Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [75]
Panic gripped Moist and, not at all coincidentally, so did a pair of padded paddles, which closed over his ears. Just before all sound was silenced, he heard: “You may experience a taste of eggs and the sensation of being slapped in the face with some sort of a fish. This is perfectly—”
And then thlabber happened. It was a traditional magic term, although Moist didn’t know this. There was a moment in which everything, even the things that couldn’t be stretched, felt stretched. And then there was the moment when everything suddenly went back to not being stretched, known as the moment of thlabber.
When Moist opened his eyes again, the chair was facing the other way. There was no sign of the pickles, the tongs, or the mouse, but in their place was a bucket of clockwork pastry lobsters and a boxed set of novelty glass eyes.
Moist gulped and muttered: “Haddock.”
“Really? Most people say cod,” said someone. “No accounting for taste, I suppose.” Hands unbuckled Moist and helped him to his feet. These hands belonged to an orangutan, but Moist didn’t pass comment. This was a university of wizards, after all.
The man who had shoved him into the chair was now standing by a desk staring at some wizardly device.
“Any moment now,” he said. “Any moment. Any moment now. Any second…”
A bundle of what appeared to be hosepipes led from the desk into the wall. Moist was certain they bulged for a moment, like a snake eating in a hurry; the machine stuttered, and a piece of paper dropped out of a slot.
“Ah…here we are,” said the wizard, snatching it up. “Yes, the book you were after was A History of Hats, by F. G. Smallfinger, am I right?”
“No. I’m not after a book, in fact—” Moist began.
“Are you sure? We have lots.”
There were two striking things about this wizard. One was…well, Grandfather Lipwig has always said that you could tell the honesty of a man by the size of his ears, and this was clearly a very honest wizard. The other was that the beard he was wearing was clearly false.
“I was looking for a wizard called Pelc,” he ventured.
The beard parted slightly to reveal the wide smile.
“I knew the machine would work!” said the wizard. “You are looking, in fact, for me.”
THE SIGN on the outside of the office door said: LADISLAV PELC, D.M.PHIL, PREHUMOUS PROFESSOR OF MORBID BIBLIOMANCY.
On the inside of the door was a hook, on which the wizard hung his beard.
It was a wizard’s study, so of course it had the skull with a candle on it and a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. No one, least of all wizards, know why this is, but you have to have them.
It was also a room full of books and made of books. There was no actual furniture; this is to say, the desk and chairs were shaped out of books. It looked as though many of them were frequently referred to, because they lay open with other books used as bookmarks.
“You want to know about your post office, I expect?” said Pelc, as Moist settled onto a chair carefully put together from volumes 1 to 41 of Synonyms for the Word “Plimsoll.”
“Yes, please,” said Moist.
“Voices? Strange events?”
“Yes!”
“How can I put this…” mused Pelc. “Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a ‘gevaisa,’ a tomb of living words. Are you of a literary persuasion, Mr. Lipwig?”
“Not as such.” Books were a closed book to Moist.
“Would you burn a book?” said Pelc. “An old book, say, battered, almost spineless, found in a box of rubbish?”
“Well…probably not,” Moist admitted.
“Why not? Would the thought make you uncomfortable?”
“Yes, I suppose it would. Books are…well, you just don’t do that. Er…why do you wear a false beard? I thought wizards had real ones.”