The Truth (Discworld 25)

'Absolutely right for that occasion, yes,' he said.

'Yes, but it's not often people make money like that,' said the suicidal Charlie. His eyes kept straying to the monstrous bulk of Mr Tulip, who was holding a paper bag in one hand and, in the other hand, a spoon. He was using the spoon to ferry a fine white powder to his nose, his mouth and once, Charlie would have sworn, his ear.

'Well, you are a special man, Charlie,' said Mr Pin. 'And afterwards you will have to stay out of sight for a long time.'

'Yeah,' said Mr Tulip, in a spray of powder. There was a sudden strong smell of mothballs.

'All right, but why did you have to kidnap me, then? One minute I was locking up for the night, next minute - bang! And you've got me chained up.'

Mr Pin decided to change tack. Charlie was arguing too much for a man in the same room as Mr Tulip, especially a Mr Tulip who was halfway through a bag of powdered mothballs. He gave him a big friendly smile.

'There's no point in dwelling on the past, my friend,' he said. 'This is business. All we want is a few days of your time, and then you end up with a fortune and - and I believe this is important, Charlie - a lifetime in which to spend it.'

Charlie was turning out to be very stupid indeed.

'But how do you know I won't tell someone?' he insisted.

Mr Pin sighed. 'We trust you, Charlie.'

The man had run a clothes shop in Pseudopolis. Small shopkeepers had to be smart, didn't they? They were usually sharp as knives when it came to making just the right amount of wrong change. So much for physiognomy, thought Mr Pin. This man could pass for the Patrician even in a good light, but while by all accounts Lord Vetinari would have already worked out all the nasty ways the future could go, Charlie was actually entertaining the idea that he was going to come out of this alive and might even outsmart Mr Pin. He was actually trying to be cunning. He was sitting a few feet away from Mr Tulip, a man trying to snort crushed moth repellant, and he was trying guile. You almost had to admire the man.

'I'll need to be back by Friday,' said Charlie. 'It'll all be over by Friday, will it?'

The shed that was now leased by the dwarfs had in the course of its rickety life been a forge and a laundry and a dozen other enterprises, and had last been used as a rocking-horse factory by someone who had thought something was the Next Big Thing when it was by then one day away from becoming the Last Big Flop. Stacks of half-finished rocking horses that Mr Cheese had

been unable to sell for the back rent still filled one wall all the way to the tin roof. There was a shelf of corroding paint tins. Brushes had fossilized in their jars.

The press occupied the centre of the floor, with several dwarfs at work. William had seen presses. The engravers used them. This one had an organic quality, though. The dwarfs spent as much time changing the press as they did using it. Extra rollers appeared, endless belts were threaded into the works. The press grew by the hour.

Goodmountain was working in front of several of the large sloped boxes, each one of which was divided into several dozen compartments.

William watched the dwarf's hand fly over the little boxes of leaden letters.

'Why's there a bigger box for the Es?'

' 'cos that's the letter we use most of.'

'Is that why it's in the middle of the box?'

'Right. Es then Ts then As...'

'I mean, people would expect to see A in the middle.'

'We put E.'

'But you've got more Ns than Us. And U is a vowel.'

'People use more Ns than you think.'

On the other side of the room Caslong's stubby dwarf fingers danced across his own boxes of letters.

'You can almost read what he's working on--' William began.

Goodmountain glanced up. His eyes narrowed for a moment.

' "... Make... more... money... inn... youre... Spare... Time..." ' he said. 'Sounds like Mr Dibbler has been back.'

William stared down at the box of letters again. Of course, a quill pen potentially contained anything you wrote with it. He could understand that. But it did so in a clearly theoretical way, a safe way. Whereas these dull grey blocks looked threatening. He could understand why they worried people. Put us together in the right way, they seemed to say, and we can be anything you want. We could even be something you don't want. We can spell anything. We can certainly spell trouble.