Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [12]
Whatever the original purpose of the room, though, it was now the place where two people lived; two people who got along but, nevertheless, had a clear sense of mine and thine. The space was divided into two, with a narrow bed at either end. The dividing line was painted on the floor, up the walls, and across the ceiling. My half, your half.
So long as we remember that, the line indicated, there won’t be any more…trouble.
In the middle, so that it bestrode the boundary line, was a table. A couple of mugs and two tin plates were carefully arranged at either end. There was a salt pot in the middle of the table. At the salt pot, the line turned into a little circle to encompass it in its own demilitarized zone.
One half of the narrow room contained an overlarge and untidy bench, piled with jars, bottles, and old papers; it looked like the work space of a chemist who made it up as he went along, or until it exploded. The other had an old card table, on which small boxes and rolls of black felt had been stacked with slightly worrying precision. There, on a stand, was also the largest magnifying glass Moist had ever seen.
That side of the room had been swept clean, the other was a mess that threatened to encroach over the Line.
Unless one of the scraps of paper from the grubbier side was a funny shape, it seemed that somebody, with care and precision and presumably a razor blade, had cut off that corner of it that had gone too far.
A young man stood in the middle of the clean half of the floor. He’d obviously been waiting for Moist, just like Groat, but he hadn’t mastered the art of standing to attention or, rather, had only partly understood it. His right side stood considerably more to attention than his left side, and, as a result of this, he was standing like a banana. Nevertheless, with his huge, nervous grin and big, gleaming eyes he radiated keenness, quite possibly beyond the boundaries of sanity. There was a definite sense that at any moment he would bite. And he wore a blue cotton shirt on which someone had printed ASK ME ABOUT PINS!
“Er…” said Moist.
“Apprentice Postman Stanley,” mumbled Groat. “Orphan, sir. Very sad. Came to us from the Siblings of Offler charity home, sir. Both parents passed away of the Gnats on their farm out in the wilds, sir, and he was raised by peas.”
“Surely you mean on peas, Mr. Groat?”
“By peas, sir. Very unusual case. A good lad if he doesn’t get upset, but he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning.”
“Er…perhaps,” said Moist. He turned hurriedly to Stanley. “So you know something about pins, do you?” he said in what he hoped was a jovial voice.
“Nossir!” said Stanley. He all but saluted.
“But your shirt says—”
“I know everything about pins, sir,” said Stanley. “Everything there is to know!”
“Well, that’s, er—” Moist began.
“Every single fact about pins, sir,” Stanley went on. “There’s not a thing I don’t know about pins. Ask me anything about pins, sir. Anything you like at all. Go on, sir!”
“Well…” Moist floundered, but years of practice came to his aid. “I wonder how many pins were made in this city last ye—”
He stopped. A change had come across Stanley’s face; it smoothed out, lost the vague sense that its owner was about to attempt to gnaw your ear off.
“Last year the combined workshops (or ‘pinneries’) of Ankh-Morpork turned out twenty-seven million, eight hundred and eighty thousand, nine hundred and seventy-eight pins,” said Stanley, staring into a pin-filled, private universe. “That includes wax-headed, steels, brassers, silver-headed (and full silver), extra large, machine- and handmade, reflexed and novelty, but not lapel pins, which should not be grouped with the true pins at all, since they are technically known as ‘sports’ or ‘blazons,’ sir—”
“Ah yes, I think I once saw a magazine or something,” said Moist desperately. “It was called, er…Pins Monthly?”
“Oh dear,” said Groat behind him. Stanley’s face contorted in something that looked like a cat’s bottom with a nose.