The Challenge — Moving Mountains - The Many Uses of Cabbage — The

Board Debates - Mr Lipwig on his Knees - The Smoking Gnu -

The Way of the Woodpecker

 

It was the next morning.

Something prodded Moist.

He opened his eyes, and stared along the length of a shiny black cane, past the hand holding the silver Death’s head knob and into the face of Lord Vetinari. Behind him, the golem smouldered in the corner.

‘Pray, don’t get up,’ said the Patrician. ‘I expect you have had a busy night?’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Moist, forcing himself upright. He’d fallen asleep at his desk again; his mouth tasted as though Tiddles had slept in it. Behind Vetinari’s head he could see Mr Groat and Stanley, peering anxiously round the door.

Lord Vetinari sat down opposite him, after dusting some ash off a chair.

‘You have read this morning’s Times,’ he said.

‘I was there when it was printed, sir.’ Moist’s neck seemed to have developed extra bones. He tried to twist his head straight.

‘Ah, yes. Ankh-Morpork to Genua is about two thousand miles, Mr Lipwig. And you say you can get a message there faster than the clacks. You have issued that as a challenge. Most intriguing!

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Even the fastest coach takes almost two months, Mr Lipwig, and I’m given to understand that if you travelled non-stop your kidneys would be jolted out of your ears.’

‘Yes, sir. I know that,’ said Moist, yawning.

 ‘It would be cheating, you know, to use magic’

Moist yawned again. ‘I know that too, sir.’

‘Did you ask the Archchancellor of Unseen University before you suggested that he should devise the message for this curious race?’ Lord Vetinari demanded, unfolding the newspaper. Moist caught sight of the headlines:

 

THE RACE IS ON!

‘Flying Postman’ vs. Grand Trunk

 

‘No, my lord. I said the message should be prepared by a well-respected citizen of great probity, such as the Archchancellor, sir.’

‘Well, he’s hardly likely to say no now, is he?’ said Vetinari.

‘I’d like to think so, sir. Gilt won’t be able to bribe him, at least.’

‘Hmm.’ Vetinari tapped the floor once or twice with his cane. ‘Would it surprise you to know that the feeling in the city this morning is that you’ll win? The Trunk has never been out of commission for longer than a week, a clacks message can get to Genua in a few hours and yet, Mr Lipwig, people think you can do this. Don’t you find that amazing?’

‘Er . . .’

‘But, of course, you are the man of the moment, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, suddenly jovial. ‘You are the golden messenger!’ His smile was reptilian. ‘I do hope you know what you are doing. You do know what you are doing, don’t you, Mr Lipwig?’

‘Faith moves mountains, my lord,’ said Moist.

‘There are a lot of them between here and Genua, indeed,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘You say in the paper that you’ll leave tomorrow night?’

‘That’s right. The weekly coach. But on this run we won’t take paying passengers, to save weight.’ Moist looked into Vetinari’s eyes.

‘You wouldn’t like to give me some little clue?’ said the Patrician.

‘Best all round if I don’t, sir,’ said Moist.

‘I suppose the gods haven’t left an extremely fast magical horse buried somewhere nearby, have they?’

‘Not that I’m aware, sir,’ said Moist earnestly. ‘Of course, you never know until you pray.’

‘No-o,’ said Vetinari. He’s trying the penetrating gaze, Moist thought. But we know how to deal with that, don’t we? We let it pass right through.

‘Gilt will have to accept the challenge, of course,’ said Vetinari. ‘But he is a man of . . . ingenious resource.’

That seemed to Moist to be a very careful way of saying ‘murderous bastard’. Once away, he let it pass.

His lordship stood up. ‘Until tomorrow night, then,’ he said. ‘No doubt there will be some little ceremony for the newspapers?’

‘I haven’t actually planned that, sir,’ said Moist.

‘No, of course you haven’t,’ said Lord Vetinari, and gave him what could only be called . . . a look.

 

Moist got very much the same look from Jim Upwright, before the man said: ‘Well, we can put out the word and call in some favours and we’ll get good horses at the post houses, Mr Lipwig, but we only go as far as Bonk, you know? Then you’ll have to change. The Genua Express is pretty good, though. We know the lads.’

‘You sure you want to hire the whole coach?’ said Harry, as he rubbed down a horse. ‘It’ll be expensive, ‘cos we’ll have to put on another for the passengers. It’s a popular run, that one.’

‘Just the mail in that coach,’ said Moist. ‘And some guards.’

‘Ah, you think you’ll be attacked?’ said Harry, squeezing the towel bone dry with barely an effort.

‘What do you think?’ said Moist.

The brothers looked at one another.

‘I’ll drive it, then,’ said Jim. ‘They don’t call me Leadpipe for nothing.’

‘Besides, I heard there were bandits up in the mountains,’ said Moist.

‘Used to be,’ said Jim. ‘Not as many now.’

‘That’s something less to worry about, then,’ said Moist.

‘Dunno,’ said Jim. ‘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.

People like a show . . .

 . . . and so mail was coming in for Genua, at a dollar a time. A lot of mail.

It was Stanley who explained. He explained several times, because Moist had a bit of a blind spot on this one.

‘People are sending envelopes with stamps inside envelopes to the coach office in Genua so that the first envelope can be sent back in the second envelope,’ was the shape of explanation that finally blew on some sparks in Moist’s brain.

‘They want the envelopes back?’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Because they’ve been used, sir.’

‘That makes them valuable?’

‘I’m not sure how, sir. It’s like I told you, sir. I think some people think that they’re not real stamps until they’ve done the job they were invented to do, sir. Remember the first printing of the one penny stamps that we had to cut out with scissors? An envelope with one of those on is worth two dollars to a collector.’

‘Two hundred times more than the stamp?’

‘That’s how it’s going sir,’ said Stanley, his eyes sparkling. ‘People post letters to themselves just to get the stamp, er, stamped, sir. So they’ve been used.’

‘Er . . . I’ve got a couple of rather crusty handkerchiefs in my pocket,’ said Moist, mystified. ‘Do you think people might want to buy them at two hundred times what they cost?’

‘No, sir!’ said Stanley.

‘Then why should—’

‘There’s a lot of interest, sir. I thought we could do a whole set of stamps for the big guilds, sir. All the collectors would want them. What do you think?’

‘That’s a very clever idea, Stanley,’ said Moist. ‘We’ll do that. The one for the Seamstresses’ Guild might have to go inside a plain brown envelope, eh? Haha!’

This time it was Stanley who looked perplexed. ‘Sorry, sir?’

Moist coughed. ‘Oh, nothing. Well, I can see you’re learning fast, Stanley.’ Some things, anyway.

‘Er . . . yes, sir. Er . . . I don’t want to push myself forward, sir—’

‘Push away, Stanley, push away,’ said Moist cheerfully.

Stanley pulled a small paper folder out of his pocket, opened it, and laid it reverentially in front of Moist.

‘Mr Spools helped me with some of it,’ he said. ‘But I did a lot.’

It was a stamp. It was a yellowy-green colour. It showed - Moist peered - a field of cabbages, with some buildings on the horizon.

He sniffed. It smelled of cabbages. Oh, yes.

‘Printed with cabbage ink and using gum made from broccoli, sir,’ said Stanley, full of pride. ‘A Salute to the Cabbage Industry of the Sto Plains, sir. I think it might do very well. 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. You can make practically anything with cabbage, sir. Then there’s—’

‘Cabbage stamps,’ said Moist, terminally. ‘At fifty pence, I note. You have hidden depths, Stanley.’

‘I owe it all to you, Mr Lipwig!’ Stanley burst out. ‘I have put the childish playground of pins right behind me, sir! The world of stamps, which can teach a young man much about history and geography as well as being a healthy, enjoyable, engrossing and thoroughly worthwhile hobby that will give him an interest that will last a lifetime, has opened up before me and—’

‘Yes, yes, thank you!’ said Moist.

‘—and I’m putting thirty dollars into the pot, sir. All my savings. Just to show we support you.’

Moist heard all the words, but had to wait for them to make sense.

‘Pot?’ he said at last. ‘You mean like a bet?’

‘Yes, sir. A big bet,’ said Stanley happily. ‘About you racing the clacks to Genua. People think that’s funny. A lot of the bookmakers are offering odds, sir, so Mr Groat is organizing it, sir! He said the odds aren’t good, though.’

‘I shouldn’t think they are,’ said Moist weakly. ‘No one in their right mind would—’

‘He said we’d only win one dollar for every eight we bet, sir, but we reckoned—’

Moist shot upright. ‘Eight to one odds on?’ he shouted. ‘The bookies think I’m going to win? How much are you all betting?’

‘Er . . . about one thousand two hundred dollars at the last count, sir. Is that—’

Pigeons rose from the roof at the sound of Moist von Lipwig’s scream.

‘Fetch Mr Groat right now!’

 

It was a terrible thing to see guile on the face of Mr Groat. The old man tapped the side of his nose.

‘You’re the man that got money out o’ a bunch of gods, sir!’ he said, grinning happily.

‘Yes,’ said Moist desperately. ‘But supposing I - I just did that with a trick . . .’

‘Damn good trick, sir,’ the old man cackled. ‘Damn good. A man who could trick money out of the gods’d be capable of anything, I should think!’

‘Mr Groat, there is no way a coach can get to Genua faster than a clacks message. It’s two thousand miles!’

‘Yes, I realize you’ve got to say that, sir. Walls have ears, sir. Mum’s the word. But we all had a talk, and we reckoned you’ve been very good to us, sir, you really believe in the Post Office, sir, so we thought: it’s time to put our money in our mouth, sir!’ said Groat, and now there was a touch of defiance.

Moist gaped once or twice. ‘You mean “where your mouth is”?’

‘You’re the man who knows a trick or three, sir! The way you just went into the newspaper office and said, we’ll race you! Reacher Gilt walked right into your trap, sir!’

Glass into diamond, thought Moist. He sighed. ‘All right, Mr Groat. Thank you. Eight to one on, eh?’

‘We were lucky to get it, sir. They went up to ten to one on, then they closed the books. All they’re accepting now is bets on how you’ll win, sir.’

Moist perked up a little. ‘Any good ideas?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a one-dollar flutter on “by dropping fire from the sky”, sir. Er . . . you wouldn’t like to give me a hint, p’raps?’

‘Please go and get on with your work, Mr Groat,’ said Moist severely.

‘Yessir, of course, sir, sorry I asked, sir,’ said Groat, and crabbed off.

Moist put his head in his hands.

I wonder if it’s like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you’ll die falling.

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

He had an office in the Tump Tower. He didn’t like it much, because the whole place shook to the movement of the semaphore, but it was necessary for the look of the thing. It did have an unrivalled view of the city, though. And the site alone was worth what they’d paid for the Trunk.

‘It takes the best part of two months to get to Genua by coach,’ he said, staring across the rooftops to the Palace. ‘He might be able to shave something off that, I suppose. The clacks takes a few hours. What is there about this that frightens you?’

‘So what’s his game?’ said Greenyham. The rest of the board sat around the table, looking worried.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gilt. ‘I don’t care.’

‘But the gods are on his side, Readier,’ said Nutmeg.

‘Let’s talk about that, shall we?’ said Gilt. ‘Does that claim strike anyone else as odd? The gods are not generally known for no-frills gifts, are they? Especially not ones that you can bite. No, these days they restrict themselves to things like grace, patience, fortitude and inner strength. Things you can’t see. Things that have no value. Gods tend to be interested in prophets, not profits, haha.’

There were some blank looks from his fellow directors.

‘Didn’t quite get that one, old chap,’ said Stowley.

‘Prophets, I said, not profits,’ said Gilt. He waved a hand. ‘Don’t worry yourselves, it will look better written down. In short, Mr Lipwig’s gift from above was a big chest of coins, some of them in what look remarkably like bank sacks and all in modern denominations. You don’t find this strange?’

‘Yes, but even the high priests say he—’

‘Lipwig is a showman,’ snapped Gilt. ‘Do you think the gods will carry his mail coach for him? Do you? This is a stunt, do you understand? It got him on page one again, that’s all. This is not hard to follow. He has no plan, other than to fail heroically. No one expects him actually to win, do they?’

‘I heard that people are betting heavily on him.’

‘People enjoy the experience of being fooled, if it promises a certain amount of entertainment,’ said Gilt. ‘Do you know a good bookmaker? I shall have a little flutter. Five thousand dollars, perhaps?’

This got some nervous laughter, and he followed it up. ‘Gentlemen, be sensible. No gods will come to the aid of our Postmaster. No wizard, either. They’re not generous with magic and we’ll soon find out if he uses any. No, he’s looking for the publicity, that’s all. Which is not to say,’ he winked, ‘that we shouldn’t, how shall I put it, make certainty doubly sure.’

They perked up still more. This sounded like the kind of thing they wanted to hear.

‘After all, accidents can happen in the mountains,’ said Greenyham.

‘I believe that is the case,’ said Gilt. ‘However, I was referring to the Grand Trunk. Therefore I have asked Mr Pony to outline our procedure. Mr Pony?’

The engineer shifted uneasily. He’d had a bad night. T want it recorded, sir, that I have urged a six-hour shutdown before the event,’ he said.

‘Indeed, and the minutes will show that I have said that is quite impossible,’ said Gilt. ‘Firstly because it would be an unpardonable loss of revenue, and secondly because sending no messages would send quite the wrong message.’

‘We’ll shut down for an hour before the event, then, and clear down,’ said Mr Pony. ‘Every tower will send a statement of readiness to the Tump and then lock all doors and wait. No one will be allowed in or out. We’ll configure the towers to run duplex - that is,’ he translated for management, ‘we’ll turn the down-line into a second up-line, so the message will get to Genua twice as fast. We won’t have any other messages on the Trunk while the, er, race is on. No Overhead, nothing. And from now on, sir, from the moment I walk out of this room, we take no more messages from feeder towers. Not even from the one in the Palace, not even from the one in the University.’ He sniffed, and added with some satisfaction: ‘ ‘specially not them students. Someone’s been having a go at us, sir.’

‘That seems a bit drastic, Mr Pony?’ said Greenyham.

‘I hope it is, sir. I think someone’s found a way of sending messages that can damage a tower, sir.’

‘That’s impossi—’

Mr Pony’s hand slapped the table. ‘How come you know so much, sir? Did you sit up half the night trying to get to the bottom of it? Have you taken a differential drum apart with a tin opener? Did you spot how the swage armature can be made to jump off the elliptical bearing if you hit the letter K and then send it to a tower with an address higher than yours, but only if you hit the letter Q first and the drum spring is fully wound? Did you spot that the key levers wedge together and the spring forces the arm up and you’re looking at a gearbox full of teeth? Well, I did!’

‘Are you talking about sabotage here?’ said Gilt.

‘Call it what you like,’ said Pony, drunk with nervousness. ‘I went to the yard this morning and dug out the old drum we took out of Tower 14 last month. I’ll swear the same thing happened there. But mostly the breakdowns are in the upper tower, in the shutter boxes. That’s where—’

‘So our Mr Lipwig has been behind a campaign to sabotage us . . .’ Gilt mused.

‘I never said that!’ said Pony.

‘No name need be mentioned,’ said Gilt smoothly.

‘It’s just sloppy design,’ said Pony. ‘I dare say one of the lads found it by accident and tried it again to see what happened. They’re like that, the tower boys. Show ‘em a bit of cunning machinery and they’ll spend all day trying to make it fail. The whole Trunk’s a lash-up, it really is.’

‘Why do we employ people like this?’ said Stowley, looking bewildered.

‘Because they’re the only people mad enough to spend their life up a tower miles from anywhere pressing keys,’ said Pony. ‘They like it.’

‘But somebody in a tower must press the keys that do all these . . . terrible things,’ said Stowley.

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.

‘The lads follow the signal, sir, as they say,’ he said. ‘They watch the next tower and repeat the message, as fast as they can. There’s no time to think about it. Anything for their tower comes out on the differential drum. They just pound keys and kick pedals and pull levers, as fast as they can. They take pride in it. They even do all kinds of tricks to speed things up. I don’t want any talk about sabotage, not right now. Let’s just get the message sent, as fast as possible. The lads will enjoy that.’

‘The image is attractive,’ said Gilt. ‘The dark of night, the waiting towers, and then, one by one, they come alive as a serpent of light speeds across the world, softly and silently carrying its . . . whatever. We must get some poet to write about it.’ He nodded at Mr Pony. ‘We’re in your hands, Mr Pony. You’re the man with the plan.’

 

‘I don’t have one,’ said Moist.

‘No plan?’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Are you telling me you—’

‘Keep it down, keep it down!’ Moist hissed. ‘I don’t want everyone to know!’

They were in the little cafe near the Pin Exchange which, Moist had noticed, didn’t seem to be doing much business today. He’d had to get out of the Post Office, in case his head exploded.

‘You challenged the Grand Trunk! You mean you just talked big and hoped something would turn up?’ said Miss Dearheart.

‘It’s always worked before! Where’s the sense in promising to achieve the achievable? What kind of success would that be?’ said Moist.

‘Haven’t you ever heard of learning to walk before you run?’

‘It’s a theory, yes.’

‘I just want to be absolutely clear,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Tomorrow night - that’s the day after today - you are going to send a coach -that’s a thing on wheels, pulled by horses, which might reach fourteen miles an hour on a good road - to race against the Grand Trunk -that’s all those semaphore towers, which can send messages at hundreds of miles an hour - all the way to Genua - that’s the town which is a very long way away indeed?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have no wonderful plan?’

‘No.’

‘And why are you telling me?’

‘Because, in this city, right now, you are the only person who would possibly believe I don’t have a plan!’ said Moist. ‘I told Mr Groat and he just tapped the side of his nose, which is something you wouldn’t want to watch, by the way, and said, “Of course you haven’t, sir. Not you! Hohoho!”‘

‘And you just hoped something would turn up? What made you think it would?’

‘It always has. The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up.’

‘And I’m supposed to help you how?’

‘Your father built the Trunk!’

‘Yes, but I didn’t,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve never been up in the towers. I don’t know any big secrets, except that it’s always on the point of breaking down. And everyone knows that.’

‘People who can’t afford to lose are betting money on me! And the more I tell them they shouldn’t, the more they bet!’

‘Don’t you think that’s a bit silly of them?’ said Miss Dearheart sweetly.

Moist drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I can think of another good reason why you might help me. It’s a little complicated, so I can only tell you if you promise to sit still and not make any sudden movements.’

‘Why, do you believe I will?’

‘Yes. I think that in a few seconds you’ll try to kill me. I’d like you to promise not to.’

She shrugged. ‘This should be interesting.’

‘Promise?’ said Moist.

‘All right. I hope it’s going to be exciting.’ Miss Dearheart flicked some ash off her cigarette. ‘Go on.’

Moist took a couple of calm breaths. This was it. The End. If you kept changing the way people saw the world, you ended up changing the way you saw yourself.

‘I am the man who lost you that job at the bank. I forged those bills.’

Miss Dearheart’s expression didn’t change, apart from a certain narrowing of the eyes. Then she blew out a stream of smoke.

‘I did promise, did I?’ she said.

‘Yes. Sorry.’

‘Did I have my fingers crossed?’

‘No. I was watching.’

‘Hmm.’ She stared reflectively at the glowing end of her cigarette. ‘All right. You’d better tell me............