Making Money (Discworld 36)

'Yes, Drumknott, I'm conscious of the fact. There are always expenses. And the other matter?'

'Soon, sir, soon. This is not a job for Cranberry, sir. I'm having to bribe at the highest level.' Heretofore coughed. 'Silence is expensive, sir...'

Moist escorted Adora Belle back to the university in silence. But the important thing was that nothing had been broken and no one had been killed.

Then as if reaching a conclusion after much careful thought, Adora Belle said: 'I worked in a bank for a while, you know, and hardly anyone got stabbed.'

'I'm sorry, I forgot to warn you. And I did push you out of the way in time.'

'I must admit that the way you threw me to the floor quite turned my head.'

'Look, I'm sorry, okay? And so is Aimsbury! And now will you tell me what all this is about? You found four golems, right? Have you brought them back?'

'No, the tunnel collapsed before we got down that far. I told you, they were half a mile down under millions of tons of sand and mud. For what it's worth, we think there was a natural ice dam up in the mountains, which burst and flooded half the continent. The stories about Um say it was destroyed in a flood, so that fits. The golems were washed away with the rubble, which ended up against some chalk cliffs by the sea.'

'How did you find out they were down there? It's... well, it's nowhere!'

'The usual way. One of our golems heard one singing. Imagine that. It's been underground for sixty thousand years...'

In the night under the world, in the pressure of the depth, in the crushing of the dark... a golem sang. There were no words. The song was older than words; it was older than tongues. It was the call of the common clay, and it carried for miles. It travelled along fault lines, made crystals sing in harmony in dark unmeasured caverns, followed rivers that never saw the sun...

... and out of the ground and up the legs of a golem from the Golem Trust, who was pulling a waggon loaded with coal along the region's one road. When he arrived in Ankh-Morpork he told the Trust. That was what the Trust did: it found golems.

Cities, kingdoms, countries came and went, but the golems that their priests had baked from clay and filled with holy fire tended to go on for ever. When they had no more orders, no more water to fetch or wood to hew, perhaps because the land was now on the sea bed or the city was inconveniently under fifty feet of volcanic ash, they did nothing but wait for the next order. They were, after all, property. Each obeyed whatever instructions were written on the little scroll in his head. Sooner or later, rock erodes. Sooner or later a new city would arise. One day there would be orders.

Golems had no concept of freedom. They knew they were artefacts; some even still bore, on their clay, the finger marks of the long-dead priest. They were made to be owned.

There had always been a few in Ankh-Morpork, running errands, doing chores, pumping water deep underground, unseen and silent and not getting in anyone's way. Then one day, someone freed a golem by inserting in its head the receipt for the money he'd paid for it. And then he told it that it owned itself.

A golem could not be freed by orders, or a war, or a whim. But it could be freed by freehold. When you have been a possession, then you really understand what freedom means, in all its magnificent terror.

Dorfl, the first freed golem, had a plan. He worked hard, around the clock he had no time for, and bought another golem. The two golems worked hard and bought a third golem... and now there was the Golem Trust, which bought golems, found golems entombed underground of in the depths of the sea, and helped golems buy themselves.

In the booming city golems were worth their weight in gold. They would accept small wages but they earned them for twenty-four hours a day. It was still a bargain  -  stronger than trolls, more reliable than oxen, and more indefatigable and intelligent than a dozen of each, a golem could power every machine in a workshop.

This didn't make them popular. There was always a reason to dislike a golem. They didn't drink, eat, gamble, swear or smile. They worked. If a fire broke out, they hurried en masse to put it out and then walked back to what they had been doing. No one knew why a creature that had been baked into life had the urge to do this, but all it won them was a kind of awkward resentment. You couldn't be grateful to an unmoving face with glowing eyes.

'How many are down there?' said Moist.

'I told you. Four.'

Moist felt relieved. 'Well, that's good. Well done. Can we have a proper celebratory meal tonight? Of something the animal wasn't so attached to? And then, who knows - '

'There may be a snag,' said Adora Belle slowly.

'No, really?'

'Oh, please.' Adora Belle sighed. 'Look, the Umnians were the first golem-builders, do you understand? Golem legend says that the Umnians invented golems. It's easy to believe, too. Some priest baking a votive offering says the right words, and the clay sits up. It was their only invention. They didn't need any more. Golems built their city, golems tilled their fields. They invented the wheel, but as a children's toy. They didn't need wheels, you see. You don't need weapons, either, when you've got golems instead of city walls. You don't even need shovels - '

'You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?'

'Only a man would think of that.'

'It's our job,' said Moist. 'If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.'

'Well, there's no evidence of them,' said Adora Belle briskly. 'The Umnians never even worked iron. They did work bronze, though... and gold.'

There was something about the way 'gold' was left hanging there that Moist didn't like.