Going Postal полностью

Handing all that gold over to a copper had been a difficult thing to do, but there really was no choice. He’d got them by the short and curlies, anyway. No one was going to stand up and say the gods didn’t do this sort of thing. True, they’d never done it so far, but you could never tell, with gods. Certainly there were queues outside the three temples, once the Times had put out its afternoon edition.

This had presented a philosophical problem to the priesthoods. They were officially against people laying up treasures on earth but, they had to admit, it was always good to get bums on pews, feet in sacred groves, hands rattling drawers and fingers being trailed in the baby crocodile pool. They settled therefore for a kind of twinkle-eyed denial that it could happen again, while hinting that, well, you never know, ineffable are the ways of gods, eh? Besides, petitioners standing in line with their letter asking for a big bag of cash were open to the suggestion that those most likely to receiveth were the ones who had already givethed, and got the message once you’d tapped them on the head with the collecting plate a few times.

Even Miss Extremelia Mume, whose small multi-purpose temple over a bookmakers’ office in Cable Street handled the everyday affairs of several dozen minor gods, was doing good business among those prepared to back an outside chance. She’d hung a banner over the door. It read: It Could Be YOU.

It couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. But, you never knew… this time it might.

Moist recognized that hope. It was how he’d made his living. You knew that the man running the Find The Lady game was going to win, you knew that people in distress didn’t sell diamond rings for a fraction of their value, you knew that life generally handed you the sticky end of the stick, and you knew that the gods didn’t pick some everyday undeserving tit out of the population and hand them a fortune.

Except that, this time, you might be wrong, right? It might just happen, yes?

And this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn’t be.

Now Moist von Lipwig headed along Attic Bee Street, towards the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Heads turned as he went past. He’d never been off the front page for days, after all. He just had to hope that the winged hat and golden suit were the ultimate in furniture; people saw the gold, not the face.

The hospital was still being built, as all hospitals are, but it had its own queue at the entrance. Moist dealt with that by ignoring it, and going straight in. There were, in the main hallway, people who looked like the kind of people whose job it is to say ‘oi, you!’ when other people just wander in, but Moist generated his personal ‘I’m too important to be stopped’ field and they never quite managed to frame the words.

And, of course, once you got past the doorway demons of any organization people just assumed you had a right to be there, and gave you directions.

Mr Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said ‘Do Not Enter’, but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing.

The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist.

‘Mr Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath , sir!’

‘They have to carry you?’ said Moist. ‘Can’t you walk, Tolliver?’

‘Yessir, but I fights ‘em, fights ‘em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!’

‘Please calm down, Mr Groat,’ said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. ‘You’re all right, then?’

‘Just a scratch, sir, look… ’ Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly.

Moist nearly fainted. The banshee had tried to make a noughts-and-crosses board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly.

‘Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,’ Groat said grudgingly. ‘But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs.

‘Right as rain, sir. I told ‘em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. I bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with Aggy bossing people around? I bet it is! I bet you really need me, right, sir?’

‘Urn, yes,’ said Moist. ‘Are they giving you medicine?’