Making Money

The promise of gold — The Men of the Sheds — The cost of a penny and the usefulness of widows — Overheads underfoot — Security, the importance thereof — A fascination with transactions — A son of many fathers — Alleged untrustworthiness in a case of flaming underwear — The Panopticon of the World and the blindness of Mr Bent — An Arch Comment

'SOMEHOW I WAS expecting something… bigger,' said Moist, looking through the steel bars into the little room that held the gold. The metal, in open bags and boxes, gleamed dully in the torchlight.

'That is almost ten tons of gold,' said Bent reproachfully. 'It does not have to look big.'

'But all the ingots and bags put together aren't much bigger than the desks out there!'

'It is very heavy, Mr Lipwig. It is the one true metal, pure and unsullied,' said Bent. His left eye twitched. 'It is the metal that never fell from grace.'

'Really?' said Moist, checking that the door out of there was still open.

'And it is also the only basis of a sound financial system,' Mr Bent went on, while the torchlight reflected off the bullion and gilded his face. 'There is Value! There is Worth! Without the anchor of gold, all would be chaos.'

'Why?'

'Who would set the value of the dollar?'

'Our dollars are not pure gold, though, are they?'

'Aha, yes. Gold-coloured, Mr Lipwig,' said Bent. 'Less gold than seawater, gold-ish. We adulterated our own currency! Infamy! There can be no greater crime!' His eye twitched again.

'Er… murder?' Moist ventured. Yep, the door was still open.

Mr Bent waved a hand. 'Murder only happens once,' he said, 'but when the trust in gold breaks down, chaos rules. But it had to be done. The abominable coins are, admittedly, only gold-ish, but they are at least a solid token of the true gold in the reserves. In their wretchedness, they nevertheless acknowledge the primacy of gold and our independence from the machinations of government! We ourselves have more gold than any other bank in the city, and only I have a key to that door! And the chairman has one too, of course,' he added, very much as a grudging and unwelcome afterthought.

'I read somewhere that the coin represents a promise to hand over a dollar's worth of gold,' said Moist helpfully.

Mr Bent steepled his hands in front of his face and turned his eyes upwards, as though praying.

'In theory, yes,' he said after a few moments. 'I would prefer to say that it is a tacit understanding that we will honour our promise to exchange it for a dollar's worth of gold provided we are not, in point of fact, asked to.'

'So… it's not really a promise?'

'It certainly is, sir, in financial circles. It is, you see, about trust.'

'You mean, trust us, we've got a big expensive building?'

'You jest, Mr Lipwig, but there may be a grain of truth there.' Bent sighed. 'I can see you have a lot to learn. At least you'll have me to teach you. And now, I think, you would like to see the Mint. People always like to see the Mint. It's twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six seconds past one, so they should have finished their lunch hour.'

It was a cavern. Moist was pleased about that, at least. A mint should be lit by flames.

Its main hall was three storeys high, and picked up some grey daylight from the rows of barred windows. And, in terms of primary architecture, that was it. Everything else was sheds.

Sheds were built on to the walls and even hung like swallows' nests up near the ceiling, accessed by unsafe-looking wooden stairs. The uneven floor itself was a small village of sheds, placed any old how, no two alike, each one carefully roofed against the non-existent prospect of rain. Wisps of smoke spiralled gently through the thick air. Against one wall a forge glowed dark orange, providing the right Stygian atmosphere. The place looked like the after-death destination for people who had committed small and rather dull sins.

This was, however, just the background. What dominated the hall was the Bad Penny. The treadmill was… strange.

Moist had seen treadmills before. There had been one in the Tanty, wherein inmates could invigorate their cardiovascular systems whether they wanted to or not. Moist had taken a turn or two before he worked out how to play the system. It had been a brute of a thing, cramped, heavy and depressing. The Bad Penny was much larger, but hardly seemed to be there at all. There was a metal rim that, from here, looked frighteningly thin. Moist tried in vain to see the spokes, until he realized that there weren't any, just hundreds of thin wires.

'All right, I can see it must work, but—' he began, staring up at the huge gearbox.