Making Money

wonderful light!” Owlswick exclaimed, ignoring the offer. “It’s like day!”
    “Jolly good,” said Moist. “Now get some sleep, Owlswick. Remember what I told you. In the morning, you are going to design the first proper one-dollar bank note, understand?”
    Owlswick nodded, but his mind was already elsewhere.
    “You’re with me on this, are you?” said Moist loudly. “A note so good that no one else could do it? I showed you my attempt, yes? I know you can do better, of course.”
    He looked nervously at the little man. He wasn’t insane, Moist was sure, but it was clear that mostly, for him, the world happened elsewhere.
    Owlswick paused in the act of unpacking his box.
    “Um…I can’t make things up,” he said.
    “What do you mean?” said Moist.
    “I don’t know how to make things up,” said Owlswick, staring at a paintbrush as if expecting it to whistle.
    “But you’re a forger! Your stamps look better than ours!”
    “Er…yes. But I don’t have your…I don’t know how to get started…I mean, I need something to work from…I mean, once it’s there, I can…”
    It must be about four o’clock, thought Moist. Four o’clock! I hate it when there are two four o’clocks in the same day…
    He snatched a piece of paper from Owlswick’s box, and pulled out a pencil.
    “Look,” he said, “you start with…”
    What?
    “Richness,” he told himself, aloud, “richness and solidarity, like the front of the bank. Lots of ornate scrolling, which is hard to copy. A…panorama, a cityscape…yes! Ankh-Morpork, it’s all about the city! Vetinari’s head, because they’ll expect that, and a Great Big One, so they get the message. Oh, the coat of arms, we must have that. And down here—” the pencil scribbled fast “—a space for the chairman’s signature, pardon me, I mean paw print. On the back…well, we are talking fine detail, Owlswick. Some god would give us a bit of gravitas. One of the jollier ones. What’s the name of that god with the three-pronged fork? One like him, anyway. Fine lines, Owlswick, that’s what we want. Oh, and a boat. I like boats. Tell ’em it’s worth a dollar again, too. Um…oh yes, mystic stuff doesn’t hurt, people’ll believe in any damn thing if it sounds old and mysterious. Doth not a penny to the widow outshine the unconquered sun?”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I haven’t the foggiest idea,” said Moist, “I just made it up.” He sketched away for a while and then pushed the paper across to the awestruck Owlswick.
    “Something like that,” he said. “Have a go. Think you can make something of it?”
    “I’ll try,” Owlswick promised.
    “Good. I’ll see you tomo—later on. Igor here will look after you.”
    Owlswick was already staring at nothing. Moist pulled Igor aside.
    “Just a shave and a haircut, okay?”
    “As you with, thur. Am I right in thinking that the gentleman doeth not want any entanglementth with the Watch?”
    “Correct.”
    “No problem there, thur. Could I thuggetht a change of name?”
    “Good idea. Any suggestions?”
    “I like the name Clamp, thur. And for a firtht name, Exorbit thpringth to mind,” Igor sprayed.
    “Really. Where did it spring from? No, don’t answer that. Exorbit Clamp…” Moist hesitated, but at this time of the night, why argue? Especially when it was this time of the morning. “Exorbit Clamp it is, then. Make certain he forgets even the name of Jenkins,” Moist added, with what, he later realized, was in the circumstances a definite lack of foresight.
    Moist slipped back up to bed without ever having to duck out of sight. No guard is at his best in the small hours. The place was locked up tight, wasn’t it? Who would break in?
    Down in the well-fornicated vault, the artist formerly known as Owlswick stared at Moist’s sketches and felt his brain begin to fizz. It was true that he was not, in any proper sense, a madman. He was, by certain standards, very sane. Faced with a world too busy, complex, and incomprehensible to deal with, he’d reduced it to a small bubble just big enough to hold him and his palette. It was nice and quiet in there. All the noises were far away, and They couldn’t spy on him.
    “Mr. Igor?” he said.
    Igor looked up from a crate in which he had been rummaging. He held what looked like a metal colander in his hands.
    “How may I be of thurvith, thur?”
    “Can you get me some old books with pictures of gods and boats and maybe some views