Making Money d-36 Read online

  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.

  All, 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 posting boxes to reduce the numbers of toads…'

  Lord Vetinari repeated himself.

  'Er… which, it's true, staff put in the posting boxes to keep down the snails…'

  Lord Vetinari remained unvocal.

  'Er… These, I must in fairness point out, got into the boxes of their own accord, in order to eat the glue on the stamps,' said Moist, aware that he was beginning to burble.

  'Well, at least you were saved the trouble of having to introduce them yourselves,' said Lord Vetinari cheerfully. 'As you indicate, this may well have been a case where chilly logic should have been replaced by the common sense of, perhaps, the average chicken. But that is not the reason I asked you to come here today.'

  'If it's about the cabbage-flavoured stamp glue—' Moist began.

  Vetinari waved a hand. 'An amusing incident,' he said, 'and I believe nobody actually died.'

  'Er, the Second Issue 50p stamp?' Moist ventured.

  'The one they call the "Lovers"?' said Vetinari. 'The League of Decency did complain to me, yes, but—'

  'Our artist didn't realize what he was sketching! He doesn't know much about agriculture! He thought the young couple were sowing seeds!'

  'Ahem,' said Vetinari. 'But I understand that the offending affair can only be seen in any detail with quite a large magnifying glass, and so the offence, if such it be, is largely self-inflicted.' He gave one of his slightly frightening little smiles. 'I understand the few copies in circulation among the stamp collectors are affixed to a plain brown envelope.' He looked at Moist's blank face and sighed. 'Tell me, Mr Lipwig, would you like to make some real money?'

  Moist gave this some thought and then said, very carefully: 'What will happen to me if I say yes?'

  'You will start a new career of challenge and adventure, Mr Lipwig.'

  Moist shifted uneasily. He didn't need to look round to know that, by now, someone would be standing by the door. Someone heavily but not grotesquely built, in a cheap black suit, and with absolutely no sense of humour.

  'And, just for the sake of argument, what will happen if I say no?'

  'You may walk out of that door over there and the matter will not be raised again.'

  It was a door in a different wall. He had not come in by it.

  'That door over there?' Moist stood up and pointed.

  'Indeed so, Mr Lipwig.'

  Moist turned to Drumknott. 'May I borrow your pencil, Mr Drumknott? Thank you.' He walked over to the door and opened it. Then he cupped one hand to his ear, theatrically, and dropped the pencil.

  'Let's see how dee—'

  Clik! The pencil bounced and rolled on some quite solid-looking floorboards. Moist picked it up and stared at it, and then walked slowly back to his chair.

  'Didn't there use to be a deep pit full of spikes down there?' he said.

  'I can't imagine why you would think that,' said Lord Vetinari.

  'I'm sure there was,' Moist insisted.

  'Can you recall, Drumknott, why our Mr Lipwig should think that there used to be a deep pit full of spikes behind that door?' said Vetinari.

  'I can't imagine why he would think that, my lord,' Drumknott murmured.

  'I'm very happy at the Post Office, you know,' said Moist, and realized that he sounded defensive.

  'I'm sure you are. You make a superb Postmaster General,' said Vetinari. He turned to Drumknott. 'Now I've finished this I'd better deal with the overnights from Genua,' he said, and carefully folded the letter into an envelope.

  'Yes, my lord,' said Drumknott.

  The tyrant of Ankh-Morpork bent to his work. Moist watched blankly as Vetinari took a small but heavy-looking box from a desk drawer, removed a stick of black sealing wax from it and melted a small puddle of the wax on to the envelope with an air of absorption that Moist found infuriating.

  'Is that all?' he said.

  Vetinari looked up and appeared surprised to see him still there. 'Why, yes, Mr Lipwig. You may go.' He laid aside the stick of wax and took a black signet ring out of the box.

  'I mean, there's not some kind of problem, is there?'

  'No, not at all. You have become an exemplary citizen, Mr Lipwig,' said Vetinari, carefully stamping a V into the cooling wax. 'You rise each morning at eight, you are at your desk at thirty minutes past. You have turned the Post Office from a calamity into a smoothly running machine. You pay your taxes and a little bird tells me that you are tipped to be next year's Chairman of the Merchants' Guild. Well done, Mr Lipwig!'

  Moist stood up to leave, but hesitated. 'What's wrong with being Chairman of the Merchants' Guild, then?' he said.

  With slow and ostentatious patience, Lord Vetinari slipped the ring back into its box and the box back into the drawer. 'I beg your pardon, Mr Lipwig?'

  'It's just that you said it as though there was something wrong with it,' said Moist.

  'I don't believe I did,' said Vetinari, looking up at his secretary. 'Did I utter a derogatory inflection, Drumknott?'

  'No, my lord. You have often remarked that the traders and shopkeepers of the guild are the backbone of the city,' said Drumknott, handing him a thick file.

  ' I shall get a very nearly gold chain,' said Moist.

  'He will get a very nearly gold chain, Drumknott,' observed Vetinari, paying attention to a new letter.

  'And what's so bad about that?' Moist demanded.

  Vetinari looked up again with an expression of genuinely contrived puzzlement. 'Are you quite well, Mr Lipwig? You appear to have something wrong with your hearing. Now run along, do. The Central Post Office opens in ten minutes and I'm sure you would wish, as ever, to set a good example to your staff.'

  When Moist had departed, the secretary quietly laid a folder in front of Vetinari. It was labelled 'Albert Spangler/Moist von Lipwig'.

  'Thank you, Drumknott, but why?'

  'The death warrant on Albert Spangler is still extant, my lord,' Drumknott murmured.

  'Ah. I understand,' said Lord Vetinari. 'You think that I will point out to Mr Lipwig that under his nomme de felonie of Albert Spangler he could still be hanged? You think that I might suggest to him that all I would need to do is inform the newspapers of my shock at finding that our honourable Mr Lipwig is none other than the master thief, forger and confidence trickster who over the years has stolen many hundreds of thousands of dollars, breaking banks and forcing honest businesses into penury? You think I will threaten to send in some of my most trusted clerks to audit the Post Office's accounts and, I am certain, uncover evidence of the most flagrant embezzlement? Do you think that they will find, for example, that the entirety of the Post Office Pension Fund has gone missing? You think I w
ill express to the world my horror at how the wretch Lipwig escaped the hangman's noose with the aid of persons unknown? Do you think, in short, that I will explain to him how easily I can bring a man so low that his former friends will have to kneel down to spit on him? Is that what you assumed, Drumknott?'

  The secretary stared up at the ceiling. His lips moved for twenty seconds or so while Lord Vetinari got on with the paperwork. Then he looked down and said: 'Yes, my lord. That about covers it, I believe.'

  'Ah, but there is more than one way of racking a man, Drumknott.'

  'Face up or face down, my lord?'

  'Thank you, Drumknott. I value your cultivated lack of imagination, as you know.'

  'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

  'In fact, Drumknott, you get him to build his own rack, and let him turn the screw all by himself.'

  'I'm not sure I'm with you there, my lord.'

  Lord Vetinari laid his pen aside. 'You have to consider the psychology of the individual, Drumknott. Every man may be considered as a sort of lock, to which there is a key. I have great hopes for Mr Lipwig in the coming skirmish. Even now, he still has the instincts of a criminal.'

  'How can you tell, my lord?'

  'Oh, there are all sorts of little clues, Drumknott. But I think a most persuasive one is that he has just walked off with your pencil.'

  There were meetings. There were always meetings. And they were dull, which is part of the reason they were meetings. Dull likes company.

  The Post Office wasn't going places any more. It had gone to places. It had arrived at places. Now those places required staff, and staff rotas, and wages, and pensions, and building maintenance, and cleaning staff to come in at night, and collection schedules, and discipline and investment and on, and on…

  Moist stared disconsolately at a letter from a Ms Estressa Partleigh of the Campaign for Equal Heights. The Post Office, apparently, was not employing enough dwarfs. Moist had pointed out, very reasonably, he thought, that one in three of the staff were dwarfs. She had replied that this was not the point. The point was that since dwarfs were on average two-thirds the height of humans, the Post Office, as a responsible authority, should employ one and a half dwarfs for every human employed. The Post Office must reach out to the dwarf community, said Ms Partleigh.

  Moist picked up the letter between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. It's reach down, Ms Partleigh, reach down.

  There had also been something about core values. He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could the terms like 'core values' at him with impunity.

  Nevertheless, Moist was prepared to believe that there were people who found a quiet contentment in contemplating columns of figures. Their number did not include him.

  It had been weeks since he'd last designed a stamp! And much longer since he'd had that tingle, that buzz, that feeling of flying that meant a scam was cooking gently and he was getting the better of someone who thought they were getting the better of him.

  Everything was all so… worthy. And it was stifling.

  Then he thought about this morning, and smiled. Okay, he'd got stuck, but the shadowy night-time climbing fraternity reckoned the Post Office to be particularly challenging. And he'd talked his way out of the problem. All in all, it was a win. For a while there, in between the moments of terror, he'd felt alive and flying.

  A heavy tread in the corridor indicated that Gladys was on the way with his mid-morning tea. She entered with her head bent down to avoid the lintel and, with the skill of something massive yet possessed of incredible coordination, put the cup and saucer down without a ripple. She said: 'Lord Vetinari's Carriage Is Waiting Outside, Sir.'

  Moist was sure there was more treble in Gladys's voice these days.

  'But I saw him an hour ago! Waiting for what?' he said.

  'You, Sir.' Gladys dropped a curtsy, and when a golem drops a curtsy you can hear it.

  Moist looked out of his window. A black coach was outside the Post Office. The coachman was standing next to it, having a quiet smoke.

  'Does he say I have an appointment?' he said.

  'The Coachman Said He Was Told To Wait,' said Gladys.

  'Ha!'

  Gladys curtsied again before she left.

  When the door had shut behind her, Moist returned his attention to the pile of paperwork in his in-tray. The top sheaf was headed 'Minutes of the Meeting of the Sub Post Offices Committee', but they looked more like hours.

  He picked up the mug of tea. On it was printed: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS! He stared at it, and then absentmindedly picked up a thick black pen and drew a comma between 'Here' and 'But'. He also crossed out the exclamation mark. He hated that exclamation mark, hated its manic, desperate cheeriness. It meant: You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here. We'll See to That!

  He forced himself to read the minutes, realizing that his eye was skipping whole paragraphs in self-defence.

  Then he started on the District Offices' Weekly Reports. After that, the Accidents and Medical Committee sprawled its acres of words.

  Occasionally Moist glanced at the mug.

  At twenty-nine minutes past eleven the alarm on his desk clock went 'bing'. Moist got up, put his chair under the desk, walked to the door, counted to three, opened it, said 'Hello, Tiddles' as the Post Office's antique cat padded in, counted to nineteen as the cat did its circuit of the room, said 'Goodbye, Tiddles' as it plodded back into the corridor, shut the door and went back to his desk.

  You just opened the door for an elderly cat who's lost hold of the concept of walking around things, he told himself, as he rewound the alarm. You do it every day. Do you think that's the action of a sane man? Okay, it's sad to see him standing for hours with his head up against a chair until someone moves it, but now you get up every day to move the chair for him. This is what honest work does to a person.

  Yes, but dishonest work nearly got me hanged! he protested.

  So? Hanging only lasts a couple of minutes. The Pension Fund Committee lasts a lifetime! It's all so boring! You're trapped in chains of gold-ish!

  Moist had ended up near the window. The coachman was eating a biscuit. When he caught sight of Moist he gave him a friendly wave.

  Moist almost jumped back from the window. He sat down hurriedly and countersigned FG/2 requisition forms for fifteen minutes straight. Then he went out into the corridor, which on its far side was open to the big hall, and looked down.

  He'd promised to get the big chandeliers back, and now they both hung there glittering like private star systems. The big shiny counter gleamed in its polished splendour. There was the hum of purposeful and largely efficient activity.

  He'd done it. It all worked. It was the Post Office. And it wasn't fun any more.

  He went down into the sorting rooms, he dropped into the postmen's locker room to have a convivial cup of tar-like tea, he wandered around the coach yard and got in the way of people who were trying to do their jobs, and at last he plodded back to his office, bowed under the weight of the humdrum.

  He just happened to glance out of the window, as anyone might. The coachman was eating his lunch! His damn lunch! He had a little folding chair on the pavement, with his meal on a little folding table! It was a large pork pie and a bottle of beer! There was even a white tablecloth!

  Moist went down the main stairs like a maddened tapdancer and ran out through the big double doors. In one crowded moment, as he hurried towards the coach, the meal, table, cloth and chair were stowed in some unnoticeable compartment, and the man was standing by the invitingly open door.

  'Look, what is this about?' Moist demanded, panting for breath. 'I don't have all—'

  'All, Mr Lipwig,' said Lord Vetinari's voice from within, 'do step inside. Thank you, Houseman, Mrs Lavish will be waiting. Hurry up, Mr Lipwig, I am not going to eat you. I have just had an acceptable cheese sandwich.'

  What harm can it do to find out? It's a question that has
left bruises down the centuries, even more than 'It can't hurt if I only take one' and 'It's all right if you only do it standing up'.

  Moist climbed into the shadows. The door clicked behind him, and he turned suddenly.

  'Oh, really,' said Lord Vetinari. 'It's just shut, it isn't locked, Mr Lipwig. Do compose yourself!' Beside him, Drumknott sat primly with a large leather satchel on his lap.

  'What is it you want?' said Moist.

  Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow. 'I? Nothing. What do you want?'

  'What?'

  'Well, you got into my coach, Mr Lipwig.'

  'Yes, but I was told it was outside!'

  'And if you had been told it was black, would you have found it necessary to do anything about it? There is the door, Mr Lipwig.'

  'But you've been parked out here all morning!'

  'It is a public street, sir,' said Lord Vetinari. 'Now sit down. Good.'

  The coach jerked into motion.

  'You are restless, Mr Lipwig,' said Vetinari. 'You are careless of your safety. Life has lost its flavour, has it not?'

  Moist didn't reply.

  'Let us talk about angels,' said Lord Vetinari.

  'Oh yes, I know that one,' said Moist bitterly. 'I've heard that one. That's the one you got me with after I was hanged—'

  Vetinari raised an eyebrow again. 'Only mostly hanged, I think you'll find. To within an inch of your life.'

  'Whatever! I was hanged! And the worst part of that was finding out I only got two paragraphs in the Tanty Bugle![1] Two paragraphs, may I say, for a life of ingenious, inventive and strictly non-violent crime? I could have been an example to youngsters! Page one got hogged by the Dyslectic Alphabet Killer, and he only managed A and W!'

  'I confess the editor does appear to believe that it is not a proper crime unless someone is found in three alleys at once, but that is the price of a free Press. And it suits us both, does it not, that Albert Spangler's passage from this world was… unmemorable?'