Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [18]
Paper crackled underneath him as he tried to get comfortable. Idly, he picked up a letter at random; it was addressed to someone called Antimony Parker at 1 Lobbin Clout, and on the back, in capitals, it said S.W.A.L.K. He eased it open with a fingernail; the paper inside all but crumbled at his touch.
My Very Dearest Timony,
Yes! Why should a Woman, Sensible to the Great Honour that a Man is Doing her, play the Coy Minx at such a time!! I know you have spoken to Papa, and of course I consent to becoming the Wife of the Kindest, Most Wonderful—
Moist glanced at the date on the letter. It had been written forty-one years ago.
He was not, as a rule, given to introspection, it being a major drawback in his line of work, but he couldn’t help wondering if—he glanced back at the letter—“Your loving Agnathea” had ever married Antimony, or whether the romance had died right here, in this graveyard of paper.
He shivered and tucked the envelope into his jacket. He’d have to ask Groat what S.W.A.L.K. meant.
“Mr. Pump!” he shouted.
There was a faint rumble from the corner of the room where the golem stood, waist-deep in mail.
“Yes, Mr. Lipvig?”
“Is there no way you can shut your eyes? I can’t sleep with two red glowing eyes watching me. It’s a…well, it’s a childhood thing.”
“Sorry, Mr. Lipvig. I Could Turn My Back.”
“That won’t work. I’d still know they’re there. Anyway, the glow reflects off the wall. Look, where would I run to?”
The golem gave this some thought.
“I Will Go And Stand In The Corridor, Mr. Lipvig,” he decided, and began to wade toward the door.
“You do that,” said Moist. “And in the morning I want you to find my bedroom, okay? Some of the offices still have space near the ceiling, you can move the letters into there.”
“Mr. Groat Does Not Like The Mail To Be Moved, Mr. Lipvig,” the golem rumbled.
“Mr. Groat is not the postmaster, Mr. Pump. I am.”
Good gods, the madness is catching, Moist thought as the glow of the golem’s eyes disappeared into darkness outside. I’m not the postmaster, I’m some poor bastard who’s the victim of some stupid…experiment. What a place! What a situation! What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
He tried to find the angle, the way out…but all the time a conversation kept bouncing off the insides of his brain.
Imagine a hole, a hundred feet deep and full of water.
Imagine the darkness. Imagine, at the bottom of the hole, a figure roughly of human shape, turning in that swirling darkness a massive handle once every eight seconds.
Pump…Pump…Pump…
For two hundred and forty years.
“You didn’t mind?” Moist had asked.
“You Mean Did I Harbor Resentment, Mr. Lipvig? But I Was Doing Useful And Necessary Work! Besides, There Was Much For Me To Think About.”
“At the bottom of a hundred feet of dirty water? What the hell did you find to think about?”
“Pumping, Mr. Lipvig.”
And then, the golem said, had come cessation, and dim light, a lowering of levels, a locking of chains, movement upwards, emergence into a world of light and color…and other golems.
Moist knew something about golems. They used to be baked out of clay, thousands of years ago, and brought to life by some kind of scroll put inside their heads, and they never wore out and they worked, all the time. You saw them pushing brooms, or doing heavy work in timber yards and foundries. Most of them you never saw at all. They made the hidden wheels go round, down in the dark. And that was more or less the limit of his interest in them. They were, almost by definition, honest.
But now the golems were freeing themselves. It was the quietest, most socially responsible revolution in history. They were property,