Making Money - Terry Pratchett [1]
These were loud sounds, which were, therefore, public sounds, which, in turn, meant they were everyone’s problem and, therefore, not mine. But small sounds were nearby and suggested such things as stealth betrayed, and were, therefore, pressing and personal.
Therefore, he tried not to make little noises.
Below him, the coach yard of the Central Post Office buzzed like an overturned hive. They’d got the turntable working really well now. The overnight coaches were arriving and the new Überwald Flyer was gleaming in the lamplight. Everything was going right, which was, to the nighttime climber, why everything was going wrong.
The climber thrust a brick key into soft mortar, shifted his weight, moved his foo—
Damn pigeon! It flew up in panic, his other foot slipped, his fingers lost their grip on the drainpipe, and when the world had stopped churning, he was owing the postponement of his meeting with the distant cobbles to his hold on a brick key, which was, let’s face it, nothing more than a long, flat nail with a T-piece grip.
And you can’t bluff a wall, he thought. If you swing, you might get your hand and foot on the pipe, or the key might come out.
Oh…kay…
He had other keys and a small hammer. Could he knock one in without losing his grip on the other?
Above him, the pigeon joined its colleagues on a higher ledge.
The climber thrust the nail into the mortar with as much force as he dared, pulled the hammer out of his pocket, and, as the Flyer departed below with clattering and jingling, dealt the nail one massive blow.
It went in. He dropped the hammer, hoping the sound of its impact would be masked by the general bustle, and grabbed the new hold before it had hit the ground.
Oh…kay. And now I am…stuck?
The pipe was less than three feet away. Fine. This would work. Move both hands onto the new hold, swing gently, get his left hand around the pipe, and he could drag himself across the gap. Then it would be just—
The pigeon was nervous. For pigeons, it’s the default state of being. It chose this point to lighten the load.
Oh…kay. Correction: Two hands were now gripping the suddenly very slippery nail.
Damn.
And at this point, because nervousness runs through pigeons faster than a streaker through a convent, a gentle patter began.
There are times when “it does not get any better than this” does not spring to mind.
And then a voice from below said: “Who’s up there?”
Thank you, hammer. They can’t possibly see me, he thought. People look up from the well-lit yard with their night vision in shreds. But so what? They know I’m here now.
Oh…kay.
“All right, it’s a fair cop, guv,” he called down.
“A thief, eh?” said the voice below.
“Haven’t touched a thing, guv. Could do with a hand up, guv.”
“Are you Thieves’ Guild? You’re using their lingo.”
“Not me, guv. I always use the word guv, guv.”
He wasn’t able to look down very easily now, but sounds below indicated that hostlers and off-duty coachmen were strolling over. That was not going to be helpful. Coachmen met most of their thieves out on lonely road, where the highwaymen seldom bothered to ask sissy questions like “Your money or your life?” When one was caught, justice and vengeance were happily combined by means of a handy length of lead pipe.
There was a muttering beneath him, and it appeared that a consensus had been reached.
“Right, Mister Post Office Robber,” a cheery voice bellowed. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, okay? We’re gonna go into the building, right, and lower you a rope. Can’t say fairer’n that, right?”
“Right, guv.”
It had been the wrong kind of cheery. It had been the cheery of the word pal in “You lookin’ at me, pal?” The Guild of Thieves paid a twenty-dollar bounty fee for a nonaccredited thief brought in alive, and there were oh, so many ways of still being alive when you were dragged in and poured