And then he saw it. It was one of those hopeless little shop fronts that house enterprises with a lifetime measured in days, like Giant Clearance Sale!!! of socks with two heels each, tights with three legs and shirts with one sleeve, four feet long. The window was boarded over, but just visible behind the graffiti above it were the words: The Golem Trust.
Moist pushed open the door. Glass crunched under his feet.
A voice said, ‘Hands where I can see them, mister!'
He raised his hands cautiously, while peering into the gloom. There was definitely a crossbow being wielded by a dim figure. Such light as had managed to get round the boards glinted off the tip of the bolt.
‘Oh,' said the voice in the dark, as if mildly annoyed that there was no excuse to shoot anybody. ‘All right, then. We had visitors last night.'
‘The window?' said Moist.
‘It happens about once a month. I was just sweeping it up.' There was the scratch of a match, and a lamp was lit. ‘They don't generally attack the golems themselves, not now there's free ones around. But glass doesn't fight back.'
The lamp was turned up, revealing a tall young woman in a tight grey woollen dress, with coal-black hair plastered down so that she looked like a peg doll and forced into a tight bun at the back. There was a slight redness to her eyes that suggested she had been crying.
‘You're lucky to have caught me,' she said. ‘I'd only come in to make sure nothing's been taken. Are you here to sell or to hire? You can put your hands down now,' she added, placing the crossbow under the counter.
‘Sell or hire?' said Moist, lowering his hands with care.
‘A golem,' she said, in a talking-to-the-hard-of-thinking voice. ‘We are the Go-lem Trust. We buy or hire go-lems. Do you want to sell a go-lem or hire a go-lem?'
‘Nei-ther,' said Moist. ‘I've got a go-lem. I mean, one is work-ing for me.'
‘Really? Where?' said the woman. ‘And we can probably speed up a little, I think.'
‘At the Post Office.'
‘Oh, Pump 19,' said the woman. ‘He said it was government service.'
‘We call him Mister Pump,' said Moist primly.
‘Really? And do you get a wonderful warm charitable feeling when you do?'
‘Pardon? What?' said Moist, bewildered. He wasn't sure if she was managing the trick of laughing at him behind her frown.
The woman sighed. ‘Sorry, I'm a bit snappish this morning. A brick landing on your desk does that to you. Let's just say they don't see the world in the same way as we do, okay? They've got feelings, in their own way, but they're not like ours. Anyway... how can I help you, Mr... ?'
‘Von Lipwig,' said Moist, and added: ‘Moist von Lipwig,' to get the worst over with. But the woman didn't even smile.
‘Lipwig, small town in Near Uberwald,' she said, picking up a brick from the broken glass and debris on her desk, regarding it critically, and then turning to the ancient filing cabinet behind her and filing it under B. ‘Chief export: its famous dogs, of course, second most important export its beer, except during the two weeks of Sektober-fest, when it exports... second-hand beer, probably?'
‘I don't know. We left when I was a kid,' said Moist. ‘As far as I'm concerned, it's just a funny name.'
‘Try Adora Belle Dearheart some time,' said the woman.
‘Ah. That's not a funny name,' said Moist.
‘Quite,' said Adora Belle Dearheart. ‘I now have no sense of humour whatsoever. Well, now that we've been appropriately human towards one another, what exactly was it you wanted?'
‘Look, Vetinari has sort of lumbered me with Mr— with Pump 19 as an... an assistant, but I don't know how to treat...' Moist sought in the woman's eyes for some clue as to the politically correct term, and plumped for ‘him.'
‘Huh? Just treat him normally.'
‘You mean normally for a human being, or normally for a pottery man filled with fire?'
To Moist's astonishment Adora Belle Dearheart took a packet of cigarettes out of a desk drawer and lit one. She mistook his expression, and proffered the pack.
‘No, thanks,' he said, waving it away. Apart from the occasional old lady with a pipe, he'd never seen a woman smoke before. It was... strangely attractive, especially since, as it turned out, she smoked a cigarette as if she had a grudge against it, sucking the smoke down and blowing it out almost immediately.
‘You're getting hung up about it all, right?' she said. When Ms Dearheart wasn't smoking she held the cigarette at shoulder height, the elbow of her left arm cupped in her right hand. There was a definite feel about Adora Belle Dearheart that a lid was only barely holding down an entire womanful of anger.
‘Yes! I mean—' Moist began.
‘Hah! It's just like the Campaign for Equal Heights and all that patronizing stuff they spout about dwarfs and why we shouldn't use terms like "small talk" and "feeling small". Golems don't have any of our baggage about "who am I, why am I here", okay? Because they know. They were made to be tools, to be property, to work. Work is what they do. In a way, it's what they are. End of existential angst.'
Ms Dearheart inhaled and then blew out the smoke in one nervous movement. ‘And then stupid people go around calling them "persons of clay" and "Mr Spanner" and so on, which they find rather strange. They understand about free will. They also understand that they don't have it. Mind you, once a golem owns himself, it's a different matter.'
‘Own? How does property own itself?' said Moist. ‘You said they were—'
‘They save up and buy themselves, of course! Freehold is the only path to freedom they'll accept. Actually, what happens is that the free golems support the Trust, the Trust buys golems whenever it can, and the new golems then buy themselves from the Trust at cost. It's working well. The free golems earn twenty-four/eight and there's more and more of them. They don't eat, sleep, wear clothes or understand the concept of leisure. The occasional tube of ceramic cement doesn't cost much. They're buying more golems every month now, and paying my wages, and the iniquitous rent the landlord of this dump is charging because he knows he's renting to golems. They never complain, you know. They pay whatever's asked. They're so patient it could drive you nuts.'
Tube of ceramic cement, thought Moist. He tried to fix that thought in case it came in useful, but some mental processes were fully occupied with the growing realization of how well some women could look in a severely plain dress.
‘Surely they can't be damaged, can they?' he managed.
‘Certainly they can! A sledgehammer on the right spot would really mess one up. Owned golems will just stand there and take it. But the Trust golems are allowed to defend themselves, and when someone weighing a ton snatches a hammer out of your hand you have to let go really quickly.'
‘I think Mr Pump is allowed to hit people,' said Moist.
‘Quite possibly. A lot of the frees are against that, but others say a tool can't be blamed for the use to which it's put,' said Ms Dearheart. ‘They debate it a lot. For days and days.'
No rings on her fingers, Moist noted. What kind of attractive girl works for a bunch of clay men?
‘This is all fascinating? he said. ‘Where can I find out more?'
‘We do a pamphlet,' said almost-certainly-Miss Dearheart, pulling open a drawer and flipping a thin booklet on to the desk. ‘It's five pence.'
The title on the cover was Common Clay.
Moist put down a dollar. ‘Keep the change,' he said.
‘No!' said Miss Dearheart, fumbling for coins in the drawer. ‘Didn't you read what it said over the door?'
‘Yes. It said "SmasH The Barstuds",' said Moist.
Miss Dearheart put a hand to her forehead wearily. ‘Oh, yes. The painter hasn't been yet. But underneath that... look, it's on the back of the pamphlet...'
, Moist read, or at least looked at.
‘It's one of their own languages,' she said. ‘It's all a bit... mystic. Said to be spoken by angels. It translates as "By Our Own Hand, Or None". They're fiercely independent. You've no idea.'
She admires them, Moist thought. Whoo-ee. And... angels?
‘Well, thank you,' he said. ‘I'd better be going. I'll definitely... well, thank you, anyway.'
‘What are you doing at the Post Office, Mr von Lipwig?' said the woman, as he opened the door.
‘Call me Moist,' said Moist, and a bit of his inner self shuddered. ‘I'm the new postmaster.'
‘No kidding?' said Miss Dearheart. ‘Then I'm glad you've got Pump 19 with you. The last few postmasters didn't last long, I gather.'
‘I think I heard something about that,' said Moist cheerfully. ‘It sounds as though things were pretty bad in the olden days.'
Miss Dearheart's brow wrinkled. ‘Olden days?' she said. ‘Last month was olden days?'
Lord Vetinari stood looking out of his window. His office had once had a wonderful view of the city and, technically, it still did, although now the roofline was a forest of clacks towers, winking and twinkling in the sunlight. On the Tump, the old castle mound across the river, the big tower, one end of the Grand Trunk that wound more than two thousand miles across the continent to Genua, glittered with semaphore.
It was good to see the lifeblood of trade and commerce and diplomacy pumping so steadily, especially when you employed clerks who were exceptionally good at decryption. White and black by day, light and dark by night, the shutters stopped only for fog and snow.