'How can you tell, my lord?'
'Oh, there are all sorts of little clues, Drumknott. But I think a most persuasive one is that he has just walked off with your pencil.'
There were meetings. There were always meetings. And they were dull, which is part of the reason they were meetings. Dull likes company.
The Post Office wasn't going places any more. It had gone to places. It had arrived at places. Now those places required staff, and staff rotas, and wages, and pensions, and building maintenance, and cleaning staff to come in at night, and collection schedules, and discipline and investment and on, and on...
Moist stared disconsolately at a letter from a Ms Estressa Partleigh of the Campaign for Equal Heights. The Post Office, apparently, was not employing enough dwarfs. Moist had pointed out, very reasonably, he thought, that one in three of the staff were dwarfs. She had replied that this was not the point. The point was that since dwarfs were on average two-thirds the height of humans, the Post Office, as a responsible authority, should employ one and a half dwarfs for every human employed. The Post Office must reach out to the dwarf community, said Ms Partleigh.
Moist picked up the letter between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. It's reach down, Ms Partleigh, reach down.
There had also been something about core values. He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could the terms like 'core values' at him with impunity.
Nevertheless, Moist was prepared to believe that there were people who found a quiet contentment in contemplating columns of figures. Their number did not include him.
It had been weeks since he'd last designed a stamp! And much longer since he'd had that tingle, that buzz, that feeling of flying that meant a scam was cooking gently and he was getting the better of someone who thought they were getting the better of him.
Everything was all so... worthy. And it was stifling.
Then he thought about this morning, and smiled. Okay, he'd got stuck, but the shadowy night-time climbing fraternity reckoned the Post Office to be particularly challenging. And he'd talked his way out of the problem. All in all, it was a win. For a while there, in between the moments of terror, he'd felt alive and flying.
A heavy tread in the corridor indicated that Gladys was on the way with his mid-morning tea. She entered with her head bent down to avoid the lintel and, with the skill of something massive yet possessed of incredible coordination, put the cup and saucer down without a ripple. She said: 'Lord Vetinari's Carriage Is Waiting Outside, Sir.'
Moist was sure there was more treble in Gladys's voice these days.
'But I saw him an hour ago! Waiting for what?' he said.
'You, Sir.' Gladys dropped a curtsy, and when a golem drops a curtsy you can hear it.
Moist looked out of his window. A black coach was outside the Post Office. The coachman was standing next to it, having a quiet smoke.
'Does he say I have an appointment?' he said.
'The Coachman Said He Was Told To Wait,' said Gladys.
'Ha!'
Gladys curtsied again before she left.
When the door had shut behind her, Moist returned his attention to the pile of paperwork in his in-tray. The top sheaf was headed 'Minutes of the Meeting of the Sub Post Offices Committee', but they looked more like hours.
He picked up the mug of tea. On it was printed: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS! He stared at it, and then absentmindedly picked up a thick black pen and drew a comma between 'Here' and 'But'. He also crossed out the exclamation mark. He hated that exclamation mark, hated its manic, desperate cheeriness. It meant: You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here. We'll See to That!
He forced himself to read the minutes, realizing that his eye was skipping whole paragraphs in self-defence.
Then he started on the District Offices' Weekly Reports. After that, the Accidents and Medical Committee sprawled its acres of words.
Occasionally Moist glanced at the mug.
At twenty-nine minutes past eleven the alarm on his desk clock went 'bing'. Moist got up, put his chair under the desk, walked to the door, counted to three, opened it, said 'Hello, Tiddles' as the Post Office's antique cat padded in, counted to nineteen as the cat did its circuit of the room, said 'Goodbye, Tiddles' as it plodded back into the corridor, shut the door and went back to his desk.
You just opened the door for an elderly cat who's lost hold of the concept of walking around things, he told himself, as he rewound the alarm. You do it every day. Do you think that's the action of a sane man? Okay, it's sad to see him standing for hours with his head up against a chair until someone moves it, but now you get up every day to move the chair for him. This is what honest work does to a person.
Yes, but dishonest work nearly got me hanged! he protested.
So? Hanging only lasts a couple of minutes. The Pension Fund Committee lasts a lifetime! It's all so boring! You're trapped in chains of gold-ish!
Moist had ended up near the window. The coachman was eating a biscuit. When he caught sight of Moist he gave him a friendly wave.