Going Postal

show them how the cards are marked, I tell them what I am…and they nudge one another and grin and each one of them thinks himself no end of a fine fellow to be doing business with me. They throw good money after bad. They believe themselves to be sharp operators, and yet they offer themselves like little lambs. How I love to see their expressions when they think they’re being astute .”
    “Indeed, thur,” said Igor. He was wondering if that job at the new hospital was still open. His cousin Igor was already working there and had told him it was wonderful, sometimes you had to work all night! And you got a white coat, all the rubber gloves you could eat, and, best of all, you got rethpect .
    “It’s so…basic,” said Gilt. “You make money as it runs down, you make money building it up again, you might even make a little money running it, then you sell it to yourself when it collapses. The leases alone are worth a fortune. Give Alphonse his nuts, will you?”
    “ Twelve and a half percent! Twelve and a half percent! ” said the cockatoo, sidling up and down the perch excitedly.
    “Certainly, thur,” said Igor, taking a bag out of his pocket and advancing cautiously. Alphonse had a beak like a pair of shears.
    Or maybe try veterinary work like his other cousin Igor. That was a good, traditional area, certainly. Pity about all that publicity when the hamster smashed its way out of its treadmill and ate that man’s leg before flying away, but that was Progrethth for you. The important thing was to get out before the mob arrived. And when your boss started telling thin air how good he was, that was the time.
    “Hope is the curse of humanity, Igor,” said Gilt, putting his hands behind his head.
    “Could be, thur,” said Igor, trying to avoid the horrible, curved beak.
    “The tiger does not hope to catch its prey, nor does the gazelle hope to escape the claws. They run , Igor. Only the running matters. They know that they must run. And now I must run along to those nice people at the Times , to tell everyone about our bright new future. Get the coach out, will you?”
    “Certainly, thur. If you will excuthe me, I will go and fetch another finger.”
    I think I’ll head back to the mountains , he thought as he went down to the cellar. At least the monsters there have the decency to look like ones .

    F LARES AROUND the ruins of the Post Office made the night brilliant. The golems didn’t need them, but the surveyors did. Moist had got a good deal there. The gods had spoken, after all. It’d do a firm no harm at all to be associated with this phoenix of a building.
    In the bit that was still standing, shored up and tarpaulined, the Post Office—that is, the people who were the Post Office—worked through the night. In truth, there wasn’t enough for everyone to do, but they turned up anyway, to do it. It was that kind of night. You had to be there, so that later you could say, “…and I was there, that very night…”
    Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling. It was…amazing. They listened to him, they did things for him, they scuttled around as if he was a real leader and not some cheat and fraud.
    And there were the letters. Oh, the letters hurt. More and more were coming in, and they were addressed to him. The news had got around the city. It had been in the paper! The gods listened to this man!
    …we will deliver to the gods themselves…
    He was the man with the gold suit and the hat with wings. They’d made a crook the messenger of the gods, and piled on his charred desk the sum of all their hopes and fears…badly punctuated, true, in smudged pencil or free Post Office ink, which had spluttered across the paper in the urgency of writing.
    “They think you’re an angel,” said Miss Dearheart, who was sitting on the other side of his desk and helping him sort through the pathetic petitions. Every half hour or so Mr. Pump brought up some more.
    “Well, I’m not,” snapped Moist.
    “You speak to the gods and the gods listen,” said Miss Dearheart, grinning. “They told you where the treasure was. Now, that’s what I call religion. Incidentally, how did you know the money was there?”
    “You don’t believe in any gods?”
    “No, of course not. Not while people like Reacher Gilt walk under the sky. All there is, is us. The money…?”
    “I can’t tell you,” said Moist.
    “Have you read some of these letters?” said Miss