The corridor opened out ahead of him, where it met a T-junction. The noise was coming from the brightly lit space beyond. Moist walked towards the shining brass railing of the balcony ahead—
—and stopped.
All right, the brain has been carried all the way up here at great expense; now it’s time for it to do some work.
The hall of the Post Office was a dark cavern filled with mountains of mail. There were no balconies, no shining brasswork, no bustling staff and as sure as hell there were no customers.
The only time the Post Office could have looked like this was in the past, yes?
There was balconies, sir, all round the big hall on every floor, made of iron, like lace!
But they weren’t in the present, not in the here and now. But he wasn’t in the past, not exactly. His fingers had felt a stairwell when his eyes had seen carpeted floor.
Moist decided that he was standing in the here and now but seeing in the here and then. Of course, you’d have to be mad to believe it, but this was the Post Office.
Poor Mr Sideburn had stepped out on to a floor that wasn’t there any more.
Moist stopped before stepping out on to the balcony, reached down, and felt the chill on his fingertips once again as they went through the carpet. Who was it – oh, yes, Mr Mutable. He’d stood here, rushed to look down and—
—smack, sir, smack on to the marble.
Moist stood up carefully, steadied himself against the wall, and peered gingerly into the big hall.
Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, but they were unlit because sunlight was pouring through the sparkling dome on to a scene innocent of pigeon droppings but alive with people, scuttling across the chequerboard floor or hard at work behind the long polished counters made of rare wood, my dad said. Moist stood and stared.
It was a scene made up of a hundred purposeful activities that fused happily into a great anarchy. Below him big wire baskets on wheels were being manhandled across the floor, sacks of letters were being tipped on moving belts, clerks were feverishly filling the pigeon-holes. It was a machine, made of people, sir, you should’ve seen it!
Away to Moist’s left, at the far end of the hall, was a golden statue three or four times life size. It was of a slim young man, obviously a god, wearing nothing more than a hat with wings on, sandals with wings on and – Moist squinted – a fig leaf with wings on? He’d been caught by the sculptor as he was about to leap into the air, carrying an envelope and wearing an expression of noble purpose.
It dominated the hall. It wasn’t there in the present day; the dais was unoccupied. If the counters and the chandeliers had gone, a statue that even looked like gold must’ve stood no chance. It had probably been The Spirit of the Post, or something.
Meanwhile, the mail down there was moving more prosaically.
Right under the dome was a clock with a face pointing in each of the four directions. As Moist watched it, the big hand clanked to the top of the hour.
A horn blew. The frantic ballet ceased as, somewhere below Moist, some doors opened and two lines of men in the uniforms, sir, royal blue with brass buttons! You should’ve seen them! marched into the hall in two lines and stood to attention in front of the big doors. A large man, in a rather grander version of the uniform and with a face like toothache, was waiting there for them; he wore a large hourglass hanging in a gimballed brass cage at his belt, and he looked at the waiting men as if he had seen worse sights but not often and even then only on the soles of his enormous boots.
He held up the hourglass with an air of evil satisfaction, and took a deep breath before roaring: ‘Numbahhh Four Delivereeee . . . stand!’
The words reached Moist’s ears slightly muffled, as though he was hearing them through cardboard. The postmen, already at attention, contrived to look even more alert. The big man glared at them and took another huge gulp of air.
‘Numbahhh Four Delivereeee wait for it, wait for it! . . . DELIVAAAAAAAH!’
The two lines marched past him and out into the day.
Once, we were postmen . . .
I’ve got to find a real stairway, Moist thought, pushing himself away from the edge. I’m . . . hallucinating the past. But I’m standing in the present. It’s like sleepwalking. I don’t want to walk out on to fresh air and end up as one more chalk outline.
He turned round, and someone walked right through him.
The sensation was unpleasant, like a sudden snap of fever. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is seeing someone’s head walk through yours. The view is mostly grey, with traces of red and hollow hints of sinus. You would not wish to know about the eyeballs.
. . . face all contorted like he’d seen a ghost . . .
Moist’s stomach heaved, and as he turned with his hand over his mouth he saw a young postman looking in his general direction with a look of horror that probably reflected the one on the unseen Moist’s face. Then the boy shivered, and hurried away.
So Mr Ignavia had got this far, too. He’d been smart enough to work out the floor but seeing another head going through your own, well, that could take you the wrong way . . .
Moist ran after the boy. Up here, he was lost; he must have toured less than a tenth of the building with Groat, the way constantly being blocked by glaciers of mail. There were other stairs, he knew, and they still existed in the present. Ground level, that was the goal: a floor you could rely on.
The boy went through a door and into what looked like a room full of parcels, but Moist could see an open doorway at the far end, and a hint of banister. He speeded up, and the floor disappeared from under his feet.
The light vanished. He was briefly and horribly aware of dry letters all around him, falling with him. He landed on more letters, choking as dry, ancient mail piled up about him. For a moment, through the rain of paper, he caught a glimpse of a dusty window half covered with letters, and then he was submerged again. The heap under him began to move, slipping down and sideways. There was the crack of what could have been a door being burst off its hinges and the sideways flow increased noticeably. He struck out madly for the surface in time for his head to hit the top of a door jamb and then the current dragged him under.
Helpless now, tumbling in the river of paper, Moist dimly felt the jolt as a floor gave way. The mail poured through, taking him with it and slamming him into another drift of envelopes. Sight disappeared as thousands of letters thudded down on top of him, and then sound died, too.
Darkness and silence squeezed him in a fist.
Moist von Lipwig knelt with his head resting on his arms. There was air here but it was warm and stale and wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t move more than a finger.
He could die here. He would die here. There must be tons of mail around him.
‘I commend my soul to any god who can find it,’ he mumbled, in the stifling air.
A line of blue danced across his inner vision.
It was handwriting. But it spoke.
‘Dear Mother, I have arived safely and found good lodgings at . . . .
The voice sounded like a country boy but it had a . . . a scritchy quality to it. If a letter could talk, it would sound like that. The words rambled on, the characters curving and slanting awkwardly under the pen of a reluctant writer—
—and as it ran on another line also began to write across the dark, crisply and neatly:
Dear Sir, I have the honour to inform you that I am the sole executer of the estate of the late Sir Davie Thrill, of The Manor, Mixed Blessings, and it appears that you are the sole . . . .’
The voice continued in words so clipped that you could hear the shelves full of legal books behind the desk, but a third line was beginning.
Dear Mrs Clarck, I much regret to inform you that in an engagement with the enemy yesterday your husband, C. Clark, fought valiantly but was . . .
And then they all wrote at once. Voices in their dozens, their hundreds, their thousands, filled his ears and squiggled across his inner vision. They didn’t shout, they just unrolled the words until his head was full of sound, which formed new words, just as all the instruments of an orchestra tinkle and scrape and blast to produce one climax—