Moist hopped over it and plunged unsteadily into the dark.
Something as tough and hard as a shackle snapped round his good ankle. He hung from the broom handle for a second, and then collapsed.
‘I Have Nothing But Good Feelings Towards You, Mr Lipwig!’ boomed the voice cheerfully.
Moist groaned. The broom must have been kept as an ornament, because it certainly hadn’t been used much on the accumulations in the stable yard. On the positive side, this meant he had fallen into something soft. On the negative side, it meant that he had fallen into something soft.
Someone grabbed a handful of his coat and lifted him bodily out of the muck.
‘Up We Get, Mr Lipwig!’
‘It’s pronounced Lipvig, you moron,’ he moaned. ‘A v, not a w!’
‘Up Ve Get, Mr Lipvig!’ said the booming voice, as his broom/ crutch was pushed under his arm.
‘What the hell are you?’ Lipwig managed.
‘I Am Your Parole Officer, Mr Lipvig!’
Moist managed to turn round, and looked up, and then up again, into a gingerbread man’s face with two glowing red eyes in it. When it spoke, its mouth was a glimpse into an inferno.
‘A golem? You’re a damn golem?’
The thing picked him up in one hand and slung him over its shoulder. It ducked into the stables and Moist, upside down with his nose pressed against the terracotta of the creature’s body, realized that it was picking up his horse in its other hand. There was a brief whinny.
‘Ve Must Make Haste, Mr Lipvig! You Are Due In Front Of Lord Vetinari At Eight O’clock! And At Vork By Nine!’
Moist groaned.
‘Ah, Mr Lipwig. Regrettably, we meet again,’ said Lord Vetinari.
It was eight o’clock in the morning. Moist was swaying. His ankle felt better, but it was the only part of him that did.
‘It walked all night!’ he said. ‘All damn night! Carrying a horse as well!’
‘Do sit down, Mr Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, looking up from the table and gesturing wearily to the chair. ‘By the way, “it” is a “he”. An honorific in this case, clearly, but I have great hopes of Mr Pump.’
Moist saw the glow on the walls as, behind him, the golem smiled.
Vetinari looked down at the table again, and seemed to lose interest in Moist for a moment. A slab of stone occupied most of the table. Little carved figurines of dwarfs and trolls covered it. It looked like some kind of game.
‘Mr Pump?’ said Moist.
‘Hmm?’ said Vetinari, moving his head to look at the board from a slightly different viewpoint.
Moist leaned towards the Patrician, and jerked a thumb in the direction of the golem.
‘That’, he said, ‘is Mr Pump?’
‘No,’ said Lord Vetinari, leaning forward likewise and suddenly, completely and disconcertingly focusing on Moist. ‘He . . . is Mr Pump. Mr Pump is a government official. Mr Pump does not sleep. Mr Pump does not eat. And Mr Pump, Postmaster General, does not stop.’
‘And that means what, exactly?’
‘It means that if you are thinking of, say, finding a ship headed for Fourecks, on the basis that Mr Pump is big and heavy and travels only at walking pace, Mr Pump will follow you. You have to sleep. Mr Pump does not. Mr Pump does not breathe. The deep abyssal plains of the oceans present no barrier to Mr Pump. Four miles an hour is six hundred and seventy-two miles in a week. It all adds up. And when Mr Pump catches you—’
‘Ah, now,’ said Moist, holding up a finger. ‘Let me stop you there. I know golems are not allowed to hurt people!’
Lord Vetinari raised his eyebrows. ‘Good heavens, wherever did you hear that?’
‘It’s written on . . . something inside their heads! A scroll, or something. Isn’t it?’ said Moist, uncertainty rising.
‘Oh, dear.’ The Patrician sighed. ‘Mr Pump, just break one of Mr Lipwig’s fingers, will you? Neatly, if you please.’
‘Yes, Your Lordship.’ The golem lumbered forward.
‘Hey! No! What?’ Moist waved his hands wildly and knocked game pieces tumbling. ‘Wait! Wait! There’s a rule! A golem mustn’t harm a human being or allow a human being to come to harm!’
Lord Vetinari raised a finger. ‘Just wait one moment, please, Mr Pump. Very well, Mr Lipwig, can you remember the next bit?’
‘The next bit? What next bit?’ said Moist. ‘There isn’t a next bit!’
Lord Vetinari raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Pump?’ he said.
‘“ . . . Unless Ordered To Do So By Duly Constituted Authority”,’ said the golem.
‘I’ve never heard that bit before!’ said Moist.
‘Haven’t you?’ said Lord Vetinari, in apparent surprise. ‘I can’t imagine who would fail to include it. A hammer can hardly be allowed to refuse to hit the nail on the head, nor a saw to make moral judgements about the nature of the timber. In any case, I employ Mr Trooper the hangman, whom of course you have met, and the City Watch, the regiments and, from time to time . . . other specialists, who are fully entitled to kill in their own defence or in protection of the city and its interests.’ Vetinari started to pick up the fallen pieces and replace them delicately on the slab. ‘Why should Mr Pump be any different just because he is made of clay? Ultimately, so are we all. Mr Pump will accompany you to your place of work. The fiction will be that he is your bodyguard, as befits a senior government official. We alone will know that he has . . . additional instructions. Golems are highly moral creatures by nature, Mr Lipwig, but you may find their morality a shade . . . old-fashioned?’
‘Additional instructions?’ said Moist. ‘And would you mind telling me exactly what his additional instructions are?’
‘Yes.’ The Patrician blew a speck of dust off a little stone troll and put it on its square.
‘And?’ said Moist, after a pause.
Vetinari sighed. ‘Yes, I would mind telling you exactly what they are. You have no rights in this matter. We have impounded your horse, by the way, since it was used in the committing of a crime.’
‘This is cruel and unusual punishment!’ said Moist.
‘Indeed?’ said Vetinari. ‘I offer you a light desk job, comparative freedom of movement, working in the fresh air . . . no, I feel that my offer might well be unusual, but cruel? I think not. However, I believe we do have down in the cellars some ancient punishments which are extremely cruel and in many cases quite unusual, if you would like to try them for the purposes of comparison. And, of course, there is always the option of dancing the sisal two-step.’
‘The what?’ said Moist.
Drumknott leaned down and whispered something in his master’s ear.
‘Oh, I apologize,’ said Vetinari. ‘I meant of course the hemp fandango. It is your choice, Mr Lipwig. There is always a choice, Mr Lipwig. Oh, and by the way . . . do you know the second interesting thing about angels?’
‘What angels?’ said Moist, angry and bewildered.
‘Oh, dear, people just don’t pay attention,’ said Vetinari. ‘Remember? The first interesting thing about angels? I told you yesterday? I expect you were thinking about something else. The second interesting thing about angels, Mr Lipwig, is that you only ever get one.’
Chapter Two
The Post Office
In which we meet the Staff- Glom of Nit – Dissertation on Rhyming
Slang – ‘You should have been there!’ – The Dead Letters – A Golem’s
Life – Book of Regulations
There was always an angle. There was always a price. There was always a way. And look at it like this, Moist thought: certain death had been replaced with uncertain death, and that was an improvement, wasn’t it? He was free to walk around . . . well, hobble, at the moment. And it was just possible that somewhere in all this was a profit. Well, it could happen. He was good at seeing opportunities where other people saw barren ground. So there was no harm in playing it straight for a few days, yes? It’d give his foot a chance to get better, he could spy out the situation, he could make plans. He might even find out how indestructible golems were. After all, they were made of pottery, weren’t they? Things could get broken, maybe.
Moist von Lipwig raised his eyes and examined his future.
The Ankh-Morpork Central Post Office had a gaunt frontage. It was a building designed for a purpose. It was, therefore, more or less, a big box to employ people in, with two wings at the rear which enclosed the big stable yard. Some cheap pillars had been sliced in half and stuck on the outside, some niches had been carved for some miscellaneous stone nymphs, some stone urns had been ranged along the parapet and thus Architecture had been created.