Business of Business and the Nature of Freedom Once Again Discussed –
Clerk Brian shows enthusiasm
Rise And Shine, Mr Lipvig. Your Second Day As Postmaster!’
Moist opened one crusted eye and glared at the golem.
‘Oh, so you’re an alarm clock too?’ he said. ‘Aargh. My tongue. It feels like it was caught in a mousetrap.’
He half crawled, half rolled across the bed of letters and managed to stand up just outside the door.
‘I need new clothes,’ he said. ‘And food. And a toothbrush. I’m going out, Mr Pump. You are to stay here. Do something. Tidy the place up. Get rid of the graffiti on the walls, will you? At least we can make the place look clean!’
‘Anything You Say, Mr Lipvig.’
‘Right!’ said Moist, and strode off, for one stride, and then yelped.
‘Be Careful Of Your Ankle, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump.
‘And another thing!’ said Moist, hopping on one leg. ‘How can you follow me? How can you possibly know where I am?’
‘Karmic Signature, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem.
‘And that means what, exactly?’ Moist demanded.
‘It Means I Know Exactly Where You Are, Mr Lipvig.’
The pottery face was impassive. Moist gave up.
He limped out into what, for this city, was a fresh new morning. There had been a touch of frost overnight, just enough to put some zest into the air and give him an appetite. The leg still hurt, but at least he didn’t need the crutch today.
Here was Moist von Lipwig walking through the city. He’d never done that before. The late Albert Spangler had, and so had Mundo Smith and Edwin Streep and half a dozen other personas that he’d donned and discarded. Oh, he’d been Moist inside (what a name, yes, he’d heard every possible joke), but they had been on the outside, between him and the world.
Edwin Streep had been a work of art. He’d been a lack-of-confidence trickster, and needed to be noticed. He was so patently, obviously bad at running a bent Find The Lady game and other street scams that people positively queued up to trick the dumb trickster and walked away grinning . . . right up to the point when they tried to spend the coins they’d scooped up so quickly.
There’s a secret art to forgery, and Moist had discovered it: in a hurry, or when excited, people will complete the forgery by their own cupidity. They’ll be so keen to snatch the money from the obvious idiot that their own eyes fill in all the little details that aren’t quite there on the coins they so quickly pocket. All you needed to do was hint at them.
But that was just for starters. Some customers never even discovered that they’d put fake coins in their purse, thus revealing to the incompetent Streep in which pocket they kept it. Later on they learned that Streep might be rubbish with a deck of cards but also that this lack was more than made up for by his exceptional skill as a pickpocket.
Now Moist felt like a peeled prawn. He felt as though he’d stepped out naked. And yet, still, no one was taking any notice. There were no cries of’Hey, you’, no shouts of’That’s him!’ He was just another face in the crowd. It was a strange new feeling. He’d never really had to be himself before.
He celebrated by buying a street directory from the Guild of Merchants, and had a coffee and a bacon sandwich while he thumbed, greasily, through it for the list of bars. He didn’t find what he was looking for there but he did find it in the list of hairdressers, and grinned when he did so. It was nice to be right.
He also found a mention of Dave’s Pin Exchange, up in Dolly Sisters, in an alley between a house of negotiable affection and a massage parlour. It bought and sold pins to pin fanciers.
Moist finished his coffee with a look on his face which those who knew him well, a group consisting in fact of absolutely nobody, would have recognized as the formation of a plan. Ultimately, everything was all about people. If he was going to be staying here for a while, he’d make himself comfortable.
He went for a walk to the self-styled ‘Home of Acuphilia!!!’
It was like lifting an unregarded stone and finding a whole new world. Dave’s Pin Exchange was the kind of small shop where the owner knows every single one of his customers by name. It was a wonderful world, the world of pins. It was a hobby that could last you a lifetime. Moist knew this because he expended one dollar on Pins by J. Lanugo Owlsbury, apparently the last word on the subject. Everyone had their funny little ways, Moist conceded, but he wasn’t entirely at home among people who, if they saw a pin-up, would pay attention to the pins. Some of the customers browsing the book racks {Mis-draws, Double Pointers and Flaws, Pins of Uberwald and Genua, First Steps in Pins, Adventures in Acuphilia . . . ) and staring covetously at the rack of pins laid out under glass had an intensity of expression that frightened him. They looked a bit like Stanley. They were all male. Clearly, women weren’t natural ‘pinheads’.
He found Total Pins on the bottom rack. It had a smudgy, home-produced look, and the print was small and dense and lacked such subtleties as paragraphs and, in many cases, punctuation. The common comma had looked at Stanley’s expression and decided not to disturb him.
When Moist put the little magazine on the counter the shop’s owner, a huge bearded man with dreadlocks, a pin through his nose, a beer belly belonging to three other people and the words ‘Death or Pins’ tattooed on a bicep, picked it up and tossed it back down dismissively.
‘Sure about that, sir?’ he said. ‘We’ve got Pins Monthly, New Pins, Practical Pins, Modern Pins, Pins Extra, Pins International, Talking Pins, Pins World, World Pins, World of Pins, Pins and Pinneries . . .’ Moist’s attention wandered off for a while but came back in time to catch ‘. . . the Acuphile Digest, Extreme Pins, $itfte! – that’s from Uberwald, very good if you collect foreign pins – Beginning Pins -that’s a part-work, sir, with a new pin every week – Pin Times and’ – here the big man winked – ‘Back Alley Pins’
‘I noticed that one,’ said Moist. ‘It has lots of pictures of young women in leather.’
‘Yes, sir. But, to be fair, they’re generally holding pins. So, then . . . it’s still Total Pins for you, is it?’ he added, as if giving a fool one last chance to repent of his folly.
‘Yes,’ said Moist. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.’ Dave scratched his stomach thoughtfully. ‘It’s just that the editor is a bit . . . a bit . . .’
‘A bit what?’ said Moist.
‘Well, we think he’s a bit weird about pins, to tell you the truth.’
Moist looked around the shop. ‘Really?’ he said.
Moist went to a nearby cafe and leafed through the magazine. One of the skills of his previous life had been an ability to pick up just enough about anything to sound like an expert, at least to nonexperts. Then he returned to the shop.
Everyone had their levers. Often it was greed. Greed was a reliable old standby. Sometimes it was pride. That was Groat’s lever. He desperately wanted promotion; you could see it in his eyes. Find the lever, and then it was plain sailing.
Stanley, now, Stanley . . . would be easy.
Big Dave was examining a pin under a microscope when Moist returned to the shop. The rush hour for pin buying must have been nearly over, because there were only a few laggards ogling the pins under glass, or thumbing through the racks.
Moist sidled over to the counter and coughed.
‘Yes, sir?’ said Big Dave, looking up from his work. ‘Back again, eh? They get to you, don’t they? Seen anything you like?’
‘A packet of pre-perforated pin papers and a tenpenny lucky dip bag, please,’ said Moist loudly. The other customers looked up for a moment as Dave pulled the packets off their rack, and then looked down again.
Moist leaned over the counter. ‘I was wondering,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘if you’d got anything a bit . . . you know . . . sharper?’
The big man gave him a carefully blank look. ‘How d’you mean, sharper?’ he said.
‘You know,’ said Moist. He cleared his throat. ‘More . . . pointed.’
The doorbell jangled as the last of the customers, sated on pins for one day, stepped out. Dave watched them go and then turned his attention back to Moist.
‘A bit of a connoisseur, are we, sir?’ he said, winking.