Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [58]
“That’s cursed with an extra ed?”
“Yes, sir. The worst kind. No, put your hat on, sir. It’ll keep the rain off, at least.”
Moist prepared to lower the hat, but as he did so he was aware that the old postmen were drawing back.
“You’re not sure!” he yelled, waving a finger. “You’re not actually sure, are you! All of you! You’re thinking, hmm, maybe this time it will work, right? You’re holding your breath! I can tell! Hope is a terrible thing, gentlemen!”
He lowered the hand.
“Feeling anything?” said Groat after a while.
“It’s a bit…scratchy,” said Moist.
“Ah, that’d be some amazing mystic force leakin’ out, eh?” said Groat, desperately.
“I don’t think so,” said Moist. “Sorry.”
“Most of the postmasters I served under hated wearing that thing,” said the Worshipful Master, as everyone relaxed. “Mind you, you’ve got the height to carry it off. Postmaster Atkinson was only five feet one, and it made him look broody.” He patted Moist on the shoulder. “Never mind, lad, you did your best.”
An envelope bounced off his head. As he brushed it away, another one landed on his shoulder and slid off.
Around the group, letters started to land on the floor like fish dropped by a passing tornado.
Moist looked up. The letters were falling down from the darkness, and the drizzle was turning into a torrent.
“Stanley? Are you…messing about up there?” Groat ventured, almost invisible in the paper sleet.
“I always said those attics didn’t have strong enough floors,” moaned the Worshipful Master. “It’s just a mailstorm again. We made too much noise, that’s all. C’mon, let’s get out while we can, eh?”
“Then put those lanterns out! They ain’t safety lights!” shouted Groat.
“We’ll be groping around in the dark, lad!”
“Oh, you’d rather see by the light of a burning roof, would you?”
The lanterns winked out…and by the darkness they now shed Moist von Lipwig saw the writing on the wall or, at least, hanging in the air just in front of it. The hidden pen swooped through the air in loops and curves, drawing its glowing blue letters behind it.
Moist von Lipwig? it wrote.
“Er…yes?”
You are the Postmaster!
“Look, I’m not the One you’re looking for!”
Moist von Lipwig, at a time like this any One will do!
“But…but…I am not worthy!”
Acquire worth with speed, Moist von Lipwig! Bring back the light! Open the doors! Stay not the messengers about their business!
Moist looked down at the golden light coming up from around his feet. It sparkled off his fingertips and began to fill him up from inside, like fine wine. He felt his feet leave the dais as the words lifted him up and spun him gently.
In the beginning was a Word, but what is a word without its messenger, Moist von Lipwig? You ARE the Postmaster!
“I am the Postmaster!” Moist shouted.
The mail must move, Moist von Lipwig! Too long have we been bound here.
“I will move the mail!”
You will move the mail?
“I will! I will!”
Moist von Lipwig?
“Yes?”
The words came like a gale, whirling the envelopes in the sparkling light, shaking the building to its foundations.
Deliver Us!
CHAPTER 6
Little Pictures
The postmen unmasked • A terrible engine
• The new pie • Mr. Lipwig thinks about stamps
• The messenger from the Dawn of Time
“MR. LIPVIG?” said Mr. Pump.
Moist looked up into the golem’s glowing eyes. There had to be a better way of waking up in the morning. Some people managed with a clock, for heavens’ sake.
He was lying on a bare mattress under a musty blanket in his newly excavated apartment, which smelled of ancient paper, and every bit of him ached.
In a clouded kind of way, he was aware of Pump saying: “The Postmen Are Waiting, Sir. Postal Inspector Groat Said That You Would Probably Wish To Send Them Out Properly On This Day.”
Moist blinked at the ceiling.
“Postal inspector? I promoted him all the way to postal inspector?”
“Yes, Sir. You Were Very Ebullient.”
Memories of last night flocked treacherously to tapdance their speciality acts on the famous stage of the Grand Old Embarrassing Recollection.
“Postmen?