Going Postal

Dearheart. “Sick children, dying wives—”
    “Some just want cash,” said Moist hurriedly, as if that made it better.
    “Whose fault is that, Slick? You’re the man who can tap the gods for a wad of wonga!”
    “So what shall I do with all these…prayers?” said Moist.
    “Deliver them, of course. You’ve got to. You are the messenger of the gods. And they’ve got stamps on. Some of them are covered in stamps! It’s your job . Take them to the temples. You promised to do that!”
    “I never promised to—”
    “ You promised to when you sold them the stamps! ”
    Moist almost fell off his chair. She’d wielded the sentence like a fist.
    “And it’ll give them hope,” she added, rather more quietly.
    “False hope,” said Moist, struggling upright.
    “Maybe not this time,” said Miss Dearheart. “That’s the point of hope.” She picked up the battered remains of Anghammarad’s message. “ He was taking a message across the whole of Time. You think you’ve got it tough?”
    “Mr. Lipwig?”
    The voice floated up from the hall, and at the same time the background noise subsided like a bad soufflé.
    Moist walked over to where a wall had once been. Now, with the scorched floorboards creaking underfoot, he looked right down into the hall. A small part of him thought: We’ll have to put in a big picture window when we rebuild. This is just too impressive for words .
    There was a buzz of whispering and a few gasps. There were a lot of customers, too, even in the early foggy hours. It’s never too late for a prayer.
    “Is everything all right, Mr. Groat?” he called down.
    Something white was waved in the air.
    “Early copy of the Times , sir!” Groat shouted. “Just in! Gilt’s all over the front page, sir! Where you ought to be, sir! You won’t like it, sir!”

    I F M OIST VON L IPWIG had been raised to be a clown, he’d have visited shows and circuses and watched the kings of fooldom. He’d have marveled at the elegant trajectory of the custard pie, memorized the new business with the ladder and the bucket of whitewash, and watched with care every carelessly juggled egg. While the rest of the audience watched the display with the appropriate feelings of terror, anger, and exasperation, he’d make notes.
    Now, like an apprentice staring at the work of a master, he read Reacher Gilt’s words on the still-damp newspaper.
    It was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. Oh, yes. You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency, and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although “synergistically” had probably been a whore from the start. The Grand Trunk’s problems were clearly the result of some mysterious spasm in the universe and had nothing to do with greed, arrogance, and willful stupidity. Oh, the Grand Trunk management had made mistakes—oops, “well-intentioned judgments which, with the benefit of hindsight, might regrettably have been, in some respects, in error”—but these had mostly occurred, it appeared, while correcting “fundamental systemic errors” committed by the previous management. No one was sorry for anything, because no living creature had done anything wrong; bad things had happened by spontaneous generation in some weird, chilly, geometrical other-world, and “were to be regretted.” *
    The Times reporter had made an effort, but nothing short of a stampede could have stopped Reacher Gilt in his crazed assault on the meaning of meaning. The Grand Trunk “was about people” and the reporter had completely failed to ask what that meant, exactly ? And then there was this piece called “Our Mission”…
    Moist felt the acid rise in his throat until he could spit lacework in a sheet of steel.
    Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. Oh, the Grand Trunk stood for everything , from life and liberty to Mom’s homemade Distressed Pudding. It stood for everything, except anything.
    Through a pink mist, his eye caught the line “Safety is our foremost consideration.” Why hadn’t the lead type melted, why hadn’t the paper blazed rather than be part of this obscenity? The press should have buckled, the roller should have cleaved unto the platen…
    That was bad. But then he saw Gilt’s reply to a hasty question about the Post Office.
    Reacher Gilt loved the Post Office