Going Postal Read Free

told Moist that the length of the present time was entirely in the gift of the speaker.
    He opened his eyes. He was sitting in a comfortable chair. At a desk opposite him, sitting with his hands steepled reflectively in front of his pursed lips, was Lord Havelock Vetinari, under whose idiosyncratically despoticrule Ankh-Morpork had become the city where, for some reason, everyone wanted to live.
    An ancient animal sense also told Moist that other people were standing behind the comfortable chair, and that it could be extremely uncomfortable should he make any sudden movements. But they couldn’t be as terrible as the thin, black-robed man with the fussy little beard and the pianist’s hands, who was watching him.
    “Shall I tell you about angels, Mr. Lipwig?” said the Patrician pleasantly. “I know two interesting facts about them.”
    Moist grunted. There were no obvious escape routes in front of him, and turning around was out of the question. His neck ached horribly.
    “Oh, yes. You were hanged,” said Vetinari. “A very precise science, hanging. Mr. Trooper is a master. The slippage and thickness of the rope, whether the knot is placed here rather than there , the relationship between weight and distance…oh, I’m sure the man could write a book. You were hanged to within half an inch of your life, I understand. Only an expert standing right next to you would have spotted that, and in this case the expert was our friend Mr. Trooper. 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.”
    Moist stared. He’d felt the snap of the rope, the choke of the noose! He’d seen the blackness welling up! He’d died !
    “I’m offering you a job, Mr. Lipwig. Alfred Spangler is buried, but Mr. Lipwig has a future . It may, of course, be a very short one, if he is stupid. I am offering you a job, Mr. Lipwig. Work, for wages. I realize the concept may be unfamiliar.”
    Only as a form of hell , Moist thought.
    “The job is that of postmaster general of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office.” Moist continued to stare.
    “May I just add, Mr. Lipwig, that behind you there is a door. If at any time in this interview you feel you wish to leave, you have only to step through it and you will never hear from me again.”
    Moist filed that under “Deeply Suspicious.”
    “To continue: the job, Mr. Lipwig, involves the refurbishment and running of the city’s postal service, preparation of the international packets, maintenance of Post Office property, et cetera, et cetera—”
    “If you stick a broom up my arse I could probably sweep the floor, too,” said a voice. Moist realized it was his. His brain was a mess. It had come as a shock to him that the afterlife was this one.
    Lord Vetinari gave him a long, long look.
    “Well, if you wish,” he said, and turned to a hovering clerk. “Drumknott, does the housekeeper have a store cupboard on this floor, do you know?”
    “Oh, yes, my lord,” said the clerk. “Shall I—”
    “It was a joke!” Moist burst out.
    “Oh, I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized,” said Lord Vetinari, turning back to Moist. “Do tell me if you feel obliged to make another one, will you?”
    “Look,” said Moist, “I don’t know what’s happening here, but I don’t know anything about delivering post!”
    “Mr. Lipwig, this morning you had no experience at all of being dead, and yet but for my intervention