Terry Pratchett: Making Money

Moist stood up to leave, but hesitated. 'What's wrong with being Chairman of the Merchants' Guild, then?' he said.

With slow and ostentatious patience, Lord Vetinari slipped the ring back into its box and the box back into the drawer. 'I beg your pardon, Mr Lipwig?'

'It's just that you said it as though there was something wrong with it,' said Moist.

'I don't believe I did,' said Vetinari, looking up at his secretary. 'Did I utter a derogatory inflection, Drumknott?'

'No, my lord. You have often remarked that the traders and shopkeepers of the guild are the backbone of the city,' said Drumknott, handing him a thick file.

' I shall get a very nearly gold chain,' said Moist.

'He will get a very nearly gold chain, Drumknott,' observed Vetinari, paying attention to a new letter.

'And what's so bad about that?' Moist demanded.

Vetinari looked up again with an expression of genuinely contrived puzzlement. 'Are you quite well, Mr Lipwig? You appear to have something wrong with your hearing. Now run along, do. The Central Post Office opens in ten minutes and I'm sure you would wish, as ever, to set a good example to your staff.'

When Moist had departed, the secretary quietly laid a folder in front of Vetinari. It was labelled 'Albert Spangler/Moist von Lipwig'.

'Thank you, Drumknott, but why?'

'The death warrant on Albert Spangler is still extant, my lord,' Drumknott murmured.

'Ah. I understand,' said Lord Vetinari. 'You think that I will point out to Mr Lipwig that under his nomme de felonie of Albert Spangler he could still be hanged? You think that I might suggest to him that all I would need to do is inform the newspapers of my shock at finding that our honourable Mr Lipwig is none other than the master thief, forger and confidence trickster who over the years has stolen many hundreds of thousands of dollars, breaking banks and forcing honest businesses into penury? You think I will threaten to send in some of my most trusted clerks to audit the Post Office's accounts and, I am certain , uncover evidence of the most flagrant embezzlement? Do you think that they will find, for example, that the entirety of the Post Office Pension Fund has gone missing? You think I will express to the world my horror at how the wretch Lipwig escaped the hangman's noose with the aid of persons unknown? Do you think, in short, that I will explain to him how easily I can bring a man so low that his former friends will have to kneel down to spit on him? Is that what you assumed, Drumknott?'

The secretary stared up at the ceiling. His lips moved for twenty seconds or so while Lord Vetinari got on with the paperwork. Then he looked down and said: 'Yes, my lord. That about covers it, I believe.'

'Ah, but there is more than one way of racking a man, Drumknott.'

'Face up or face down, my lord?'

'Thank you, Drumknott. I value your cultivated lack of imagination, as you know.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'In fact, Drumknott, you get him to build his own rack, and let him turn the screw all by himself.'

'I'm not sure I'm with you there, my lord.'

Lord Vetinari laid his pen aside. 'You have to consider the psychology of the individual, Drumknott. Every man may be considered as a sort of lock, to which there is a key. I have great hopes for Mr Lipwig in the coming skirmish. Even now, he still has the instincts of a criminal.'

'How can you tell, my lord?'

'Oh, there are all sorts of little clues, Drumknott. But I think a most persuasive one is that he has just walked off with your pencil.'

There were meetings. There were always meetings. And they were dull, which is part of the reason they were meetings. Dull likes company.

The Post Office wasn't going places any more. It had gone to places. It had arrived at places. Now those places required staff, and staff rotas, and wages, and pensions, and building maintenance, and cleaning staff to come in at night, and collection schedules, and discipline and investment and on, and on…

Moist stared disconsolately at a letter from a Ms Estressa Partleigh of the Campaign for Equal Heights. The Post Office, apparently, was not employing enough dwarfs. Moist had pointed out, very reasonably, he thought, that one in three of the staff were dwarfs. She had replied that this was not the point. The point was that since dwarfs were on average two-thirds the height of humans, the Post Office, as a responsible authority, should employ one and a half dwarfs for every human employed. The Post Office must reach out to the dwarf community, said Ms Partleigh.

Moist picked up the letter between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. It's reach down , Ms Partleigh, reach down .

There had also been something about core values. He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could the terms like 'core values' at him with impunity.

Nevertheless, Moist was prepared to believe that there were people who found a quiet contentment in contemplating columns of figures. Their number did not include him.

It had been weeks since he'd last designed a stamp! And much longer since he'd had that tingle, that buzz, that feeling of flying that meant a scam was cooking gently and he was getting the better of someone who thought they were getting the better of him.

Everything was all so… worthy. And it was stifling.

Then he thought about this morning, and smiled. Okay, he'd got stuck, but the shadowy night-time climbing fraternity reckoned the Post Office to be particularly challenging. And he'd talked his way out of the problem. All in all, it was a win. For a while there, in between the moments of terror, he'd felt alive and flying.

A heavy tread in the corridor indicated that Gladys was on the way with his mid-morning tea. She entered with her head bent down to avoid the lintel and, with the skill of something massive yet possessed of incredible coordination, put the cup and saucer down without a ripple. She said: 'Lord Vetinari's Carriage Is Waiting Outside, Sir.'

Moist was sure there was more treble in Gladys's voice these days.

'But I saw him an hour ago! Waiting for what?' he said.

'You, Sir.' Gladys dropped a curtsy, and when a golem drops a curtsy you can hear it.

Moist looked out of his window. A black coach was outside the Post Office. The coachman was standing next to it, having a quiet smoke.

'Does he say I have an appointment?' he said.

'The Coachman Said He Was Told To Wait,' said Gladys.

'Ha!'

Gladys curtsied again before she left.

When the door had shut behind her, Moist returned his attention to the pile of paperwork in his in-tray. The top sheaf was headed 'Minutes of the Meeting of the Sub Post Offices Committee', but they looked more like hours.

He picked up the mug of tea. On it was printed: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS!He stared at it, and then absentmindedly picked up a thick black pen and drew a comma between 'Here' and 'But'. He also crossed out the exclamation mark. He hated that exclamation mark, hated its manic, desperate cheeriness. It meant: You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here. We'll See to That!

He forced himself to read the minutes, realizing that his eye was skipping whole paragraphs in self-defence.

Then he started on the District Offices' Weekly Reports. After that, the Accidents and Medical Committee sprawled its acres of words.

Occasionally Moist glanced at the mug.

At twenty-nine minutes past eleven the alarm on his desk clock went 'bing'. Moist got up, put his chair under the desk, walked to the door, counted to three, opened it, said 'Hello, Tiddles' as the Post Office's antique cat padded in, counted to nineteen as the cat did its circuit of the room, said 'Goodbye, Tiddles' as it plodded back into the corridor, shut the door and went back to his desk.