In which Lord Vetinari Gives Advice - Mr Lipwig’s Bad Memory - Evil

Criminal Geniuses’ difficulty with finding property — Mr Groat’s Fear of

Bathing, and a Discussion on Explosive Underwear — Mr Pony and his

flimsies - The Board debates, Gilt decides - Moist von Lipwig Attempts

the Impossible

 

The clocks were chiming seven o’clock. ‘Ah, Mr Lipwig,’ said Lord Vetinari, looking up. ‘Thank you so much for dropping in. It has been such a busy day, has it not? Drumknott, do help Mr Lipwig to a chair. Prophecy can be very exhausting, I believe.’

Moist waved the clerk away and eased his aching body into a seat.

‘I didn’t exactly decide to drop in,’ he said. ‘A large troll watchman walked in and grabbed me by the arm.’

‘Ah, to steady you, I have no doubt,’ said Lord Vetinari, who was poring over the battle between the stone trolls and the stone dwarfs. ‘You accompanied him of your own free will, did you not?’

‘I’m very attached to my arm,’ said Moist. ‘I thought I’d better follow it. What can I do for you, my lord?’

Vetinari got up and went and sat in the chair behind his desk, where he regarded Moist with what almost looked like amusement.

‘Commander Vimes has given me some succinct reports of today’s events,’ he said, putting down the troll figure he was holding and turning over a few sheets of paper. ‘Beginning with the riot at the Grand Trunk offices this morning which, he says, you instigated . . . ?’

‘All I did was volunteer to deliver such clacks messages as had been held up by the unfortunate breakdown,’ said Moist. ‘I didn’t expect the idiots in their office to refuse to hand the messages back to their customers! People had paid in advance, after all. I was just helping everyone in a difficult time. And I certainly didn’t “instigate” anyone to hit a clerk with a chair!’

‘Of course not, of course not,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘I am sure you acted quite innocently and from the best of intentions. But I am agog to hear about the gold, Mr Lipwig. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I believe.’

‘Some of it I can’t quite remember,’ said Moist. ‘It’s all a bit unclear.’

‘Yes, yes, I imagine it was. Perhaps I can clarify a few details?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘Around mid-morning, Mr Lipwig, you were chatting to people outside your regrettably distressed building when’ - here the Patrician glanced at his notes - ‘you suddenly looked up, shielded your eyes, dropped to your knees and screamed, “Yes, yes, thank you, I am not worthy, glory be, may your teeth be picked clean by birds, halleluiah, rattle your drawers” and similar phrases, to the general concern of people nearby, and you then stood up with your hands outstretched and shouted “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, buried in a field! Thank you, thank you, I shall fetch it immediately!” Whereupon you wrested a shovel from one of the men helping to clear the debris of the building and began to walk with some purpose out of the city.’

‘Really?’ said Moist. ‘It’s all a bit of a blank.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ said Vetinari happily. ‘You will probably be quite surprised to know that a number of people followed you, Mr Lipwig? Including Mr Pump and two members of the City Watch?’

‘Good heavens, did they?’

‘Quite. For several hours. You stopped to pray on a number of occasions. We must assume it was for the guidance which led your footsteps, at last, to a small wood among the cabbage fields.’

‘It did? I’m afraid it’s all rather a blur,’ said Moist.

‘I understand you dug like a demon, according to the Watch. And I note that a number of reputable witnesses were there when your shovel struck the lid of the chest. I understand the Times will be carrying a picture in the next edition.’

Moist said nothing. It was the only way to be sure.

‘Any comments, Mr Lipwig?’

‘No, my lord, not really.’

‘Hmm. About three hours ago I had the senior priests of three of the major religions in this office, along with a rather bewildered freelance priestess who I gather handles the worldly affairs of Anoia on an agency basis. They all claim that it was their god or goddess who told you where the gold was. You don’t happen to remember which one it was, do you?’

‘I sort of felt the voice rather than heard it,’ said Moist carefully.

‘Quite so,’ said Vetinari. ‘Incidentally, they all felt that their temples should get a tithe of the money,’ he added. ‘Each.’

‘Sixty thousand dollars?’ said Moist, sitting up. ‘That’s not right!’

‘I commend the speed of your mental arithmetic in your shaken state. No lack of clarity there, I’m glad to see,’ said Vetinari. ‘I would advise you to donate fifty thousand, split four ways. It is, after all, in a very public and very definite and incontrovertible way, a gift from the gods. Is this not a time for reverential gratitude?’

There was a lengthy pause, and then Moist raised a finger and managed, against all the odds, a cheerful smile. ‘Sound advice, my lord. Besides, a man never knows when he might need a prayer.’

‘Exactly,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘It is less than they demanded but more than they expect, and I did point out to them that the remainder of the money was all going to be used for the civic good. It is going to be used for the civic good, isn’t it, Mr Lipwig?’

‘Oh, yes. Indeed!’

‘That is just as well, since currently it’s sitting in Commander Vimes’s cells.’ Vetinari looked down at Moist’s trousers. ‘I see you still have mud all over your lovely golden suit, Postmaster. Fancy all that money being buried in a field. And you can still remember nothing about how you got there?’

Vetinari’s expression was getting on Moist’s nerves. You know, he thought. I know you know. You know I know you know. But I know you can’t be certain, not certain. ‘Well . . . there was an angel,’ he said.

‘Indeed? Any particular kind?’

‘The kind you only get one of, I think,’ said Moist.

‘Ah, good. Well, then it all seems very clear to me,’ said Vetinari, sitting back. ‘It is not often a mortal man achieves such a moment of glorious epiphany, but I am assured by the priests that such a thing could happen, and who should know better than they? Anyone even suggesting that the money was in some way . . . obtained in some wrong fashion will have to argue with some very turbulent priests and also, I assume, find their kitchen drawers quite impossible to shut. Besides, you are donating money to the city—’ he held up his hand when Moist opened his mouth, and went on, ‘that is, the Post Office, so the notion of private gain does not arise. 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. So, Mr Lipwig, you are instructed to rebuild the Post Office as soon as possible. The bills will be met and, since the money is effectively a gift from the gods, there will be no drain on our taxes. Well done, Mr Lipwig. Very well done. Don’t let me detain you.’

Moist actually had his hand on the door handle when the voice behind him said: ‘Just one minor thing, Mr Lipwig.’

He stopped. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘It occurs to me that the sum which the gods so generously have seen fit to bestow upon us does, by pure happenstance, approximate to the estimated haul of a notorious criminal, which as far as I know has never been recovered.’

Moist stared at the woodwork in front of him. 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.

He turned, face carefully deadpan. Lord Vetinari had walked over to his game.

‘Really, sir? Who was that, then?’ he said.

‘One Albert Spangler, Mr Lipwig.’

‘He’s dead, sir,’ said Moist.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir. I was there when they hanged him.’

‘Well remembered, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, moving a dwarf all the way across the board.

 

Damn, damn, damn! Moist shouted, but only for internal consumption.

He’d worked hard for that mon— well, the banks and merchants had worked har— well, somewhere down the line someone had worked hard for that money, and now a third of it had been . . . well, stolen, that was the only word for it.

Moist experienced a certain amount of unrighteous indignation about this.

Of course he would have given most of it to the Post Office, that was the whole point, but you could construct a damn good building for a lot less than a hundred thousand dollars and Moist had been hoping for a little something for himself.

Still, he felt good. Perhaps this was that ‘wonderful warm feeling’ people talked about. And 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, and the world sure as hell didn’t need another Dark Lord, not with Gilt doing so well. 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.

Handing all that gold over to a copper had been a difficult thing to do, but there really was no choice. He’d got them by the short and curlies, anyway. No one was going to stand up and say the gods didn’t do this sort of thing. True, they’d never done it so far, but you could never tell, with gods. Certainly there were queues outside the three temples, once the Times had put out its afternoon edition.

This had presented a philosophical problem to the priesthoods. They 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.

Even Miss Extremelia Mume, whose small multi-purpose temple over a bookmakers’ office in Cable Street handled the everyday affairs of several dozen minor gods, was doing good business among those prepared to back an outside chance. She’d hung a banner over the door. It read: It Could Be YOU.

It couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. But, you never knew . . . this time it might.

Moist recognized that hope. It was how he’d made his living. 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.

Now Moist von Lipwig headed along Attic Bee Street, towards the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Heads turned as he went past. He’d never been off the front page for days, after all. He just had to hope that the winged hat and golden suit were the ultimate in furniture; people saw the gold, not the face.

The hospital was still being built, as all hospitals are, but it had its own queue at the entrance. Moist dealt with that by ignoring it, and going straight in. There were, in the main hallway, people who looked like the kind of people whose job it is to say ‘oi, you!’ when other people just wander in, but Moist generated his personal ‘I’m too important to be stopped’ field and they never quite managed to frame the words.

And, of course, once you got past the doorway demons of any organization people just assumed you had a right to be there, and gave you directions.

Mr Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said ‘Do Not Enter’, but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing.

The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist.

‘Mr Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath, sir!’

‘They have to carry you?’ said Moist. ‘Can’t you walk, Tolliver?’

‘Yessir, but I fights ‘em, fights ‘em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!’

‘Please calm down, Mr Groat,’ said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. ‘You’re all right, then?’

‘Just a scratch, sir, look . . .’ Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly.

Moist nearly fainted. The banshee had tried to make a noughts-and-crosses board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly.

‘Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,’ Groat said grudgingly. ‘But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs.

‘Right as rain, sir. I told ‘em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. I bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with Aggy bossing people around? I bet it is! I bet you really need me, right, sir?’

‘Urn, yes,’ said Moist. ‘Are they giving you medicine?’

‘Hah, they call it medicine, sir. They gave me a lot of ol’ mumbo-pocus about it being wonderful stuff, but it’s got neither taste nor smell, if you want my opinion. They say it’ll do me good but I told ‘em it’s hard work that does me good, sir, not sitting in soapy water with young wimmin lookin’ at my rattle-and-flute. And they took my hair away! They called it unhygienic, sir! What a nerve! All right, it moves about a bit of its own accord, but that’s only natural. I’ve had my hair a long time, sir. I’m used to its funny little ways!’

‘Hwhat is going on here?’ said a voice full of offended ownership.

Moist turned.

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. But chillier. And with sails. And with a headdress starched to a cutting edge.

Two smaller women stood behind and on either side of her, in definite danger of being crushed if she stepped backwards.

‘I’ve come to see Mr Groat,’ said Moist weakly, while Groat gibbered and pulled the bedclothes over his head.

‘Quite impossible! I am the matron here, young man, and I must insist that you leave at once! Mr Groat is in an extremely unstable condition.’

‘He seems fine to me,’ said Moist.

He had to admire the look the matron gave him. It suggested that Moist had just been found adhering to the sole of her shoe. He returned it with a chilly one of his own.

‘Young man, his condition is extremely critical!’ she snapped. ‘I refuse to release him!’

‘Madam, illness is not a crime!’ said Moist. ‘People are not released from hospital, they are discharged!’

The matron drew herself up and out, and gave Moist a smile of triumph. ‘That, young man, is hwhat we are afraid of!’

 

Moist was sure doctors kept skeletons around to cow patients. Nyer, nyer, we know what you look like underneath . . . He quite approved, though. He had a certain fellow feeling. Places like the Lady Sybil were very rare these days, but Moist felt certain he could make a profitable career out of wearing a white robe, using long learned names for ailments like ‘runny nose’ and looking solemnly at things in bottles.

On the other side of the desk, a Dr Lawn - he had his name on a plate on his desk, because doctors are very busy and can’t remember everything - looked up from his notes on Tolliver Groat.

‘It was quite interesting, Mr Lipwig. It was the first time I’ve ever had to operate to remove the patient’s clothing,’ he said. ‘You don’t happen to know what the poultice was made of, do you? He wouldn’t tell us.’

‘I believe it’s layers of flannel, goose grease and bread pudding,’ said Moist, staring around at the office.

‘Bread pudding? Really bread pudding?’

‘Apparently so,’ said Moist.

‘Not something alive, then? It seemed leathery to us,’ said the doctor, leafing through the notes. ‘Ah, yes, here we are. Yes, his trousers were the subject of a controlled detonation after one of his socks exploded. We’re not sure why.’

‘He fills them with sulphur and charcoal to keep his feet fresh, and he soaks his trousers in saltpetre to prevent Gnats,’ said Moist. ‘He’s a great believer in natural medicine, you see. He doesn’t trust doctors.’

‘Really?’ said Dr Lawn. ‘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 Groat thinks that every man is his own physician, I gather?’

‘He makes his own medicines,’ Moist explained. ‘He starts every day with a quarter of a pint of gin mixed with spirits of nitre, flour of sulphur, juniper and the juice of an onion. He says it clears the tubes.’

‘Good heavens, I’m sure it does. Does he smoke at all?’

Moist considered this. ‘No-o. It looks more like steam,’ he said.

‘And his background in basic alchemy is . . . ?’

‘Non-existent, as far as I know,’ said Moist. ‘He makes some interesting cough sweets, though. After you’ve sucked them for two minutes you can feel the wax running out of your ears. He paints his knees with some sort of compound of iodine and—’

‘Enough!’ said the doctor. ‘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. Take him away, please. I have to say that against all the odds I found him amazingly healthy. I can quite see why an attack by a banshee would be so easily shrugged off. In fact Mr Groat is probably unkillable by any normal means, although I advise you not to let him take up tap dancing. Oh, and do take his wig, will you? We tried putting it in a cupboard, but it got out. We’ll send the bill to the Post Office, shall we?’

‘I thought this said “Free Hospital” on the sign,’ said Moist.

‘Broadly, yes, broadly,’ said Dr Lawn. ‘But those on whom the gods have bestowed so many favours - one hundred and fifty thousand of them, I heard - probably have had all the charity they require, hmm?’

And it’s all sitting in the Watch’s cells, thought Moist. He reached into his jacket and produced a crumpled wad of green Ankh-Morpork one-dollar stamps.

‘Will you take these?’ he said.

 

The picture of Tiddles being carried out of the Post Office by Moist von Lipwig was, since it concerned an animal, considered to be full of human interest by the Times and was thus displayed prominently on the front page.

Reacher Gilt looked at it without displaying so much as a flicker of emotion. Then he reread the story next to it, under the headlines:

 

MAN SAVES CAT

‘We’ll Rebuild Bigger!’ Vow as Post Office Blazes

$150,000 Gift From Gods

Wave of stuck drawers hits city

 

‘It occurs to me that the editor of the Times must sometimes regret that he has only one front page,’ he observed drily.

There was a sound from the men sitting round the big table in Gilt’s office. It was the kind of sound you get when people are not really laughing.

‘Do you think he has got gods on his side?’ said Greenyham.

‘I hardly imagine so,’ said Gilt. ‘He must have known where the money was.’

‘You think so? If I knew where that much money was I wouldn’t leave it in the ground.’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Gilt quietly, in such a way that Greenyham felt slightly uneasy.

‘Twelve and a half per cent! Twelve and a half per cent!’ screamed Alphonse, bouncing up and down on his perch.

‘We’re made to look fools, Reacher!’ said Stowley. ‘He knew the line would go down yesterday! He might as well have divine guidance! We’re losing the local traffic already. Every time we have a shutdown you can bet he’ll run a coach out of sheer devilment. There’s nothing that damn man won’t stoop to. He’s turned the Post Office into a . . . a show!’

‘Sooner or later all circuses leave town,’ said Gilt.

‘But he’s laughing at us!’ Stowley persisted. ‘If the Trunk breaks down again I wouldn’t put it past him to run a coach to Genua!’

‘That would take weeks,’ said Gilt.

‘Yes, but it’s cheaper and it gets there. That’s what he’ll say. And he’ll say it loudly, too. We’ve got to do something, Reacher.’

‘And what do you suggest?’

‘Why don’t we just spend some money and get some proper maintenance done?’

‘You can’t,’ said a new voice. ‘You don’t have the men.’

All heads turned to the man at the far end of the table. He had a jacket on over his overalls and a very battered top hat on the table beside him. 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. He hadn’t seen a clacks until three years ago, when the first company was founded, but he was methodical and engineering was engineering.

Currently his greatest friend in the world was his collection of pink flimsies. He’d done his best, but he wasn’t going to carry the can when this lot finally fell over and his pink flimsies would see to it that he didn’t. White memo paper to the chairman, yellow flimsy to the file, pink flimsy you kept. No one could say he hadn’t warned them.

A two-inch stack of the latest flimsies was attached to his clipboard. Now, feeling like an elder god leaning down through the clouds of some Armageddon and booming: ‘Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I warn you? Did you listen? Too late to listen now!’, he put on a voice of strained patience.

‘I’ve got six maint’nance teams. I had eight last week. I sent you a memo about that, got the flimsies right here. We ought to have eighteen teams. Half the lads are needin’ to be taught as we go, and we ain’t got time for teachin’. In the oP days we’d set up walkin’ towers to take the load an’ we ain’t got men even to do that now—’

‘All right, it takes time, we understand,’ said Greenyham. ‘How long will it take if you . . . hire more men and get these walking towers working and—’

‘You made me sack a lot of the craftsmen,’ said Pony.

‘We didn’t sack them. We “let them go”,’ said Gilt.

‘We . . . downsized,’ said Greenyham.

‘Looks like you succeeded, sir,’ said Pony. He took a stub of pencil out of one pocket and a grubby notebook out of the other.

‘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 . . .’

‘How soon can we have the Grand Trunk running properly?’ said Greenyham, while Gilt leaned back and shut his eyes.

Pony’s lips moved as he ran his eyes over his figures. ‘Nine months,’ he said.

‘I suppose if we’re seen to be working hard nine months of erratic running won’t seem too—’ Mr Stowley began.

‘Nine months shut down,’ said Mr Pony.

‘Don’t be a fool, man!’

‘I ain’t a fool, sir, thank you,’ said Pony sharply. ‘I’ll have to find and train new craftsmen, ‘cos a lot of the old brigade won’t come back whatever I offer. If we shut the towers down I can use the signallers; at least they know their way around a tower. We can get more work done if we don’t have to drag walking towers and set them up. Make a clean start. The towers were never built that well to begin with. Dearheart never expected this sort of traffic. Nine months of dark towers, sirs.’

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 . . .

‘You can’t do better than that?’ said Stowley.

‘Mr Stowley, I’ll be doin’ well if it’s only nine months,’ said Pony, focusing again. ‘If you don’t wan............