Chris Patterson - Going Postal

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.'