Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [99]
A LITTLE PRESSURE LAMP burned in the stuffy snugness of the locker room, its glow a globe of unusual brilliance. In the center of it, magnifying glass in hand, Stanley examined his stamps.
This was…heaven. Peas are known for their thoroughness, and Stanley was conscientious in the extreme. Mr. Spools, slightly unnerved by his smile, had given him all the test sheets and faulty pages, and Stanley was carefully cataloguing them—how many of each, what the errors were, everything.
A little tendril of guilt was curling through his mind: This was better than pins, it really was. There could be no end to stamps. You could put anything on them. They were amazing. They could move letters around and then you could stick them in a book, all neat. You wouldn’t get “pinhead’s thumb,” either.
He’d read about this feeling in the pin magazines. They said you could come unpinned. Girls and marriage were sometimes mentioned in this context. Sometimes an ex-head would sell off his whole collection, just like that. Or at some pin-meet someone would suddenly throw all their pins in the air and run out, shouting, “Aargh, they’re just pins!” Up until now, such a thing had been unthinkable to Stanley.
He picked up his little sack of unsorted pins, and stared at it. A few days ago, the mere thought of an evening with his pins would have given him a lovely, warm, comfortable feeling inside. But now it was time to put away childish pins.
Something screamed.
It was harsh, guttural, it was malice and hunger given a voice. Small, huddling, shrewlike creatures had once heard sounds like that, circling over the swamps.
After a moment of ancient terror had subsided, Stanley crept over and opened the door.
“H-hello?” he called in the cavernous darkness of the hall. “Is there anyone there?”
There was, fortunately, no reply, but there was some scrabbling up near the roof.
“We’re closed, you know,” he quavered. “But we’re open again at seven in the morning for a range of stamps and a wonderful deal on mail to Pseudopolis.” His voice slowed and his brow creased as he tried to remember everything Mr. Lipwig had told them earlier. “Remember, we may not be the fastest but we always get there. Why not write to your old granny?”
“I ate my grandmother,” growled a voice from high in the darkness. “I gnawed her bones.”
Stanley coughed. He had not been trained in the art of salesmanship.
“Ah,” he said. “Er…perhaps an aunt, then?”
He wrinkled his nose. Why was there the stink of lamp oil in the air?
“Hello?” he said again.
Something dropped out of the dark, bounced off his shoulder, and landed on the floor with a wet thud. Stanley reached down, felt around, and found a pigeon. At least, he found about half a pigeon. It was still warm, and very sticky.
MR. GRYLE sat on a beam high above the hall. His stomach was on fire.
It was no good, old habits died too hard. They were bred in the bone. Something warm and feathery fluttered up in front of you and of course you snapped at it. Ankh-Morpork had pigeons roosting on every gutter, cornice, and statue. Not even the resident gargoyles could keep them down. He’d had six before he sailed in through the broken dome, and then another huge, warm, feathery cloud had risen up, and a red haze had simply dropped in front of his eyes.
They were so tasty. You couldn’t stop at one! And, five minutes later, you remembered why you should have.
These were feral, urban birds that lived on what they could find on the streets—Ankh-Morpork streets, at that. They were bobbing, cooing plague pits. You might as well eat a dog-turd burger and wash it down with a jumbo cup of septic tank.
Mr. Gryle groaned. Best to finish the job, get out of here, and go and throw up over a busy street. He dropped his oil bottle into the dark and fumbled for his matches. His species had come to fire late, because nests burned too easily, but it did have its uses…
FLAME BLOSSOMED, high up at the far end of the hall. It dropped from the beams and landed on the stacks of letters. There was a whoomph as the oil caught fire; blue