Going Postal

politically correct term, and plumped for—“him.”
    “Huh? Just treat him normally.”
    “You mean normally for a human being, or normally for a pottery man filled with fire?”
    To Moist’s astonishment, Adora Belle Dearheart took a pack of cigarettes out of a desk drawer and lit one. She mistook his expression and proffered the pack.
    “No, thanks,” he said, waving it away. Apart from the occasional old lady with a pipe, he’d never seen a woman smoke before. It was…strangely attractive, especially since, as it turned out, she smoked a cigarette as if she had a grudge against it, sucking the smoke down and blowing it out almost immediately.
    “You’re getting hung up about it all, right?” she said. When Ms. Dearheart wasn’t smoking, she held the cigarette at shoulder height, the elbow of her left arm cupped in her right hand. There was a definite feel about Adora Belle Dearheart that a lid was only barely holding down an entire womanful of anger.
    “Yes! I mean—” Moist began.
    “Hah! It’s just like the Campaign for Equal Heights and all that patronizing stuff they spout about dwarfs and why we shouldn’t use terms like ‘small talk’ and ‘feeling small.’ Golems don’t have any of our baggage about ‘who am I, why am I here,’ okay? Because they know . They were made to be tools, to be property, to work. Work is what they do. In a way, it’s what they are . End of existential angst.”
    Ms. Dearheart inhaled and then blew out the smoke in one nervous movement. “And then stupid people go around calling them ‘persons of clay’ and ‘Mr. Spanner’ and so on, which they find rather strange. They understand about free will. They also understand that they don’t have it. Mind you, once a golem owns himself, it’s a different matter.”
    “Own? How does property own itself?” said Moist. “You said they were—”
    “They save up and buy themselves, of course! Freehold is the only path to freedom they’ll accept. Actually, what happens is that the free golems support the Trust, the Trust buys golems whenever it can, and the new golems then buy themselves from the Trust at cost. It’s working well. The free golems earn 24-8 and there’s more and more of them. They don’t eat, sleep, wear clothes, or understand the concept of leisure. The occasional tube of ceramic cement doesn’t cost much. They’re buying more golems every month now, and paying my wages and the iniquitous rent the landlord of this dump is charging because he knows he’s renting to golems. They never complain, you know. They pay whatever’s asked. They’re so patient it could drive you nuts.”
    Tube of ceramic cement , thought Moist. He tried to fix that thought in case it came in useful, but some mental processes were fully occupied with the growing realization of how well some women could look in a severely plain dress.
    “Surely they can’t be damaged, can they?” he managed.
    “Certainly they can! A sledgehammer on the right spot would really mess one up. Owned golems will just stand there and take it. But the Trust golems are allowed to defend themselves, and when someone weighing a ton snatches a hammer out of your hand you have to let go really quickly.”
    “I think Mr. Pump is allowed to hit people,” said Moist.
    “Quite possibly. A lot of the frees are against that, but others say a tool can’t be blamed for the use to which it’s put,” said Ms. Dearheart. “They debate it a lot. For days and days.”
    No rings on her fingers, Moist noted. What kind of attractive girl works for a bunch of clay men?
    “This is all fascinating ,” he said. “Where can I find out more?”
    “We do a pamphlet,” said almost-certainly-Miss Dearheart, pulling open a drawer and flipping a thin booklet onto the desk. “It’s five pence.”
    The title on the cover was Common Clay .
    Moist put down a dollar. “Keep the change,” he said.
    “No!” said Miss Dearheart, fumbling for coins in the drawer. “Didn’t you read what it said over the door?”
    “Yes. It said ‘SmasH The Barstuds,’” said Moist.
    Miss Dearheart put a hand to her forehead wearily. “Oh, yes. The painter hasn’t been yet. But underneath that…look, it’s on the back of the pamphlet…”
    , Moist read, or at least looked at.
    “It’s one of their own languages,” she said. “It’s all a bit…mystic. Said to be spoken by angels. It translates as ‘By Our Own Hand, Or None.’ They’re fiercely