Going Postal

box you could open people’s brains.
    It was a work of art in its own right, the way all the little compartments lifted up and fanned out when you opened it. There were pens and inks, of course, but also little pots of paints and tints, stains and solvents. And, carefully kept flat, thirty-six different types of paper, some of them quite hard to obtain. Paper was important. Get the weight and translucence wrong, and no amount of skill would save you. You could get away with bad penmanship much easier than you could with bad paper. In fact, rough penmanship often worked better than a week of industrious midnights spent getting every little thing right, because there was something in people’s heads that spotted some little detail that wasn’t quite right but at the same time would fill in details that had merely been suggested by a few careful strokes. Attitude, expectation, and presentation were everything.
    Just like me , he thought.
    The door was knocked on and opened in one movement.
    “Yes?” snapped Moist, not looking up. “I’m busy designing mon—stamps here, you know!”
    “There’s a lady ,” panted Groat. “With golems !”
    “Ah, that’ll be Miss Dearheart,” said Moist, laying down his pen.
    “Yessir, she said, ‘Tell Mr. Sunshine I’ve brought him his postmen,’ sir! You’re going to use golems as postmen, sir?”
    “Yes. Why not?” said Moist, giving Groat a severe look. “You get on okay with Mr. Pump, don’t you?”
    “Well, he’s all right, sir,” the old man mumbled. “I mean, he keeps the place tidy, he’s always very respectful, I speak as I find…but people can be a bit odd about golems, sir, what with them glowing eyes and all, and the way they never stops . The lads might not take to ’em, sir, that’s all I’m saying.”
    Moist stared at him. Golems were thorough, reliable, and, by gods, they took orders. He’d get another chance to be smiled at by Miss Dearheart—think about Golems! Golems, golems, golems!
    He smiled and said, “Even if I can prove they’re real postmen?”

    T EN MINUTES LATER , the fist of the golem called Anghammarad smashed through a letterbox and several square inches of splintering wood.
    “Mail Delivered,” it announced, and went still. The eyes dulled.
    Moist turned to the cluster of human postmen and gestured toward the impromptu Postman’s Walk he’d set up in the big hall.
    “Note the flattened roller skate, gentlemen. Note the heap of ground glass where the beer bottle was. And Mr. Anghammarad did it all with a hood on his head, I might point out.”
    “Yeah, but his eyes burned holes in it,” Groat pointed out.
    “None of us can help the way we’re made,” said Adora Belle Dearheart primly.
    “I’ve got to admit, it did my heart good to see him punch through that door,” said Senior Postman Bates. “That’ll teach ’em to put ’em low and sharp.”
    “And no problem with dogs, I expect,” said Jimmy Tropes. “He’d never get the arse bitten out of his trousers.”
    “So you all agree a golem is suitable to become a postman?” said Moist.
    Suddenly all the faces twisted up as the postmen shuffled into a chorus:
    “ Well, it’s not us, you understand… ”
    “ …people can be a bit funny about, er, clay folk… ”
    “ …all that stuff about taking jobs away from real people… ”
    “ Nothing against him at all but… ”
    They stopped, because the golem Anghammarad was beginning to speak again. Unlike Mr. Pump, it took him some time to get up to speed. And when his voice arrived, it seemed to be coming from long ago and far away, like the sound of surf in a fossil shell.
    He said: “What Is A Postman?”
    “A messenger, Anghammarad,” said Miss Dearheart. Moist noticed that she spoke to golems differently. There was actual tenderness in her voice.
    “Gentlemen,” he said to the postmen, “I know you feel—”
    “I Was A Messenger,” Anghammarad rumbled.
    His voice was not like Mr. Pump’s, and neither was his clay. He looked like a crude jigsaw puzzle of different clays, from almost black through red to light gray. Anghammarad’s eyes, unlike the furnace glow of those of the other golems, burned a deep ruby red. He looked old. More than that, he felt old. The chill of time radiated off him.
    On one arm, just above the elbow, was a metal box on a corroded band that had stained the clay.
    “Running errands, eh?” said Groat nervously.
    “Most Recently I Delivered The Decrees Of King