Going Postal

It may take fifty years, but we get there in the end. You know your walks. Take it steady. Remember, if you can’t deliver it, if the house has gone…well, it comes back here and we’ll put it into the Dead Letter office and at least we’ll have tried. We just want people to know the Post Office is back again, understand?”
    A postman raised a hand.
    “Yes?” Moist’s skill at remembering names was better than his skill at remembering anything else about last night. “Senior Postman Thompson, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, sir! So what do we do when people give us letters, sir?”
    Moist’s brow wrinkled. “Sorry? I thought you deliver the mail, don’t you?”
    “No, Bill’s right, sir,” said Groat. “What do we do if people give us new mail?”
    “Er…what did you used to do?” said Moist.
    The postmen looked at one another.
    “Get one penny off ’em for the stamping, bring it back here for it to be stamped with the official stamp,” said Groat promptly. “Then it gets sorted and delivered.”
    “So…people have to wait until they see a postman? That seems rather—”
    “Oh, in the old days there was dozens of smaller offices, see?” Groat added. “But when it all started going bad we lost ’em.”
    “Well, let’s get the mail moving again and we can work things out as we go along,” said Moist. “I’m sure ideas will occur. And now, Mr. Groat, you have a secret to share…”

    G ROAT’S KEY RING jingled as he led Moist through the Post Office’s cellars and eventually to a metal door. Moist noted a length of black-and-yellow rope on the floor: the Watch had been here, too.
    The door clicked open. There was a blue glow inside, just faint enough to be annoying, leave purple shadows on the edge of vision, and make the eyes water.
    “Voil-ah,” said Groat.
    “It’s a…is it some kind of theater organ?” said Moist. It was hard to see the outlines of the machine in the middle of the floor, but it stood there with all the charm of a torturer’s rack. The blue glow was coming from somewhere in the middle of it. Moist’s eyes were streaming already.
    “Good try, sir! Actually it is the Sorting Engine,” said Groat. “It’s the curse of the Post Office, sir. It had imps in it for the actual reading of the envelopes, but they all evaporated years ago. Just as well, too.”
    Moist’s gaze took in the wire racks that occupied a whole wall of the big room. It also found the chalk outlines on the floor. The chalk glowed in the strange light. The outlines were quite small. One of them had five fingers.
    “Industrial accident,” he muttered. “All right, Mr. Groat. Tell me.”
    “Don’t go near the glow, sir,” said Groat. “That’s what I said to Mr. Whobblebury. But he snuck down here all by hisself, later on. Oh dear, sir, it was poor young Stanley that went and found him, sir, after he saw poor little Tiddles dragging something along the passage. A scene of car-nage met his eyes. You just can’t imagine what it was like in here, sir.”
    “I think I can,” said Moist.
    “I doubt if you can, sir.”
    “I can, really.”
    “I’m sure you can’t, sir.”
    “I can! All right?” shouted Moist. “Do you think I can’t see all those little chalk outlines? Now can we get on with it before I throw up?”
    “Er…right you are, sir.” said Groat. “Ever heard of Bloody Stupid Johnson? Quite famous in this city.”
    “Didn’t he build things? Wasn’t there always something wrong with them? I’m sure I read something about him…”
    “That’s the man, sir. He built all kinds of things, but, sad to say, there was always some major flaw.”
    In Moist’s brain, a memory kicked a neuron. “Wasn’t he the man who specified quicksand as a building material because he wanted a house finished fast?” he said.
    “That’s right, sir. Usually the major flaw was that the designer was Bloody Stupid Johnson. Flaw, you might say, was part of the whole thing. Actually, to be fair, a lot of the things he designed worked quite well, it was just that they didn’t do the job they were supposed to. This thing, sir, did indeed begin life as an organ, but it ended up as a machine for sorting letters. The idea was that you tipped the mail sack in that hopper, and the letters were speedily sorted into those racks. Postmaster Cowerby meant well, they say. He was a stickler for speed and efficiency, that man. My grandad told me the Post Office spent a fortune on getting it to