Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [135]
“—can’t do that anymore in any case, because we’ve heard they’re changing the—”
Moist stared at the pigeon for a while, until silence came back. Ah. Mad Al had finished, and by the looks of things it hadn’t been on a high note.
“You can’t do it, then,” said Moist, his heart sinking.
“Not now. Old Mr. Pony might be a bit of an old woman, but he sits and niggles at problems. He’s been changing all the codes all day! We’ve heard from one of our mates that every signaler will have to have a personal code now. They’re being very careful. I know Miss Adora Belle thought we could help you, but that bastard Gilt has locked things up tight. He’s worried you’re going to win.”
“Hah!” said Moist.
“We’ll come up with some other way in a week or two,” said Undecided Adrian. “Can’t you put it off until then?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Sorry,” said Undecided Adrian. He was playing idly with a small glass tube, full of red light. When he turned it over, it filled with yellow light.
“What’s that?” Moist asked.
“A prototype,” said Undecided Adrian. “It could have made the Trunk almost three times faster at night. It uses perpendicular molecules. But the Trunk’s just not open to new ideas.”
“Probably because they explode when dropped?” said Sane Alex.
“Not always.”
“I think I could do with some fresh air,” said Moist.
They stepped out into the night. In the middle distance, the terminal tower still winked, and one or two towers were alight in other parts of the city.
“What’s that one?” he said, like a man pointing to a constellation.
“Thieves’ Guild,” said Undecided Adrian. “General signals for the members. I can’t read ’em.”
“And that one? Isn’t that the first tower on the way to Sto Lat?”
“No, it’s the Watch station on the Hubwards Gate. General signals to Pseudopolis Yard.”
“It looks a long way off.”
“They use small shutter boxes, that’s all. You can’t see Tower 2 from here, the university’s in the way.”
Moist stared, hypnotized, at the lights.
“I wondered why that old stone tower on the way to Sto Lat wasn’t used when the Trunk was built? It’s in the right place.”
“The old wizard tower? Robert Dearheart used it for his first experiments, but it’s a bit too far, and the walls aren’t safe, and if you stay in there for more than a day at a time, you go mad. It’s all the old spells that got into the stones.”
There was silence, and then they heard Moist say, in a slightly strangled voice: “If you could get onto the Grand Trunk tomorrow, is there anything you could do to slow it down?”
“Yes, but we can’t,” said Undecided Adrian.
“Yes, but if you could?”
“Well, there’s something we’ve been thinking about…” said Mad Al. “It’s very crude.”
“Will it knock out a tower?” said Moist.
“Should we be telling him about this?” said Sane Alex.
“Have you ever met anyone else that Killer had a good word for?” said Undecided Adrian. “In theory, it could knock out every tower, Mr. Moist.”
“Are you insane as well as mad?” said Sane Alex. “He’s government!”
“Every tower on the Trunk?” said Moist.
“Yep. In one go,” said Mad Al. “It’s pretty crude.”
“Really every tower?” said Moist again.
“Maybe not every tower, if they catch on,” Mad Al admitted, as if less than wholesale destruction was something to be mildly ashamed of. “But plenty. Even if they cheat and carry it to the next tower on horseback. We call it…the Woodpecker.”
“The woodpecker?”
“No, not like that. You need, sort of, more of a pause for effect, like…the Woodpecker.”
“…The Woodpecker,” said Moist, more slowly.
“You’ve got it. But we can’t get it onto the Trunk. They’re on to us.”
“Supposing I could get it onto the Trunk?” said Moist, staring at the lights. The towers themselves were quite invisible now.
“You? What do you know about clacks codes?” said Undecided Adrian.
“I treasure my ignorance,” said Moist. “But I know about people. You think about being