Going Postal
Traduction: [ Google | Babelfish ]
Catégories : [ Livres/Discworld ]
© Amazon.fr
Moist von Lipwig, a con artists, is condemned to be hanged, but his death is faked by the Patrician who puts him in charge of Ankh-Morpork's Post Office which has been closed for many years. With the help of an old Postman who still lives in the building and his assistant, they start by delivering the tons of mail which had been accumulated in the building, filling most rooms and corridors. Moist hires golems as postmen, because they work without interruption and don't mind dog bites. Meanwhile, the Grand Trunk Company, who had acquired the clacks network in dubious circumstances and is running it without pause nor maintenance in order to make the most money out of it, doesn't like the Post Office to be reopened. But since the Grand Trunk is prohibitively expensive and ceases functioning at least once a week, people start to use mail again. Moist invents the post stamp, which turns out to be very lucrative when people start collecting stamps. Moist also discovers that parts of the failures of the Grand Trunk are caused by the “Smoking Gnu”, which turns out to be a group of three crackers who have found a way to break clacks towers by sending a specific message, and not the spirit of the dead clacksmen after all. In the end, Moist challenges the Grand Trunk Company to send a message to Genua, two-thousand miles away. By mail coach it will take a couple of months, but Moist manages to get the people to support him. Thanks to the Smoking Gnu, he also manages to replace the message sent to Genua by clacks with a text of his own, accusing the Company to have swindled the creators of the clacks. There is no actually proof, but the message received in Genua is read by a wizard over a kind of magical television system during an official reception at the University and everyone can hear the accusation, which is enough for the Patrician to order a financial investigation.
[ Posté le 6 décembre 2009 à 19:12 | 1 commentaire | lien permanent ]
