Going Postal

‘Capital! Welcome to government service!’ said Lord Vetinari, extending his hand. ‘I pride myself on being able to pick the right man. The wage is twenty dollars a week and, I believe, the Postmaster General has the use of a small apartment in the main building. I think there’s a hat, too. I shall require regular reports. Good day.’

He looked down at his paperwork. He looked up.

‘You appear to be still here, Postmaster General?’

‘And that’s it ?’ said Moist, aghast. ‘One minute I’m being hanged, next minute you’re employing me?’

‘Let me see… yes, I think so. Oh, no. Of course. Drumknott, do give Mr Lipwig his keys.’

The clerk stepped forward and handed Moist a huge, rusted keyring full of keys, and proffered a clipboard. ‘Sign here, please, Postmaster General,’ he said.

Hold on a minute, Moist thought, this is only one city. It’s got gates. It’s completely surrounded by different directions to run. Does it matter what I sign?

‘Certainly,’ he said, and scribbled his name.

‘Your correct name, if you please,’ said Lord Vetinari, not looking up from his desk. ‘What name did he sign, Drumknott?’

The clerk craned his head. ‘Er… Ethel Snake, my lord, as far as I can make out.’

‘Do try to concentrate, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari wearily, still apparently reading the paperwork.

Moist signed again. After all, what would it matter in the long run? And it would certainly be a long run, if he couldn’t find a horse.

‘And that leaves only the matter of your parole officer,’ said Lord Vetinari, still engrossed in the paper before him.

‘Parole officer?’

‘Yes. I’m not completely stupid, Mr Lipwig. He will meet you outside the Post Office building in ten minutes. Good day.’

When Moist had left, Drumknott coughed politely and said, ‘Do you think he’ll turn up there, my lord?’

‘One must always consider the psychology of the individual,’ said Vetinari, correcting the spelling on an official report. ‘That is what I do all the time and lamentably, Drumknott, you do not always do. That is why he has walked off with your pencil.’

Always move fast. You never know what’s catching you up.

Ten minutes later Moist von Lipwig was well outside the city. He’d bought a horse, which was a bit embarrassing, but speed had been of the essence and he’d only had time to grab one of his emergency stashes from its secret hiding place and pick up a skinny old screw from the Bargain Box in Hobson’s Livery Stable. At least it’d mean no irate citizen going to the Watch.

No one had bothered him. No one had looked at him twice; no one ever did. The city gates had indeed been wide open. The plains lay ahead of him, full of opportunity. And he was good at parlaying nothing into something. For example, at the first little town he came to he’d go to work on this old nag with a few simple techniques and ingredients that’d make it worth twice the price he’d paid for it, at least for about twenty minutes or until it rained. Twenty minutes would be enough time to sell it and, with any luck, pick up a better horse worth slightly more than the asking price. He’d do it again at the next town and in three days, maybe four, he’d have a horse worth owning.

But that would be just a sideshow, something to keep his hand in. He’d got three very nearly diamond rings sewn into the lining of his coat, a real one in a secret pocket in the sleeve, and a very nearly gold dollar stitched cunningly into the collar. These were, to him, what his saw and hammer are to a carpenter. They were primitive tools, but they’d put him back in the game.

There is a saying ‘You can’t fool an honest man’ which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men. Moist never knowingly tried it, anyway. If you did fool an honest man, he tended to complain to the local Watch, and these days they were harder to buy off. Fooling dishonest men was a lot safer and, somehow, more sporting. And, of course, there were so many more of them. You hardly had to aim.

Half an hour after arriving in the town of Hapley, where the big city was a tower of smoke on the horizon, he was sitting outside an inn, downcast, with nothing in the world but a genuine diamond ring worth a hundred dollars and a pressing need to get home to Genua, where his poor aged mother was dying of Gnats. Eleven minutes later he was standing patiently outside a jeweller’s shop, inside which the jeweller was telling a sympathetic citizen that the ring the stranger was prepared to sell for twenty dollars was worth seventy-five (even jewellers have to make a living). And thirty-five minutes after that he was riding out on a better horse, with five dollars in his pocket, leaving behind a gloating sympathetic citizen who, despite having been bright enough to watch Moist’s hands carefully, was about to go back to the jeweller to try to sell for seventy-five dollars a shiny brass ring with a glass stone that was worth fifty pence of anybody’s money.