Making Money (9 page)

“Is he? Oh. I don’t get out of the cellar very much these days,” said Hubert.

“Really,” said Moist, his smile now a bit glassy.

“No, we’re so close to perfection, you see,” said Hubert. “I really think we’re nearly there…”

“Mister Hubert believes that this…device is a sort of crystal ball for showing the future,” said Bent, and rolled his eyes.

“Possible futures. Would Mr. Lipstick like to see it in operation?” said Hubert, vibrating with enthusiasm and eagerness. Only a man with a heart of stone would have said no, so Moist made a wonderful attempt at indicating that all his dreams were coming true.

“I’d love to,” he said, “but what does it actually do?”

Too late, he saw the signs. Hubert grasped the lapels of his jacket, as if addressing a meeting, and swelled with the urge to communicate, or at least talk at length in the belief that it was the same thing.

“The Glooper, as it is affectionately known, is what I call a quote ‘analogy machine’ unquote. It solves problems not by considering them as a numerical exercise but by actually duplicating them in a form we can manipulate: in this case, the flow of money and its effects within our society becomes water flowing through a glass matrix, the Glooper. The geometrical shape of certain vessels, the operation of valves, and, although I say so myself, ingenious tipping buckets and flow-rate propellers enable the Glooper to simulate quite complex transactions. We can change the starting conditions, too, to learn the rules inherent in the system. For example, we can find out what happens if you halve the labor force in the city, by the adjustment of a few valves, rather than going out into the streets and killing people.”

“A big improvement! Bravo!” said Moist desperately, and started to clap.

No one joined in. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Er…perhaps you would like a less, um, dramatic demonstration?” Hubert volunteered.

Moist nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Show me…show me what happens when people get fed up with banks,” he said.

“Ah, yes, a familiar one! Igor, set up program five!” Hubert shouted to some figure in the forest of glassware. There was the sound of squeaky screws being turned and the glug of reservoirs being topped up.

“Igor?” said Moist. “You have an Igor?”

“Oh, yes,” said Hubert. “That’s how I get this wonderful light. They know the secret of storing lightning in jars! But don’t let that worry you, Mr. Lipspick. Just because I’m employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn’t mean I am some sort of madman, ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha,” agreed Moist.

“Ha hah hah!” said Hubert. “Hahahahahaha!! Ahahahahaha
hhhhh!!!!!
—”

Bent slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed. “Sorry about that, it’s the air down here,” he mumbled.

“It certainly looks very…complex, this thing of yours,” said Moist, striking out for normality.

“Er, yes,” said Hubert, a little bit thrown. “And we are refining it all the time. For example, floats coupled to ingenious spring-loaded sluice gates elsewhere on the Glooper can allow changes in the level in one flask to automatically adjust flows in several other places in the system—”

“What’s that for?” said Moist, pointing at random to a round bottle suspended in the tubing.

“Phase-of-the-moon valve,” said Hubert promptly.

“The moon affects how money moves around?”

“We don’t know. It might. The weather certainly does.”

“Really?”

“Certainly!” Hubert beamed. “And we’re adding fresh influences all the time. Indeed, I will not be satisfied until my wonderful machine can completely mimic every last detail of our great city’s economic cycle!” A bell rang, and he went on: “Thank you, Igor! Let it go!”

Something clanked, and colored waters began to foam and slosh along the bigger pipes. Hubert raised not only his voice but also a long pointer.

“Now, if we reduce public confidence in the banking system—watch that tube there—you will see here a flow of cash out of the banks and into Flask 28, currently designated ‘The Old Sock Under the Mattress.’ Even quite rich people don’t want their money outside their control. See the mattress getting fuller, or perhaps I should say…thicker?”

“That’s a lot of mattresses,” Moist agreed.

“I prefer to think of it as one mattress a third of a mile high.”

“Really?” said Moist.

Slosh! Valves opened somewhere, and water rushed along a new path.

“Now see how bank lending is emptying as the money drains into the Sock?” Gurgle! “Watch Reservoir 11, over there. That means business expansion is slowing…there it goes, there it goes…” Drip! “Now watch Bucket 34. It’s tipping, it’s tipping…there! The scale on the left of Flask 17 shows collapsing businesses, by the way. See Flask 9 beginning to fill? That’s foreclosures. Job losses is Flask 7…and there goes the valve on Flask 28, as the socks are pulled out.” Flush! “But what is there to buy? Over here we see that Flask 11 has also drained…” drip

Except for the occasional gurgle, the aquatic activity subsided.

“And we end up in a position where we can’t move because we’re standing on our own hands, as it were,” said Hubert. “Jobs vanishing, people without savings suffering, wages low, farms going back to wilderness, rampaging trolls coming down from the mountains—”

“They’re here already,” said Moist. “Some of them are even in the Watch.”

“Are you sure?” said Hubert.

“Yes, they’ve got helmets and everything. I’ve seen them.”

“Then I expect they’ll be wanting to rampage back to the mountains,” said Hubert. “I think I would, if I were them.”

“You believe all that could really happen?” said Moist. “A bunch of tubes and buckets can tell you that?”

“They are correlated to events very carefully, Mr. Lipswick,” said Hubert, looking hurt. “Correlation is everything. Did you know it is an established fact that hemlines tend to rise in times of national crisis?”

“You mean—?” Moist began, not at all certain how the sentence was going to end.

“Women’s dresses get shorter,” said Hubert.

“And that causes a national crisis? Really? How high do they go?”

Mr. Bent coughed a leaden cough. “I think perhaps we should go, Mr. Lipwig,” he said. “If you have seen all you want, no doubt you are in a hurry to leave.” There was a slight inflection on leave.

“What? Oh…yes,” said Moist. “I probably should be getting along. Well, thank you, Hubert. It has been an education and no mistake.”

“I just can’t get rid of the leaks,” said the little man, looking crestfallen. “I’ll swear that every joint is watertight, but we never end up with the same amount of water that we started with.”

“Of course not, Hubert,” said Moist, patting him on the shoulder. “And that’s because you’re close to achieving perfection!”

“I am?” said Hubert, wide-eyed.

“Certainly. Everyone knows that at the end of the week you never have quite as much money as you think you should. It’s a well-known fact!”

The sunrise of delight dawned on Hubert’s face. Topsy was right, Moist told himself. I am good with people.

“Now demonstrated by the Glooper!” Hubert breathed. “I shall write a paper on it!”

“Or you could write it on paper!” said Moist, shaking him warmly by the hand. “Okay, Mr. Bent, let us tear ourselves away!”

When they were walking up the main stairs Moist said: “What relation is Hubert to the current chairman?”

“Nephew,” said Bent. “How did you—?”

“I’m always interested in people,” said Moist, smiling to himself. “And there’s the red hair, of course. Why does Mrs. Lavish have two crossbows on her desk?”

“Family heirlooms, sir,” lied Bent. It was a deliberate, flagrant lie, and he must have meant it to be seen as such. Family heirlooms. And she sleeps in her office. All right, she’s an invalid, but people usually do that at home.

She doesn’t intend to step out of the room. She’s on guard. And she’s very particular about who comes in.

“Do you have any interests, Mr. Bent?”

“I do my job with care and attention, sir.”

“Yes, but what do you do in the evenings?”

“I double-check the day’s totals in my office, sir. I find counting very…satisfying.”

“You’re very good at it, yes?”

“More than you can imagine, sir.”

“So if I save ninety-three-point-forty-seven dollars a year for seven years at two and a quarter percent, compound, how—”

“Eight hundred and thirty-five-point-thirteen dollars calculated once annually, sir,” said Bent calmly.

Yes, and twice you’ve known the exact time, thought Moist. And you didn’t look at a watch. You are good with numbers. Inhumanly good, perhaps…

“No holidays?” he said aloud.

“I did a walking tour of the major banking houses of Überwald last summer, sir. It was most instructive.”

“That must have taken weeks. I’m glad you felt able to tear yourself away!”

“Oh, it was easy, sir. Miss Drapes, who is the senior clerk, sent a coded clacks of the day’s business to each of my lodging houses at the close of business every day. I was able to review it over my after-dinner strudel and respond instantly with advice and instructions.”

“Is Miss Drapes a useful member of the staff?”

“Indeed. She performs her duties with care and alacrity.” He paused. They were at the top of the stairs. Bent turned and looked directly at Moist.

“I have worked here all my life, Mr. Lipwig. Be careful of the Lavish family. Mrs. Lavish is the best of them, a wonderful woman. The others…are used to getting their own way.”

Old family, old money. That kind of family. Moist felt a distant call, like the song of the skylark. It came back to taunt him every time, for example, he saw an out-of-towner in the street with a map and a perplexed expression, crying out to be relieved of his money in some helpful and hard-to-follow way.

“Dangerously so?” he said.

Bent looked a little affronted at this directness. “They are not at home to disappointment, sir. They have tried to declare Mrs. Lavish insane, sir.”

“Really?” said Moist. “Compared to who?”

T
HE WIND BLEW
through the town of Big Cabbage, which liked to call itself The Green Heart of the Plains.

It was called Big Cabbage because it was home to The Biggest Cabbage in the World, and the town’s inhabitants were not very creative when it came to names. People traveled miles to see this wonder; they’d go inside its concrete interior and peer out through the windows, buy cabbage-leaf bookmarks, cabbage ink, cabbage shirts, Captain Cabbage dolls, musical boxes carefully crafted from Kohl Rabi and cauliflower, which played “The Cabbage-Eater’s Song,” cabbage jam, kale ale, and green cigars made from a newly developed species of cabbage and rolled on the thighs of local maidens, presumably because they liked it.

Then there was the excitement of Brassica World, where very small children could burst into terrified screams at the huge head of Captain Cabbage himself, along with his friends Cauliflower the Clown and Billy Broccoli. For older visitors there was, of course, the Cabbage Research Institute, over which a green pall always hung and downwind of which plants tended to be rather strange and sometimes turned to watch you as you passed.

And then…what better way to record the day of a lifetime than pose at the behest of the black-clad man with the iconograph, who took a picture of the happy family and promised a framed, colored result, sent right to their home, for a mere three dollars, S&H included, one dollar deposit to cover expenses, if you would be so good, sir, and may I say what wonderful children you have there, madam, they are a credit to you and no mistake, oh, and did I say that if you are not delighted with the framed picture then send no further money and we shall say no more about it?

The kale ale was generally pretty good, and there’s no such thing as too much flattery where mothers are concerned, and, all right, the man had rather strange teeth, which seem determined to make a break from his mouth, but none of us is perfect and what was there to lose?

What there was to lose was a dollar, and they add up. Whoever said you can’t fool an honest man wasn’t one.

Around about the seventh family a watchman started taking a distant interest, so the man in dusty black made a show of taking the last name and address and strolled into an alley. He tossed the broken iconograph back on the pile of junk where he had found it—it was a cheap one and the imps had long since evaporated—and was about to set off across the fields when he saw the newspaper being bowled along by the wind.

To a man traveling on his wits, a newspaper was a useful treasure. Stuck down your shirt, it kept the wind off your chest. You could use it to light fires. For the fastidious, it saved a daily resort to dockweed, burdock, or other broad-leaved plants. And, as a last resort, you could read it.

This evening, the breeze was getting up. He gave the front page of the paper a cursory glance, and tucked it under his vest.

His teeth tried to tell him something, but he never listened to them. A man could go mad, listening to his teeth.

W
HEN HE GOT
back to the Post Office, Moist looked up the Lavish family in Whom’s Whom. They were indeed what was known as “old money,” which meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.

They’d been rich for centuries. The key players in the current crop of Lavishes, apart from Topsy, were her brother-in-law Marko Lavish and his wife, Capricia Lavish, daughter of a famous trust fund. They lived in Genua, as far away from other Lavishes as possible, which was a very Lavish thing to do. Then there were Topsy’s stepchildren, the twins Cosmo and Pucci, who had, the story ran, been born with their little hands around each other’s throats, like true Lavishes. There were also plenty more cousins, aunts, and genetic hangers-on, all watching one another like cats. From what he’d heard, the family business was traditionally banking, but the recent generations, buoyed by a complex network of long-term investments and ancient trust funds, had diversified into disinheriting and suing one another, apparently with great enthusiasm and a commendable lack of mercy. He recalled pictures of them in the Times’ society pages, getting in or out of sleek black coaches and not smiling very much, in case the money escaped.