Going Postal

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet.

It's a tough decision.

But he's got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

Maybe it'll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it's a death sentence either way.

Or perhaps there's a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who's prepared to push the envelope...

Quotes

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that it is in a body that, in the morning, is going to be hanged.

"It's me, sir, Daniel 'One Drop' Trooper. I am your executioner for today, sir. Don't you worry, sir. I've hanged dozens of people. We'll soon have you out of here."

Moist: "Do you really think all this [hanging] deters crime, Mr. Trooper?"
Trooper: "Well, in the generality of things I'd say it's hard to tell, given that it's hard to find evidence of crimes not committed. But in the specificality, sir, I'd say it's very efficacious."
Moist: "Meaning what?"
Trooper: "Meaning I've never seen someone up here more'n once, sir."

Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.

"I am offering you a job, Mr. Lipwig. Work, for wages. I realize the concept may not be familiar."

Only as a form of hell, Moist thought.

"Look," said Moist, "I don't know what's happening here, but I don't know anything about delivering post!"

"Mr. Moist, this morning you had no experience at all of being dead, and yet but for my intervention you would nevertheless have turned out to be extremely good at it," said Lord Vetinari sharply. "It just goes to show: you never know until you try."

Vetinari: "There is always a choice."
Moist: "You mean ... I could choose certain death?"
Vetinari: "A choice, nevertheless. Or, perhaps, an alternative. You see, I believe in freedom, Mr. Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."

"Of course, I accept as natural born criminal, habitual liar, fraudster and totally untrustworthy perverted genius."

"Capital! Welcome to government service!"

There is a saying "You can't fool an honest man" which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men.

The world was blessedly free of honest men, and wonderfully full of people who believed they could tell the difference between an honest man and a crook.

Anyone who couldn't simply remember where he'd stashed a great big fortune deserved to lose it, in Moist's opinion.

He knew how to ride without a saddle. Hell, once he'd ridden without pants, too, but luckily all the tar and feathers helped him stick to the horse.

Weapons raised the ante far too high. It was much better to rely on a gift for talking his way out of things, confusing the issue and, if that failed, some well-soled shoes and a cry of "Look, what's that over there?"

The broom must have been kept as an ornament, because it certainly hadn't been used much on the accumulations in the stable yard. On the positive side, this meant he had fallen into something soft. On the negative side, it meant that he had fallen into something soft.

"This is cruel and unusual punishment!" said Moist.

"Indeed?" said Vetinari. "I offer you a light desk job, comparative freedom of movement, working in the fresh air... no, I feel that my offer might well be unusual, but cruel? I think not. However, I believe we do have down in the cellars some ancient punishments which are extremely cruel and in many cases quite unusual, if you would like to try them for the purposes of comparison."

Some cheap pillars had been sliced in half and stuck on the outside, some niches had been carved for some miscellaneous stone nymphs, some stone urns had been ranged along the parapet and thus Architecture had been created.

The figure stopped to cough long and hard, making a noise like a wall being hit repeatedly with a bag of rocks. Moist saw that it had a beard of the short bristled type that suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog.

Mr. Groat wore a toupee. There may actually be a man somewhere on whom a toupee works, but whoever that man might be, Mr. Groat was not he. It was chestnut brown, the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong style and, all in all, wrong.

The Dimwell Street rhyming slang is probably unique in that it does not, in fact, rhyme. No one knows why, but theories so far advanced are 1) that it is quite complex and in fact follows hidden rules or 2) Dimwell is well named or 3) it's made up to annoy strangers, which is the case with most such slangs.

"Tiddles?" said Moist. "You mean that really is a cat's name? I thought it was just a joke."

He decided that the role of keen but bewildered manager was the one to play here. Besides, apart from the "keen" aspect it didn't need any effort.

Being caught at 1 a.m. in a bank's deposit vault while wearing a black suit with lots of little pockets in it could be considered suspicious, so why do it? With careful planning, the right suit, the right papers and, above all, the right manner, you could walk into the place at midday and the manager would hold the door open for you when you left.

Before you could sell glass as diamonds you had to make people really want to see diamonds.

"I was a clerk," said Moist.

"What, paperwork, that sort of thing?" said Groat, looking at him intently.

"Yes, pretty much all paperwork." That was honest, if you included playing cards, cheques, letters of accreditation, bank drafts and deeds.

Moist: "Mr. Groat, I don't want to, you know, upset you or anything, but there"s thousands of letters out there under a thick layer of pigeon guano..."
Groat: "Actually, on that score, sir, things aren't as bad as they seem. It's very dry stuff, pigeon doings, and forms quite a hard protective crust on the envelopes..."

"...the thing is, Tolliver, that the picture I see in your description is what I might refer to for the purposes of the analogy as a cameo, whereas all this" -- Moist waved his hand to include the building and everything it contained -- "is a full-sized triptych showing scenes from history, the creation of the world and the disposition of the gods, with a matching chapel ceiling portraying the glorious firmament and a sketch of a lady with a weird smile thrown in for good measure!"

Groat: "Got to follow Regulations, sir."
Moist: "For what? It appears we don't accept any mail or deliver any mail! We just sit here!"
Groat: "No, sir, we don't just sit here. We follow the Post Office Regulations. Fill the inkwells, polish the brass--"
Moist: "You don't sweep up the pigeon shit!"
Groat: "Oddly enough, that's not in the Regulations, sir."

A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away.

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

"It's not good to look too often on the face of a god," he said. "Or any other part."

A hundred feet down and a quarter of a mile away as the woodpecker flies during daylight, Moist followed the path of destiny. Currently, it was leading him through a neighbourhood that was on the downside of whatever curve you hoped you'd bought your property on the upside of. Graffiti and rubbish were everywhere here. They were everywhere in the city, if it came to that, but elsewhere the garbage was better quality rubbish and the graffiti were close to being correctly spelled. The whole area was waiting for something to happen, like a really bad fire.

"Sorry, I'm a bit snappish this morning. A brick landing on your desk does that to you."

"Golems don't have any of our baggage about 'who am I, why am I here', okay? Because they know. They were made to be tools, to be property, to work. Work is what they do. In a way, it's what they are. End of existential angst."

A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.

Mr. Horsefry was a youngish man, not simply running to fat but vaulting, leaping and diving towards obesity.

It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was that of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr. Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous and pious man. In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain.

The shifting of the paper exposed a file marked "Embezzlement". The title was of course upside down to the rest of the group and, since presumably it was not intended to be read by them, they read it.

Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: while I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplumbable by any line, I'll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry.

Groat: "No offence, but you've got a bit more colour than the average penpusher."
Moist: "Dark clerks? Oh... do you mean those stocky little men in black suits and bowler hats?"
Groat: "The very same. Scholarship boys at the Assassins' Guild, some of 'em. I heard that they can do some nasty things when they've a mind."
Moist: "I thought you called them penpushers?"
Groat: "Yeah, but I didn't say where, heehee."

Moist: "A werewolf. And they don't tell visitors?"
Groat: "Now, how'd they do that, sir? Put it on a sign outside? 'Welcome To Ankh-Morpork, We Have A Werewolf', sir?"

Groat: "The Watch's got loads of dwarfs and trolls and a golem -- a free golem, savin' your presence, Mr. Pump -- and a couple of gnomes and a zombie... even a Nobbs."
Moist:"Nobbs? What's a Nobbs?"
Groat: "Corporal Nobby Nobbs, sir. Not met him yet? They say he's got an official chitty saying he's human, and who needs one of those, eh? Fortunately there's only one of him so he can't breed."

Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar, thought Moist.

People in Ankh-Morpork always paid attention to people on rooftops, in case there was a chance of an interesting suicide.

He was part of the government, wasn't he? Governments took money off people. That's what they were for.

People skills weren't much good in the face of Mr. Parker. He was one of the impervious people, whose grasp of volume control was about as good as his understanding of personal space.

"Well, we do not believe in going crazy in the postal service, do we, Mr. Gro--" He stopped. Mr. Groat had the expression of one who did believe in going crazy.

"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.

"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be-- all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"

"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And. Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs."

A lot of rumours had begun concerning Reacher Gilt, just as soon as people had noticed him and started asking, "Who is Reacher Gilt? What kind of a name is Reacher, anyway?"

They were the kind of parties that entered urban mythology (Was it true about the chopped liver? Were you there? What about the time when he brought in a troll stripper and three people jumped out of the window? Were you there? And that story about the bowl of sweets? Were you there? Did you see it? Was it true? Were you there?)

"You think about money in the old-fashioned way. Money is not a thing, it is not even a process. It is a kind of shared dream. We dream that a small disc of common metal is worth the price of a substantial meal."

Igor took Crispin home. By that time the man had reached the "jolly drunk" stage and was singing the kind of song that's hilarious to rugby players and children under the age of eleven, and getting him into his house must have awoken the neighbours, especially when he kept repeating the verse about the camel.

...it was depressing how quickly honest citizens warmed to an opportunity to take advantage of a poor benighted traveller. It could ruin a man's faith in human nature, if he had one.

There's not a city in the world without its Loyal and Ancient and Justified and Hermetic Order of little men who think they can reap the secrets of the ancients for a couple of hours every Thursday night and don't realize what prats they look in a robe.

He remembered joining -- what was it? Oh yes -- the Men of the Furrow, in some town out in the stalks. He had been blindfolded, of course, and the Men had made all the horrific noises they could imagine, and then a voice in the darkness had said, "Shake hands with the Old Master!" and Moist had reached out and shaken a goat's foot. Those who got out of there with clean pants won.

Next day he'd swindled three of his trusting new Brothers out of eighty dollars.

"Oh, all right," said Moist, trying to sound jovial. "What's the worst that can happen, eh?"

Groat was silent.

"I said--" Moist began.

"I was just working that out, sir," said Groat. "Let's see... yes, sir. The worst that can happen is you lose all your fingers on one hand, are crippled for life, and break half the bones in your body. Oh, and then they don't let you join. But don't you worry about a thing, sir, not a thing!"

"Postmen," the booming voice demanded again, "what is the First Oath?"

Voices sang out from the darkness, in chorus: "Strewth, would you bleedin' credit it? Toys, prams, garden tools ... they don't care what they leaves out on the path on these dark mornings!"

"Postmen, what is the Second Oath?" the echoing voice commanded.

"Dogs! I tell you, there's no such thing as a good one! If they don't bite they all crap! It's as bad as stepping on machine oil!"

He pitched the voice right. It was the key to a thousand frauds. You had to sound right, sound like you knew what you were doing, sound like you were in charge. And, while he'd spoken gibberish, it was authentic gibberish.

You only ever needed to hear that bark once. It wasn't a particularly aggressive one, because it was made by a mouth capable of crushing a skull. You didn't need too much extra advertising when you could do that.

Now he could see the mysterious Order clearly. They were robed, of course, because you couldn't have a secret order without robes. They had pushed the hoods back now, and each man was wearing a peaked cap with a bird skeleton wired to it. [Footnote: Women are always significantly under-represented in secret orders.]

"I can assure you that the control my voice has over them at the moment is stronger than steel," said Moist. This was probably garbage, but it was good garbage.

Mr. Pump entered, carrying a large box. It should be quite hard to open a big pair of doors while carrying something in both hands, but not if you're a golem. They just walk at them. The doors can choose to open or try to stay shut, it's up to them.

Pump: "There Are Some Gentlemen Outside With Nets And Gloves And Extremely Thick Clothing, Mr. Lipvig. They Say They Work For A Mr. Harry King. They Want To Know If You Have Finished With These Dogs."
Moist: "Harry King?"
Groat: "He's a big scrap merchant, sir. I expect the dogs was borrowed off of him. He turns 'em loose in his yards at night."
Moist: "No burglar gets in, eh?"
Groat: "I think he's quite happy if they get in, sir. Saves having to feed the dogs."

Memories of last night flocked treacherously to tap-dance their speciality acts on the famous stage of the Grand Old Embarrassing Recollection.

"Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?"

"I'm never going to live up to all this, Mr. Pump," he said. "They want a saint, not someone like me."

"Perhaps A Saint Is Not What They Need, Sir," said the golem.

They all wore uniforms, although since no two uniforms were exactly alike they were not, in fact, uniform and therefore not technically uniforms.

"But I thought you were a secret society!"

"Not secret, sir. Not exactly secret. More... ignored, you might say."

Groat: "Ever heard of Bloody Stupid Johnson? Quite famous in this city."
Moist: "Didn't he build things? Wasn't there always something wrong with them? I'm sure I read something about him--"
Groat: "That's the man, sir. He built all kinds of things, but, sad to say, there was always some major flaw."
Moist: "Wasn't he the man who specified quicksand as a building material because he wanted a house finished fast?"
Groat: "That's right, sir. Usually the major flaw was that the designer was Bloody Stupid Johnson."

There was a silence. In that silence, Moist tried out a variety of responses, from "Pull the other one, it's got bells on" to "That's impossible", and decided they all sounded stupid.

Time travel was only a kind of magic, after all. That's why it always went wrong.

Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards -- not "not doing magic" because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you know how easy it is. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again.

People wanted to be fooled. They really believed that you found gold nuggets lying on the ground, that this time you could find the Lady, that just for once the glass ring might be real diamond.

It didn't matter that the machine had been switched off, the wizards said. It existed in plenty of other presents and so worked here owing to... a lengthy sentence which the postmen didn't understand but had words like "portal", "multidimensional" and "quantum" in it, quantum being in it twice.

The wizards from Unseen University had been jolly interested in the problem, like doctors being really fascinated by some new virulent disease; the patient appreciates all the interest, but would very much prefer it if they either came up with a cure or stopped prodding.

Moist: "The rate for delivery anywhere in the city is a penny, isn't it?"
Groat: "Except for the Shades, sir. That"s five pence 'cos of the armed guard."

"No!" Moist's fist thumped the table. "Never say that, Tolliver! Never! Run before you walk! Fly before you crawl! Keep moving forward! You think we should try to get a decent mail service in the city. I think we should try to send letters anywhere in the world! Because if we fail, I'd rather fail really hugely."

Miss Dearheart: "Tell me, what do you want them to do?"
Moist: "Be postmen."
Miss Dearheart: "Working in public?"
Moist: "I don't think you can have secret postmen."

"I Am Almost Nineteen Thousand Years Old, Having Been Born In The Fire By The Priests Of Upsa In The Third Ning Of The Shaving Of The Goat. They Gave Me A Voice That I Might Carry Messages. Of Such Things Is The World Made."

"Never heard of them either," said Tropes.

"Upsa Was Destroyed By The Explosion Of Mount Shiputu. I Spent Two Centuries Under A Mountain Of Pumice Before It Eroded, Whereupon I Became A Messenger For The Fishermen Kings Of The Holy Ult. It Could Have Been Worse."

The golem's voice got deeper, as if he was quoting from memory. "Neither Deluge Nor Ice Storm Nor The Black Silence Of The Netherhells Shall Stay These Messengers About Their Sacred Business. Do Not Ask Us About Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Tar Pits, Big Green Things With Teeth Or The Goddess Czol."

"You had big green things with teeth back then?" said Tropes.

"Bigger. Greener. More Teeth," rumbled Anghammarad.

"And the goddess Czol?" said Moist.

"Do Not Ask."

"[Commander Vimes is] the most cynical bastard that walks under the sun."

"You think he's cynical?" said Moist.

"Yes," she said, blowing smoke. "As you suspect, that's practically a professional opinion."

Ye gods, Miss Dearheart was hard work. He'd met women he couldn't charm, but they'd been foothills compared to the icy heights of Mount Dearheart.

Moist: "Would you like to have dinner tonight?"
Miss Dearheart: "I like to have dinner every night. With you? No."

"Doesn't this place give you the creeps? You could perhaps do something with some floral wallpaper and a fire-bomb."

"Um... some people didn't like getting their mail, sir."

"Things got posted through the wrong doors?" said Moist.

"Oh, no, sir. But old letters ain't always welcome. Not when they're, as it might be, a will. A will. As in Last Will and Testament, sir," the old man added meaningfully. "As in, it turns out the wrong daughter got mum's jewellery twenty years ago. As it were."

Sacharissa: "Have you heard about the fracas in Weaver Street?"
Moist: "I heard it was a rumpus."
Sacharissa: "I'm afraid it's got worse. There was a house on fire when I left."

Sacharissa: "Aren't you being rather ambitious, Mr Lipwig?"
Moist: "I'm sorry, I don't know any other way to be."

"I dare say the clacks is wonderful if you wish to know the prawn market figures from Genua. But can you write S.W.A.L.K. on a clacks? Can you seal it with a loving kiss? Can you cry tears on to a clacks, can you smell it, can you enclose a pressed flower? A letter is more than just a message."

Miss Cripslock was scribbling like mad, and it's always worrying to see a journalist take a sudden interest in what you're saying, especially when you half suspect it was a load of pigeon guano.

Moist: "I don't want to be singled out from all the hard-working men and golems who are putting the Post Office back on its feet! After all, there's no 'me' in team, eh?"
Sacharissa: "Actually, there is."

"I really didn't want to go into this, but it's against my religion," said Moist, who'd had time to think. "We're forbidden to have any image made of us. It removes part of the soul, you know."

"And you believe that?" said Sacharissa. "Really?"

"Er, no. No. Of course not. Not as such. But... but you can't treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can't say yes please, I'll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind."

"Although your name probably is Moist von Lipwig, because I can't believe anyone would choose that as an assumed name," she went on.

"I have to hand it to you, Mr. Lipwig, taking on a job that has killed four men before you. It takes a special kind of man to do that."

Yes, thought Moist. An ignorant one.

"How old are you, Mr. Lipwig?"

"Twenty-six. Is that important?"

"We like to be thorough." Miss Cripslock gave him a sweet smile. "Besides, it's useful if we have to write your obituary."

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis: "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins."

Somewhere [the library] has every book ever written, that ever will be written and, notably, every book that it is possible to write. These are not on the public shelves lest untrained handling cause the collapse of everything that it is possible to imagine. [Footnote: Again.]

"You may experience a taste of eggs and the sensation of being slapped in the face with some sort of fish. This is perfectly--"

It was a wizard's study, so of course had the skull with a candle in it and a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. No one, least of all wizards, knows why this is, but you have to have them.

"We'll never be able to deliver them all," said Moist. "That'd take years."

"The mere fact you're delivering any will help, I'm sure," said Professor Pelc, smiling like a doctor telling a man not to worry, the disease is only fatal in 87 per cent of cases.

Moist was not good at early mornings in any case. That was one of the advantages of a life of crime: you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired.

Moist made a mental note: envelopes with a stamp already on them and a sheet of folded paper inside them: Instant Letter Kit, Just Add Ink! That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money.

Hobson: "Good horseman, are yer?"
Moist: "When it comes to riding out of town, Mr. Hobson, there's no one faster."

"We're sorry to hear that our colleagues in the clacks company are experiencing temporary difficulties with their machinery, we fully sympathize with their plight, and if they would like us to deliver their messages for them we would of course be happy to sell them some stamps -- soon to be available in penny, twopenny, fivepenny, tenpenny and one dollar values, available here at your Post Office, ready gummed. Incidentally, we intend eventually to flavour the gum in liquorice, orange, cinnamon and banana flavours, but not strawberry because I hate strawberries."

The Post Office was the underdog, and an underdog can always find somewhere soft to bite.

If he'd had spurs, Moist would have spurred Boris on at this point, and would probably have been thrown, trampled and eaten for his pains. [Footnote: Which would have been agonizing.]

He'd have to jump off; there was no other way. Moist had tried out half a dozen scenarios as the walls loomed, but nearly all of them involved haystacks. The one that didn't was the one where he broke his neck.

The mayor of Sto Lat was a short, bird-like man, who'd either become mayor very recently and immediately after the post had been held by a big fat man, or thought that a robe that trailed several feet behind you and a chain that reached to the waist was the look for civic dignitaries this year.

The voice went into his head, bored down through his memories, riffled through his fears, found the right levers, battened on to them and pulled.

Groat: "A good woman, that. Fifth generation of Miss Maccalariats. Maiden name kept for professional purposes, o' course."
Moist: "They get married?"
Groat: "Yessir."
Moist: "Do they bite their husbands' heads off on their wedding night?"

He always moved fast. His whole life had been movement. Move fast, because you never know what's trying to catch you up--

Moist had never met a head waiter who hated money.

He looked like a better class of pirate, a buccaneer maybe, but one who took the time to polish his plank.

It wasn't a good idea to steal things from people who did their own law enforcement. They tended to be very definite.

Fooling a maitre d' was practically a public service.

Gryle was not a man for small talk or, if it came to it, any talk at all.

He'd never blackmail you, because such an attempt would be the first move in a game that would almost certainly end in death for somebody; if Mr. Gryle found himself in such a game he'd kill right now, without further thought, in order to save time, and assumed that anyone else would, too.

It smelled -- no, it stank -- no, it fugged of horses, leather, veterinary medicine, bad coal, brandy and cheap cigars. That"s what a fug was. You could have cut cubes out of the air and sold it for cheap building material.

They were big men, who looked as though they"d been built out of pork and fat bacon.

There's a kind of big, outdoor sort of man who's got no patience at all with prevaricators and fibbers, but will applaud any man who can tell an outrageous whopper with a gleam in his eye.

"They get so mad even ordinary mad people think they're mad."

"Stop right there, Mr. Pump, please! Cupids are these... little overweight kids in nappies, all right? Not big clay people."

...the Mended Drum could be depended upon. If someone didn't come out of the door backwards and fall down in the street just as you passed, then there was something wrong with the world.

"Now, Oyster Dave here -- put your helmet back on, Dave -- will be the enemy in front and Basalt who, as we know, don't need a helmet, he'll be the enemy coming up behind you. Okay, it's well past knuckles time, let's say Gravy there has done his thing with the Bench Swipe, there's a bit of knifeplay, we've done the whole Chandelier Swing number, blah blah blah, then Second Chair -- that's you, Bob -- you step smartly between their Number Five man and a Bottler, swing the chair back over your head like this -- sorry, Pointy -- and then swing it right back on to Number Five, bang, crash, and there's a cushy six points in your pocket. If they're playing a dwarf at Number Five then a chair won't even slow him down but don't fret, hang on to the bits that stay in your hand, pause one moment as he comes at you and then belt him across both ears. They hate that, as Stronginthearm here will tell you. Another three points. It's probably going to be freestyle after that but I want all of you, including Mucky Mick and Crispo, to try for a Double Andrew when it gets down to the fist-fighting again. Remember? You back into each other, turn round to give the other guy a thumping, cue moment of humorous recognition, then link left arms, swing round and see to the other fellow's attacker, foot or fist, it's your choice. Fifteen points right there if you get it to flow just right. Oh, and remember we'll have an Igor standing by, so if your arm gets taken off do pick it up and hit the other bugger with it -- it gets a laugh and twenty points."

-- Organized bar-brawling

Moist got to the bar eventually, by dropping a handful of small change on the floor. That usually cleared the crush a little.

Oh gods, I'm going to have to do something, Moist thought. He's big and he's got a sword like a butcher's cleaver and the moment I say anything he"s going to go right into stage four, Violent Undirected Madman, and they can be surprisingly accurate before they fall over.

"What is sticking in your foot is a Mitzy 'Pretty Lucretia' four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Considered as pounds per square inch, it's like being trodden on by a very pointy elephant. Now, I know what you're thinking: you're thinking, 'Could she press it all the way through to the floor?' And, you know, I'm not sure about that myself. The sole of your boot might give me a bit of trouble, but nothing else will. But that's not the worrying part. The worrying part is that I was forced practically at knifepoint to take ballet lessons as a child, which means I can kick like a mule; you are sitting in front of me; and I have another shoe."

--Who needs a Magnum when you've got stiletto heels?

In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart... well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better.

Miss Dearheart: "The Grand Trunk Company kills people, Mr. Lipwig. In all kinds of ways. You must be getting on Reacher Gilt's nerves."
Moist: "Oh, come on! I'm barely a wasp at their picnic!"
Miss Dearheart: "And what do people do to wasps, do you think?"

Across the room, a man hit another man with his own leg and picked up seven points.

"Remember, we may not be the fastest but we always get there. Why not write to your old granny?"

"I ate my grandmother," growled a voice from high in the darkness. "I gnawed her bones."

Stanley coughed. He had not been trained in the art of salesmanship.

"Ah," he said. "Er... perhaps an aunt, then?"

[The pigeons] were so tasty. You couldn't stop at one! And five minutes later you remembered why you should have done.

These were feral, urban birds, that lived on what they could find on the streets. Ankh-Morpork streets, at that. They were bobbing, cooing plague pits. You might as well eat a dog turd burger and wash it down with a jumbo cup of septic tank.

A restaurant that has a waiter even for the mustard stacks up the prices. But right now Moist wasn't worrying about the bill. There were ways to deal with bills, and it was best to deal with them on a full stomach.

Miss Dearheart: "That bastard has just walked into the place! Reacher Gilt! I'll just kill him and join you for the pudding..."
Moist: "You can't do that!"
Miss Dearheart: "Oh? Why not?"
Moist: "You're using the wrong knife! That"s for the fish! You'll get into trouble!"

Miss Dearheart: "They don't have a knife for stabbing rich murdering bastards?"
Moist: "They bring it to the table when you order one."

There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed across the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own.

"The management would like to thank you for not killing the guests."

Paragraph 4 said: If Trapped by Fire, Endeavour to Escape. Do Not Open Doors If Warm. Do Not Use Stairs If Burning. If No Exit Presents Itself Remain Calm and Await a) Rescue or b) Death.

It did not say in the Regulations: If Attacked by Huge Swooping Screaming Creature Hit Hard in the Mouth with Sack of Pins, and Stanley wondered if he should pencil this in. But that would be Defacing Post Office Property, and he could get into trouble for that.

Moist: "I'd better go in. Er... you wouldn't care to say 'No, no, don't do it, you're being far too brave!' would you?"
Miss Dearheart: "No, no, don't do it, you're being far too brave! How was that for you?"

Moist: "Is there a hospice in this city? A decent doctor, even?"
Miss Dearheart: "There's the Lady Sybil Free Hospital."
Moist: "Is it any good?"
Miss Dearheart: "Some people don't die."

And hadn't his grandfather warned him to keep away from women as neurotic as a shaved monkey? Actually he hadn't, his interest lying mainly with dogs and beer, but he should have done.

...the good thing about a stake through the heart was that it also worked on non-vampires.

"Tiddles!" bellowed Moist. He wished he hadn't. It was such a stupid name to shout in a burning building.

A vampire, she'd said. And Stanley had hit "a big bird" with a sackful of pins. Stanley the Vampire Slayer, with a bag of pins.

Cats never figured in grandfather's Lipwigzer kennels, except as an impromptu snack.

It was one of the prime rules of exploring in a hostile environment: do not bother about the cat.

He arose slowly, on unsteady legs, and stared at what had become of the creature. If he'd been a hero, he would have taken the opportunity to say, "That's what I call sorted!" Since he wasn't a hero, he threw up.

A body doesn't work properly when significant bits are not sharing the same space-time frame as the rest of it, but it does look more colourful.

A man who rushes into a burning building to rescue a stupid cat and comes out carrying the cat is seen as a hero, even if he is a rather dumb one. If he comes out sans cat he's a twit.

"Listen," Moist growled. "The hero has to come out with the cat. The cat doesn't have to be alive--"

The key point was never to tell the truth. Coppers never believed what people told them in any case, so there was no point in giving them extra work.

"We believe it to have been a banshee, Mr. Lipwig," said the captain patiently. "They're very rare."

"I thought they just screamed on the rooftops of people who are going to die," said Moist.

"The civilized ones do, sir. The wild ones cut out the middle man."

Carrot: "No one has been behaving oddly?"
Moist: "In the Post Office, captain, it's very hard to tell."

...people like Gilt don't bother with the law. They never break it, they just use people who do.

He'd sent letters to Offler, Om and Blind Io, all important gods, and also to Anoia, a minor goddess of Things That Stick In Drawers.

[Footnote: Often, but not uniquely, a ladle, but sometimes a metal spatula or, rarely, a mechanical egg-whisk that nobody in the house admits to ever buying. The desperate mad rattling and cries of "How can it close on the damn thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?" is as praise unto Anoia. She also eats corkscrews.]

It is not often that a wailing woman rushes into a room and throws herself at a man. It had never happened to Moist before. Now it happened, and it seemed such a waste that the woman was Miss Maccalariat.

Moist reeled under her weight. She was dragging at his collar so hard that he was likely to end up on the floor, and the thought of being found on the floor with Miss Maccalariat was-- well, a thought that just couldn't be thoughted. The head would explode before entertaining it.

"It's all so dreadful, Mr. Lipwig!" said Miss Maccalariat, determined to drain the bitter cup of despair to the very dregs.

"There appears to be no owner for the money, although so far, of course, nine hundred and thirty-eight people would like me to believe it belongs to them. Such is life in Ankh-Morpork."

Why is this man ruling just one city? he thought. Why isn't he ruling the world? Is this how he treats other people? It's like being a puppet. The difference is, he arranges for you to pull your own strings.

...what would he have done with the money? He never had time to spend it in any case. After all, what could a master criminal buy? There was a shortage of seaside properties with real lava flows near a reliable source of piranhas...

Gilt didn't need a tower with ten thousand trolls camped outside. He just needed a ledger and a sharp mind. It worked better, was cheaper and he could go out and party at night.

[The priests] were officially against people laying up treasures on earth but, they had to admit, it was always good to get bums on pews, feet in sacred groves, hands rattling drawers and fingers being trailed in the baby crocodile pool. They settled therefore for a kind of twinkle-eyed denial that it could happen again, while hinting that, well, you never know, ineffable are the ways of gods, eh? Besides, petitioners standing in line with their letter asking for a big bag of cash were open to the suggestion that those most likely to receiveth were the ones who had already givethed, and got the message once you"d tapped them on the head with the collecting plate a few times.

You knew that the man running the Find The Lady game was going to win, you knew that people in distress didn't sell diamond rings for a fraction of their value, you knew that life generally handed you the sticky end of the stick, and you knew that the gods didn't pick some everyday undeserving tit out of the population and hand them a fortune.

Except that, this time, you might be wrong, right? It might just happen, yes?

And this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn't be.

If one of the rules that should be passed on to a young man is "don't get mixed up with crazy girls who smoke like a bellows", another one should be "run away from any woman who pronounces 'what' with two Hs".

This woman might have been two women. She certainly had the cubic capacity and, since she was dressed entirely in white, looked rather like an iceberg.

...he had his name on a plate on his desk, because doctors are very busy and can't remember everything...

Moist: "He"s a great believer in natural medicine, you see. He doesn't trust doctors."
Dr. Lawn: "Really? He retains some vestige of sanity, then."

"Incidentally, it's wisest not to argue with the nursing staff. I find the wisest course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted."

"Mr. Lipwig, there are times when we humble practitioners of the craft of medicine have to stand aside in astonishment. Quite a long way aside, in the case of Mr. Groat, and preferably behind a tree."

"Oh, and do take his wig, will you? We tried putting it in a cupboard, but it got out."

His name was Mr. Pony, and he was the Trunk's chief engineer. He'd come with the company, and had hung on because at the age of fifty-eight, with twinges in your knuckles, a sick wife and a bad back, you think twice about grand gestures such as storming out.

"D'you want it fast or cheap or good, gentlemen?" he said. "The way things have gone, I can only give you one out of three..."

-- The universal lament of the engineer

He wanted to say, oh, how he wanted to say: craftsmen. D'you know what that means? It means men with some pride, who get fed up and leave when they"re told to do skimpy work in a rush, no matter what you pay them. So I'm employing people as "craftsmen" now who're barely fit to sweep out a workshop. But you don't care, because if they don't polish a chair with their arse all day you think a man who's done a seven-year apprenticeship is the same as some twerp who can't be trusted to hold a hammer by the right end. He didn't say this aloud, because although an elderly man probably has a lot less future than a man of twenty, he"s far more careful of it...

He waited until they had settled down and were regarding him with that strange and rather terrifying look that rich men wear when they think they may be in danger of becoming poor men.

"Reacher, you know we'll be in big trouble if the Trunk stops working," said Nutmeg. "Some of us have... debts to service. If the Trunk fails for good then people will... ask questions."

Oh, those pauses, thought Gilt. Embezzlement is such a difficult word.

"Many of us had to work very hard to raise the cash," said Stowley.

Yes, keeping a straight face in front of your clients must be tricky, Gilt thought.

They were, by their own standards, honest men, in that they only did what they knew or suspected that everyone else did and there was never any visible blood...

"Perhaps we have been... a little smug, a little lax, but we have learned our lesson! Spurred by the competition we are investing several hundred thousand dollars--"

"Several hundred?" said Greenyham.

Gilt waved him into silence, and continued: "--several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening co-operation with the communities we are proud to serve. We fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. That is our mission."

-- Management-speak is truly universal

He surveyed the faces of men who now knew that they were riding a tiger. It had been a good ride up until a week or so ago. It wasn't a case of not being able to get off. They could get off. That was not the problem. The problem was that the tiger knew where they lived.

And then it occurred to one or two of the board that the jovial "my friends" in the mouth of Reacher Gilt, so generous with his invitations, his little tips, his advice and his champagne, was beginning, in its harmonics and overtones, to sound just like the word "pal" in the mouth of a man in an alley who was offering cosmetic surgery with a broken bottle in exchange for not being given any money.

"Igor, would you say that I'm insane?" he said.

Igors are not supposed to lie to an employer. It's part of the Code of the Igors. Igor took refuge in strict linguistic honesty.

"I wouldn't find mythelf able to thay that, thur," he said.

"...I show them what I do, I show them how the cards are marked, I tell them what I am... and they nudge one another and grin and each one of them thinks himself no end of a fine fellow to be doing business with me. They throw good money after bad. They believe themselves to be sharp operators, and yet they offer themselves like little lambs. How I love to see their expressions when they think they"re being astute."

Or maybe try veterinary work like my other cousin Igor, Igor thought. That was a good traditional area, certainly. Pity about all that publicity when the hamster smashed its way out of its treadmill and ate that man's leg before flying away, but that was Progrethth for you. The important thing was to get out before the mob arrived. And when your boss started telling thin air how good he was, that was the time.

They'd made a crook the messenger of the gods, and piled on his charred desk the sum of all their hopes and fears... badly punctuated, true, and in smudged pencil or free Post Office ink, which had spluttered across the paper in the urgency of writing.

Moist: "So what shall I do with all these... prayers?"
Miss Dearheart: "Deliver them, of course. You"ve got to. You are the messenger of the gods. And they've got stamps on. Some of them are covered in stamps! It's your job. Take them to the temples. You promised to do that!"
Moist: "I never promised to--"
Miss Dearheart: "You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Miss Dearheart: "And it'll give them hope."
Moist: "False hope."
Miss Dearheart: "Maybe not this time. That's the point of hope."

You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although "synergistically" had probably been a whore from the start.

No one was sorry for anything because no living creature had done anything wrong; bad things had happened by spontaneous generation in some weird, chilly, geometrical otherworld, and "were to be regretted". [Footnote: Another bastard phrase that'd sell itself to any weasel in a tight corner.]

Miss Maccalariat: "Mr. Lipwig, I hope never to hear such language in this building again!"
Miss Dearheart: "He was using it about the chairman of the Grand Trunk Company."
Miss Maccalariat: "Oh... Er, in that case... perhaps a teensy bit quieter, then?"
Moist: "Certainly, Miss Maccalariat."
Miss Maccalariat: "And perhaps not the K-word?"
Moist: "No, Miss Maccalariat."
Miss Maccalariat: "And also not the L-word, the T-word, both of the S-words, the V-word and the Y-word."
Moist: "Just as you say, Miss Maccalariat."
Miss Maccalariat: "'Murdering conniving bastard of a weasel' was acceptable, however."

Moist: "Besides, I heard there were bandits up in the mountains."
Jim: "Used to be. Not as many now."
Moist: "That's something less to worry about, then."
Jim: "Dunno. We never found out what wiped them out."

Always remember that the crowd which applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

"Cabbages are so popular, sir. You can make so many things out of them!"

"Well, I can see that--"

"There's cabbage soup, cabbage beer, cabbage fudge, cabbage cake, cream of cabbage--"

"Yes, Stanley, I think you--"

"--pickled cabbage, cabbage jelly, cabbage salad, boiled cabbage, deep-fried cabbage--"

"Yes, but now can--"

"--fricassee of cabbage, cabbage chutney, Cabbage Surprise, sausages--"

"Sausages?"

"Filled with cabbage, sir."

How could people be so stupid? They seemed to cling to ignorance because it smelled familiar.

"People enjoy the experience of being fooled, if it promises a certain amount of entertainment."

Pony sighed. They never took an interest. It was just money. They didn't know how anything worked. And then suddenly they needed to know, and you had to use baby talk.

Miss Dearheart: "You mean you just talked big and hoped something would turn up?"
Moist: "It's always worked before! Where's the sense in promising to achieve the achievable? What kind of success would that be?"
Miss Dearheart: "Haven't you ever heard of learning to walk before you run?"
Moist: "It's a theory, yes."

"The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up."

Moist: "It's a little complicated, so I can only tell you if you promise to sit still and not make any sudden movements."
Miss Dearheart: "Why, do you believe I will?"
Moist: "Yes. I think that in a few seconds you'll try to kill me."

"Go up there tonight, Mr. Lipwig. Get yourself a little bit closer to heaven. And then get down on your knees and pray. You know how to pray, don't you? You just put your hands together -- and hope."

There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a lot of little pauses, each one more deeply embarrassing than its parent.

"We'll employ anyone who can read and write and reach a letter box, Miss Maccalariat. I'll hire vampires if they're a member of the League of Temperance, trolls if they wipe their feet, and if there're any werewolves out there I'd love to hire postmen who can bite back."

What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the snap of a finger?

"I'm Mad Al, he's Sane Alex, and that's Adrian, who says he's not mad but can't prove it."

[The pigeon] watched them from the corner with mad little eyes, its genes remembering the time it had been a giant reptile that could have taken these sons of monkeys to the cleaners in one mouthful.

It had all kinds of improvements, it would be cheaper to run, it was the bee's knees, mutt's nuts and various wonderful bits of half a dozen other creatures.

It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in fact, stealing. But there was no law against it because no one knew the crime existed, so is it really stealing if what's stolen isn't missed? And is it stealing if you're stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property is theft, except mine.

"So now you're, what was it again... crackers?" Moist said.

"That's right," said Mad Al. "Because we can crack the system."

"That sounds a bit over-dramatic when you're just doing it with lamps, doesn't it?"

"Yes, but 'flashers' was already taken," said Sane Alex.

Moist missed the rest of the sentence. Innocent words swirled in it like debris caught in a flood, occasionally bobbing to the surface and waving desperately before being pulled under again. He caught "the" several times before it drowned, and even "disconnect" and "gear chain", but the roaring, technical polysyllables rose and engulfed them all.

He wasn't interested in machinery; he thought of a spanner as something which had another person holding it.

"Maybe not every tower, if they catch on," Mad Al admitted, as if less than wholesale destruction was something to be mildly ashamed of.

"The woodpecker?"

"No, not like that. You need, sort of, more of a pause for effect, like... the Woodpecker."

He liked the Gnu. They thought in a refreshingly different way; whatever curse hung around the stones of the old tower surely couldn't affect minds like theirs, because they were inoculated against madness by being a little bit crazy all the time.

Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, levelled his cue and took careful aim.

The white ball hit a red ball, which rolled gently into a pocket. This was harder than it looked because more than half of the snooker table served as the Archchancellor's filing system [Footnote: Ridcully practised the First Available Surface method of filing.]

Ridcully: "Was there something else, Mr. Stibbons?"
Stibbons: "There's a polite letter from Lord Vetinari asking on behalf of the city whether the University might consider including in its intake, oh, twenty-five per cent of less able students, sir?"
Ridcully: "Can't have a bunch of grocers and butchers telling a university how to run itself, Stibbons! Thank them for their interest and tell them we'll continue to take one hundred per cent of complete and utter dullards, as usual."

Stibbons: "That's Devious Collabone, sir. He's out studying Oyster Communications in a Low Intensity Magical Field for his B.Thau."
Ridcully: "Good gods, can they communicate?"
Stibbons: "Apparently, Archchancellor, although thus far they're refusing to talk to him."

Ridcully: "Why'd we send him all the way out there?"
Stibbons: "Devious H. Collabone, Archchancellor? Remember? With the terrible halitosis?"
Ridcully: "Oh, you mean Dragonbreath Collabone? The one who could blow a hole in a silver plate?"
Stibbons: "Yes, Archchancellor. You said that out in the swamps no one would notice?"

It wasn't your fault; no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care.

Moist stared at his reflection, barely listening. He always raised the stakes, automatically. Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it had been impossible.

A bit more graffiti had been added to the strata that now covered the boarded-up window. It was just above knee-level and said, in crayon: "Golms are Made of pOo." It was good to see the fine old traditions of idiot bigotry being handed down, in a no-good-at-all kind of way.

"But can I trust you?"

"On this? My gods, no! Your father trusted Gilt, and look what happened! I wouldn't trust me if I was you. But I would if I was me."

"Why the helmet?" said Moist.

"It's a disguise," said Alex.

"A big horned helmet?"

"Yes. It makes me so noticeable that no one will suspect I'm trying not to be noticed, so they won't bother to notice me."

"It's so sad you're going, Mr. Igor," said Mrs Glowbury, the cook. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "You've been a real breath of fresh air."

"Can't be helped, Mrthth Glowbury," said Igor. "I thall mith your thteak and kidney pie, and no mithtake. It doth my heart good to thee a woman who can really make thomething out of leftoverth."

It was the heart of any scam or fiddle. Keep the punter uncertain or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.

Raise the stakes. Always push your luck, because no one else would push it for you.

"Did you get some guards?"

"Four of them, Mr. Lipwig," Jim announced. "Lying low inside. Men of repute and integrity. Known 'em since we were lads: Nosher Harry, Skullbreaker Tapp, Grievous Bodily Harmsworth and Joe 'No Nose' Tozer."

Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong...

But it might.

If there's one thing a wizard hates, it's having to wait while the person in front of them is in two minds about coleslaw. It's a salad bar, they say, it's got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn't be a salad bar, you're not here to look at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth?

In front of him, Mustrum Ridcully reddened with anger, his tried and tested approach to most problems.

Archchancellor Ridcully was a great believer in retaliation by promotion. You couldn't have civilians criticizing one of his wizards. That was his job.

Greenyham: "I will sue the University! I will sue the University!"
Ridcully: "Oh, please sue the University! We've got a pond full of people who tried to sue the University--"

Vetinari: "Commander Vimes, be so kind as to send men to the offices of the Grand Trunk Company, Ankh-Sto Associates, Sto Plains Holdings, Ankh Futures and particularly to the premises of the Ankh-Morpork Mercantile Credit Bank. Inform the manager, Mr. Cheeseborough, that the bank is closed for audit and I wish to see him in my office at his earliest convenience. Any person in any of those premises who so much as moves a piece of paper before my clerks arrive will be arrested and held complicit in any or all of such offences as may be uncovered. While this is happening, moreover, no person concerned with the Grand Trunk Company or any of its employees is to leave this room."
Greenyham: "You can't do that!"
Vetinari: "Can I not? I am a tyrant. It's what we do."

A fine upstanding citizen wouldn't have stooped so low, but he hadn't got this job because he was a fine upstanding citizen. Some tasks needed a good honest hammer. Others needed a twisty corkscrew.

It dawned on the directors of the Grand Trunk that their chairman was absent and, which was worse, they weren't.

"...in my experience, the best way to get something done is to give it to someone who is busy."

"It wasn't a nice thing to do," Adora Belle Dearheart went on, in the same level tone.

"There wasn't a nice thing that would work," said Moist.

Peel away the lies, and the truth would emerge, naked and ashamed and with nowhere else to hide.