Chris Patterson - Going Postal

Helpless now, tumbling in the river of paper, Moist dimly felt the jolt as a floor gave way. The mail poured through, taking him with it and slamming him into another drift of envelopes. Sight disappeared as thousands of letters thudded down on top of him, and then sound died, too.

Darkness and silence squeezed him in a fist.

Moist von Lipwig knelt with his head resting on his arms. There was air here but it was warm and stale and wouldn't last long. He couldn't move more than a finger.

He could die here. He would die here. There must be tons of mail around him.

‘I commend my soul to any god who can find it,' he mumbled, in the stifling air.

A line of blue danced across his inner vision.

It was handwriting. But it spoke.

‘Dear Mother, I have arived safely and found good lodgings at... .

The voice sounded like a country boy but it had a... a scritchy quality to it. If a letter could talk, it would sound like that. The words rambled on, the characters curving and slanting awkwardly under the pen of a reluctant writer—

—and as it ran on another line also began to write across the dark, crisply and neatly:

Dear Sir, I have the honour to inform you that I am the sole executer of the estate of the late Sir Davie Thrill, of The Manor, Mixed Blessings, and it appears that you are the sole... .'

The voice continued in words so clipped that you could hear the shelves full of legal books behind the desk, but a third line was beginning.

Dear Mrs Clarck, I much regret to inform you that in an engagement with the enemy yesterday your husband, C. Clark, fought valiantly but was...

And then they all wrote at once. Voices in their dozens, their hundreds, their thousands, filled his ears and squiggled across his inner vision. They didn't shout, they just unrolled the words until his head was full of sound, which formed new words, just as all the instruments of an orchestra tinkle and scrape and blast to produce one climax—

Moist tried to scream, but envelopes filled his mouth.

And then a hand closed on his leg and he was in the air and upside down.

‘Ah, Mr Lipvig!' boomed the voice of Mr Pump. ‘You Have Been Exploring! Welcome To Your New Office!'

Moist spat out paper and sucked air into stinging lungs.

‘They're... alive!' he gasped. ‘They're all alive ! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt! I know how the others died!'

‘I Am Happy For You, Mr Lipvig,' said Pump, turning him the right way up and wading waist deep across the room, while behind them more mail trickled through a hole in the ceiling.

‘You don't understand! They talk! They want...' Moist hesitated. He could still hear the whispering in his head. He said, as much to himself as for the benefit of the golem, ‘It's as though they want to be... read.'

‘That Is The Function Of A Letter,' said Pump calmly. ‘You Will See That I Have Almost Cleared Your Apartment.'

‘Listen, they're just paper! And they talked !'

‘Yes,' rumbled the golem ponderously. ‘This Place Is A Tomb Of Unheard Words. They Strive To Be Heard.'

‘Oh, come on! Letters are just paper. They can't speak !'

‘I Am Just Clay, And I Listen,' said Pump, with the same infuriating calm.

‘Yes, but you've got added mumbo-jumbo—'

The red fire rose behind Pump's eyes as he turned to stare at Moist.

‘I went... backwards in time, I think,' Moist mumbled, backing away. ‘In... my head. That's how Sideburn died. He fell down stairs that weren't there in the past. And Mr Ignavia died of fright. I'm sure of it! But I was inside the letters! And there must have been a... a hole in the floor, or something, and that... I fell, and I...' He stopped. ‘This place needs a priest, or a wizard. Someone who understands this kind of stuff. Not me!'

The golem scooped up two armfuls of the mail that had so recently entombed his client.

‘You Are The Postmaster, Mr Lipvig,' he said.

‘That's just Vetinari's trick! I'm no postman, I'm just a fraud—'

‘Mr Lipwig?' said a nervous voice from the doorway behind him. He turned and saw the boy Stanley, who flinched at his expression.

‘Yes?' snapped Moist. ‘What the hell do you— What do you want, Stanley? I'm a little busy right now.'

‘There's some men,' said Stanley, grinning uncertainly. ‘They're downstairs. Some men.'

Moist glared at him, but Stanley seemed to have finished for now.

‘And these men want... ?' he prompted.

‘They want you, Mr Lipwig,' said Stanley. ‘They said they want to see the man who wants to be postmaster.'

‘I don't want to be—' Moist began, but gave up. There was no point in taking it out on the boy.

‘Excuse Me, Postmaster,' said the golem behind him. ‘I Wish To Complete My Allotted Task.'

Moist stood aside as the clay man walked out into the corridor, the old boards groaning under his enormous feet. Outside, you could see how he'd managed to clean out the office. The walls of other rooms were bowed out almost to the point of exploding. When a golem pushes things into a room, they stay pushed.

The sight of the plodding figure calmed Moist down a little. There was something intensely... well, down-to-earth about Mr Pump.

What he needed now was normality, normal people to talk to, normal things to do to drive the voices out of his head. He brushed fragments of paper off his increasingly greasy suit.

‘All right,' he said, trying to find his tie, which had ended up hanging down his back. ‘I shall see what they want.'

They were waiting on the half-landing on the big staircase. They were old men, thin and bowed, like slightly older copies of Groat. They had the same ancient uniform, but there was something odd about them.

Each man had the skeleton of a pigeon wired on to the top of his peaked hat.

‘Be you the Unfranked Man?' growled one of them, as he approached.

‘What? Who? Am I?' said Moist. Suddenly, the idea of normality was ebbing again.

‘Yes, you are, sir,' whispered Stanley beside him. ‘You have to say yes, sir. Gosh, sir, I wish it was me doing this.'

‘Doing what?'

‘For the second time: be you the Unfranked Man?' said the old man, looking angry. Moist noticed that he was missing the top joints on the middle fingers of his right hand.

‘I suppose so. If you insist,' he said. This didn't meet with any approval at all.

‘For the last time: be you the Unfranked Man?' This time there was real menace in the voice.

‘Yes, all right! For the purposes of this conversation, yes! I am the Unfranked Man!' Moist shouted. ‘Now can we—'

Something black was dropped over his head from behind and he felt strings pulled tightly round his neck.

‘The Unfranked Man is tardy,' crackled another elderly voice, in his ear, and unseen but tough hands took hold of him. ‘No postman he.'

‘You'll be fine, sir,' said the voice of Stanley, as Moist struggled. ‘Don't worry. Mr Groat will guide you. You'll do it easily, sir.'

‘Do what?' said Moist. ‘Let go of me, you daft old devils!'

‘The Unfranked Man dreads the Walk,' one assailant hissed.

‘Aye, the Unfranked Man will be Returned to Sender in no short order,' said another.

‘The Unfranked Man must be weighed in the balance,' said a third.

‘Stanley, fetch Mr Pump right now!' shouted Moist, but the hood was thick and clinging.

‘Mustn't do that, sir,' said Stanley. ‘Mustn't do that at all, sir. It will be all right, sir. It's just a... a test, sir. It's the Order of the Post, sir.'

Funny hats, Moist thought, and began to relax. Hoodwinks and threats... I know this stuff. It's mysticism for tradesmen. There's not a city in the world without its Loyal and Ancient and Justified and Hermetic Order of little men who think they can reap the secrets of the ancients for a couple of hours every Thursday night and don't realize what prats they look in a robe. I should know - I must have joined a dozen of ‘em myself. I bet there's a secret handshake. I know more secret handshakes than the gods. I'm in about as much danger as I would be in a class of five-year-olds. Less, probably. Unfranked Man... good grief.