Chris Patterson - Going Postal

‘On what charge?' said Greenyham, still managing to find a last reserve of hauteur from somewhere.

‘ There doesn't have to be one !' Robe swirling like the edge of darkness, Vetinari swung round to the omniscope and Devious Collabone, for whom two thousand miles suddenly wasn't far enough. ‘Continue, Professor. There will be no further interruptions.'

Moist watched the audience as Collabone stuttered and mispronounced his way through the rest of the message. It dealt with generalities rather than particulars, but there were dates, and names, and thundering denunciations. There was nothing new, not really new, but it was packaged in fine language and it was delivered by the dead.

We who died on the dark towers demand this of you...

He ought to be ashamed.

It was one thing to put words in the mouths of the gods; priests did it all the time. But this, this was a step too far. You had to be some kind of bastard to think of something like this.

He relaxed a bit. A fine upstanding citizen wouldn't have stooped so low, but he hadn't got this job because he was a fine upstanding citizen. Some tasks needed a good honest hammer. Others needed a twisty corkscrew.

With any luck, he could believe that, if he really tried.

There had been a late fall of snow, and the fir trees around Tower 181 were crusted with white under the hard, bright starlight.

Everyone was up there tonight - Grandad, Roger, Big Steve-oh, Wheezy Halfsides, who was a dwarf and had to sit on a cushion to reach the keyboards, and Princess.

There had been a few muffled exclamations as the message came through. Now there was silence, except for the sighing of the wind. Princess could see people's breath in the air. Grandad was drumming his fingers on the woodwork.

Then Wheezy said: ‘Was that all real?'

The breath clouds got denser. People were relaxing, coming back to the real world.

‘You saw the instructions we got,' said Grandad, staring across the dark forests. ‘Don't change anything. Send it on, they told us. We sent it on. We damn well did send it on!'

‘Who was it from?' said Steve-oh.

‘It doesn't matter,' said Grandad. ‘Message comes in, message goes out, message moves on.'

‘Yeah, but was it really from—' Steve-oh began.

‘Bloody hell, Steve-oh, you really don't know when to shut up , do you?' said Roger.

‘Only I heard about Tower 93, where the guys died and the tower sent a distress signal all by itself,' mumbled Steve-oh. He was fast on the keys, but not knowing when to shut up was only one of his social failings. In a tower, it could get you killed.

‘Dead Man's Handle,' said Grandad. ‘You should know that. If there's no activity for ten minutes when a signature key is slotted, the drum drops the jacquard into the slot and the counterweight falls and the tower sends the help sign.' He spoke the words as if reading them from a manual.

‘Yeah, but I heard that in Tower 93 the jacquard was wedged and—'

‘I can't stand this,' muttered Grandad. ‘Roger, let's get this tower working again. We've got local signals to send, haven't we?'

‘Sure. And stuff waiting on the drum,' said Roger. ‘But Gilt said we weren't to restart until—'

‘Gilt can kiss my—' Grandad began, then remembered the present company and finished:'—donkey. You read what went through just now! Do you think that bas— that man is still in charge?'

Princess looked out from the upstream window. ‘182's lit up,' she announced.

‘Right! Let's light up and shift code,' Grandad growled. ‘That's what we do! And who's going to stop us? All those without something to do, get out! We are running !'

Princess went out on to the little platform, to be out of the way. Underfoot the snow was like icing sugar, in her nostrils the air was like knives.

When she looked across the mountains, in the direction she'd learned to think of as downstream, she could see that Tower 180 was sending. At that moment, she heard the thump and click of 181's own shutters opening, dislodging snow. We shift code, she thought. It's what we do.

Up on the tower, watching the star-like twinkle of the Trunk in the clear, freezing air, it was like being part of the sky.

And she wondered what Grandad most feared: that dead clacks-men could send messages to the living, or that they couldn't.

Collabone finished. Then he produced a handkerchief and rubbed away at whatever the green stuff was that had begun to grow on the glass. This made a squeaking sound.

He peered nervously through the smear. ‘Is that all right, sir? I'm not in some sort of trouble, am I?' he asked. ‘Only at the moment I think I'm close to translating the mating call of the giant clam...'

‘Thank you, Professor Collabone; a good job well done. That will be all,' said Archchancellor Ridcully coldly. ‘Unhinge the mechanism, Mr Stibbons.' A look of fervid relief passed across Devious Colla-bone's face just before the omniscope went blank.

‘Mr Pony, you are the chief engineer of the Grand Trunk, are you not?' said Vetinari, before the babble could rise again.

The engineer, suddenly the focus of attention, backed away waving his hands frantically. ‘Please, your lordship! I'm just an engineer, I don't know anything—'

‘Calm yourself, please. Have you heard that the souls of dead men travel on the Trunk?'

‘Oh, yes, your lordship.'

‘Is it true?

‘Well, er...' Pony looked around, a hunted man. He'd got his pink flimsies, and they would show everyone that he was nothing more than a man who'd tried to make things work, but right now all he could find on his side was the truth. He took refuge in it. ‘I can't see how, but, well... sometimes, when you're up a tower of a night, and the shutters are rattlin' and the wind's singing in the rigging, well, you might think it's true.'

‘I believe there is a tradition called "Sending Home"?' said Lord Vetinari.

The engineer looked surprised. ‘Why, yes, sir, but...' Pony felt he ought to wave a little flag for a rational world in which, at the moment, he didn't have a lot of faith, ‘the Trunk was dark before we ran the message, so I don't see how the message could have got on—'

‘Unless, of course, the dead put it there?' said Lord Vetinari. ‘Mr Pony, for the good of your soul and, not least, your body, you will go now to the Tump Tower, escorted by one of Commander Vimes's men, and send a brief message to all the towers. You will obtain the paper tapes, which I believe are known as drum rolls, from all the towers on the Grand Trunk. I understand that they show a record of all messages originating at that tower, which cannot be readily altered?'

‘That will take weeks to do, sir!' Pony protested.

‘An early start in the morning would seem in order, then,' said Lord Vetinari.

Mr Pony, who had suddenly spotted that a spell a long way from Ankh-Morpork might be a very healthy option just now, nodded and said, ‘Right you are, my lord.'

‘The Grand Trunk will remain closed in the interim,' said Lord Vetinari.

‘It's private property!' Greenyham burst out.

‘Tyrant, remember,' said Vetinari, almost cheerfully. ‘But I'm sure that the audit will serve to sort out at least some aspects of this mystery. One of them, of course, is that Mr Readier Gilt does not seem to be in this room.'

Every head turned.

‘Perhaps he remembered another engagement?' said Lord Vetinari. ‘I think he slipped out some time ago.'

It dawned on the directors of the Grand Trunk that their chairman was absent and, which was worse, they weren't. They drew together.

‘I wonder if, uh, at this point at least we could discuss the matter with you privately, your lordship?' said Greenyham. ‘Readier was not an easy man to deal with, I'm afraid.'