Chris Patterson - Going Postal

‘People die on them towers,' said Jim. ‘We see, you know. Damn right! The towers follows the coach roads. We used to have the contract to haul lads out to the towers and we heard ‘em talking. They used to have an hour a day when they shut the whole Trunk down for maint'nance.'

‘The Hour of the Dead, they called it,' said Harry. ‘Just before dawn. That's when people die.'

Across a continent, the line of light, beads on the pre-dawn darkness. And, then, the Hour of the Dead begins, at either end of the Grand Trunk, as the upline and downline shutters clear their messages and stop moving, one after the other.

The men of the towers had prided themselves on the speed with which they could switch their towers from black and white daylight transmission to the light and dark mode of the night. On a good day they could do it with barely a break in transmission, clinging to swaying ladders high above the ground while around them the shutters rattled and chattered. There were heroes who'd lit all sixteen lamps on a big tower in less than a minute, sliding down ladders, swinging on ropes, keeping their tower alive. ‘Alive' was the word they used. No one wanted a dark tower, not even for a minute.

The Hour of the Dead was different. That was one hour for repairs, replacements, maybe even some paperwork. It was mostly replacements. It was fiddly to repair a shutter high up on the tower with the wind making it tremble and freezing the blood in your fingers, and always better to swing it out and down to the ground and slot another one in place. But when you were running out of time, it was tempting to brave the wind and try to free the bloody shutters by hand.

Sometimes the wind won. The Hour of the Dead was when men died.

And when a man died, they sent him home by clacks.

Moist's mouth dropped open. ‘Huh?'

‘That's what they call it,' said Harry. ‘Not lit'rally, o' course. But they send his name from one end of the Trunk to the other, ending up at the tower nearest his home.'

‘Yeah, but they say sometimes the person stays on in the towers, somehow,' said Jim.' "Living in the Overhead", they call it.'

‘But they're mostly pissed when they say that,' said Harry.

‘Oh, yes, mostly pissed, I'll grant you,' said his brother. ‘They get worked too hard. There's no Hour of the Dead now; they only get twenty minutes. They cut the staff, too. They used to run a slow service on Octedays; now it's high speed all the time, except towers keep breaking down. We seen lads come down from them towers with their eyes spinning and their hands shaking and no idea if it's bum or breakfast time. It drives ‘em mad. Eh? Damn right!'

‘Except that they're already mad,' said Harry. ‘You'd have to be mad to work up in them things.'

‘They get so mad even ordinary mad people think they're mad.'

‘That's right. But they still go back up there. The clacks drives them back. The clacks owns them, gets into their souls,' said Harry. ‘They get paid practically nothing but I'll swear they'd go up those towers for free.'

‘The Grand Trunk runs on blood now, since the new gang took over. It's killin' men for money,' said Jim.

Harry drained his mug. ‘We won't have none of it,' he said. ‘We'll run your mail for you, Mr Lipwig, for all that you wear a damn silly hat.'

‘Tell me,' said Moist, ‘have you ever heard of something called the Smoking Gnu?'

‘Dunno much,' said Jim. ‘A couple of the boys mentioned them once. Some kind of outlaw signallers, or something. Something to do with the Overhead.'

‘What is the Overhead? Er... dead people live in it?'

‘Look, Mr Lipwig, we just listen, okay,' said Jim. ‘We chat to ‘em nice and easy, ‘cos when they come down from the towers they're so dozy they'll walk under your coach wheels—'

‘It's the rocking in the wind,' said Harry. ‘They walk like sailors.'

‘Right. The Overhead? Well, they say a lot of the messages the clacks carries is about the clacks, okay? Orders from the company, housekeeping messages, messages about messages—'

‘—dead men's names—' said Moist.

‘Yeah, them too. Well, the Smoking Gnu is in there somewhere,' Jim went on. ‘That's all I know. I drive coaches, Mr Lipwig. I ain't a clever man like them up on the towers. Hah, I'm stupid enough to keep my feet on the ground!'

‘Tell Mr Lipwig about Tower 93, Jim,' said Harry. ‘Make ‘is flesh creep!'

‘Yeah, heard about that one?' said Jim, looking slyly at Moist.

‘No. What happened?'

‘Only two lads were up there, where there should've been three. One of them went out in a gale to budge a stuck shutter, which he shouldn't've done, and fell off and got his safety rope tangled round his neck. So the other bloke rushed out to get him, without his safety rope - which he shouldn't've done - and they reckon he got blown right off the tower.'

‘That's horrible,' said Moist. ‘Not creepy, though. As such.'

‘Oh, you want the creepy bit? Ten minutes after they was both dead the tower sent a message for help. Sent by a dead man's hand.' Jim stood up and put his tricorn hat on. ‘Got to take a coach out in twenty minutes. Nice to meet you, Mr Lipwig.' He pulled open a drawer in the battered desk and pulled out a length of lead pipe. ‘That's for highwaymen,' he said, and then took out a big silver brandy flask. ‘And this is for me,' he added with rather more satisfaction. ‘Eh? Damn right!'

And I thought the Post Office was full of crazy people, Moist thought.

‘Thank you,' he said, standing. Then he remembered the strange letter in his pocket, for whatever use it was, and added: ‘Have you got a coach stopping at Pseudopolis tomorrow?'

‘Yeah, at ten o'clock,' said Harry.

‘We'll have a bag for it,' said Moist.

‘Is is worth it?' said Jim. ‘It's more'n fifty miles, and I heard they've got the Trunk repaired. It's a stoppin' coach, won't get there ‘til nearly dark.'

‘Got to make the effort, Jim,' said Moist.

The coachman gave him a look with a little glint that indicated he thought Moist was up to something, but said: ‘Well, you're game, I'll say that for you. We'll wait for your bag, Mr Lipwig, and the best of luck to you. Must rush, sir.'

‘What coach are you taking out?' said Moist.

Til take the first two stages of the overnight flyer to Quirm, leaving at seven,' said Jim. ‘If it's still got all its wheels.'

‘It's nearly seven?'

‘Twenty to, sir.'

‘I'll be late!'

The coachmen watched him run back across the yard, with Mr Pump and Gladys trailing slowly behind.

Jim pulled on his thick leather gauntlets, thoughtfully, and then said to his brother: ‘You know how you get them funny feelings?'

‘I reckon I do, Jim.'

‘And would you reckon there'll be a clacks failure between here and Pseudopolis tomorrow?'

‘Funny you should mention that. Mind you, it'd be a two to one bet anyway, the way things have been going. Maybe he's just a betting man, Jim.'

‘Yeah,' said Jim. ‘Yeah. Eh? Damn right!'

Moist struggled out of the golden suit. It was good advertising, no doubt about it, and when he wore it he felt he had style coming out of his ears, but wearing something like that to the Mended Drum meant that he wanted to be hit over the head with a stool and what would come out of his ears wouldn't bear thinking about.

He threw the winged hat on the bed and struggled into his second golem-made suit. Sombre, he'd said. You had to hand it to golem tailoring. The suit was so black that if it had been sprinkled with stars the owls would have collided with it. He needed more time but Adora Belle Dearheart was not someone you felt you should keep waiting.

‘You look fine, sir,' said Groat.