Making Money (5 page)

“How is Miss Dearheart?” said Vetinari, apparently oblivious of the growing stir.

“She’s away,” said Moist bluntly.

“Ah, the Trust has located another buried golem, no doubt.”

“Yes.”

“Still trying to carry out orders given to it thousands of years ago?”

“Probably. It’s out in the wilderness somewhere.”

“She is indefatigable,” said Vetinari happily. “Those people are resurrected from darkness to turn the wheels of commerce, for the general good. Just like you, Mr. Lipwig. She is doing the city a great service. And the Golem Trust, too.”

“Yes,” said Moist, letting the whole resurrection thing pass.

“But your tone says otherwise.”

“Well…” Moist knew he was squirming, but squarm anyway. “She’s always rushing off because they’ve traced another golem in some ancient sewer or something—”

“And not rushing off after you, as it were?”

“And she’s been away for weeks on this one,” said Moist, ignoring the comment because it was probably accurate, “and she won’t tell me what it’s about. She just says it’s very important. Something new.”

“I think she’s mining,” said Vetinari. He began to tap his cane on the marble, slowly. It made a ringing sound. “I have heard that golems appear to be mining on dwarf land this side of Chimeria, near the coach road. Much to the interest of the dwarfs, I might add. The king leased the land to the Trust and wants to make certain he gets a look at what is dug up.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“Miss Dearheart? No. Knowing her, the king of the dwarfs might be. She’s a very…composed young lady, I’ve noticed.”

“Hah! You don’t know the half of it.”

Moist made a mental note to send Adora Belle a message as soon as this was over. The whole situation with golems was heating up once more, what with the guilds complaining about them taking jobs. She was needed in the city—by the golems, obviously.

He became aware of a subtle noise. It came from below, and sounded very much like air bubbling through liquid, or maybe water being poured out of a bottle with the familiar blomp-blomp sound.

“Can you hear that?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“The future of economical planning, I understand.” Lord Vetinari looked if not worried then at least unaccustomedly puzzled.

“Something must have happened,” he said. “Mr. Bent is normally oiling his way across the floor within seconds of my entrance. I hope nothing unamusing has happened to him.”

A pair of big elevator doors opened at the far end of the hall, and a man stepped through. For just a moment, probably unnoticed by anyone who had never had to read faces for a living, he was anxious and upset, but it passed with speed as he adjusted his cuffs and set his face in the warm, benevolent smile of someone who is about to take some money off you.

Mr. Bent was in every way smooth and uncreased. Moist had been expecting a traditional banker’s frock coat, but instead there was a very well-cut black jacket above pinstripe trousers. Mr. Bent was also silent. His feet, soundless even on the marble, were unusually large for such a dapper man, but the shoes, black and polished, mirror-shiny, were very well made. Perhaps he wanted to show them off, because he walked like a dressage horse, lifting each foot very deliberately off the ground before setting it on the ground again. Apart from that incongruity, Mr. Bent had the air about him of one who stands quietly in a cupboard when not in use.

“Lord Vetinari, I am so sorry!” he began. “I’m afraid there was unfinished business—”

Lord Vetinari got to his feet. “Mr. Mavolio Bent, allow me to present Mr. Moist von Lipwig,” he said. “Mr. Bent is the chief cashier here.”

“Ah, the inventor of the revolutionary unsecured one-penny note?” said Bent, extending a thin hand. “Such audacity! I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Lipwig.”

“One-penny note?” said Moist, mystified. Mr. Bent, despite his protestation, did not look pleased at all.

“Did you not listen to what I was saying?” said Vetinari. “Your stamps, Mr. Lipwig.”

“A de facto currency,” said Bent, and light dawned on Moist. Well, it was true, he knew it. He’d meant stamps to be stuck to letters, but people had decided, in their untutored way, that a penny stamp was nothing more than a very light, government guaranteed penny and, moreover, one that you could put on an envelope. The advertising pages were full of businesses that had sprouted on the back of the beguilingly transferable postage stamps: “Learn The Uttermost Secrets Of The Cosmos! Send 8 penny stamps for booklet!” A lot of stamps wore out as currency without ever seeing the inside of a posting box.

Something in Bent’s smile annoyed Moist, though. It was not quite as kind when seen close.

“What do you mean by ‘unsecured’?” he said.

“How do you validate its claim to be worth a penny?”

“Er, if you stick it on a letter you get a penny’s worth of travel?” said Moist. “I don’t see what you’re getting at—”

“Mr. Bent is one of those who believe in the preeminence of gold, Mr. Lipwig,” said Vetinari. “I’m sure you’ll get along exactly like a house on fire. I shall leave you now, and await your decision with, ah, compound interest. Come, Drumknott. Perhaps you will drop in to see me tomorrow, Mr. Lipwig?”

Moist and Bent watched them go. Then Bent glared at Moist. “I suppose I must show you around…sir,” he said.

“I have a feeling that we haven’t quite hit it off, Mr. Bent,” said Moist.

Bent shrugged, an impressive maneuver on that gaunt frame. It was like watching an ironing board threatening to unfold.

“I know nothing to your discredit, Mr. Lipwig. But I believe the chairman and Lord Vetinari have a dangerous scheme in mind, and you are their cat’s-paw, Mr. Lipwig, you are their implement.”

“This would be the new chairman?”

“That is correct.”

“I don’t particularly want or intend to be an implement,” said Moist.

“Good for you, sir. But events are eventuating—”

There was a crash of broken glass from below, and a faint, muffled voice shouted: “Damn! There goes the balance of payments!”

“Let’s have that tour, shall we?” said Moist brightly. “Starting with what that was?”

“That abomination?” Bent gave a little shudder. “I think we should leave that until Hubert has cleaned up. Oh, will you look at that? It really is terrible…”

Mr. Bent strode across the floor until he was under the big, solemn clock. He glared at it as if it had mortally offended him, and snapped his fingers, but a junior clerk was already hurrying across the floor with a small stepladder. Mr. Bent mounted the steps, opened the clock, and moved the second hand forward by two seconds. The clock was slammed shut, the steps dismounted, and the accountant returned to Moist, adjusting his cuffs.

He looked Moist up and down. “It loses almost a minute a week. Am I the only person who finds this offensive? It would appear so, alas. Let’s start with the gold, shall we?”

“Ooo, yes,” said Moist. “Let’s!”

The promise of gold
The Men of the Sheds
The cost of a penny and the usefulness of widows
Overheads underfoot
Security, the importance thereof
A fascination with transactions
A son of many fathers
Alleged untrustworthiness in a case of flaming underwear
The panopticon of the world and the blindness of Mr. Bent
An arch comment

“S
OMEHOW
I
WAS
expecting something…bigger,” said Moist, looking through the steel bars into the little room that held the gold. The metal, in open bags and boxes, gleamed dully in the torchlight.

“That is almost ten tons of gold,” said Bent reproachfully. “It does not have to look big.”

“But all the ingots and bags put together aren’t much bigger than the desks out there!”

“It is very heavy, Mr. Lipwig. It is the one true metal, pure and unsullied,” said Bent. His left eye twitched. “It is the metal that never fell from grace.”

“Really?” said Moist, checking that the door out of there was still open.

“And it is also the only basis of a sound financial system,” Mr. Bent went on, while the torchlight reflected from the bullion and gilded his face. “There is Value! There is Worth! Without the anchor of gold, all would be chaos.”

“Why?”

“Who would set the value of the dollar?”

“Our dollars are not pure gold, though, are they?”

“Aha, yes. Gold-colored, Mr. Lipwig,” said Bent. “Less gold than seawater. Gold-ish. We adulterated our own currency! Infamy! There can be no greater crime!” His eye twitched again.

“Er…murder?” Moist ventured. Yep, the door was still open.

Mr. Bent waved a hand. “Murder only happens once,” he said, “but when the trust in gold breaks down, chaos rules. But it had to be done. The abominable coins are, admittedly, only goldish, but they are at least a solid token of true gold in the reserves. In their wretchedness, they nevertheless acknowledge the primacy of gold and our independence from the machinations of government! We ourselves have more gold than any other bank in the city, and only I have a key to that door! And the manager has one too, of course,” he added, very much as a grudging and unwelcome afterthought.

“I read somewhere that the coins represent a promise to hand over a dollar’s worth of gold,” said Moist helpfully.

Mr. Bent steepled his hands in front of his face and turned his eyes upward, as though praying.

“In theory, yes,” he said after a few moments. “I would prefer to say that it is a tacit understanding that we will honor our promise to exchange it for a dollar’s worth of gold, provided we are not, in point of fact, asked to.”

“So…it’s not really a promise?”

“It certainly is, sir, in financial circles. It is, you see, about trust.”

“You mean, trust us, we’ve got a big expensive building?”

“You jest, Mr. Lipwig, but there may be a grain of truth there.” Bent sighed. “I can see you have a lot to learn, and at least you’ll have me to teach you. And now, I think, you would like to see the Mint. People always like to see the Mint. It’s twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six seconds past one, so they should have finished their lunch hour.”

I
T WAS A CAVERN.
Moist was pleased about that, at least. A Mint should be lit by flames.

Its main hall was three stories high, and picked up some gray daylight from the rows of barred windows. And, in terms of primary architecture, that was it. Everything else was sheds.

Sheds were built onto the walls and even hung like swallows’ nests up near the ceiling, accessed by unsafe-looking wooden stairs. The uneven floor itself was a small village of sheds, placed any old how, no two alike, each one carefully roofed against the nonexistent prospect of rain. Wisps of smoke spiraled gently through the thick air. Against one wall a forge glowed, providing the dark orange glow that gave the place the right stygian atmosphere. The place looked like the after-death destination for people who had committed small and rather dull sins.