‘I Shall Do So Immediately, Sir.’
‘Well,’ Moist said, blinking in the light of his sleeves. ‘Let’s speed the mail, then, shall we?’
The formerly retired postmen were waiting in the hall, in a space cleared from last night’s maildrop. They all wore uniforms, although since no two uniforms were exactly alike they were not, in fact, uniform and therefore not technically uniforms. The caps all had peaks, but some were high-domed and some were soft and the old men themselves had ingrown their clothes, too, so that jackets hung like drape coats and trousers looked like concertinas. And, as is the wont of old men, they wore their medals and the determined looks of those ready for the final combat.
‘Delivery ready for inspection, sah!’ said Postal Inspector Groat, standing at attention so hard that sheer pride had lifted his feet a full inch off the floor.
‘Thank you. Er… right.’
Moist wasn’t sure what he was inspecting, but he did his best. Wrinkled face after wrinkled face stared back at him.
The medals, he realized, weren’t all for military service. The Post Office had medals of its own. One was a golden dog’s head, worn by a little man with a face like a packet of weasels.
‘What’s this, er… ’ he began.
‘Senior Postman George Aggy, sir. The badge? Fifteen bites and still standin’, sir!’ said the man proudly.
‘Well, that is a… a… a lot of bites, isn’t it… ’
‘Ah, but I foxed ‘em after number nine, sir, and got meself a tin leg, sir!’
‘You lost your leg?’ said Moist, horrified.
‘No, sir. Bought a bit of ol’ armour, didn’t I?’ said the wizened man, grinning artfully. ‘Does m’heart good to hear their teeth squeaking, sir!’
‘Aggy, Aggy… ’ Moist mused, and then memory sparked. ‘Weren’t you—’
‘I’m the Worshipful Master, sir,’ said Aggy. ‘I hope you won’t take last night the wrong way, sir. We all used to be like young Tolliver, sir, but we gave up hope, sir. No hard feelings?’
‘No, no,’ said Moist, rubbing the back of his head.
‘And I’d like to add my own message of congratulations as chairman of the Ankh-Morpork Order of Postal Workers Benevolent and Friendly Society,’ Aggy went on.
‘Er… thank you,’ said Moist. ‘And who are they, exactly?’
‘That was us last night, sir,’ said Aggy, beaming.
‘But I thought you were a secret society!’
‘Not secret, sir. Not
‘Well done,’ said Moist vaguely, which seemed to cover everything. He stood back, and cleared his throat. ‘Gentlemen, this is it. If we want the Post Office back in business, we must start by delivering the old mail. It is a sacred trust. The mail gets through. It may take fifty years, but we get there in the end. You know your walks. Take it steady. Remember, if you can’t deliver it, if the house has gone… well, it comes back here and we’ll put it into the Dead Letter office and at least we’ll have tried. We just want people to know the Post Office is back again, understand?’
A postman raised a hand.
‘Yes?’ Moist’s skill at remembering names was better than his skill at remembering anything else about last night. ‘Senior Postman Thompson, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir! So what do we do when people give us letters, sir?’
Moist’s brow wrinkled. ‘Sorry? I thought you
‘No, Bill’s right, sir,’ said Groat. ‘What do we do if people give us new mail?’
‘Er… what did you use to do?’ said Moist.
The postmen looked at one another.
‘Get one penny off ‘em for the stamping, bring it back here to be stamped with the official stamp,’ said Groat promptly. ‘Then it gets sorted and delivered.’
‘So… people have to wait until they see a postman? That seems rather—’
‘Oh, in the old days there was dozens of smaller offices, see?’ Groat added. ‘But when it all started going bad we lost ‘em.’
‘Well, let’s get the mail moving again and we can work things out as we go along,’ said Moist. ‘I’m sure ideas will occur. And now, Mr Groat, you have a secret to share… ’
Groat’s key ring jingled as he led Moist through the Post Office’s cellars and eventually to a metal door. Moist noted a length of black and yellow rope on the floor: the Watch had been here, too.
The door clicked open. There was a blue glow inside, just faint enough to be annoying, leave purple shadows on the edge of vision and make the eyes water.
‘Voil-ah,’ said Groat.
‘It’s a… is it some kind of theatre organ?’ said Moist. It was hard to see the outlines of the machine in the middle of the floor, but it stood there with all the charm of a torturer’s rack. The blue glow was coming from somewhere in the middle of it. Moist’s eyes were streaming already.
‘Good try, sir! Actually it is the Sorting Engine,’ said Groat. ‘It’s the curse of the Post Office, sir. It had imps in it for the actual reading of the envelopes, but they all evaporated years ago. Just as well, too.’
