'It does?' said Hubert.
'You mark my words,' said Moist, ushering Adora Belle firmly towards the distant exit.
When they had gone, Hubert sniffed the palm of his hand and shivered. 'They were nice people, weren't they?' he said.
'Yeth, marthter.'
Hubert looked up at the glittering, trickling pipes of the Glooper, faithfully mirroring in its ebbing and flowing the tides of money around the city. Just one blow could rattle the world. It was a terrible responsibility.
Igor joined him. They stood in a silence broken only by the sloshing of commerce.
'What shall I do, Igor?' said Hubert.
'In the Old Country we have a thaying,' Igor volunteered.
'A what?'
'A thaying. We thay: "If you don't want the monthter you don't pull the lever".'
'You don't think I've gone mad, do you, Igor?'
'Many great men have been conthidered mad, Mr Hubert. Even Dr Hanth Forvord wath called mad. But I put it to you: could a madman have created a revoluthionary living-brain ecthtractor?'
'Is Hubert quite… normal?' said Adora Belle, as they climbed the marble staircases towards dinner.
'By the standards of obsessive men who don't get out into the sunlight?' said Moist. 'Pretty normal, I'd say.'
'But he acted as if he'd never seen a woman before!'
'He's just not used to things that don't come with a manual,' said Moist.
'Hah,' said Adora Belle. 'Why is it that only men get like that?'
Earns a tiny wage working for golems, thought Moist. Puts up with graffiti and smashed windows because of golems. Camps out in wildernesses, argues with powerful men. All for golems. But he didn't say anything, because he'd read the manual.
They had reached the managerial floor. Adora Belle sniffed. 'Smell that? Isn't that just wonderful?' she said. 'Wouldn't it turn a rabbit into a carnivore?'
'Sheep's head,' said Moist gloomily.
'Only to make the broth,' said Adora Belle. 'All the soft wobbly bits get taken out first. Don't worry. You've just been put off by the old joke, that's all'
'What old joke?'
'Oh, come on! A boy goes into a butcher's shop and says: "Mum says can we please have a sheep's head and you're to leave the eyes in 'cos it's got to see us through the week." You don't get it? It's using "see" in the sense of "to last" and also in the sense of, well, to see…'
'I just think it's a bit unfair to the sheep, that's all.'
'Interesting,' said Adora Belle. 'You eat nice anonymous lumps of animals but think it's unfair to eat the other bits? You think the head goes off thinking: at least he didn't eat me? Strictly speaking, the more we eat of an animal the happier its species should be, since we wouldn't need to kill so many of them.'
Moist pushed open the double doors, and the air was full of wrongness again.
There was no Mr Fusspot. Normally he'd be waiting in his in-tray, ready to greet Moist with a big slobbery welcome. But the tray was empty.
The room seemed larger, too, and this was because it also contained no Gladys.
There was a little blue collar on the floor. The smell of cooking filled the air.
Moist ran down the passage to the kitchen where the golem was standing solemnly by the stove, watching the rattling lid of a very large pot. Grubby foam slid down and dripped on to the stove.
Gladys turned when she saw Moist. 'I Am Cooking Your Dinner, Mr Lipwig.'
The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist's inner eyeballs.
'Could you just put the ladle down and step away from the pot, please?' said Adora Belle, suddenly beside him.
'I Am Cooking Mr Lipwig's Dinner,' said Gladys, with a touch of defiance. The scummy bubbles, it seemed to Moist, were getting bigger.
'Yes, and it looks as if it's nearly done,' said Adora Belle. 'So I Would Like To See It, Gladys.'
There was silence.
'Gladys?'
In one movement the golem handed her the ladle and stood back, half a ton of living clay moving as lightly and silently as smoke.
Cautiously, Adora Belle lifted the pot's lid and plunged the ladle into the seething mass.
Something scratched at Moist's boot. He looked down into the worried goldfish eyes of Mr Fusspot.
Then he looked back at what was rising out of the pot, and realized that it was at least thirty seconds since he'd last drawn breath.
Peggy came bustling in. 'Oh, there you are, you naughty boy!' she said, picking up the little dog. 'Would you believe it, he got all the way down to the cold room!' She looked around, brushing hair out of her eyes. 'Oh, Gladys, I did tell you to move it on to the cool plate when it started to thicken!'
Moist looked at the rising ladle, and in the flood of relief various awkward observations scrambled to be heard.
I've been in this job less than a week. The man I really depend on has run away screaming. I'm going to be exposed as a criminal. That's a sheep's head…
And — thank you for the thought, Aimsbury — it's wearing sunglasses.
Chapter 9
Cribbins fights his teeth — Theological advice — 'That's what I call entertainment' — Mr Fusspot's magic toy — Sir Joshua's books — Breaking in to banking — The minds of policemen — What about the gold? — Cribbins warms up — The return of Professor Flead, unfortunately — Moist counts his blessings — A werewolf revealed — Splot: it does you good — Time to pray
'I'M AFRAID I HAVE TO close the office now, reverend.' The voice of Ms Houser broke into Cribbins's dreams. 'We open up again at nine o'clock tomorrow,' it added, hopefully.
Cribbins opened his eyes. The warmth and the steady ticking of the clock had lulled him into a wonderful doze.
Ms Houser was standing there, not gloriously naked and pink as so recently featured in the reverie, but in a plain brown coat and an unsuitable hat with feathers in it.
Suddenly awake, he fumbled urgently in his pocket for his dentures, not trusting them with the custody of his mouth while he slept. He turned his head away in a flurry of unaccustomed embarrassment, as he fought to get them in, and then fought again to get them in and the right way up. They always fought back. In desperation he wrenched them out and banged them sharply on the arm of the chair once or twice to break their spirit before ramming them into his mouth once more.
'Wshg!' said Cribbins, and slapped the side of his face. 'Why, thank you, ma'am,' he said, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief. 'I am sorry about that, but I'm a martyr to them, I shwear.'
'I didn't like to disturb you,' Ms Houser went on, her horrified expression fading. 'I'm sure you needed your sleep.'
'Not sleeping, ma'am, but contemplating,' said Cribbins, standing up. 'Contemplating the fall of the unrighteous and the elevation of the godly. Is it not said that the last shall be first and the first shall be last?'
'You know, I've always been a bit worried about that,' said Ms Houser. 'I mean, what happens to the people who aren't first but aren't really last, either. You know… jogging along, doing their best?' She strolled towards the door in a manner which, not quite as subtly as she thought, invited him to accompany her.
'A conundrum indeed, Berenice,' said Cribbins, following her. 'The holy texts don't mention it, but I have no doubt that…' His forehead creased. Cribbins was seldom troubled by religious questions, and this one was pretty difficult. He rose to it like a born theologian. 'I have no doubt that they will be found shtill jogging along, but possibly in the opposite direction!
'Back towards the Last?' she said, looking worried.
'Ah, dear lady, remember that they will by then be the First.'
'Oh yes, I hadn't thought of it like that. That's the only way it could work, unless of course the original First would wait for the Last to catch up.'
'That would be a miracle indeed,' said Cribbins, watching her lock the door behind them. The evening air was sharp and unwelcoming after the warmth of the newspaper room, and made the prospect
of another night in the flop-house in Monkey Street seem doubly unappealing. He needed his own miracle right now, and he had a feeling that one was shaping up right here.
'I expect it's very hard for you, reverend, finding a place to stay,' Ms Houser said. He couldn't make out her expression in the gloom.
'Oh, I have faith, shister,' he said. 'If Om does not come, He schends— Arrg!' And at a time like this! A spring had slipped! It was a judgement!
But agonizing as it was, it might yet have its blessing. Ms Houser was bearing down on him with the look of a woman determined to do good at any price. Oh, it hurt, though; it had snapped right across his tongue.
A voice behind him said: 'Excuse me, I couldn't help noticing… Are you Mr Cribbins, by any chance?'
Enraged by the pain in his mouth, Cribbins turned with murder in his heart, but 'That's Reverend Cribbins, thank you,' said Ms Houser, and his fists unclenched.
"Shme,' he muttered.
A pale young man in an old-fashioned clerk's robe was staring at him. 'My name is Heretofore,' he said, 'and if you are Cribbins I know a rich man who wants to meet you. It could be your lucky day.'
'Ish zat sho?' muttered Cribbins. 'And if zat man ish called Coshmo, I want to meet him. It could be hish lucky day, too. Ain't we the lucky onesh!'
'You must have had a moment of dread,' said Moist, as they relaxed in the marble-floored sitting room. At least Adora Belle relaxed. Moist was searching.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said as he opened a cupboard.
'Golems weren't built to be free. They don't know how to handle… stuff.'
'They'll learn. And she wouldn't have hurt the dog,' said Adora Belle, watching him pace the room.
'You weren't sure. I heard the way you were talking to her. "Put down the ladle and turn around slowly" sort of thing.' Moist pulled open a drawer.
'Are you looking for something?'
'Some bank keys. There should be a set of them somewhere around.'
Adora Belle joined in. It was that or argue about Gladys. Besides, the suite had a great many drawers and cupboards, and it was something to do while dinner was prepared.
'What is this key for?' she asked, after a mere few seconds. Moist turned. Adora Belle held up a silvery key on a ring.
'No, there'll be a lot more than that,' said Moist. 'Where did you find it, anyway?'
She pointed to the big desk. 'I just touched the side here and— Oh, it didn't do it this time…'
It took Moist more than a minute to find the trigger that slid the little drawer out. Shut, it disappeared seamlessly into the grain of the wood.
'It must be for something important,' he said, heading for another desk. 'Maybe the rest of the keys were kept somewhere else. Just try it on anything. I've only been camping here, really. I don't know what's in half of these drawers.'
He returned to a bureau and was sifting through its contents when he heard a click and creak behind him and Adora Belle said, in a rather flat voice: 'You did say Sir Joshua entertained young ladies up here, right?'
'Apparently, yes. Why?'
'Well, that's what I call entertainment.'
Moist turned. The door of a heavy cupboard stood wide open. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'What's all that for?'
'You are joking?'
'Well, yes, all right. But it's all so… so black.'
'And leathery,' said Adora Belle. 'Possibly rubbery, too.'
They advanced on the museum of inventive erotica just revealed. Some of it, freed at last from confinement, unfolded, slid or, in a few cases, bounced on to the floor.
'This…' Moist prodded something, which went spoing!… 'is, yes, rubbery. Definitely rubbery.'
'But all this here is pretty much frilly,' said Adora Belle. 'He must have run out of ideas.'
'Either that or there were no more ideas to have. I think he was eighty when he died,' said Moist, as a seismic shift caused some more piles to slide and slither downwards.
'Well done him,' said Adora Belle. 'Oh, and there's a couple of shelves of books, too,' she went on, investigating the gloom at the back of the cupboard. 'Just here, behind the rather curious saddle and the whips. Bedtime reading, I assume.'
'I don't think so,' said Moist, pulling out a leather-bound volume and flicking it open at a random page. 'Look, it's the old boy's journal. Years and years of it. Good grief, there's decades!
'Let's publish it and make a fortune,' said Adora Belle, kicking the heap. 'Plain covers, of course.'
'No, you don't understand. There may be something in here about Mr Bent! There's some secret…' Moist ran a finger along the spines. 'Let's see, he's forty-seven, he came here when he was about thirteen, and a few months later some people came looking for him. Old Lavish didn't like the look of them— Ah!' He pulled out a couple of volumes. 'These should tell us something, they're around the right time…'
'What are these, and why do they jingle?' Adora Belle said, holding up a couple of strange devices.
'How should I know?'
'You're a man.'
'Well, yes. And? I mean, I don't go in for this stuff.'
'You know, I think it's like horseradish,' said Adora Belle thoughtfully.
'Pardon?'
'Like… well, horseradish is good in a beef sandwich, so you have some. But one day a spoonful just doesn't cut the mustard—'
'As it were,' said Moist, fascinated.
'—and so you have two, and soon it's three, and eventually there's more horseradish than beef, and then one day you realize the beef fell out and you didn't notice.'
'I don't think that is the metaphor you're looking for,' said Moist, 'because I have known you to make yourself a horseradish sandwich.'
'All right, but it's still a good one,' said Adora Belle. She reached down and picked up something from the floor. 'Your keys, I think. What they were doing in there we shall never know, with any luck.'
Moist took them. The ring was heavy with keys of all sizes.
'And what shall we do with all this stuff?' Adora Belle kicked the heap again. It quivered, and somewhere inside something squeaked.
'Put it back in the cupboard?' Moist suggested uncertainly. The pile of passionless frippery had a brooding, alien look, like some sea monster of the abyss that had been dragged unceremoniously from its native darkness into the light of the sun.
'I don't think I could face it,' said Adora Belle. 'Let's just leave the door open and let it crawl back by itself. Hey!' This was to Mr Fusspot, who'd trotted smartly out of the room with something in his mouth.
'Tell me that was just an old rubber bone,' she said. 'Please?'
'No-o,' said Moist, shaking his head. 'I think that would definitely be the wrong description. I think it was… was… it was not an old rubber bone, is what it was.'
'Now look,' said Hubert, 'don't you think we'd know if the gold had been stolen? People talk about that sort of thing! I'm pretty certain it's a fault in the crossover multivalve, right here.' He tapped a thin glass tube.
'I don't think the Glooper ith wrong, thur,' said Igor gloomily.
'Igor, you realize that if the Glooper is right then I'll have to believe there is practically no gold in our vaults?'
'I believe the Glooper ith not in error, thur.' Igor took a dollar out of his pocket and walked over to the well.
'If you would be tho good ath to watch the "Lotht Money" column, thur?' he said, and dropped the coin into the dark waters. It gleamed for a moment as it sank beyond the pockets of Mankind.
In one corner of the Glooper's convoluted glass tubing a small blue bubble drifted up, dawdling from side to side as it rose, and burst on the surface with a faint 'gloop'.
'Oh dear,' said Hubert.
The comic convention, when two people are dining at a table designed to accommodate twenty, is that they sit at either end. Moist and Adora Belle didn't try it, but instead huddled together. Gladys stood at the other end, a napkin over one arm, her eyes two sullen glows.
Th
e sheep skull didn't help Moist's frame of mind at all. Peggy had arranged it as a centrepiece, with flowers around it, but the cool sunglasses were getting on his nerves.
'How good is a golem's hearing?' he said.
'Extremely,' said Adora Belle. 'Look, don't worry, I have a plan.'
'Oh, good.'
'No, seriously. I'll take her out tomorrow'.
'Can't you just—' Moist hesitated, and then mouthed: 'change the words in her head?'
'She's a free golem!' said Adora Belle sharply. 'How would you like it?'
Moist remembered Owlswick and the turnip. 'Not much,' he admitted.
'With free golems you should change minds by persuasion. I think I can do that.'
'Aren't your golden golems due to arrive tomorrow?'
'I hope so.'
'It's going to be a busy day. I'm going to launch paper money and you're going to march gold through the streets.'
'We couldn't leave them underground. Anyway, they might not be golden. I'll go and see Flead in the morning.'
'We will go and see him. Together!'
She patted Moist's arm. 'Never mind. There could be worse things than golden golems.'
'I can't think what they are,' said Moist, a phrase that he later regretted. 'I'd like to take people's minds off gold—'
He stopped, and stared at the sheep, which stared back in a calm, enigmatic way. For some reason Moist felt it should have a saxophone and a little black beret.
'Surely they looked in the vault,' he said aloud.
'Who looked?' said Adora Belle.
'That's where he'd go. The one thing you can depend on, right? The foundation of all that's worthy?'
'Who'd go?'
'Mr Bent is in the gold vault!' said Moist, standing up so quickly that his chair fell over. 'He's got all the keys!'
'Sorry? Is this the man who went haywire after making a simple mistake?'
'That's him. He's got a Past.'
'One of those with a capital P?'
'Exactly. Come on, let's get down there!'
'I thought we were going to have a romantic evening?'
'We will! Right after we get him out!'
Making Money d-36 Page 25
