the postmen unmasked - a terrible engine - the new pie - mr lipwig

thinks about stamps — the messenger from the dawn of time

‘mr lipvig?’ said mr pump.

moist looked up into the golem’s glowing eyes. there had to be a better way of waking up in the morning. some people managed with a clock, for heavens’ sake.

he was lying on a bare mattress under a musty blanket in his newly excavated apartment, which smelled of ancient paper, and every bit of him ached.

in a clouded kind of way, he was aware of pump saying: ‘the postmen are waiting, sir. postal inspector groat said that you would probably wish to send them out properly on this day.’

moist blinked at the ceiling. ‘postal inspector? i promoted him all the way to postal inspector?’

‘yes, sir. you were very ebullient.’

memories of last night flocked treacherously to tap-dance their speciality acts on the famous stage of the grand old embarrassing recollection.

‘postmen?’ he said.

‘the brotherhood of the order of the post. they’re old men, sir, but wiry. they’re pensioners now, but they all volunteered. they’ve been here for hours, sorting the mail.’

i hired a bunch of men even older than groat . . .

‘did i do anything else?’

‘you gave a very inspirational speech, sir. i was particularly impressed when you pointed out that “angel” is just a word for messenger. not many people know that.’

on the bed, moist slowly tried to cram his fist into his mouth.

‘oh, and you promised to bring back the big chandeliers and the fine polished counter, sir. they were very impressed. no one knows where they got to.’

oh, gods, thought moist.

‘and the statue of the god, sir. that impressed them even more, i would say, because apparently it was melted down many years ago.’

‘did i do anything last night that suggested i was sane?’

‘i am sorry, sir?’ said the golem.

but moist remembered the light, and the whispering of the mail. it’d filled his mind with . . . knowledge, or memories that he didn’t remember ever acquiring.

‘unfinished stories,’ he said.

‘yes, sir,’ said the golem calmly. ‘you talked about them at length, sir.’

‘i did?’

‘yes, sir. you said—’

—that every undelivered message is a piece of space-time that lacks another end, a little bundle of effort and emotion floating freely. pack millions of them together and they do what letters are meant to do. they communicate, and change the nature of events. when there’s enough of them, they distort the universe around them.

it had all made sense to moist. or, at least, as much sense as anything else.

‘and . . . did i actually rise up in the air, glowing gold?’ said moist.

‘i think i must have missed that, sir,’ said mr pump.

‘you mean i didn’t, then.’

‘in a manner of speaking you did, sir,’ said the golem.

‘but in common, everyday reality i didn’t?’

‘you were lit, as it were, by an inner fire, sir. the postmen were extremely impressed.’

moist’s eye lit on the winged hat, which had been thrown carelessly on the desk.

‘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.

moist sat up, and the blanket dropped away. ‘what happened to my clothes?’ he said. ‘i’m sure i hung them neatly on the floor.’

‘i did in fact try to clean your suit with spot remover, sir,’ said mr pump. ‘but since it was effectively just one large spot, it removed the whole suit.’

‘i liked that suit! at least you could have saved it for dusters, or something.’

‘i’m sorry, sir, i’d assumed that dusters had been saved for your suit. but in any case, i obeyed your order, sir.’

moist paused. ‘what order?’ he said suspiciously.

‘last night you asked me to obtain a suit fit for a postmaster, sir. you gave me very precise instructions,’ said the golem. ‘fortunately my colleague stitcher 22 was working at the theatrical costumiers. it is hanging on the door.’

and the golem had even found a mirror. it wasn’t very big, but it was big enough to show moist that if he were dressed any sharper he’d cut himself as he walked.

‘wow,’ he breathed. ‘el dorado or what?’

the suit was cloth of gold, or whatever actors used instead. moist was about to protest, but second thoughts intervened quickly.

good suits helped. a smooth tongue was not much use in rough trousers. and people would notice the suit, not him. he’d certainly be noticed in this suit; it’d light up the street. people would have to shade their eyes to look at him. and apparently he’d asked for this.

‘it’s very . . .’ he hesitated. the only word was ‘. . . fast. i mean, it looks as if it’s about to speed away at any moment!’

‘yes, sir. stitcher 22 has a skill. note also the gold shirt and tie. to match the hat, sir.’

‘er, you couldn’t get him to knock up something a little more sombre, could you?’ said moist, covering his eyes to stop himself being blinded by his own lapels. ‘for me to wear when i don’t want to illuminate distant objects?’

‘i shall do so immediately, sir.’

‘well,’ moist said, blinking in the light of his sleeves. ‘let’s speed the mail, then, shall we?’

the formerly retired postmen were waiting in the hall, in a space cleared from last night’s maildrop. they all wore uniforms, although since no two uniforms were exactly alike they were not, in fact, uniform and therefore not technically uniforms. the caps all had peaks, but some were high-domed and some were soft and the old men themselves had ingrown their clothes, too, so that jackets hung like drape coats and trousers looked like concertinas. and, as is the wont of old men, they wore their medals and the determined looks of those ready for the final combat.

‘delivery ready for inspection, sah!’ said postal inspector groat, standing at attention so hard that sheer pride had lifted his feet a full inch off the floor.

‘thank you. er . . . right.’

moist wasn’t sure what he was inspecting, but he did his best. wrinkled face after wrinkled face stared back at him.

the medals, he realized, weren’t all for military service. the post office had medals of its own. one was a golden dog’s head, worn by a little man with a face like a packet of weasels.

‘what’s this, er . . .’ he began.

‘senior postman george aggy, sir. the badge? fifteen bites and still standin’, sir!’ said the man proudly.

‘well, that is a . . . a . . . a lot of bites, isn’t it . . .’

‘ah, but i foxed ‘em after number nine, sir, and got meself a tin leg, sir!’

‘you lost your leg?’ said moist, horrified.

‘no, sir. bought a bit of ol’ armour, didn’t i?’ said the wizened man, grinning artfully. ‘does m’heart good to hear their teeth squeaking, sir!’

‘aggy, aggy . . .’ moist mused, and then memory sparked. ‘weren’t you—’

‘i’m the worshipful master, sir,’ said aggy. ‘i hope you won’t take last night the wrong way, sir. we all used to be like young tolliver, sir, but we gave up hope, sir. no hard feelings?’

‘no, no,’ said moist, rubbing the back of his head.

‘and i’d like to add my own message of congratulations as chairman of the ankh-morpork order of postal workers benevolent and friendly society,’ aggy went on.

‘er . . . thank you,’ said moist. ‘and who are they, exactly?’

‘that was us last night, sir,’ said aggy, beaming.

‘but i thought you were a secret society!’

‘not secret, sir. not exactly secret. more . . . ignored, you might say. these days it’s just about pensions and making sure your ol’ mates get a proper funeral when they’re returned to sender, really.’

‘well done,’ said moist vaguely, which seemed to cover everything. he stood back, and cleared his throat. ‘gentlemen, this is it. if we want the post office back in business, we must start by delivering the old mail. it is a sacred trust. the mail gets through. it may take fifty years, but we get there in the end. you know your walks. take it steady. remember, if you can’t deliver it, if the house has gone . . . well, it comes back here and we’ll put it into the dead letter office and at least we’ll have tried. we just want people to know the post office is back again, understand?’

a postman raised a hand.

‘yes?’ moist’s skill at remembering names was better than his skill at remembering anything else about last night. ‘senior postman thompson, isn’t it?’

‘yes, sir! so what do we do when people give us letters, sir?’

moist’s brow wrinkled. ‘sorry? i thought you deliver the mail, don’t you?’

‘no, bill’s right, sir,’ said groat. ‘what do we do if people give us new mail?’

‘er . . . what did you use to do?’ said moist.

the postmen looked at one another.

‘get one penny off ‘em for the stamping, bring it back here to be stamped with the official stamp,’ said groat promptly. ‘then it gets sorted and delivered.’

‘so . . . people have to wait until they see a postman? that seems rather—’

‘oh, in the old days there was dozens of smaller offices, see?’ groat added. ‘but when it all started going bad we lost ‘em.’

‘well, let’s get the mail moving again and we can work things out as we go along,’ said moist. ‘i’m sure ideas will occur. and now, mr groat, you have a secret to share . . .’

groat’s key ring jingled as he led moist through the post office’s cellars and eventually to a metal door. moist noted a length of black and yellow rope on the floor: the watch had been here, too.

the door clicked open. there was a blue glow inside, just faint enough to be annoying, leave purple shadows on the edge of vision and make the eyes water.

‘voil-ah,’ said groat.

‘it’s a . . . is it some kind of theatre organ?’ said moist. it was hard to see the outlines of the machine in the middle of the floor, but it stood there with all the charm of a torturer’s rack. the blue glow was coming from somewhere in the middle of it. moist’s eyes were streaming already.

‘good try, sir! actually it is the sorting engine,’ said groat. ‘it’s the curse of the post office, sir. it had imps in it for the actual reading of the envelopes, but they all evaporated years ago. just as well, too.’

moist’s gaze took in the wire racks that occupied a whole wall of the big room. it also found the chalk outlines on the floor. the chalk glowed in the strange light. the outlines were quite small. one of them had five fingers.

‘industrial accident,’ he muttered. ‘all right, mr groat. tell me.’

‘don’t go near the glow, sir,’ said groat. ‘that’s what i said to mr whobblebury. but he snuck down here all by hisself, later on. oh, dear, sir, it was poor young stanley that went and found him, sir, after he saw poor little tiddles dragging something along the passage. a scene of carnage met his eyes. you just can’t imagine what it was like in here, sir.’

‘i think i can,’ said moist.

‘i doubt if you can, sir.’

‘i can, really.’

‘i’m sure you can’t, sir.’

‘i can! all right?’ shouted moist. ‘do you think i can’t see all those little chalk outlines? now can we get on with it before i throw up?’

‘er . . . right you are, sir,’ said groat. ‘ever heard of bloody stupid johnson? quite famous in this city.’

‘didn’t he build things? wasn’t there always something wrong with them? i’m sure i read something about him—’

‘that’s the man, sir. he built all kinds of things, but, sad to say, there was always some major flaw.’

in moist’s brain, a memory kicked a neuron. ‘wasn’t he the man who specified quicksand as a building material because he wanted a house finished fast?’ he said.

‘that’s right, sir. usually the major flaw was that the designer was bloody stupid johnson. flaw, you might say, was part of the whole thing. actually, to be fair, a lot of the things he designed worked quite well, it was just that they didn’t do the job they were supposed to. this thing, sir, did indeed begin life as an organ, but it ended up as a machine for sorting letters. the idea was that you tipped the mail sack in that hopper, and the letters were speedily sorted into those racks. postmaster cowerby meant well, they say. he was a stickler for speed and efficiency, that man. my grandad told me the post office spent a fortune on getting it to work.’

‘and lost their money, eh?’ said moist.

‘oh no, sir. it worked. oh yes, it worked very well. so well that people went mad, come the finish.’

‘let me guess,’ said moist. ‘the postmen had to work too hard?’

‘oh, postmen always work too hard, sir,’ said groat, without blinking. ‘no, what got people worried was finding letters in the sorting tray a year before they were due to be written.’

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. groat looked deadly serious. so instead he said: ‘how?’

the old postman pointed to the blue glow. ‘have a squint inside, sir. you can just see it. don’t get right above it, whatever you do.’

moist moved a little closer to the machine and peered into the machinery. he could just make out, at the heart of the glow, a little wheel. it was turning, slowly.

‘i was raised in the post office,’ said groat, behind him. ‘born in the sorting room, weighed on the official scales. learned to read from envelopes, learned figuring from old ledgers, learned jography from looking at the maps of the city and history from the old men. better than any school. better than any school, sir. but never learned jommetry, sir. bit of a hole in my understanding, all that stuff about angles and suchlike. but this, sir, is all about pie.’

‘like in food?’ said moist, drawing back from the sinister glow.

‘no, no, sir. pie like in jommetry.’

‘oh, you mean pi the number you get when . . .’ moist paused. he was erratically good at maths, which is to say he could calculate odds and currency very, very fast. there had been a geometry section in his book at school, but he’d never seen the point. he tried, anyway.

‘it’s all to do with . . . it’s the number you get when the radius of a circle . . . no, the length of the rim of a wheel is three and a bit times the . . . er . . .’

‘something like that, sir, probably, something like that,’ said groat. ‘three and a bit, that’s the ticket. only bloody stupid johnson said that was untidy, so he designed a wheel where the pie was exactly three. and that’s it, in there.’

‘but that’s impossible!’ said moist. ‘you can’t do that! pi is like . . . built in! you can’t change it. you’d have to change the universe!’

‘yes, sir. they tell me that’s what happened,’ said groat calmly. ‘i’ll do the party trick now. stand back, sir.’

groat wandered out into the other cellars and came back with a length of wood.

‘stand further back, sir,’ he suggested, and tossed the piece of wood on top of the machine.

the noise wasn’t loud. it was a sort of ‘clop’. it seemed to moist that something happened to the wood when it went over the light. there was a suggestion of curvature—

several pieces of timber clattered on to the floor, along with a shower of splinters.

‘they had a wizard in to look at it,’ said groat. ‘he said the machine twists just a little bit of the universe so pie could be three, sir, but it plays hob with anything you put too near it. the bits that go missing get lost in the . . . space-time-continuememememem, sir. but it doesn’t happen to the letters because of the way they travel through the machine, you see. that’s the long and short of it, sir. some letters came out of that machine fifty years before they were posted!’

‘why didn’t you switch it off?’

‘couldn’t, sir. it kept on going like a siphon. anyway, the wizard said if we did that terrible things might happen! ‘cos of, er, quantum, i think.’

‘well, then, you could just stop feeding it mail, couldn’t you?’

‘ah, well, sir, there it is,’ said groat, scratching his beard. ‘you have positioned your digit right on the nub or crux, sir. we should’ve done that, sir, we should’ve, but we tried to make it work for us, you see. oh, the management had schemes, sir. how about delivering a letter in dolly sisters thirty seconds after it had been posted in the city centre, eh? of course, it wouldn’t be polite to deliver mail before we’d actually got it, sir, but it could be a close run thing, eh? we were good, so we tried to be better . . .’

and, somehow, it was all familiar . . .

moist listened glumly. time travel was only a kind of magic, after all. that’s why it always went wrong.

that’s why there were postmen, with real feet. that’s why the clacks was a string of expensive towers. come to that, it was why farmers grew crops and fishermen trawled nets. oh, you could do it all by magic, you certainly could. you could wave a wand and get twinkly stars and a fresh-baked loaf. you could make fish jump out of the sea ready cooked. and then, somewhere, somehow, magic would present its bill, which was always more than you could afford.

that’s why it was left to wizards, who knew how to handle it safely. 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.

anyway, there was a sense of inevitability about the whole business. 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.

words spilled out of mr groat like stashed mail from a crack in the wall. sometimes the machine had produced a thousand copies of the same letter, or filled the room with letters from next tuesday, next month, next year. sometimes they were letters that hadn’t been written, or might have been written, or were meant to have been written, or letters which people had once sworn that they had written and hadn’t really, but which nevertheless had a shadowy existence in some strange invisible letter world and were made real by the machine.

if, somewhere, any possible world can exist, then somewhere there is any letter that could possibly be written. somewhere, all those cheques really are in the post.

they poured out - letters from the present day which turned out not to be from this present day, but ones that might have happened if only some small detail had been changed in the past. 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. they didn’t understand, but they had to do something. no one could deliver all that mail. and so the rooms began to fill up . . .

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.

the machine couldn’t be stopped and certainly shouldn’t be destroyed, the wizards said. destroying the machine might well cause this universe to stop existing, instantly.

on the other hand, the post office was filling up, so one day chief postal inspector rumbelow had gone into the room with a crowbar, had ordered all the wizards out, and belted the machine until things stopped whirring.

the letters ceased, at least. this came as a huge relief, but nevertheless the post office had its regulations and so the chief postal inspector was brought before postmaster cowerby and asked why he had decided to risk destroying the whole universe in one go.

according to post office legend, mr rumbelow had replied: ‘firstly, sir, i reasoned that if i destroyed the universe all in one go no one would know; secondly, when i walloped the thing the first time the wizards ran away, so i surmised that unless they had another universe to run to they weren’t really certain; and lastly, sir, the bloody thing was getting on my nerves. never could stand machinery, sir.’

‘and that was the end of it, sir,’ said mr groat, as they left the room. ‘actually, i heard where the wizards were saying that the universe was destroyed all in one go but instantly came back all in one go. they said they could tell by lookin’, sir. so that was okay and it let old rumbelow off’f the hook, on account it’s hard to discipline a man under post office regulations for destroying the universe all in one go. mind you - hah - there’ve been postmasters that would have given it a try. but it knocked the stuffing out of us, sir. it was all downhill after that. the men had lost heart. it broke us, to tell you the truth.’

‘look,’ said moist, ‘the letters we’ve just given the lads, they’re not from some other dimension or—’

‘don’t worry, i checked ‘em last night,’ said groat. ‘they’re just old. mostly you can tell by the stamp. i’m good at telling which ones are prop’ly ours, sir. had years to learn. it’s a skill, sir.’

‘could you teach other people?’

‘i dare say, yes,’ said groat.

‘mr groat, the letters have talked to me,’ moist burst out.

to his surprise, the old man grabbed his hand and shook it. ‘well done, sir!’ he said, tears rising in his eyes. ‘i said it’s a skill, didn’t i? listen to the whispers, that’s half the trick! they’re alive, sir, alive. not like people, but like . . . ships are alive, sir. i’ll swear, all them letters pressed together in here, all the . . . the passion of ‘em, sir, why, i do think this place has got something like a soul, sir, indeed i do . . .’

the tears coursed down groat’s cheeks. it’s madness, of course, thought moist. but now i’ve got it, too.

‘ah, i can see it in your eyes, sir, yes i can!’ said groat, grinning wetly. ‘the post office has found you! it’s enfolded you, sir, yes it has. you’ll never leave it, sir. there’s families that’ve worked here for hundreds and hundreds of years, sir. once the postal service puts its stamp on you, sir, there’s no turning back . . .’

moist disentangled his hand as tactfully as he could.

‘yes,’ he said. ‘do tell me about stamps.’

thump.

moist looked down at the piece of paper. smudgy red letters, chipped and worn, spelled out: ‘ankh-morpork post office.’

‘that’s right, sir,’ said groat, waving the heavy metal and wood stamper in the air. ‘i bang the stamp on the ink pad here, then bang it, sir, bang it on the letter. there! see? done it again. same every time. stamped.’

‘and this is worth a penny?’ said moist. ‘good grief, man, a kid could forge this with half a potato!’

‘that was always a bit of a problem, sir, yes,’ said groat.

‘why does a postman have to stamp the letters, anyway?’ said moist. ‘why don’t we just sell people a stamp?’

‘but they’d pay a penny and then go on stamping for ever, sir,’ said groat, reasonably.

in the machinery of the universe, the wheels of inevitability clicked into position . . .

‘well, then,’ said moist, staring thoughtfully at the paper, ‘how about . . . how about a stamp you can use only once?’

‘you mean, like, not much ink?’ said groat. his brow wrinkled, causing his toupee to slip sideways.

‘i mean . . . if you stamped the stamper lots of times on paper, then cut out all the stampings . . .’ moist stared at an inner vision, if only to avoid the sight of the toupee slowly crawling back. ‘the rate for delivery anywhere in the city is a penny, isn’t it?’

‘except for the shades, sir. that’s five pence ‘cos of the armed guard,’ said groat.

‘right. o-kay. i think i might have something here . . .’ moist looked up at mr pump, who was smouldering in the corner of the office. ‘mr pump, would you be so good as to go along to the goat and spirit level over at hen-and-chickens and ask the publican for “mr robinson’s box”, please? he may want a dollar. and while you’re over there, there’s a printing shop over that way, teemer and spools. leave a message to say that the postmaster general wishes to discuss a very large order.’

‘teemer and spools? they’re very expensive, sir,’ said groat. ‘they do all the posh printing for the banks.’

‘they’re the very devil to forge, i know that,’ said moist. ‘or so i’ve been told,’ he added quickly. ‘watermarks, special weaves in the paper, all kinds of tricks. ahem. so . . . a penny stamping, and a fivepenny stamping . . . what about post to the other cities?’

‘five pence to sto lat,’ said groat. ‘ten or fifteen to the others. hah, three dollars for all the way to genua. we used to have to write those out.’

‘we’ll need a one-dollar stamp, then.’ moist started to scribble on the scrap of paper.

‘a dollar stamp! who’d buy one of those?’ said groat.

anyone who wants to send a letter to genua,’ said moist. ‘they’ll buy three, eventually. but for now i’m dropping the price to one dollar.’

‘one dollar! that’s thousands of miles, sir!’ groat protested.

‘yep. sounds like a bargain, right?’

groat looked torn between exultation and despair. ‘but we’ve only got a bunch of old men, sir! they’re pretty spry, i’ll grant you, but . . . well, you’ve got to learn to walk before you try to run, sir!’

‘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. all or nothing, mr groat!’

‘wow, sir!’ said groat.

moist grinned his bright, sunny smile. it very nearly reflected off his suit.

‘let’s get busy. we’re going to need more staff, postal inspector groat. a lot more staff. smarten up, man. the post office is back!’

‘yessir!’ said groat, drunk on enthusiasm. ‘we’ll . . . we’ll do things that are quite new, in interestin’ ways!’

‘you’re getting the hang of it already,’ said moist, rolling his eyes.

ten minutes later, the post office received its first delivery.

it was senior postman bates, blood streaming down his face. he was helped into the office by two watch officers, carrying a makeshift stretcher.

‘found him wandering in the street, sir,’ said one of them. ‘sergeant colon, sir, at your service.’

‘what happened to him?’ said moist, horrified.

bates opened his eyes. ‘sorry, sir,’ he murmured. ‘i held on tight, but they belted me over the bonce with a big thing!’

‘coupla toughs jumped him,’ said sergeant colon. ‘they threw his bag in the river, too.’

‘does that normally happen to postmen?’ said moist. ‘i thought— oh, no . . .’

the new, painfully slow arrival was senior postman aggy, dragging one leg because it had a bulldog attached to it.

‘sorry about this, sir,’ he said, limping forward. ‘i think my official trousers is torn. i stunned the bugger with my bag, sir, but they’re a devil to get to let go.’ the bulldog’s eyes were shut; it appeared to be thinking of something else.

‘good job you’ve got your armour, eh?’ said moist.

‘wrong leg, sir. but not to worry. i’m nat’rally imp-ervious around the calfy regions. it’s all the scar tissue, sir, you could strike matches on it. jimmy tropes is in trouble, though. he’s up a tree in hide park.’

moist von lipwig strode up market street, face set with grim purpose. the boards were still up on the golem trust, but had attracted another layer of graffiti. the paint on the door was burnt and bubbled, too.

he opened the door, and instinct made him duck. he felt the crossbow bolt zip between the wings of his hat.

miss dearheart lowered the bow. ‘my gods, it’s you! for a minute i thought a second sun had appeared in the sky!’

moist rose cautiously as she laid the bow aside.

‘we had a fire-bomb last night,’ she said, by way of explanation for attempting to shoot him in the head.

‘how many golems are for hire right now, miss dearheart?’ said moist.

‘huh? oh . . . about . . . a dozen or so—’

‘fine. i’ll take them. don’t bother to wrap them up. i want them down at the post office as soon as possible.’

‘what?’ miss dearheart’s normal expression of perpetual annoyance returned. ‘look, you can’t just walk in, snap your fingers and order a dozen people like this—’

‘they think they’re property!’ said moist. ‘that’s what you told me.’

they glared at one another. then miss dearheart fumbled distractedly in a filing tray.

‘i can let you ha— employ four right now,’ she said. ‘that’d be doors 1, saw 20, campanile 2 and . . . anghammarad. only anghammarad can talk at the moment; the frees haven’t helped the others yet—’

‘helped?’

miss dearheart shrugged. ‘a lot of the cultures that built golems thought tools shouldn’t talk. they have no tongues.’

‘and the trust gives them some extra clay, eh?’ said moist cheerfully.

she gave him a look. ‘it’s a bit more mystical than that,’ she said solemnly.

‘well, dumb is okay so long as they’re not stupid,’ said moist, trying to look serious. ‘this anghammarad’s got a name? not just a description?’

‘a lot of the very old ones have. tell me, what do you want them to do?’ said the woman.

‘be postmen,’ said moist.

‘working in public?’

‘i don’t think you can have secret postmen,’ said moist, briefly seeing shadowy figures skulking from door to door. ‘anything wrong with that?’

‘well . . . no. certainly not! it’s just that people get a bit nervous, and set fire to the shop. i’ll bring them down as soon as possible.’ she paused. ‘you do understand that owned golems have to have a day off every week? you did read the pamphlet, didn’t you?’

‘er . . . time off?’ said moist. ‘what do they need time off for? a hammer doesn’t get time off, does it?’

‘in order to be golems. don’t ask what they do - i think just go and sit in a cellar somewhere. it’s . . . it’s a way to show they’re not a hammer, mr lipwig. the buried ones forget. the free golems teach them. but don’t worry, the rest of the time they won’t even sleep.’

‘so . . . mr pump has a day off coming?’ said moist.

‘of course,’ said miss dearheart, and moist filed this one under ‘useful to know’.

‘good. thank you,’ he said. would you like to have dinner tonight? moist normally had no trouble with words, but these stuck to his tongue. there was something pineapple-prickly about miss dearheart. there was something about her expression, too, which said: there’s no possible way you could surprise me. i know all about you.

‘is there anything else?’ she said. ‘only you’re standing there with your mouth open.’

‘er . . . no. that’s fine. thank you,’ mumbled moist.

she smiled at him, and bits of moist tingled.

‘well, off you go then, mr lipwig,’ she said. ‘brighten up the world like a little sunbeam.’

four out of the five postmen were what mr groat called horse de combat and were brewing tea in the mail-stuffed cubbyhole that was laughingly called their rest room. aggy had been sent home after the bulldog had been prised from his leg; moist had a big basket of fruit sent round. you couldn’t go wrong with a basket of fruit.

well, they’d made an impression, at least. so had the bulldog. but some mail had been delivered, you had to admit it. you had to admit, too, that it was years and years late, but the post was moving. you could sense it in the air. the place didn’t feel so much like a tomb. now moist had retired to his office, where he was getting creative.

‘cup of tea, mr lipwig?’

he looked up from his work into the slightly strange face of stanley.

‘thank you, stanley,’ he said, laying down his pen. ‘and i see you got nearly all of it in the cup this time! nicely done!’

‘what’re you drawing, mr lipwig?’ said the boy, craning his neck. ‘it looks like the post office!’

‘well done. it’s going to be on a stamp, stanley. here, what do you think of the others?’ he passed over the other sketches.

‘coo, you’re a good draw-er, mr lipwig. that looks just like lord vetinari!’

‘that’s the penny stamp,’ said moist. ‘i copied the likeness off a penny. city coat-of-arms on the twopenny, morporkia with her fork on the fivepenny, tower of art on the big one-dollar stamp. i was thinking of a tenpenny stamp, too.’

‘they look very nice, mr lipwig,’ said stanley. ‘all that detail. like little paintings. what’s all those tiny lines called?’

‘cross-hatching. makes them hard to forge. and when the letter with the stamp on it comes into the post office, you see, we take one of the old rubber stamps and stamp over the new stamps so they can’t be used again, and the—’

‘yes, ‘cos they’re like money, really,’ said stanley cheerfully.

‘pardon?’ said moist, tea halfway to his lips.

‘like money. these stamps’ll be like money, ‘cos a penny stamp is a penny, when you think about it. are you all right, mr lipwig? only you’ve gone all funny. mr lipwig?’

‘er . . . what?’ said moist, who was staring at the wall with a strange, faraway grin.

‘are you all right, sir?’

‘what? oh. yes. yes, indeed. er . . . do we need a bigger stamp, do you think? five dollars, perhaps?’

‘hah, i should think you could send a big letter all the way to fourecks for that, mr lipwig!’ said stanley cheerfully.

‘worth thinking ahead, then,’ said moist. ‘i mean, since we’re designing the stamps and everything . . .’

but now stanley was admiring mr robinson’s box. it was an old friend to moist. he never used ‘mr robinson’ as an alias except to get it stored by some halfway-honest merchant or publican, so that it’d be somewhere safe even if he had to leave town quickly. it was for a con-man and forger what a set of lock picks is to a burglar, but with the contents of this box you could open people’s brains.

it was a work of art in its own right, the way all the little compartments lifted up and fanned out when you opened it. there were pens and inks, of course, but also little pots of paints and tints, stains and solvents. and, kept carefully flat, thirty-six different types of paper, some of them quite hard to obtain. paper was important. get the weight and translucence wrong, and no amount of skill would save you. you could get away with bad penmanship much more easily than you could with bad paper. in fact, rough penmanship often worked better than a week of industrious midnights spent getting every little thing right, because there was something in people’s heads that spotted some little detail that wasn’t quite right but at the same time would fill in details that had merely been suggested by a few careful strokes. attitude, expectation and presentation were everything.

just like me, he thought.

the door was knocked on and opened in one movement.

‘yes?’ snapped moist, not looking up. ‘i’m busy designing mon— stamps here, you know!’

‘there’s a lady,’ panted groat. ‘with golems!’

‘ah, that’ll be miss dearheart,’ said moist, laying down his pen.

‘yessir. she said “tell mr sunshine i’ve brought him his postmen”, sir! you’re going to use golems as postmen, sir?’

‘yes. why not?’ said moist, giving groat a severe look. ‘you get on okay with mr pump, don’t you?’

‘well, he’s all right, sir,’ the old man mumbled. ‘i mean, he keeps the place tidy, he’s always very respectful . . . i speak as i find, but people can be a bit odd about golems, sir, what with them glowing eyes and all, and the way they never stops. the lads might not take to ‘em, sir, that’s all i’m saying.’

moist stared at him. golems were thorough, reliable and by gods they took orders. he’d get another chance to be smiled at by miss dearheart— think about golems! golems, golems, golems!

he smiled, and said, ‘even if i can prove they’re real postmen?’

ten minutes later the fist of the golem called anghammarad smashed through a letter box and several square inches of splintering wood.

‘mail delivered,’ it announced, and went still. the eyes dulled.

moist turned to the cluster of human postmen and gestured towards the impromptu postman’s walk he’d set up in the big hall.

‘note the flattened roller skate, gentlemen. note the heap of ground glass where the beer bottle was. and mr anghammarad did it all with a hood on his head, i might add.’

‘yeah, but his eyes burned holes in it,’ groat pointed out.

‘none of us can help the way we’re made,’ said adora belle dearheart primly.

‘i’ve got to admit, it did my heart good to see him punch through that door,’ said senior postman bates. ‘that’ll teach ‘em to put ‘em low and sharp.’

‘and no problem with dogs, i expect,’ said jimmy tropes. ‘he’d never get the arse bitten out of his trousers.’

‘so you all agree a golem is suitable to become a postman?’ said moist.

suddenly all the faces twisted up as the postmen shuffled into a chorus.

‘well, it’s not us, you understand . . .’

‘. . . people can be a bit funny about, er, clay folk . . .’

‘. . . all that stuff about taking jobs away from real people . . .’

‘. . . nothing against him at all, but . . .’

they stopped, because the golem anghammarad was beginning to speak again. unlike mr pump, it took him some time to get up to speed. and when his voice arrived it seemed to be coming from long ago and far away, like the sound of surf in a fossil shell.

he said: ‘what is a post man?’

‘a messenger, anghammarad,’ said miss dearheart. moist noticed that she spoke to golems differently. there was actual tenderness in her voice.

‘gentlemen,’ he said to the postmen, ‘i know you feel—’

‘i was a messenger,’ anghammarad rumbled.

his voice was not like mr pump’s, and neither was his clay. he looked like a crude jigsaw puzzle of different clays, from almost black through red to light grey. anghammarad’s eyes, unlike the furnace glow of those of the other golems, burned a deep ruby red. he looked old. more than that, he felt old. the chill of time radiated off him.

on one arm, just above the elbow, was a metal box on a corroded band that had stained the clay.

‘running errands, eh?’ said groat nervously.

‘most recently i delivered the decrees of king het of thut,’ said anghammarad.

‘never heard of any king het,’ said jimmy tropes.

‘i expect that is because the land of thut slid under the sea nine thousand years ago,’ said the golem solemnly. ‘so it goes.’

‘blimey! you’re nine thousand years old?’ said groat.

‘no. 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.’

‘you must’ve seen lots of things, sir!’ said stanley.

the glowing eyes turned to him, lighting up his face. ‘sea urchins. i have seen many sea urchins. and sea cucumbers. and the dead ships, sailing. once there was an anchor. all things pass.’

‘how long were you under the sea?’ said moist.

‘it was almost nine thousand years.’

‘you mean . . . you just sat there?’ said aggy.

‘i was not instructed to do otherwise. i heard the song of the whales above me. it was dark. then there was a net, and rising, and light. these things happen.’

‘didn’t you find it . . . well, dull?’ said groat. the postmen were staring.

‘dull,’ said anghammarad blankly, and turned to look at miss dearheart.

‘he has no idea what you mean,’ she said. ‘none of them have. not even the younger ones.’

‘so i expect you’ll be keen to deliver messages again, then!’ said moist, far more jovially than he’d intended. the golem’s head turned towards miss dearheart again.

‘keen?’ said anghammarad.

she sighed. ‘another tough one, mr moist. it’s as bad as “dull”. the closest i can come is: you will satisfy the imperative to perform the directed action.’

‘yes,’ said the golem. ‘the messages must be delivered. that is written on my chem.’

‘and that’s the scroll in his head that gives a golem his instructions,’ said miss dearheart. ‘in anghammarad’s case it’s a clay tablet. they didn’t have paper in those days.’

‘you really used to deliver messages for kings?’ said groat.

‘many kings,’ said anghammarad. ‘many empires. many gods. many gods. all gone. all things go.’ 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.’

there was a thoughtful silence. moist knew how to break it.

‘and you will decide if he is a postman?’ he said softly.

the postmen went into a brief huddle, and then groat turned back to moist.

‘he’s a postman and a half, mr lipwig. we never knew. the lads say - well, it’d be an honour, sir, an honour to work with him. i mean, it’s like . . . it’s like history, sir. it’s like . . . well . . .’

‘i always said the order goes back a long way, didn’t i?’ said jimmy tropes, aglow with pride. ‘there was postmen back inna dawn o’ time! when they hears we’ve got a member who goes all that way back the other secret societies are gonna be as green as . . . as . . .’

‘something big with teeth?’ moist suggested.

‘right! and no problem with his chums neither, if they can take orders,’ said groat generously.

‘thank you, gentlemen,’ said moist. and now all that remains’ - he nodded to stanley, who held up two big tins of royal blue paint - ‘is their uniform.’

by general agreement anghammarad was given the unique rank of extremely senior postman. it seemed . . . fair.

half an hour later, still tacky to the touch, each one accompanied by a human postman, the golems took to the streets. moist watched heads turn. the afternoon sunlight glinted off royal blue and stanley, gods bless him, had found a small pot of gold paint too. frankly, the golems were impressive. they gleamed.

you had to give people a show. give them a show, and you were halfway to where you wanted to be.

a voice behind him said: ‘the postman came down like a wolf on the fold / his cohorts all gleaming in azure and gold . . .’

just for a moment, a flicker of time, moist thought: i’ve been made, she knows. somehow, she knows. then his brain took over. he turned to miss dearheart.

‘when i was a kid i always thought that a cohort was a piece of armour, miss dearheart,’ he said, giving her a smile. ‘i used to imagine the troops sitting up all night, polishing them.’

‘sweet,’ said miss dearheart, lighting a cigarette. ‘look, i’ll get you the rest of the golems as soon as possible. there may be trouble, of course. the watch will be on your side, though. there’s a free golem in the watch and they rather like him, although here it doesn’t much matter what you’re made of when you join the watch because commander vimes will see to it that you become solid copper through and through. he’s the most cynical bastard that walks under the sun.’

‘yow think he’s cynical?’ said moist.

‘yes,’ she said, blowing smoke. ‘as you suspect, that’s practically a professional opinion. but thank you for hiring the boys. i’m not sure they understand what “liking” something means, but they like to work. and pump 19 seems to hold you in some regard.’

‘thank you.’

‘i personally think you are a phoney.’

‘yes, i expect you do,’ said moist. 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. it was an act. it had to be. it was a game. it had to be.

he pulled out his packet of stamp designs. ‘what do you think of these, miss d— look, what do your friends call you, miss dearheart?’

and in his head moist said to himself i don’t know just as the woman said: ‘i don’t know. what’s this? you carry your etchings with you to save time?’

so it was a game, and he was invited to play.

‘they will be copper-engraved, i hope,’ he said meekly. ‘they’re my designs for the new stamps.’ he explained about the stamps idea, while she looked at the pages.

‘good one of vetinari,’ she said. ‘they say he dyes his hair, you know. what’s this one? oh, the tower of art . . . how like a man. a dollar, eh? hmm. yes, they’re quite good. when will you start using them?’

‘actually, i was planning to slip along to teemer and spools while the lads are out now and discuss the engraving,’ said moist.

‘good. they’re a decent firm,’ she said. ‘sluice 23 is turning the machinery for them. they keep him clean and don’t stick notices on him. i go and check on all the hired golems every week. the frees are very insistent on that.’

‘to make sure they’re not mistreated?’ said moist.

‘to make sure they’re not forgotten. you’d be amazed at how many businesses in the city have a golem working somewhere on the premises. not the grand trunk, though,’ she added. ‘i won’t let them work there.’

there was an edge to that statement.

‘er . . . why not?’ said moist.

‘there’s some shit not even a golem should work in,’ said miss dearheart, in the same steel tone. ‘they are moral creatures.’

o-kay, thought moist, bit of a sore point there, then?

his mouth said: ‘would you like to have dinner tonight?’ for just the skin of a second, miss dearheart was surprised, but not half as surprised as moist. then her natural cynicism reinflated.

‘i like to have dinner every night. with you? no. i have things to do. thank you for asking.’

‘no problem,’ said moist, slightly relieved.

the woman looked around the echoing hall. ‘doesn’t this place give you the creeps? you could perhaps do something with some floral wallpaper and a fire-bomb.’

‘it’s all going to be sorted out,’ said moist quickly. ‘but it’s best to get things moving as soon as possible. to show we’re in business.’

they watched stanley and groat, who were patiently sorting at the edge of a pile, prospectors in the foothills of the postal mountain. they were dwarfed by the white hillocks.

‘it will take you for ever to deliver them, you know,’ said miss dearheart, turning to go.

‘yes, i know,’ said moist.

‘but that’s the thing about golems,’ added miss dearheart, standing in the doorway. the light caught her face oddly. ‘they’re not frightened of “for ever”. they’re not frightened of anything.’