Making Money

there was a buzz from the crowd.
    “An experimental bank note,” said Moist, over the growing hubbub. “Just to try out the idea.”
    “How many of them are there, then?” said the inquiring man.
    “About twelve,” said Moist.
    The man turned to Pucci. “I’ll give you five dollars for it, how about that?”
    “Five? It says it’s worth one!” said Pucci, aghast.
    “Yeah, right. Five dollars, miss.”
    “Why? Are you insane?”
    “I’m as sane as the next man, thank you, young lady!”
    “Seven dollars here!” said the next man, raising a hand.
    “This is madness!” wailed Pucci.
    “Mad?” said the next man. He pointed a finger at Moist. “If I’d bought a pocketful of the black penny stamps when that feller brought them out last year, I’d be a rich man!”
    “Anyone remember the Triangular Blue?” said another bidder. “Fifty pence it cost. I put one on a letter to my aunt; by the time it got there it was worth fifty dollars! And the ol’ baggage wouldn’t give it back!”
    “It’s worth a hundred and sixty now,” said someone behind him. “Auctioned at Dave’s Stamp and Pin Emporium last week. Ten dollars is my bid, miss!”
    “Fifteen here!”
    Moist had a good view from the stairs. A small consortium had formed at the back of the hall, working on the basis that it was better to have small shares than none at all.
    Stamp collecting! It had started on day one, and then ballooned like some huge…thing, running on strange, mad rules. Was there any other field where flaws made things worth more? Would you buy a suit just because one arm was shorter than the other? Or because a bit of spare cloth was still attached? Of course, when Moist had spotted this, he’d put in flaws on purpose, as a matter of public entertainment, but he certainly hadn’t planned for Lord Vetinari’s head to appear upside down just once on every sheet of Blues. One of the printers had been about to destroy them when Moist brought him down with a flying tackle.
    The whole business was unreal, and unreal was Moist’s world. Back when he’d been a naughty boy he’d sold dreams, and the big seller in that world was the one where you got very rich by a stroke of luck. He’d sold glass as diamonds because greed clouded men’s eyes. Sensible, upright people, who worked hard every day, nevertheless believed, against all experience, in money for nothing. But the stamp collectors…they believed in small perfections. It was possible to get one small part of the world right. And even if you couldn’t get it right, you at least knew what was missing. It might be, f’rinstance, the flawed 50p Triangular Blue, but there were still six of them out there, and who knew what piece of luck might attend the dedicated searcher?
    Rather a lot of luck would be needed, Moist had to admit, because four of them were safely tucked away for a rainy day in a little lead box under the floorboards in Moist’s office. Even so, two were out there somewhere, perhaps destroyed, lost, eaten by snails, or—and here hope lay thick as winter snow—were in some unregarded bundle of letters at the back of a drawer somewhere.
    —and Miss Pucci simply didn’t know how to work a crowd. She stomped and demanded attention and bullied and insulted and it didn’t help that she’d called them “good people,” because no one likes an outright liar. And now she was losing her temper, because the bidding had reached thirty-four dollars. And now—
    —she’d torn it up!
    “That’s what I think of this silly money!” she announced, throwing the pieces in the air. Then she stood there, panting and looking triumphant, as if she’d done something clever.
    A kick in the teeth to everyone there. It made you want to cry, it really did. Oh, well.
    He pulled one of the new notes out of his pocket and held it up.
    “Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced, “I have here one of the increasingly rare first-generation One Dollar notes”—he had to pause for the laughter—“signed by myself and the chairman. Bids over forty dollars, please! All proceeds to the little kiddies!”
    He ran it up to fifty, bouncing a couple of bids off the wall. Pucci stood ignored and steaming with rage for a while and then flounced out. It was a good flounce, too. She had no idea how to handle people and she tried to make self-esteem do the work of self-respect, but the girl could flounce better than a fat turkey on a trampoline.
    The lucky winner was already