The tacks man called.
You know when you have a lot to do and you really want peace and quiet? That's when the hordes of visitors descend. It's been quiet for weeks and now I'm busy, here they come.
Today it was a small man in a striped suit and bowler hat who called himself the 'tacks man'. Unfortunately all my icicles have melted or I'd have slammed the door and watched through the peephole. Instead, I simply told him I didn't need any tacks.
"No, no," he said. "You misunderstand. I collect tacks."
"Oh. Well, I don't have any. Try the village." I tried to close the door but he stopped it with his hand. A grasping, thin hand with cracked and yellowed nails. I did wonder for a moment if he might be a distant relative but Dumes don't generally look quite so pallid and malnourished.
"I thought I made it clear." I put on my best impression of the Professor which is about 80% haughty and 20% contempt. "There are no tacks for you here. Go away."
"I'm afraid you have a legal obligation to pay me tacks on your earnings." His voice, already shrill, now strained the limits of my range of hearing.
"Huh?"
His lips pursed, or rather, they disappeared inside his mouth so that I thought his nose might touch his chin, like Aunt Demdike's did the time the Slimy Swamp Thing borrowed her teeth.
"Now look," he said, drawing himself up to his full height, a move presumably calculated to make him look impressive but which actually made him look like a stick with a bowl on top, "I am empowered by Her Majesty's Government to collect twenty percent of any money you have earned this year, along with previous years and fines for late payment."
"Now look. I'm busy. Can't you come back another time?" Entertaining lunatics can be fun but really, I have a book to review and an article to write.
"No, I am here to audit your books and collect all tax due. Now."
Confusion took over. Audit my books? I haven't written them all yet. Did he mean the ones in the library? And who was this Herman Jessy Govmint who had empowered him? He didn't look powerful to me. He looked like a streak of tired bacon with a hat on. One word filtered through and touched a memory. Earnings.
"Aaaaah, you mean tax." I nodded vigorously but this time remembered to stop before getting dizzy. "No, you see, I don't actually have any earnings. No income. No need."
His face went through some kind of self-test sequence. His jaw moved up and down, his eyes tried every conceivable direction and his nose flared and contracted. I think, but I'm not sure, that his ears wiggled. His eyebrows went through such convoluted contortions that I'm not sure whether they actually changed places.
Then his voice self-tested. 'Whuh...uh...gah," it said.
"Are you all right? Every bit of your face seems to function but are you still in control of it?"
"No income? No income? No income?" He shook his head, I suppose to unstick his voice. "There is no record of you getting any benefits at this address."
"Well, I have a wife, which I suppose could be seen as some kind of benefit. And a son, which couldn't."
"I mean monetary benefits. Unemployment, that sort of thing."
I puffed out my chest. "I am a Dume. I am not unemployed. in fact, as I told you, I am busy."
His eyes narrowed well past the point where an ordinary person's would be shut. "So you are employed? Then you have an income."
"I am not employed, neither am I unemployed, I am extraordinarily busy and I have no work. I have no income and no need of one." I paused to savour the steam coming from his ears. "And I have no need of tacks."
"Savings." He breathed out a long gasp of air that smelled like old paper. "You must be living on savings."
"I live on money." I frowned at him. "I've never saved anyone."
His body did that thing telescopes do when you've finished with them. When he looked up, his eyes leaked. "You must get the money from somewhere."
"Previous Dumes have provided," I said. "I will add to it in time but for now it is more than enough."
"Aha!" he jumped up so fast his hat rattled. "Gotcha! You have savings and interest on savings is taxable."
Well, you know, I am very interested indeed in the dungeon hoard but I had no idea I was supposed to pay someone called Herman Jessy Guvmint, or rather, the badly constructed homunculus at my door, for that action. I shall take less obvious interest in future.
For now, I solved the problem by inviting bowl-on-a-stick indoors and directing him to the laboratory.
There was even less meat on him than I expected. Perhaps it's just as well. I don't have time for a proper experiment.
