression on his face.

“Gods, I’m so sorry, I honestly didn’t mean—” Moist began.

“I know,” said Peggy wearily, “the word just forces its way out, doesn’t it? He’ll be like this for fifteen seconds, then he’ll throw the knife straight ahead of him, and then he’ll speak in fluent Quirmian for about four seconds, and then he’ll be fine. Here—” she handed Moist a bowl containing a large brown lump “—you go back in there with the sticky-toffee pudding and I’ll hide in the pantry. I’m used to it. And I can do you an omelet, too.” She pushed Moist through the door and shut it behind him.

He put down the bowl, to the immediate and fully focused interest of Mr. Fusspot.

Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot’s mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.

After a few seconds Moist distinctly heard the twang of a knife vibrating in woodwork, followed by a scream of: “Nom d’une bouilloire! Pourquoi est-ce que je suis hardiment ri sous cape à par les dieux?”

There was a knock at the double doors, followed instantly by the entry of Bent. He was carrying a large, round box.

“The suite is now ready for you, Master,” he announced. “That is to say, for Mr. Fusspot.”

“The suite?”

“Oh, yes. The chairman has a suite.”

“Oh, that suite. He has to live above the shop, as it were?”

“Indeed. Mr. Slant has been kind enough to give me a copy of the conditions of the legacy. The chairman must sleep in the bank every night—”

“But I’ve got a perfectly good apartment in the—”

“Ahem. They are the Conditions, sir,” said Bent. “You can have the bed, of course,” he added generously. “Mr. Fusspot will sleep in his in tray. He was born in it, as a matter of interest.”

“I have to stay locked up here every night?”

In fact, when Moist saw the suite the prospect looked much less like a penance. He had to open four doors even before he found a bed. It had a dining room, a dressing room, a bathroom, a separate flushing privy, a spare bedroom, a passage to the office, which was a kind of public room, and a little private study. The master bedroom contained a huge oak four-poster with damask hangings, and Moist fell in love with it at once. He tried it for size. It was so soft that it was like lying in a huge, warm puddle—

He sat bolt upright. “Did Mrs. Lavish—” he began, panic rising.

“She died sitting at her desk, Master,” said Bent soothingly, as he untied the string on the big round box. “We have replaced the chair. By the way, she is to be buried tomorrow. Small Gods, at noon, family members only, by request.”

“Small Gods? That’s a bit down-market for a Lavish, isn’t it?”

“I believe a number of Mrs. Lavish’s ancestors are buried there. She did once tell me in a moment of confidence that she would be damned if she was going to be a Lavish for all eternity.” There was a rustle of paper, and Bent added: “Your hat, sir.”

“What hat?”

“For the master of the Royal Mint.” Bent held it up.

It was a black silk hat. Once it had been shiny. Now it was mostly bald. Old tramps wore better hats.

It could have been designed to look like a big pile of dollars, it could have been a crown, it could have been set with small, jeweled scenes depicting embezzlement through the ages, the progression of negotiable currency from snot to little white shells and cows and all the way to gold. It could have said something about the magic of money. It could have been good.

A black top hat. No style. No style at all.

“Mr. Bent, can you arrange for someone to go over to the Post Office and get them to bring my stuff over here?” said Moist, looking glumly at the wreck.

“Of course, Master.”

“I think ‘Mr. Lipwig’ will be fine, thank you.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

Moist sat down at the enormous desk and ran his hands lovingly across the worn green leather.

Vetinari, damn him, had been right. The Post Office had made him cautious and defensive. He’d run out of challenges, run out of fun.

Thunder grumbled, away in the distance, and the afternoon sun was being threatened by blue-black clouds. One of those heavy all-night storms was rolling in from the plains. There tended to be more crimes on rainy nights these days, according to the Times. Apparently it was because of the werewolf in the Watch: rain made smells hard to track.

After a while Peggy brought him an omelet containing absolutely no mention of the word garlic. And shortly after that, Gladys arrived with his wardrobe. All of it, including the door, carried under one arm. It bounced off the walls and ceiling as she lumbered across the carpet and dropped it in the middle of the big bedroom floor.

Moist went to follow her, but she held up her huge hands in horror.

“No, Sir! Let Me Come Out First!”

She clumped past him into the hallway. “That Was Nearly Very Bad,” she said.

Moist waited to see if anything more was going to be forthcoming, and then prompted, “Why, exactly?”

“A Man And A Young Woman Should Not Be In The Same Bedroom,” said the golem with solemn certitude.

“Er…how old are you, Gladys?” said Moist carefully.

“One Thousand And Fifty-Four Years, Mr. Lipwig.”

“Er…right. And you are made of clay. I mean, everyone’s made of clay, in a manner of speaking, but, as a golem, you are, as it were, er…very made of clay…”

“Yes, Mr. Lipwig, But I Am Not Married.”

Moist groaned. “Gladys, what did the counter girls give you to read this time?” he said.

“It Is Lady Deirdre Waggon’s Prudent Advice For Young Women,” said Gladys. “It Is Most Interesting. It Is How Things Are Done.”

She pulled a slim book out of the huge pocket in her dress. It had a chintzy look. Moist sighed. It was the kind of old-fashioned etiquette book that’d tell you Ten Things Not To Do With Your Parasol.

“I see,” Moist said.

He didn’t know how to explain. Even worse, he didn’t know what he’d be explaining. Golems were…golems. Big lumps of clay with the spark of life in them. Clothes? What for? Even the male golems in the Post Office just had a lick of blue and gold paint to make them look smart—hold on, he was getting it now! There were no male golems! Golems were golems, and had been happy to be just golems for thousands of years. And now they were in modern Ankh-Morpork, where all kinds of races and people and ideas were shaken up and it was amazing what dripped out of the bottle.

Without a further word, Gladys clumped across the hallway, turned around, and stood still. The glow in her eyes settled down to a dull red. And that was it. She had decided to stay.

In his in tray, Mr. Fusspot snored.

Moist took out the half-note that Cosmo had given him.

Desert island. Desert island. I know I think best when I’m under pressure, but what exactly did I mean?

On a desert island gold is worthless. Food gets you through times of no gold much better than gold gets you through times of no food. If it comes to that, gold is worthless in a gold mine, too. The medium of exchange in a gold mine is the pickax.

Hmm. Moist stared at the bill. What does it need to make it worth ten thousand dollars? The seal and signature of Cosmo, that’s what. Everyone knows he’s good for it. Good for nothing but money, the bastard.

Banks use these all the time, he thought. Any bank in the Plains would give me the cash, withholding a commission, of course, because banks skim you top and bottom. Still, it’s much easier than lugging bags of coins around. Of course I’d have to sign it too, otherwise it wouldn’t be secure.

I mean, if it was blank after “pay,” anyone could use it.

Desert island, desert island…on a desert island a bag of vegetables is worth more than gold, in the city gold is more valuable than the bag of vegetables.

This is a sort of equation, yes? Where’s the value?

He stared.

It’s in the city itself. The city says: In exchange for that gold, you will have all these things. The city is the magician, the alchemist in reverse. It turns worthless gold into…everything.

How much is Ankh-Morpork worth? Add it all up! The buildings, the streets, the people, the skills, the art in the galleries, the guilds, the laws, the libraries…billions? No. No money would be enough.

The city was one big gold bar. What did you need to back the currency? You just needed the city. The city says a dollar is worth a dollar.

It was a dream, but Moist was good at selling dreams. And if you could sell the dream to enough people, no one dared to wake up.

In a little rack on the desk was an ink pad and two rubber stamps, showing the city’s coat of arms and the seal of the bank. But in Moist’s eyes, there was a haze of gold around these simple things, too. They had value.

“Mr. Fusspot?” said Moist. The dog sat up in his tray, looking expectant.

Moist pushed his sleeves back and flexed his fingers.

“Shall we make some money, Mr. Chairman?” he said.

The chairman expressed unconditional agreement by means of going “Woof!”

“Pay The Bearer The Sum Of One Dollar” Moist wrote on a piece of crisp bank paper.

He stamped the paper with both stamps, and gave the result a long, critical look. It needed something more. You had to give people a show. The eye was everything.

It needed…a touch of gravitas, like the bank itself. Who’d bank in a wooden hut?

Hmm.

Ah, yes. It was all about the city, right? Underneath, he wrote, in large ornate letters:

Ad Urbem Pertinet

And, in smaller letters, after some thought:

Promitto fore ut possessori postulanti nummum unum solvem, an apte satisfaciam.

     Signed Moist von Lipwig pp The Chairman.

“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,” he said, and lifted the dog up. It was the work of a moment to press a front paw on the damp pad and leave a neat little footprint beside the signature.

Moist went through this a dozen or more times, tucked five of the resulting bills under the blotter, and took the new money, and the chairman, for walkies.

C
O
SMO
L
AVISH GLARED
at his reflection in the mirror.

Often he got it right in the glass three or four times in a row, and then—oh, the shame—he’d try it in public and people, if they were foolish enough to mention it, would say, “Have you got something in your eye?”

He’d even had a device constructed that pulled at one eyebrow repeatedly, by means of clockwork. He’d poisoned the man who made it, there and then, as he took delivery, chatting with him in his smelly little workshop while the stuff took hold. He’d been nearly eighty and Cosmo had been very careful, so it never came to the attention of the Watch. Anyway, at that age it shouldn’t really count as murder, should it? It was more like a favor, really. And obviously he couldn’t risk the old fool blabbing happily to someone after Cosmo had become Patrician.

On reflection, he thought, he should have waited until he was certain that the eyebrow-training machine was working properly. It had given him a black eye before he’d made a few hesitant adjustments.

How did Vetinari do it? It was what had got him the Patricianship, Cosmo was sure. Well, a couple mysterious murders had helped, admittedly, but it was the way the man could raise an eyebrow that kept him there.

Cosmo had studied Vetinari for a long time. It was easy enough, at social gatherings. He’d cut out every picture that appeared in the Times, too. What was the secret that kept the man so powerful and unscathed? How might he be understood?