Making Money

glug of reservoirs being topped up.
    “Igor?” said Moist. “You have an Igor?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Hubert. “That’s how I get this wonderful light. They know the secret of storing lightning in jars! But don’t let that worry you, Mr. Lipspick. Just because I’m employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn’t mean I am some sort of madman, ha ha ha!”
    “Ha ha,” agreed Moist.
    “Ha hah hah!” said Hubert. “Hahahahahaha!! Ahahahahaha hhhhh!!!!! —”
    Bent slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed. “Sorry about that, it’s the air down here,” he mumbled.
    “It certainly looks very…complex, this thing of yours,” said Moist, striking out for normality.
    “Er, yes,” said Hubert, a little bit thrown. “And we are refining it all the time. For example, floats coupled to ingenious spring-loaded sluice gates elsewhere on the Glooper can allow changes in the level in one flask to automatically adjust flows in several other places in the system—”
    “What’s that for?” said Moist, pointing at random to a round bottle suspended in the tubing.
    “Phase-of-the-moon valve,” said Hubert promptly.
    “The moon affects how money moves around?”
    “We don’t know. It might. The weather certainly does.”
    “Really?”
    “Certainly!” Hubert beamed. “And we’re adding fresh influences all the time. Indeed, I will not be satisfied until my wonderful machine can completely mimic every last detail of our great city’s economic cycle!” A bell rang, and he went on: “Thank you, Igor! Let it go!”
    Something clanked, and colored waters began to foam and slosh along the bigger pipes. Hubert raised not only his voice but also a long pointer.
    “Now, if we reduce public confidence in the banking system—watch that tube there—you will see here a flow of cash out of the banks and into Flask 28, currently designated ‘The Old Sock Under the Mattress.’ Even quite rich people don’t want their money outside their control. See the mattress getting fuller, or perhaps I should say…thicker?”
    “That’s a lot of mattresses,” Moist agreed.
    “I prefer to think of it as one mattress a third of a mile high.”
    “Really?” said Moist.
    Slosh! Valves opened somewhere, and water rushed along a new path.
    “Now see how bank lending is emptying as the money drains into the Sock?” Gurgle! “Watch Reservoir 11, over there. That means business expansion is slowing…there it goes, there it goes…” Drip! “Now watch Bucket 34. It’s tipping, it’s tipping…there! The scale on the left of Flask 17 shows collapsing businesses, by the way. See Flask 9 beginning to fill? That’s foreclosures. Job losses is Flask 7…and there goes the valve on Flask 28, as the socks are pulled out.” Flush! “But what is there to buy? Over here we see that Flask 11 has also drained…” drip
    Except for the occasional gurgle, the aquatic activity subsided.
    “And we end up in a position where we can’t move because we’re standing on our own hands, as it were,” said Hubert. “Jobs vanishing, people without savings suffering, wages low, farms going back to wilderness, rampaging trolls coming down from the mountains—”
    “They’re here already,” said Moist. “Some of them are even in the Watch.”
    “Are you sure?” said Hubert.
    “Yes, they’ve got helmets and everything. I’ve seen them.”
    “Then I expect they’ll be wanting to rampage back to the mountains,” said Hubert. “I think I would, if I were them.”
    “You believe all that could really happen?” said Moist. “A bunch of tubes and buckets can tell you that?”
    “They are correlated to events very carefully, Mr. Lipswick,” said Hubert, looking hurt. “Correlation is everything. Did you know it is an established fact that hemlines tend to rise in times of national crisis?”
    “You mean—?” Moist began, not at all certain how the sentence was going to end.
    “Women’s dresses get shorter,” said Hubert.
    “And that causes a national crisis? Really? How high do they go?”
    Mr. Bent coughed a leaden cough. “I think perhaps we should go, Mr. Lipwig,” he said. “If you have seen all you want, no doubt you are in a hurry to leave.” There was a slight inflection on leave.
    “What? Oh…yes,” said Moist. “I probably should be getting along. Well, thank you, Hubert. It has been an education and no mistake.”
    “I just can’t get rid of the leaks,” said the little man, looking