Glom of Nit

[lily_handmaiden]

Because I am overzealous, the Going Postal quotes will be in two parts.

Going Postal Quotes Part 1: Glom of Nit

The man going to be hanged had been named Moist von Lipwig by doting if unwise parents, but he was not going to embarrass the name, insofar as that was still possible, by being hanged under it. To the world in general, and particularly to that bit of it known as the death warrant, he was Alfred Spangler.

*

"Lord Vetinari's orders. He insists that all condemned prisoners should be offered the prospect of freedom."

"Freedom? But there's a bloody great stone through there!"

"Yes, there is that, sir, yes, there is that," said the warden. "It's only the prospect, you see. Not actual freedom as such. Hah, that'd be a bit daft, eh?"

"I suppose so, yes," said Moist. He didn't say "you bastards." The wardens had treated him quite civilly these past six weeks, and he made a point of getting on with people. He was very, very good at it. People skills were part of his stock-in-trade; they were nearly the whole of it.

Besides, these people had big sticks. So, speaking carefully, he added, "Some people might consider this cruel, Mr. Wilkinson."

"Yes, sir, we asked him about that, sir, but he said no, it wasn't. He said it provided--" his forehead wrinkled-- "occ-you-pay-shun-all ther-rap-py, healthy exercise, prevented moping, and offered that greatest of all treasures, which is Hope, sir."

*

"The warden was a bit green about the kumquats, 'cos he only got dates in his, but I told him, sir, that fruit baskets is like life-- until you've got the pineapple off the top you never know what's underneath."

*

"No, Alfred Spangler is dead, Mr. Lipwig. Three hundred people would swear they saw him die." He leaned forward. "And so, appropriately, it is of angels I wish to talk to you now."

Moist managed a grunt.

"The first interesting thing about angels, Mr. Lipwig, is that sometimes, very rarely, at a point in a man's career where he has made such a foul and tangled mess of his life that death appears to be the only sensible option, an angel appears to him, or, I should say, unto him, and offers him a chance to go back to the moment when it all went wrong, and this time do it right. Mr. Lipwig, I should like you to think of me as... an angel."

*

"There is always a choice."

"You mean... I could choose certain death?"

"A choice, nevertheless," said Vetinari. "Or, perhaps, an alternative. You see, I believe in freedom, Mr. Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will, of course, protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be completely without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based. Now... will you take the job? No one will recognize you, I am sure. No one ever recognizes you, it would appear."

Moist shrugged. "Oh, all right. Of course, I accept as natural-born criminal, habitual liar, fraudster, and totally untrustworthy perverted genius."

"Capital! Welcome to government service!"

*

When Moist had left, Drumknott coughed politely and said, "Do you think he'll turn up there, my lord?"

"One must always consider the psychology of the individual," said Vetinari, correcting the spelling on an official report. "That is what I do all the time and lamentably, Drumknott, you do not always do. That is why he has walked off with your pencil."

*

The Ankh-Morpork Central Post Office had a gaunt frontage. It was a building designed for a purpose. It was, therefore, more or less a big box to employ people in, with two wings at the rear, which enclosed the big stable yard. Some cheap pillars had been sliced in half and stuck on the outside, some niches had been carved for some miscellaneous stone nymphs, some stone urns had been ranged along the parapet, and thus Architecture had been created.

In appreciation of the thought that had gone into this, the good citizens, or more probably their kids, had covered the walls to a height of six feet with graffiti in many exciting colors.

In a band all along the top of the frontage, staining the stone in greens and browns, some words had been set in letters of bronze:

"'NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLO M OF NI T CAN STAY THESE MES ENGERS ABO T THEIR DUTY,'" Moist read aloud. "What the hell does that mean?"

"The Post Office Was Once A Proud Institution," said Mr. Pump.

"And that stuff?" Moist pointed. On a board much further down the building, in peeling paint, were the less heroic words:

Don't Arsk Us About: rocks troll's with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs. Cake Huje green things with teeth Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows Rains of spaniel's. fog. Mrs. Cake

"I Said It Was A Proud Institution," the golem rumbled.

"Who's Mrs. Cake?"

"I Regret I Cannot Assist You There, Mr. Lipvig."

"They seem pretty frightened of her."

"So It Appears, Mr. Lipvig."

*

Dimwell Arrhythmic Rhyming Slang: Various rhyming slangs are known, and have given the universe such terms as "apples and pears" (stairs), "rubbity-dub" (pub), and "busy bee" (General Theory of Relativity). The Dimwell Street rhyming slang is pretty unique in that it does not, in fact, rhyme. No one knows why, but theories so far advanced are 1) that it is quite complex and in fact follows hidden rules, or 2) Dimwell is well named, or 3) it's made up to annoy strangers, which is the case with most such slangs.

*

"What happened to the Post Office?"

"I Couldn't Say, Sir," said Mr. Pump placidly.

"You don't know? But it's your city," said Moist sarcastically. "Have you been stuck at the bottom of a hole in the ground for the last hundred years?"

"No, Mr. Lipvig," said the golem.

"Well, why can't--"

"It Was Two Hundred And Forty Years, Mr. Lipvig," said the golem.

"What was?"

"The Time I Spent At The Bottom Of The Hole In The Ground, Mr. Lipvig."

"What are you talking about?" said Moist.

"Why, The Time I Spent At The Bottom Of The Hole In The Ground, Mr. Lipvig. Pump Is Not My Name, Mr. Lipvig. It Is My Description. Pump. Pump 19, To Be Precise. I Stood In The Bottom Of A Hole A Hundred Feet Deep And Pumped Water. For Two Hundred And Forty Years, Mr. Lipvig. But Now I Am Ambulating In The Sunlight. This Is Better, Mr. Lipvig. This Is Better!"

*

"Why are we doing this, Mr. Groat?" said Stanley meekly.

"'Cos of hub-riss," said Mr. Groat. "That's what it was. Hub-riss killed the Post Office. Hub-riss and greed and Bloody Stupid Johnson and the New Pie."

"A pie, Mr. Groat? How could a pie--"

"Don't ask, Stanley. It gets complicated and there's nothing in it about pins."

*

"As far as I'm concerned, [Moist von Lipwig]'s just a funny name."

"Try Adora Belle Dearheart sometime," said the woman.

"Ah. That's not a funny name," said Moist.

"Quite," said Adora Belle Dearheart. "I now have no sense of humor whatsoever."

*

"Oh, that's just Thud! That's easy!" yapped a voice.

Both men turned to look at Horsefry, who had been made perky by sheer relief.

"I used to play it when I was a kid," he burbled. "It's boring. The dwarfs always win!"

Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: While I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplummable by any line, I'll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry.

"Appearances are deceptive, Crispin," said Gilt jovially. "A troll player need never lose, if he puts his mind to it."

"I know I once got a dwarf stuck up my nose and Mummy had to get it out with a hairpin," said Horsefry, as if this was a source of immense pride.

Gilt put his arm around the man's shoulders.

"That's very interesting, Crispin," he said. "Do you think it's likely to happen again?"

*

"In his Thoughts, which I have always considered to fare badly in translation, Bouffant says that intervening in order to prevent a murder is to curtail the freedom of the murderer and yet that freedom, by definition, is natural and universal, without condition," said Vetinari. "You may recall his famous dictum: 'If any man is not free, then I, too, am a small pie made of chicken,' which has led to a considerable amount of debate. Thus we might consider, for example, that taking a bottle from a man killing himself with drink is a charitable, nay, praiseworthy act, and yet freedom is curtailed once more. Mr. Gilt has studied his Bouffant but, I fear, failed to understand him. Freedom may be mankind's natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling. On the other hand, Freidegger, in Modal Contextities, claims that all freedom is limited, artificial, and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes. It overwhelms the soul, very much like the state he elsewhere describes as Vonallesvolkommenunverstandlichdasdaskeit. What position would you take here, Drumknott?"

"I've always thought, my lord, that what the world really needs are filing boxes which are not so flimsy," said Drumknott, after a moment's pause.

"Hmm," said Lord Vetinari. "A point to think about, certainly."

*

Groat leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Everyone knows there's a werewolf in the Watch, and one of them could bloody nearly smell what color clothes someone was wearing."

"A werewolf," said Moist flatly.

"Yes. Anyway, the one before him--"

"A werewolf."

"That's what I said, sir," said Groat.

"A damn werewolf."

"Takes all sorts to make a world, sir. Anyway--"

"A werewolf." Moist awoke from the horror. "And they don't tell visitors?"
"Now, how'd they do that, sir?" said Groat in a kindly voice. "Put it on a sign outside? 'Welcome to Ankh-Morpork, We Have a Werewolf,' sir? The Watch's got loads of dwarfs and trolls and a golem-- a free golem, savin' your presence, Mr. Pump-- and a couple of gnomes and a zombie... even a Nobbs."

"Nobbs? What's a Nobbs?"

"Corporal Nobby Nobbs, sir. Not met him yet? They say he's got an official chitty saying he's human, and who needs one of those, eh? Fortunately there's only one of him, so he can't breed."

*

"Well is it said: 'See an pin and pick it up, and all day long you'll have a pin.'"

*

"Hah, I wa's so downhearted, lad, I went right out and joined the..." His red face wrinkled. "You know... camel's, funny hat's, sand, where you go to forget--"

"The Klatchian Foreign Legion?" said Moist.

"That wa's it!"

*

"My grandad used to work there!"

"Well done him," said Moist.

"He said there was a curse!" said the woman, as if the idea was rather pleasing.

"Really?" said Moist. "Well, I could do with a good curse right now, as a matter of fact."

"It lives under the floor and drives you maaad!" she went on, enjoying the syllable so much that she seemed loath to let it go. "Maaad!"

"Really," said Moist. "Well, we do not believe in going crazy in the postal service, do we, Mr. Gro--" He stopped. Mr. Groat had the expression of one who did believe in going crazy.

"You daft old woman!" Groat yelled. "What did you have to tell him that for?"

*

"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."

*

"Bit of a hole in my understanding, all that stuff about angles and suchlike. But this, sir, is all about pie."

"Like in food?" said Most drawing back from the sinister glow.

"No, no, sir. Pie like in jommetry."

"Oh, you mean pi, the number you get when--" Moist paused. He was erratically good at math, which is to say he could calculate odds and currency very, very fast. There had been a geometry section in his book at school, but he'd never seen the point. He tried, anyway.

"It's all to do with... it's the number you get when the radius of a circle... no, the length of the rim of a wheel is three and a bit times the... er..."

"Something like that, sir, probably, something like that."

*

It didn't matter that the machine had been switched off, the wizards said. It existed in plenty of other presents, and so worked here owing to... a lengthy sentence, which the postmen didn't understand but which had words like "portal," "multidimensional," and "quantum" in it, "quantum" being in it twice.

*

The machine couldn't be stopped and certainly shouldn't be destroyed, the wizard said. Destroying the machine might well cause this universe to stop existing, instantly.

On the other hand, the Post Office was filling up, so one day Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow had gone into the room with a crowbar, hard ordered all the wizards out, and belted the machine until things stopped whirring.

The letters had ceased, at least. This came as a huge relief, but nevertheless, the Post Office had its Regulations, and so the chief postal inspector was brought before Postmaster Cowerby and asked why he had decided to risk destroying the whole universe in one go.

According to Post Office legend, Mr. Rumbelow had replied: "Firstly, sir, I reasoned that if I destroyed the universe all in one go, no one would know; secondly, when I walloped the thing the first time, the wizards ran away, so I surmised that unless they has another universe to run to they weren't really certain; and lastly, sir, the bloody thing was getting on my nerves. Never could stand machinery, sir."

"And that was the end of it, sir," said Mr. Groat as they left the room. "Actually, I heard where the wizards were saying that the universe was destroyed all in one go but instantly came back in one go. They said they could tell by lookin', sir. So that was okay and it let old Rumbelow off've the hook, on account of it's hard to discipline a man under Post Office Regulations for destroying the universe all in one go."

*

That's all for now; stay tuned for Part 2!

Comments

Hey

[adamid-epic.livejournal.com]

This is Alicia, and I'm using my November Novel journal, which will be updated daily because Dan wants to read what I'm writing. I friended you so you can read the entries too, if you like.

But actually I'm just commenting on your GP post, which rocks. I can't wait to read it :) :)

~Alicia~