'It appears to be gibberish,' he said, glancing at it, 'although I have to say that Umnian always does at first glance. I shall need some time to work it out. Umnian is entirely a contextual language. Have you seen these golems?'
'No, our tunnel collapsed. We can't even talk to the golems who were digging any more. Song doesn't travel well under salt water. But we think they are... unusual golems.'
'Golden, probably,' said Flead, the words leaving a thoughtful silence in their wake.
Then Adora Belle said, 'Oh.' Moist shut his eyes; on the inside of the lids the gold reserves of Ankh-Morpork walked up and down, gleaming.
'Anyone who researches Um finds the golden golem legend,' said Flead. 'Sixty thousand years ago some witch doctor sitting by a fire made a clay figure and worked out how to make it live and that was the only invention they ever needed, do you understand? Even had horse golems, did you know that? No one has ever been able to create one since. Yet the Umnians never worked iron! They never invented the spade or the wheel! Golems herded their animals and span their cloth! The Umnians did make their own jewellery, though, which largely consisted of scenes of human sacrifice, badly executed in every sense of the word. They were incredibly inventive in that area. A theocracy, of course,' he added, with a shrug. 'I don't know what it is about stepped pyramids that brings out the worst in a god... Anyway, yes, they did work gold. They dressed their priests in it. Quite possibly they made a few golems out of it. Or, equally, the "golden golem" was a metaphor referring to the value of golems to the Umnians. When people wish to express the concept of worth, "gold" is always the word of choice - '
'Isn't it just,' murmured Moist.
' - or it is simply a legend without foundation. Exploration of the site has never found anything except a few fragments of broken golem,' said Flead, sitting back and making himself comfortable on empty air.
He winked at Adora Belle. 'Perhaps you looked elsewhere? One story tells us that upon the death of all the humans, the golems walked into the sea... ?' The question mark hung in the air like the hook it was.
'What an interesting story,' said Adora Belle, poker-faced.
Flead smiled. 'I will find the sense of this message. Of course you will come and see me again tomorrow?
Moist didn't like the sound of that, whatever it was. It didn't help that Adora Belle was smiling.
'Have you, sir?' said Adora Belle, laughing.
'No, but I have an excellent memory!'
Moist frowned. He liked it better when she was giving the old devil the cold shoulder. 'Can we go now?' he said.
Probationary Trainee Junior Clerk Hammersmith Coot watched Miss Drapes looming ever closer with slightly less apprehension than his older colleagues did, and they knew this was because the poor kid had not been there long enough to know the meaning of what was about to happen.
The senior clerk put the paper on his desk with some force. The total had been ringed around in green ink which was still wet. 'Mr Bent,' she said, with a tincture of satisfaction, 'says you must do this again properly.'
And because Hammersmith was a well-brought-up young man and because this was only his first week in the bank, he said: 'Yes, Miss Drapes,' took the paper neatly and set to work.
There were many different stories told about what happened next. In years to come, clerks measured their banking experience by how close they were when the Thing Happened. There were disagreements on what was actually said. Certainly there was no violence, no matter what some of the stories implied. But it was a day that brought the world, or at least the part of it that included the counting house, to its knees.
Everyone agreed that Hammersmith spent some time working on the percentages. They say he produced a notebook - a personal notebook, which was an offence in itself - and did some work in it. Then, after some say fifteen minutes, some say nearly half an hour, he walked back to the desk of Miss Drapes, and declared: 'I'm sorry, Miss Drapes, but I can't find where the mistake is. I have checked my workings and believe my total is correct.'
His voice was not loud, but the room went silent. In fact, it was more than silent. The sheer straining of hundreds of ears meant that spiders spinning cobwebs near the ceiling wobbled in the suction. He was sent back to his desk to 'do it again and don't waste people's time' and after a further ten minutes, some say fifteen, Miss Drapes went to his desk and looked over his shoulder.
Most people agree that after half a minute or so she picked up the paper, pulled a pencil from the tight bun on the back of her head, ordered the young man out of his seat, sat down and spent some time staring at the numbers. She got up. She went to the desk of another senior clerk. Together they pored over the piece of paper. A third clerk was summoned. He copied out the offending columns, worked on them for a while and looked up, his face grey. No one needed to say it aloud. By now all work had stopped, but Mr Bent, up on the high stool, was still engrossed in the numbers before him and, significantly, he was muttering under his breath.
People sensed it in the air.
Mr Bent had Made a Mistake.
The most senior clerks conferred hastily in a corner. There was no higher authority that they could appeal to. Mr Bent was the higher authority, second only to the inexorable Lord of Mathematics. In the end it was left to the luckless Miss Drapes, who so recently had been the agent of Mr Bent's displeasure, to write on the document, 'I am sorry, Mr Bent, I believe the young man is right.' She placed this at the bottom of a number of working slips that she was delivering to the in-tray, dropped it in as the tray rumbled past, and then the sound of her little boots echoed as she rushed, weeping, the length of the hall to the ladies' restroom, where she had hysterics.
The remaining members of the staff looked around, warily, like ancient monsters who can see a second sun getting bigger in the sky but have absolutely no idea what they should do about it. Mr Bent was a fast man with an in-tray and by the look of it there was about two minutes or less before he was confronted with the message. Suddenly and all at once, they fled for the exits.
'And how was that for you?' said Moist, stepping out into the sunlight.
'Do I detect a note of peevishness?' said Adora Belle.
'Well, my plans for today did not include dropping in to chat with a three-hundred-year-old letch.'
'I think you mean lych, and anyway he was a ghost, not a corpse.'
'He was letching!'