'This was the undercroft of the temple,' said Bent, leading the way.

'Are you telling me this place doesn't just look like a temple?'

'It was built as a temple, yes, but never used as one.'

'Really?' said Moist. 'Which god?'

'None, as it turned out. One of the kings of Ankh commanded it to be built about nine hundred years ago,' said Bent. 'I suppose it was a case of speculative building. That is to say, he had no god in mind.'

'He hoped one would turn up?'

'Exactly, sir.'

'Like blue-tits?' said Moist, peering around. 'This place was a kind of celestial bird box?'

Bent sighed. 'You express yourself colourfully, Mr Lipwig, but I suppose there is some truth there. It didn't work, anyway. Then it got used as storage in case of siege, became an indoor market, and so on, and then Jocatello La Vice got the place when the city defaulted on a loan. It is all in the official history. Isn't the fornication wonderful?'

After quite a lengthy pause, Moist ventured: 'It is?'

'Don't you think so? There's more here than anywhere else in the city, I'm told.'

'Really?' said Moist, looking around nervously. 'Er, do you have to come down here at some special time?'

'Well, in banking hours usually, but we let groups in by appointment.'

'You know,' said Moist, 'I think this conversation has somehow got away from me…'

Bent waved vaguely at the ceiling. 'I refer to the wonderful vaulting,' he said. 'The word derives from fornix, meaning "arch".'

'Ah! Yes? Right!' said Moist. 'You know, I wouldn't be surprised if not many people knew that.'

And then Moist saw the Glooper, glowing among the arches.

Chapter 3

The Glooper — A proper Hubert — One very big mattress — Some observations on tourism — Gladys makes a sandwich — The Blind Letter Office — Mrs Lavish's posterity — An ominous note — Flight planning — An even more ominous note, and certainly more ominous than the first note — Mr Lipwig boards the wrong coach

MOIST HAD SEEN GLASS being bent and blown, and marvelled at the skill of the people who did it — marvelled as only a man can marvel whose sole skill is in bending words. Some of those geniuses had probably worked on this. But so had their counterparts from the hypothetical Other Side, glassblowers who had sold their souls to some molten god for the skill to blow glass into spirals and intersecting bottles and shapes that seemed to be quite close but some distance away at the same time. Water gurgled, sloshed and, yes, glooped along glass tubing. There was a smell of salt.

Bent nudged Moist, pointed to an improbable wooden hatstand, and wordlessly handed him a long yellow oilskin coat and a matching rain hat. He had already donned a similar outfit, and had magically procured an umbrella from somewhere.

'It's the Balance of Payments,' he said, as Moist struggled into the coat. 'He never gets it right.' There was a crash from somewhere, and water droplets rained down on them. 'See?' Bent added.

'What's it doing?' said Moist.

Bent rolled his eyes. 'Hell knows, Heaven suspects,' he said. He raised his voice. 'Hubert? We have a visitor!'

A distant splashing grew louder and a figure appeared around the edge of the glassware.

Rightly or wrongly, Hubert is one of those names you put a shape to. There may well be tall, slim Huberts, Moist would be the first to agree, but this Hubert was shaped like a proper Hubert, which is to say, stubby and plump. He had red hair, unusual, in Moist's experience, in the standard model Hubert. It grew thickly, straight up from his head, like the bristles of a brush; about five inches up, it appeared to have been cut short with the aid of shears and a spirit level. You could have stood a cup and saucer on it.

'A visitor?' said Hubert nervously. 'Wonderful! We don't get many down here!' Hubert wore a long white coat, with a breast pocket full of pencils.

'Really?' said Moist.

'Hubert, this is Mr Lipwig,' said Bent. 'He is here to… learn about us.'

'I'm Moist,' said Moist, stepping forward with his best smile and an extended hand.

'Oh, I'm sorry. We should have hung the raincoats nearer the door,' said Hubert. He looked at Moist's hand as if it was some interesting device, and then shook it carefully. 'You're not seeing us at our best, Mr Lipwick,' he said.

'Really?' said Moist, still smiling. How does the hair stay up like that, he wondered. Does he use glue, or what?

'Mr Lipwig is the Postmaster General, Hubert,' said Bent.

'Is he? Oh. I don't get out of the cellar very much these days,' said Hubert.

'Really?' said Moist, his smile now a bit glassy.

'No, we're so close to perfection, you see,' said Hubert. 'I really think we're nearly there…'

'Mr Hubert believes that this… device is a sort of crystal ball for showing the future,' said Bent, and rolled his eyes.

' Possible futures. Would Mr Lipstick like to see it in operation?' said Hubert, vibrating with enthusiasm and eagerness. Only a man with a heart of stone would have said no, so Moist made a wonderful attempt at indicating that all his dreams were coming true.

'I'd love to,' he said, 'but what does it actually do?'

too late, he saw the signs. Hubert grasped the lapels of his jacket, as if addressing a meeting, and swelled with the urge to communicate, or at least talk at length in the belief that it was the same thing.

'The Glooper, as it is affectionately known, is what I call a quote analogy machine unquote. It solves problems not by considering them as a numerical exercise but by actually duplicating them in a form we can manipulate: in this case, the flow of money and its effects within our society become water flowing through a glass matrix — the Glooper. The geometrical shape of certain vessels, the operation of valves and, although I say so myself, ingenious tipping buckets and flow-rate propellers enable the Glooper to simulate quite complex transactions. We can change the starting conditions, too, to learn the rules inherent in the system. For example, we can find out what happens if you halve the labour force in the city by the adjustment of a few valves, rather than by going out into the streets and killing people.'

'A big improvement! Bravo!' said Moist desperately, and started to clap.

No one joined in. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

'Er, perhaps you would like a less, um, dramatic demonstration?' Hubert volunteered.

Moist nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'Show me… show me what happens when people get fed up with banks,' he said.

'Ah, yes, a familiar one! Igor, set up program five!' Hubert shouted to some figure in the forest of glassware. There was the sound of squeaky screws being turned and the glug of reservoirs being topped up.

'Igor?' said Moist. 'You have an Igor?'

'Oh, yes,' said Hubert. 'That's how I get this wonderful light. They know the secret of storing lightning in jars! But don't let that worry you, Mr Lipspick. Just because I'm employing an Igor and working in a cellar doesn't mean I'm some sort of madman, ha ha ha!'

'Ha ha,' agreed Moist.

'Ha hah hah!,' said Hubert. 'Hahahahahaha!! Ahahaha-hahah!!!!!—'

Bent slapped him on the back. Hubert coughed. 'Sorry about that, it's the air down here,' he mumbled.

'It certainly looks very… complex, this thing of yours,' said Moist, striking out for normality.

'Er, yes,' said Hubert, a little bit thrown. 'And we are refining it all the time. For example, floats coupled to ingenious spring-loaded sluice gates elsewhere on the Glooper can allow changes in the level in one flask to automatically adjust flows in several other places in the system—'

'What's that for?' said Moist, pointing at random to a round bottle suspended in the tubing.