Making Money (2 page)

Therefore, he tried not to make little noises.

Below him, the coach yard of the Central Post Office buzzed like an overturned hive. They’d got the turntable working really well now. The overnight coaches were arriving and the new Überwald Flyer was gleaming in the lamplight. Everything was going right, which was, to the nighttime climber, why everything was going wrong.

The climber thrust a brick key into soft mortar, shifted his weight, moved his foo—

Damn pigeon! It flew up in panic, his other foot slipped, his fingers lost their grip on the drainpipe, and when the world had stopped churning, he was owing the postponement of his meeting with the distant cobbles to his hold on a brick key, which was, let’s face it, nothing more than a long, flat nail with a T-piece grip.

And you can’t bluff a wall, he thought. If you swing, you might get your hand and foot on the pipe, or the key might come out.

Oh…kay…

He had other keys and a small hammer. Could he knock one in without losing his grip on the other?

Above him, the pigeon joined its colleagues on a higher ledge.

The climber thrust the nail into the mortar with as much force as he dared, pulled the hammer out of his pocket, and, as the Flyer departed below with clattering and jingling, dealt the nail one massive blow.

It went in. He dropped the hammer, hoping the sound of its impact would be masked by the general bustle, and grabbed the new hold before it had hit the ground.

Oh…kay. And now I am…stuck?

The pipe was less than three feet away. Fine. This would work. Move both hands onto the new hold, swing gently, get his left hand around the pipe, and he could drag himself across the gap. Then it would be just—

The pigeon was nervous. For pigeons, it’s the default state of being. It chose this point to lighten the load.

Oh…kay. Correction: Two hands were now gripping the suddenly very slippery nail.

Damn.

And at this point, because nervousness runs through pigeons faster than a streaker through a convent, a gentle patter began.

There are times when “it does not get any better than this” does not spring to mind.

And then a voice from below said: “Who’s up there?”

Thank you, hammer. They can’t possibly see me, he thought. People look up from the well-lit yard with their night vision in shreds. But so what? They know I’m here now.

Oh…kay.

“All right, it’s a fair cop, guv,” he called down.

“A thief, eh?” said the voice below.

“Haven’t touched a thing, guv. Could do with a hand up, guv.”

“Are you Thieves’ Guild? You’re using their lingo.”

“Not me, guv. I always use the word guv, guv.”

He wasn’t able to look down very easily now, but sounds below indicated that hostlers and off-duty coachmen were strolling over. That was not going to be helpful. Coachmen met most of their thieves out on lonely road, where the highwaymen seldom bothered to ask sissy questions like “Your money or your life?” When one was caught, justice and vengeance were happily combined by means of a handy length of lead pipe.

There was a muttering beneath him, and it appeared that a consensus had been reached.

“Right, Mister Post Office Robber,” a cheery voice bellowed. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, okay? We’re gonna go into the building, right, and lower you a rope. Can’t say fairer’n that, right?”

“Right, guv.”

It had been the wrong kind of cheery. It had been the cheery of the word pal in “You lookin’ at me, pal?” The Guild of Thieves paid a twenty-dollar bounty fee for a nonaccredited thief brought in alive, and there were oh, so many ways of still being alive when you were dragged in and poured out on the floor.

He looked up. The window of the postmaster general’s apartment was right above him.

Oh…kay.

His hands and arms were numb yet painful at the same time.

He heard the rattle of the big freight elevator inside the building, the thud of a hatch being slapped back, the footsteps across the roof, felt the rope hit his arm.

“Grab it or drop,” said a voice, as he flailed to grasp it. “It’s all the same in the long run.” There was laughter in the dark.

The men heaved hard at the rope. The figure dangled in the air, then kicked out and swung back. Glass shattered, just below the guttering, and the rope came up empty.

The rescue party turned to one another.

“All right, you two, front and back doors right now!” said a coachman who was faster on the uptake. “Head him off! Go down in the elevator! The rest of you, we’ll squeeze him out, floor by floor!”

As they clattered back down the stairs and ran along the corridor, a man in a dressing gown poked his head out of one of the rooms, stared at them in amazement, and then snapped, “Who the hell are you lot? Go on, get after him!”

“Oh yeah? And who are you?” said a hostler, slowing down and glaring at him.

“He’s Mr. Moist von Lipwick, he is!” said a coachman at the back. “He’s the postmaster general!”

“Someone came crashing through the window, landed right between—I mean, nearly landed on me!” shouted the man in the dressing gown. “He ran off down the corridor! Ten dollars a man if you catch him! And it’s Lipwig, actually!”

That would have restarted the stampede, but the hostler said, in a suspicious voice, “Here, say the word guv, will you?”

“What are you on about?” said the coachman.

“He doesn’t half sound like that bloke,” said the hostler. “And he’s out of breath!”

“Are you stupid?” said the coachman. “He’s the postmaster! He’s got a bloody key! He’s got all the keys! Why the hell would he want to break into his own post office?”

“I reckon we ought to take a look in that room,” said the hostler.

“Really? Well, I reckon what Mr. Lipwig does to get out of breath in his own room is his own affair,” said the coachman, giving Moist a huge wink. “An’ I reckon ten dollars a man is running away from me ’cos of you being a tit. Sorry about this, sir,” he said to Moist, “he’s new and he ain’t got no manners. We will now be leaving you, sir,” he added, touching where he thought his forelock was, “with further apologies for any inconvenience which may have been caused. Now get cracking, you bastards!”

When they were out of sight, Moist went back into his room and carefully bolted the door behind him.

Well, at least he had some skills. That slight hint that there was a woman in his room had definitely swung it. Anyway, he was the postmaster general and he did have all the keys.

It was only an hour before dawn. He’d never get to sleep again. He might as well arise formally and enhance a reputation for keenness.

They might have shot him right off the wall, he thought, as he sorted out a shirt. They could have left him to hang there and taken bets on how long it’d be before he lost his grip; that would be the Ankh-Morpork way. It was just his good luck that they’d decided to give him a righteous smack or two before posting him through the guild’s letter box. And luck came to those who left a space for it—

There was a heavy yet somehow still polite knock on the door.

“Are You Decent, Mr. Lipwig?” a voice boomed.

Regrettably, yes, thought Moist, but said aloud: “Come in, Gladys.”

The floorboards creaked and furniture rattled on the other side of the room as Gladys entered.

Gladys was a golem, a clay man (or, for the sake of not having an argument, a clay woman) nearly seven feet tall. She—well, with a name like Gladys “it” was unthinkable and “he” just didn’t do the job—wore a very large blue dress.

Moist shook his head. The whole silly business had been a matter of etiquette, really. Miss Maccalariat, who ruled the Post Office counters with a rod of steel and lungs of brass, had objected to a male golem cleaning the ladies’ privies. How Miss Maccalariat had arrived at the conclusion that they were male by nature rather than custom was a fascinating mystery, but there was no profit in arguing with such as her.

And thus, with the addition of one extremely large cotton print dress, a golem became female enough for Miss Maccalariat.

The odd thing was that Gladys was female now, somehow. It wasn’t just the dress. She tended to spend time around the counter girls, who seemed to accept her into the sisterhood despite the fact that she weighed half a ton. They even passed their fashion magazine on to her, although it was hard to imagine what winter skin-care tips would mean to someone a thousand years old, with eyes that glowed like holes into a furnace.

And now she was asking him if he was decent. How would she tell?

She’d brought him a cup of tea and the city edition of the Times, still damp from the press. Both were placed, with care, on the table.

And…oh gods, they’d printed his picture. His actual picture! Him and Vetinari and various notables last night, all looking up at the new chandelier! He’d managed to move slightly so that the picture blurred a little, but it was still the face that looked out at him from the shaving mirror every morning. All the way to Genua there were people who’d been duped, fooled, swindled, and cheated by that face. The only thing he hadn’t done was hornswoggle, and that was only because he hadn’t found out how to.

Okay, he did have the kind of all-purpose face that reminded you of lots of other faces, but it was a terrible thing to see it nailed down in print. Some people thought that pictures could steal your soul, but it was liberty that was on Moist’s mind.

Moist von Lipwig, pillar of the community. Hah…

Something made him look closer. Who was that man behind him? He seemed to be staring over Moist’s shoulder. Fat face, small beard which looked like Lord Vetinari’s, but whereas the Patrician’s was a goatee, the same style on that other man looked like the result of haphazard shaving. Someone from the bank, right? There’d been so many faces, so many hands to shake, and everyone wanted to get into the picture. The man looked hypnotized, but having your picture taken often did that to people. Just another guest at just another function…

And they’d only used the picture on page one because someone had decided that the main story, which was about another bank going bust and a mob of angry customers trying to hang the manager in the street, did not merit illustration. Did the editor have the common decency to print a picture of that and put a sparkle in everyone’s day? Oh no, it had to be a picture of Moist von bloody Lipwig!

And the gods, once they’ve got a man against the ropes, can’t resist one more thunderbolt. There, lower down the front page, was the headline “STAMP FORGER WILL HANG.” They were going to execute Owlswick Jenkins. And for what? For murder? For being a notorious banker? No, just for knocking out a few hundred sheets of stamps. Quality work, too; the Watch would never have had a case if they hadn’t burst into his attic and found half a dozen sheets of halfpenny reds hanging up to dry.

And Moist had testified, right there in the court. He’d had to. It was his civic duty. Forging stamps was held to be as bad as forging coins, and he couldn’t dodge. He was the postmaster general, after all, a respected figure in the community. He’d have felt a tiny bit better if the man had sworn or glared at him, but he’d just stood in the dock, a little figure with a wispy beard, looking lost and bewildered.

He’d forged halfpenny stamps, he really had. It broke your heart, it really did. Oh, he’d done higher values too, but what kind of person takes all that trouble for half a penny? Owlswick Jenkins was, and now he was in one of the condemned cells down in the Tanty, with a few days to ponder on the nature of cruel fate before he was taken out to dance on air.

Been there, done that, Moist thought. It all went black—and then I got a whole new life. But I never thought being an upstanding citizen was going to be this bad.

“Er…thank you, Gladys,” he said to the figure looming genteelly over him.

“You Have An Appointment Now With Lord Vetinari,” said the golem.

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“There Are Two Guards Outside Who Are Sure You Do, Mr. Lipwig,” Gladys rumbled.

Oh, Moist thought. One of those appointments.

“And the time of this appointment would be right now, would it?”

“Yes, Mr. Lipwig.”

Moist grabbed his trousers, and some relic of his decent upbringing made him hesitate. He looked at the mountain of blue cotton in front of him.

“Do you mind?” he said.

Gladys turned away.

She’s half a ton of clay, Moist thought glumly, as he struggled into his clothes. And insanity is catching.

He finished dressing and hurried down the back stairs and out into the coach yard that had so recently threatened to be his penultimate resting place. The Quirm Shuttle was pulling out, but he leaped up beside the coachman, gave the man a nod, and rode in splendor down Widdershins Broadway until he could jump down outside the palace’s main entrance.

It would be nice, he reflected as he ran up the steps, if his lordship would entertain the idea that an appointment was something made by more than one person. But he was a tyrant, after all. They had to have some fun.

Drumknott, the Patrician’s secretary, was waiting by the door of the Oblong Office, and quickly ushered him into the seat in front of his lordship’s desk.

After nine seconds of industrious writing, Lord Vetinari looked up from his paperwork.

“Ah, Mr. Lipwig,” he said. “Not in your golden suit?”

“It’s being cleaned, sir.”

“I trust the day goes well with you? Up until now, that is?”

Moist looked around, sorting hastily through the Post Office’s recent little problems. Apart from Drumknott, who was standing by his master with an attitude of deferential alertness, they were alone.

“Look, I can explain,” he said.

Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.

“Pray do,” he said, leaning back.

“We got a bit carried away,” said Moist. “We were a bit too creative in our thinking. We encouraged mongooses to breed in the posting boxes to keep down the snakes…”

Lord Vetinari said nothing.

“Er…which, admittedly, we introduced into the letter boxes to reduce the numbers of toads…”