Okay, but the fake broomstick is maybe my favorite part of this whole thing…
Summary
Moist is woken by Lord Vetinari, who has seen the paper: The Post Office made a bet that it could deliver faster to Genua than the clacks. (It takes hours to send a clacks to Genua and two months to get there by coach.) It’s an impossible mission, and Vetinari wants to make certain Moist isn’t intending to cheat. Moist begins setting up the run and learns that the Post Office workers are betting everything on him to win, and that the odds are somehow in his favor. The Grand Trunk board get together to make certain that the race goes according to plan, and Mr. Pony warns them that there are people who have figured out how to send messages that break the clacks, which is why they won’t run any other messages during the race. Moist asks Miss Dearheart for help after telling her everything about his past (including being responsible for her losing the job at the bank). She tells him to get onto the roof of the Post Office and pray. He does and meets Mad Al, Sane Alex, and Undecided Adrian, who claim to be pigeon fanciers, but Moist can see that’s not the case—they’re the Smoking Gnu. Two of them worked for the Grand Trunk and one had been an alchemist. They’d tried to work for the Second Trunk before John Dearheart died.
Buy the Book
Under the Smokestrewn Sky
The group call themselves “crackers” because they crack the system of the clacks. They can break the clacks with the right codes sent, but Gilt and Pony have everything locked up for the race, so they won’t be able to help Moist. They do have a code that might bring down every tower if they could get close, called the Woodpecker. Moist tells them that he can manage the people bit, if they’re willing to try. The only problem Moist has is that he knows bad things will happen if the clacks are truly down for months. When Moist wakes up the next afternoon, he thinks he knows how to make the plan work, well and truly, to destroy Reacher Gilt. He finds Miss Dearheart in Dolly Sisters and asks for any paperwork she has from her father’s end of the Grand Trunk. She insists this will do no good, but Moist is adamant about it, even though he tells her that she shouldn’t trust him. Alex finds Moist and tells him that they can’t make the plan work unless Moist can stall the race a half hour or so because they need darkness, so Moist sets about doing all of this paperwork before he leaves. He then saunters down to Sator Square very slowly to find the crowd, wizards (who have selected the message to be sent), and Mr. Pony all waiting to begin.
More time still has to be killed, so Moist continues to stall, giving the Grand Trunk a head start to code their message, since there are images in it. This brings Reacher Gilt out in a huff, insisting that the Post Office get moving… only he spots a broom painted with stars on the coach (as Moist asked Mr. Pump to make for him), and insists the Post Office not be allowed to use a magic broom. Moist contests the Grand Trunk’s use of horses between the towers when they break down, then: If it’s meant to be their equipment against one another, he can only use the coach, and the clacks can only use the towers. He then ropes Reacher Gilt into a personal wager of one-hundred thousand dollars, and asks Miss Dearheart to marry him—she says “not yet.” By the time he leaves, Gilt is livid and the crowd is happy. Moist gets to the Smoking Gnu’s old wizard tower setup and tells them that they won’t be sending the Woodpecker because destroying the towers won’t actually stop Gilt. But he thinks he has a message that might, if they send it along. Then Moist heads back into the city to the banquet at the Unseen University where they’ve set up an omniscope to talk to a wizard stationed there. He says that he’s gotten a clacks that is a message from the dead, and reads it out loud. Vetinari demands an investigation immediately and has Vimes lock down the premises.
Vetinari happily uses his status as a tyrant to shut down the Grand Trunk and seize its assets to get to the bottom of things, letting Vimes arrest the board—excepting Reacher Gilt, who is nowhere to be found. He then stops Moist from leaving and offers him a lift back to the Post Office. He suggests that the city take over the Grand Trunk, but Moist is adamant that it be given back to the people who created it. Vetinari wonders what their investigation will turn up… and tells Moist to make certain that no one is still in the old wizard tower. Mr. Pump is given new instructions—Moist assumes that he’s been tasked with hunting down Gilt and thinks of skipping town, but knows that he won’t. He also knows that he feels horrible for fooling everyone. Adora Belle comes in to ask him about what he did, and he realizes that he can continue with this life indefinitely, just so long as he believes he can leave whenever he wants. Finance works its magic to prevent banks from going under as the extent of the Grand Trunk’s thievery is discovered. Vetinari has Reacher Gilt brought in and offers to let him run the Royal Mint, the same manner of deal given to Moist. Gilt chooses to walk out the door to his death.
Commentary
It’s pretty astounding, when you get right down to it. Vetinari took a consummate confidence man and turned him into a truly dedicated public servant.
And not even intentionally, on Moist’s part, to be fair. It’s just relevant that he realizes the only true way to bring down Reacher Gilt is to use law and politics and public perception. There’s a bit of profound wisdom tied up in there, as well: Don’t break the system if it can be fixed.
It’s a difficult one for people to internalize because, well, it’s hard to believe that most systems made by people can be fixed. And it doesn’t sound as flashy, right? “Let’s put in some endless hard work to sort out this mess” isn’t anywhere near as sexy as “Burn it all down!” But the key lesson in this book has been Moist learning that doing what you please—even when you have no ill intentions—can always hurt someone. It’s kind of impossible to be a person fullstop without hurting people in some small way because we’re that interconnected. But you can prevent the big hurts, the major missteps, by remembering the likely collateral damage inherent in big chaotic plans. (Which is hard for me to say, as I’m generally in favor of those sorts of things.)
So Moist has the chance to bring down the entire clacks system, but realizes that won’t hit the right people. What will is turning the right people over to higher authorities and taking them apart piece by piece with laws and finance and public humiliation. It doesn’t feel as successful, but that’s what will get the job done.
And because this is the Discworld, we do get some Grade A drama out of it anyway: Poor Collabone reading the message aloud as people bark at him to stop and start, the board folding like a clapboard dollhouse, Vetinari going into Full Tyrant Mode and happily siccing Vimes on all of the commander’s least favorite people (it was a good day for them; they got to have fun). Reacher Gilt choosing death over public service. We get to enjoy the fallout in this instance, something that rarely happens in our own world.
Moist finally figures out what will keep him on this path, however: reminding himself that he can leave whenever he wants to. Ultimately, what he wants is the knowledge that he still has a choice. (That he ever did, really, as Vetinari’s initial gambit was a choice that wasn’t one.) And it always gets me because this need isn’t as specific to Moist as it reads at first glance.
Think about it—isn’t that what everyone would probably wish for, if they could get it? How many people get to feel like they could walk away from their job and truly start over or try something different if they needed to right now? Guaranteed that it’s not a high number, and it’s strange to realize that Moist von Lipwig has managed to eke out better options than most. The narrative puts it to us as though this is an option he needs and finds because he’s a conman, but there’s a far more universal desire at work here.
It occurs to me, also, that Moist and Adora Belle are sort of the platonic ideal of the woman-who-likes-bad-boys type of couple. (Okay, he’s not a “bad boy” so much as he’s a problem and needs some moral untwisting.) I can fix him is the joke, right? Adora Belle gets to say, he fixed himself, thanks. Or maybe, the Patrician fixed him for me. (It’s sort of both.) She never really has to do any work on his behalf, and I appreciate that oh-so-very much.
Asides and little thoughts:
- The omniscope picking up a fiery eye that turns out to be Devious Collabone with an allergy… the book did come out the year after the Lord of the Rings trilogy finished up, so it was an immediate reference in addition to just being a real good Eye of Sauron joke.
- All of the little hacking tidbits are great with the Smoking Gnu crew, as are the similarities between the clacks system and software coding. I sort of wish we’d gotten at least one more section with the group of kids working the tower, though. Felt like we needed a little more of them in the story to work properly.
- Discworld fans love to use the GNU marker as a way of remembering their own dear departed. Just a genuinely lovely fandom thing to remember in moments where it’s needed. Speaking of which… GNU Uncle David.
Pratchettisms:
“No, of course you haven’t,” said Lord Vetinari and gave him what could only be called… a look.
Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.
And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics had come this… thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight.
It was good to see the fine old traditions of idiot bigotry being handed down in a no-good-at-all kind of way.
This, it turned out, is because “nothing to see” is what most of the universe consists of, and many a wizard has peacefully trimmed his beard while gazing into the dark heart of the cosmos.
It wasn’t a very loud word, but it had an effect rather like that of a black drop of ink in a glass of clear water.
Next up is Thud! (after a one-week pause). We’ll read up to:
“Just remember you’re a copper, will you?” he said.
