Going Postal

of the old brigade won’t come back whatever I offer. If we shut the towers down, I can use the signalers, at least they know their way around a tower. We can get more work done if we don’t have to drag walking towers and set them up. Make a clean start. The towers were never built that well to begin with. Dearheart never expected this sort of traffic. Nine months of dark towers, sirs.”
    He wanted to say, oh, how he wanted to say: Craftsmen. D’you know what that means? It means men with some pride, who get fed up and leave when they’re told to do skimpy work in a rush, no matter what you pay them. So I’m employing people as “craftsmen” now who’re barely fit to sweep out a workshop. But you don’t care, because if they don’t polish a chair with their arse all day you think a man who’s done a seven-year apprenticeship is the same as some twerp who can’t be trusted to hold a hammer by the right end . He didn’t say this aloud, because although an elderly man probably has a lot less future than a man of twenty, he’s far more careful about it…
    “You can’t do better than that?” said Stowley.
    “Mr. Stowley, I’ll be doin’ well if it’s only nine months,” said Pony, focusing again. “If you don’t want to shut down, I can maybe get it done in a year and a half, if I can find enough men and you’re ready to spend enough money. But you’ll have shutdowns every day. It’ll be crippled runnin’, sir.”
    “This man von Lipwig will walk all over us in nine months!” said Greenyham.
    “Sorry about that, sir.”
    “And how much will it cost?” asked Gilt dreamily, without opening his eyes.
    “One way or the other, sir, I reckon maybe two hundred thousand,” said Pony.
    “That’s ridiculous! We paid less than that for the Trunk!” Greenyham burst out.
    “Yes, sir. But, you see, you got to run maint’nance all the time , sir. The towers have been run ragged. There was that big gale back in Sektober and all that trouble in Uberwald. I haven’t got the manpower. If you don’t do maint’nance, a little fault soon becomes a big one. I sent you gentlemen lots of reports, sir. And you cut my budget twice. I may say my lads did wonders with—”
    “Mr. Pony,” said Gilt quietly, “I think what I see here is a conflict of cultures. Would you mind strolling along to my study, please? Igor will make you a cup of tea. Thank you so much.”
    When Pony was gone, Greenyham said: “Do you know what worries me right now?”
    “Do tell us,” said Gilt, folding his hands across his expensive waistcoat.
    “Mr. Slant is not here.”
    “He has apologized. He says he has important business,” said Gilt.
    “We’re his biggest clients! What’s more important than us? No, he’s not here because he wants to be somewhere else! The damn old revenant senses trouble and he’s never there when it all goes bad. Slant always comes out smelling of roses!”
    “That is at least more fragrant than his usual formaldehyde,” said Gilt. “Don’t panic , gentlemen.”
    “Somebody did,” said Stowley. “Don’t tell me that fire was accidental! Was it? And what happened to poor old Fatty Horsefry, eh?”
    “Calm down, my friends, calm down,” said Gilt. They’re just merchant bankers , he thought. They’re not hunters, they’re scavengers. They have no vision .
    He waited until they had settled down and were regarding him with that strange and rather terrifying look that rich men wear when they think they may be in danger of becoming poor men.
    “I expected something like this,” he said. “Vetinari wants to harry us, that is all.”
    “Reacher, you know we’ll be in big trouble if the Trunk stops working,” said Nutmeg. “Some of us have…debts to service. If the Trunk fails for good, then people will…ask questions.”
    Oh, those pauses , thought Gilt. Embezzlement is such a difficult word .
    “Many of us had to work very hard to raise the cash,” said Stowley.
    Yes, keeping a straight face in front of your clients must be tricky , Gilt thought. Aloud, he said, “I think we have to pay, gentlemen. I think we do.”
    “Two hundred thousand?” said Greenyham. “Where do you think we can get that kind of money?”
    “You got it before,” murmured Gilt.
    “And what is that supposed to mean, pray?” said Greenyham, with just a little too much indignation.
    “Poor Crispin came to see me the night before he died,” said Gilt, calm as six inches of snow. “Babbled