‘Not as mad as someone who keeps his screws neatly by size in jam jars,’ said Mad Al.
‘That counts as sane!’ said Alex hotly.
‘But everyone knows rummaging is half the fun! Besides—’
‘It’s done,’ said Undecided Adrian.
Moist looked up. The Gnu’s clacks machine rose up into the night, just as it had done on the Post Office roof. Behind it, in the direction of the city, an H-shaped structure climbed even further. It looked a little like a ship’s mast, an effect maybe caused by the wires that steadied it. They rattled in the faint breeze.
‘You must have upset someone,’ Adrian went on, while the other two settled down a bit. ‘A message was sent through twenty minutes ago, from Gilt himself. He said the big one will go through duplex, great care must be taken not to change it in any way, there is to be no other traffic at all until there’s a restart message from Gilt, and he’ll personally sack the entire staff of any tower that does not strictly follow those instructions.’
‘It just goes to show, the Grand Trunk is a people company,’ said Moist.
Undecided Adrian and Mad Al walked over to the big frame and began to unwind some ropes from their cleats.
Oh well, thought Moist, now for it . . .
‘There’s just one alteration to the plan,’ he said, and took a breath. ‘We’re not sending the Woodpecker.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Adrian, dropping his rope. ‘That was the plan!’
‘It’ll destroy the Trunk,’ said Moist.
‘Yes, that was the plan, sure enough,’ said Al. ‘Gilt’s as good as painted “kick me” on his pants! Look, it’s falling down of its own accord anyway, okay? It was an experiment in the first place! We can rebuild it faster and better!’
‘How?’ said Moist. ‘Where will the money come from? I know a way to destroy the company but leave the towers standing. They were stolen from the Dearhearts and their partners. I can give them back! But the only way to build a better line of towers is to leave the old ones intact. The Trunk’s got to earn!’
‘That’s the sort of thing Gilt would say!’ snapped Al.
‘And it’s true,’ said Moist. ‘Alex, you’re sane, tell the man! Keep the Trunk operating, replace one tower at a time, never dropping any code!’ He waved a hand towards the darkness. ‘The people out on the towers, they want to be proud of what they do, yes? It’s tough work and they don’t get paid enough but they live to shift code, right? The company’s running them into the ground but they still shift code!’
Adrian tugged at his rope. ‘Hey, the canvas is stuck,’ he announced to the tower in general. ‘It must have been caught up when we furled it . . .’
‘Oh, I’m sure the Woodpecker will work,’ said Moist, plunging on. ‘It might even damage enough towers for long enough. But Gilt will twist his way out of it. Do you understand? He’ll shout about sabotage!’
‘So what?’ said Mad Al. ‘We’ll have this lot back on the cart in an hour and no one will know we were ever here!’
‘I’ll climb up and free it, shall I?’ said Undecided Adrian, shaking the canvas.
‘I said it won’t work? said Moist, waving him away. ‘Look, Mr Al, this isn’t going to be settled by fire. It’s going to be settled with words. We’ll tell the world what happened to the Trunk.’
‘You’ve been talking to Killer about that?’ said Alex.
‘Yes,’ said Moist.
‘But you can’t prove anything,’ said Alex. ‘We heard it was all legal.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Moist. ‘But that doesn’t matter. I don’t have to prove anything. I said this is about words, and how you can twist them, and how you can spin them in people’s heads so that they think the way you want them to. We’ll send a message of our own, and do you know what? The boys in the towers will want to send it, and when people know what it says they’ll want to believe it, because they’ll want to live in a world where it’s true. It’s my words against Gilt’s, and I’m better at them than he is. I can take him down with a sentence, Mr Mad, and leave every tower standing. And no one will ever know how it was done—’
There was a brief exclamation behind them, and the sound of canvas unrolling quite fast.
‘Trust me,’ said Moist.
‘We’ll never get another chance like this,’ said Mad Al.
‘Exactly!’ said Moist.
‘One man has died for every three towers standing,’ said Mad Al. ‘Did you know that?’
‘You know they’ll never really die while the Trunk is alive,’ said Moist. It was a wild shot, but it hit something, he sensed it. He rushed on: ‘It lives while the code is shifted, and they live with it, always Going Home. Will you stop that? You can’t stop it! I won’t stop it! But I can stop Gilt! Trust me!’
The canvas hung like a sail, if as someone intended to launch the tower. It was eighty feet high and thirty feet wide and moved a little in the wind.
‘Where’s Adrian?’ said Moist.
They looked at the sail. They rushed to the edge of the tower. They looked down into darkness.
‘Adrian?’ said Mad Al uncertainly.
A voice from below said: ‘Yes?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just, you know . . . hanging around? And an owl has just landed on my head.’
There was a small tearing noise beside Moist. Sane Alex had cut a hole in the canvas.
‘Here it comes!’ he reported.
‘What?’ said Moist.
‘The message! They’re sending from Tower 2! Take a look,’ Alex said, backing away.
Moist peered through the slit, back towards the city. In the distance, a tower was sparkling.
Mad Al strode over to the half-sized clacks array and grabbed the handles.
‘All right, Mr Lipwig, let’s hear your plan,’ he said. ‘Alex, give me a hand! Adrian, just . . . hang on, all right?’
‘It’s trying to push a dead mouse in my ear,’ said a reproachful voice from below.
Moist shut his eyes, lined up the thoughts that had been buzzing for hours, and began to speak.
Behind and above him, the huge expanse of canvas was just enough to block the line of sight between the two distant towers. In front of him, the Smoking Gnu’s half-sized tower was just the right size to look, to the next tower in line, like a bigger tower a long way off. At night all you could see were the lights.
The clacks in front of him shook as the shutters rattled. And now a new message was dropping across the sky . . .
It was only a few hundred words. When Moist had finished, the clacks rattled out the last few letters and then fell silent.
After a while Moist said: ‘Will they pass it along?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mad Al, in a flat voice. ‘They’ll send it. You’re sitting up in a tower in the mountains and you get a signal like that? You’ll get it away and out of your tower as fast as you can.’
‘I don’t know if we ought to shake your hand or throw you off the tower,’ said Sane Alex sullenly. ‘That was evil.’
‘What sort of person could dream up something like that?’ said Mad Al.
‘Me. Now let’s pull Adrian up, shall we?’ said Moist quickly. ‘And then I’d better get back to the city . . .’
An omniscope is one of the most powerful instruments known to magic, and therefore one of the most useless.
It can see everything, with ease. Getting it to see anything is where wonders have to be performed because there is so much Everything – which is to say, everything that can, will, has, should or might happen in all possible universes – that anything, any previously specified thing, is very hard to find. Before Hex had evolved the control thaumarhythms, completing in a day a task that would have taken five hundred wizards at least ten years, omniscopes were used purely as mirrors because of the wonderful blackness they showed. This, it turned out, is because ‘nothing to see’ is what most of the universe consists of, and many a wizard has peacefully trimmed his beard while gazing into the dark heart of the cosmos.
There were very few steerable omniscopes. They took a long time to make and cost a great deal. And the wizards were not at all keen on making any more. Omniscopes were for them to look at the universe, not for the universe to look back at them.
Besides, the wizards did not believe in making life too easy for people. At least, for people who weren’t wizards. An omniscope was a rare, treasured and delicate thing.