Going Postal полностью

‘Can’t have a bunch of grocers and butchers telling a university how to run itself, Stibbons!’ he said firmly, lining up on a red. ‘Thank them for their interest and tell them we’ll continue to take one hundred per cent of complete and utter dullards, as usual. Take ‘em in dull, turn ‘em out sparklin’, that’s always been the UU way! Anythin’ else?’

‘Just this message for the big race tonight, Archchancellor.’

‘Oh, yes, that thing. What should I do, Mr Stibbons? I hear there’s heavy betting on the Post Office.’

‘Yes, Archchancellor. People say the gods are on the side of Mr Lipwig.’

‘Are they betting?’ said Ridcully, watching with satisfaction as the ball rematerialized on the other side of a neglected ham sandwich.

‘I don’t think so, sir. He can’t possibly win.’

‘Was he the fella who rescued the cat?’

‘That was him, sir, yes,’ said Ponder.

‘Good chap. What do we think of the Grand Trunk? Bunch of bean-crushers, I heard. Been killin’ people on those towers of theirs. Man in the pub told me he’d heard the ghosts of dead signallers haunt the Trunk. I’ll try for the pink.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that, sir. I think it’s an urban myth,’ said Ponder.

‘They travel from one end of the Trunk to the other, he said. Not a bad way to spend eternity, mark you. There’s some splendid scenery up in the mountains.’ The Archchancellor paused, and his big face screwed up in thought. ‘Haruspex’s Big Directory of Varying Dimensions ,’ he said at last.

‘Pardon, Archchancellor?’

‘That’s the message,’ said Ridcully. ‘No one said it had to be a letter, eh?’ He waved a hand over the tip of the cue, which grew a powdering of fresh chalk. ‘Give them a copy each of the new edition. Send ‘em to our man in Genua… what’s his name, thingummy, got a funny name… show him the old Alma Pater is thinkin’ of him.’

‘That’s Devious Collabone, sir. He’s out studying Oyster Communications in a Low Intensity Magical Field for his B.Thau.’

‘Good gods, can they communicate?’ said Ridcully.

‘Apparently, Archchancellor, although thus far they’re refusing to talk to him.’

‘Why’d we send him all the way out there?’

‘Devious H. Collabone, Archchancellor?’ Ponder prompted. ‘Remember? With the terrible halitosis?’

‘Oh, you mean Dragonbreath Collabone?’ said Ridcully, as realization dawned. ‘The one who could blow a hole in a silver plate?’

‘Yes, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder patiently. Mustrum Ridcully always liked to triangulate in on new information from several positions. ‘You said that out in the swamps no one would notice? If you remember, we allowed him to take a small omniscope.’

‘Did we? Far-thinking of us. Call him up right now and tell him what’s going on, will you?’

‘Yes, Archchancellor. In fact I’ll leave it a few hours because it’s still night time in Genua.’

‘That’s only their opinion,’ said Ridcully, sighting again. ‘Do it now, man.’

Fire from the sky…

Everyone knew that the top half of the towers rocked as the messages flew along the Trunk. One day, someone was going to do something about it. And all old signallers knew that if the connecting rod operating the shutters on the down-line was pushed up to open them on the same blink as the connecting rod on the up-line was pulled down to close the shutters on the other side of the tower, the tower lurched. It was being pushed from one side and pulled from the other, which would have roughly the same effect as a column of marching soldiers could have on an old bridge. That wasn’t too much of a problem, unless it occurred again and again so that the rocking built up to a dangerous level. But how often would that happen?

Every time the Woodpecker arrived at your tower, that was how often. And it was like an illness that could only attack the weak and sick. It wouldn’t have attacked the old Trunk, because the old Trunk was too full of tower captains who’d shut down instantly and strip the offending message out of the drum, secure in the knowledge that their actions would be judged by superiors who knew how a tower worked and would have done the same thing themselves.

It would work against the new Trunk, because there weren’t enough of those captains now. You did what you were told or you didn’t get paid and if things went wrong it wasn’t your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot had accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn’t your fault; no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn’t care.

And today you’d been told to shift code as fast as possible, and you didn’t want to be the one accused of slowing the system down, so you watched the next tower in line until your eyes watered and you hit keys like a man tapdancing on hot rocks.