Terence Pratchett - Going Postal

Gilt handled it well, if you couldn’t read the tells, the little signs…

‘Dear me, Mr Lipwig, do the gods approve of gambling?’ he said, and gave a short laugh.

‘What is life but a lottery, Mr Gilt?’ said Moist. ‘Shall we say… one hundred thousand dollars?’

That did it. That was the last straw. He saw something snap inside Reacher Gilt.

‘One hundred thousand? Where would you lay your hands on that kind of money, Lipwig?’

‘Oh, I just place them together, Mr Gilt. Doesn’t everyone know that?’ said Moist, to general amusement. He gave the chairman his most insolent smile. ‘And where will you lay your hands on one hundred thousand dollars?’

‘Hah. I accept the wager! We shall see who laughs tomorrow,’ said Gilt bluntly.

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ said Moist.

And now I have you in the hollow of my hand, he thought to himself. The hollow of my hand. You’re enraged, now. You’re making wrong decisions. You’re walking the plank.

He climbed up on to the coach and turned to the crowd. ‘Genua, ladies and gentlemen. Genua or bust!’

‘Someone will!’ yelled a wag in the crowd. Moist bowed, and, as he straightened up, looked into the face of Adora Belle Dearheart.

‘Will you marry me, Miss Dearheart?’ he shouted.

There was an ‘Oooh’ from the crowd, and Sacharissa turned her head like a cat seeking the next mouse. What a shame the paper had only one front page, eh?

Miss Dearheart blew a smoke ring. ‘Not yet,’ she said calmly. This got a mixture of cheers and boos.

Moist waved, jumped down beside the driver and said: ‘Hit it, Jim.’

Jim cracked his whip for the sound of the thing, and the coach moved away amidst cheering. Moist looked back, and made out Mr Pony pushing determinedly through the crowd in the direction of the Tump Tower. Then he sat back and looked at the streets, in the light of the coach lamps.

Perhaps it was the gold working its way in from outside. He could feel something filling him, like a mist. When he moved his hand, he was sure that it left a trail of flecks in the air. He was still flying.

‘Jim, do I look all right?’ he said.

‘Can’t see much of you in this light, sir,’ said the coachman. ‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Go ahead, please.’

‘Why’d you give those bastards just those middle pages?’

‘Two reasons, Jim. It makes us look good and makes them look like whiny kids. And the other is, it’s the bit with all the colour illustrations. I hear it takes ages to code one of those.’

‘You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself, Mr Lipwig! Eh? Damn straight!’

‘Drive like the blazes, Jim!’

‘Oh, I know how to give them a show, sir, you can bank on it! HyahP The whip cracked again, and the sound of hooves bounced off the buildings.

‘Six horses?’ said Moist, as they rattled up Broadway.

‘Aye, sir. Might as well make a name for myself, sir,’ said the coachman.

‘Slow down a bit when you get to the old wizard tower, will you? I’ll get off there. Did you get some guards?’

‘Four of them, Mr Lipwig,’ Jim announced. ‘Lying low inside. Men of repute and integrity. Known ‘em since we were lads: Nosher Harry, Skullbreaker Tapp, Grievous Bodily Harmsworth and Joe “No Nose” Tozer. They’re mates, sir, don’t you worry, and they’re looking forward to a little holiday in Genua.’

‘Yeah, we’ve all got our buckets and spades,’ growled a voice from inside.

‘I’d rather have them than a dozen watchmen,’ said Jim happily.

The coach rattled on, leaving the outlying suburbs behind. The road under the wheels became rougher, but the coach swung and danced along on its steel springs.

‘When you’ve dropped me off you can rein them in a bit. No need to rush, Jim,’ said Moist, after a while.

In the light of the coach lamps Moist saw Jim’s red face glow with guile.

‘It’s your Plan, eh, sir?’

‘It’s a wonderful plan, Jim!’ said Moist. And I shall have to make sure it doesn’t work.

The lights of the coach disappeared, leaving Moist in chilly darkness. In the distance the faintly glowing smokes of Ankh-Morpork made a great trailing mushroom of cloud that blotted out the stars. Things rustled in the bushes, and a breeze wafted the scent of cabbages over the endless fields.

Moist waited until he got some night vision. The tower appeared, a column of night without stars. All he had to do was find his way through the dense, brambly, root-knotted woodland—

He made a noise like an owl. Since Moist was no ornithologist, he did this by saying ‘woo woo’.

The woodland exploded with owl hoots, except that these were owls that roosted in the old wizarding tower, which drove you mad in a day. It had no obvious effect on them except that the noises they made resembled every possible sound that could be made by a living or even dying creature. There was definitely some elephant in there, and possibly some hyena, too, with a hint of bedspring.

When the din had died down a voice from a few feet away whispered: ‘All right, Mr Lipwig. It’s me, Adrian. Grab my hand and let’s go before the others start fighting again.’

‘Fighting? What about?’

‘They drive each other up the wall! Feel this rope? Can you feel it? Right. You can move fast. We scouted out a trail and strung the rope—’

They hurried through the trees. You had to be really close to the tower to see the glow coming through the ruined doorway at the base. Undecided Adrian had fixed some of his little cold lights up the inner wall. Stones moved under Moist’s feet as he scrambled to the summit. He paid them no attention, but ran up the spiral stair so fast that when he reached the top he spun.

Mad Al caught him by the shoulders. ‘No rush,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ve got ten minutes to go.’

‘We’d have been ready twenty minutes ago if somebody hadn’t lost the hammer,’ muttered Sane Alex, tightening a wire.

‘What? I put it in the tool box, didn’t I?’ said Mad Al.

‘In the spanner drawer!’

‘So?’

‘Who in their right mind would look for a hammer in the spanner drawer?’

Down below, the owls started up again.

‘Look,’ said Moist quickly, ‘that’s not important, is it? Right now?’

‘This man,’ said Sane Alex, pointing an accusing wrench, ‘this man is mad!’

‘Not as mad as someone who keeps his screws neatly by size in jam jars,’ said Mad Al.

‘That counts as sane!’ said Alex hotly.

‘But everyone knows rummaging is half the fun! Besides—’

‘It’s done,’ said Undecided Adrian.

Moist looked up. The Gnu’s clacks machine rose up into the night, just as it had done on the Post Office roof. Behind it, in the direction of the city, an H-shaped structure climbed even further. It looked a little like a ship’s mast, an effect maybe caused by the wires that steadied it. They rattled in the faint breeze.

‘You must have upset someone,’ Adrian went on, while the other two settled down a bit. ‘A message was sent through twenty minutes ago, from Gilt himself. He said the big one will go through duplex, great care must be taken not to change it in any way, there is to be no other traffic at all until there’s a restart message from Gilt, and he’ll personally sack the entire staff of any tower that does not strictly follow those instructions.’

‘It just goes to show, the Grand Trunk is a people company,’ said Moist.

Undecided Adrian and Mad Al walked over to the big frame and began to unwind some ropes from their cleats.

Oh well, thought Moist, now for it…

‘There’s just one alteration to the plan,’ he said, and took a breath. ‘We’re not sending the Woodpecker.’