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The goblin experience of the world is the cult or perhaps religion of Unggue. In short, it is a remarkably complex resurrection-based religion founded on the sanctity of bodily secretions. Its central tenet runs as follows: everything that is expelled from a goblin’s body was clearly once part of them and should, therefore, be treated with reverence and stored properly so that it can be entombed with its owner in the fullness of time.
A moment’s distasteful thought will tell us that this could not be achieved by any creature, unless in possession of great wealth, considerable storage space and compliant neighbors.
“Oh, well done, Drumknott, I shall make a cynic of you yet!
Lord Vetinari cleared his throat and continued, “I quote Pastor Oats again, Drumknott: ‘I must say that goblins live on the edge, often because they have been driven there. When nothing else can survive, they do. Their universal greeting is, apparently, “Hang” which means “Survive.”
Let it be said here that those who live their lives where life hangs by less than a thread understand the dreadful algebra of necessity, which has no mercy and when necessity presses in extremis, well, that is when the women need to make the unggue pot called “soul of tears,” the most beautiful of all the pots, carved with little flowers and washed with tears.’”
“You know my position, Drumknott. I have no particular objection to people taking substances that make them feel better, or more contented or, for that matter, see little dancing purple fairies—or even their god if it comes to that. It’s their brain, after all, and society can have no claim on it, providing they’re not operating heavy machinery at the time. However, to sell drugs to trolls that actually make their heads explode is simply murder, the capital crime.
There was no getting away from it: ultimately, in all police work, there was a definite possibility that the manure would hit the windmill.
“I suppose there’s no chance at all that I’ll be let off?” Sergeant Littlebottom looked concerned. “I’m sorry, sir, I think there’s no appeal. Officially Captain Carrot will relieve you of your badge at noon.” Vimes thumped his desk and exploded. “I don’t deserve this treatment after a lifetime of dedication to the city!” “Commander, if I may say so, you deserve a lot more.”
It was all about health, of course. It was a conspiracy. Why did they never find a vegetable that was bad for you, hey? And what was so wrong with onion gravy anyway? It had onions in it, didn’t it? They made you fart, didn’t they? That was good for you, wasn’t it? He was sure he had read that somewhere.
Two weeks holiday with every meal overseen by his wife.
Vimes hadn’t argued. There was no point in arguing with Sybil, because even if you thought that you’d won, it would turn out, by some magic unavailable to husbands, that you had, in fact, been totally misinformed.
He felt like a man banished. But, to look on the bright side, there was bound to be some horrible murder or dreadful theft in the city which for the very important purposes of morale, if nothing else, would require the presence of the head of the Watch. He could but hope.
Vetinari’s battle with the chief crossword compiler of the Ankh-Morpork Times was well known.
Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”
Vimes spent the time listening for the sound of overtaking horsemen from the city bringing much-to-be-desired news of dire catastrophe. Usually Ankh-Morpork could supply this on an almost hourly basis but now it was singularly failing to deliver its desperate son in his hour of vegetation.
Willikins was definitely not a policeman, because most policemen don’t know how to glass up somebody with a broken bottle without hurting their hands or how to make weapons of limited but specific destruction out of common kitchen utensils.
Vimes trusted Willikins. He didn’t trust many people. Too many years as a copper made you rather discriminating in that respect.
Lady Sybil knew her husband in the way people living next door to a volcano get to know the moods of their neighbor. The important thing is to avoid the bang.
It should not be possible to achieve the effect of alcohol in a drink without including alcohol, but among the skills that Willikins had learned, or possibly stolen, over the years was the ability to mix out of common household ingredients a totally soft drink that nevertheless had very nearly everything you wanted in alcohol.
We should be getting along, commander. I’m told there is chicken salad for lunch.” “Do I like chicken salad?” “Yes, commander, her ladyship tells me that you do.” Vimes gave in. “Then I do.”
After ten minutes of walking, Vimes was lost. Not physically lost but metaphorically, spiritually and peripatetically lost.
He couldn’t help this algebra; it was what you did when you did the job. Even if you didn’t expect trouble, you, well, expected trouble.
As far as Sam Vimes was concerned, he liked tea, but tea was not tea if, even before drinking, you could see the bottom of the cup.
Adamantium is said to be the strongest of all metals, but it would have bent around the patience of Sam Vimes as he said, with every syllable carefully smelted, “Oh, a layabout. And how do you go about snagging such a gentleman, pray?”
Gentility is all very well, but practicality has its uses.
Quite a sophisticated area, too. People actually put tables and chairs out on the pavement and they don’t always all get stolen.
Then, out of nowhere, possibly some deep hole, a thought struck him, just as it had many times before, sometimes in nightmares. “I wonder if any author has thought about the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, the policeman and the mysterious killer, the lawman who must think like a criminal sometimes in order to do his job, and may be unpleasantly surprised at how good he is at such thinking, perhaps. Just an idea, you understand,” he said lamely, and wondered where the hell it had come from.
No, Sam, I just wonder what goes on in your head, that’s all. I mean, I’m sure some people think being a policeman is just a job, but you don’t, do you?
“In point of fact, sir,” said Willikins smoothly, “I am employed by Commander Vimes as a gentleman’s gentleman, and I require this crossbow because sometimes his socks fight back.”
“Willikins?” said Vimes, just as the man had his hand on the doorknob. “You appear to think that my brass knuckles are inferior to yours. Is that so?” Willikins smiled. “You’ve never really agreed with the idea of the spiked ones, have you, sir?”
Vimes did what any prudent husband would do, which was dynamically nothing.
In the same way that Sybil thought that Nobby Nobbs, although a rough diamond, was a good watchman, she thought that Vimes was safer in the company of a man who never moved abroad without the weaponry of the street about his person, and who had once opened a beer bottle with somebody else’s teeth.
A copper should always be willing to learn, and Vimes had learned from Lord Vetinari that you should never react to any comment or situation until you had decided exactly what you were going to do.
Vimes just managed to stop Feeney braining it with his official truncheon, because, once you paid attention, the goblin was using words, and the words were: Ice! Ice! We want just ice! Demand! Demand just ice! Right? Just ice!
The creature hobbled to the door and looked up at the glowering chief constable and then turned to Vimes with an expression that bored into the man’s face and said very deliberately, “Just ice? Mr. Po-leess-maan?”
And again Vimes remembered the darkness and the thirst for vengeance, in fact vengeance itself made sapient and hungry.
Time to be a real copper, lad. Do the right thing and fudge the paperwork afterward, like I do.”
He thought, Well, you all condone smuggling when the right people are doing it because they’re chums, and when they aren’t they’re heavily fined. You apply one law for the poor and none for the rich, my dear, because the poor are such a nuisance.
“But it was not illegal,” said his wife icily. Her husband didn’t move, but in some ineffable sense he was suddenly taller. “I think things got a bit tangled: you see, you thought about things as being legal or illegal. Well, I’m just a soldier and never was a very good one, but it’s my opinion you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.
To Lord Vetinari, Commander Vimes had put forward three defenses. The first was that both of them had an enviable knowledge of the city and its inhabitants, official and otherwise, that rivaled Vimes’s own.
The second was the traditional urinary argument. It was better to have them inside pissing out than outside pissing in. It was at least easy to keep an eye on them.
And not least, oh my word not least, they were lucky. Many a crime had been solved because of things that had fallen on them, tried to kill them, tripped one of them up, been found floating in their lunch an...
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What was the other thing he had seen posh types do? Oh yes, you had to roll it in your fingers and hold it up to your ear. He had no idea why this had to be done, but he did it anyway. And swore. And dropped it on the ground . . .
Vimes had acquired . . . a companion. The dwarfs had one name for it: the Summoning Dark. And they had any amount of explanations for what it was: a demon, a lost god, a curse, a blessing, vengeance made flesh, except that it had no flesh other than the flesh it borrowed, a law unto itself, a killer but sometimes a protector, or something that no one could find the right words for. It could travel through rock, water, air and flesh and, for all Vimes knew, through time. After all, what limits can you put on a creature made of nothing?
That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we’ll never know.”
Therefore, I’m proud to be a colleague of yours, Sergeant Colon, and I hope you’ll forgive me when I tell you that there are times when you should shut up and get some new ideas in that big fat head of yours rather than constantly reheating the old ones.
“Well, sir, I surmise that it is dead, sir.” “And how do you deduce this, please?” “Er, its head isn’t attached to its body, sir?”
“I meant, Mr. Po-leess-maan, thank you for believing that goblins have names. My name is Sound of the Rain on Hard Ground. She was my second wife.”
“You are the gods’ own fool, Commander Vimes! No, I’m not teaching them to be fake humans, I’m teaching them how to be goblins, clever goblins!
They’re like an iceberg, commander: most of them is where you can’t see or understand, and I’m teaching Tears of the Mushroom and some of her friends so that they may be able to speak to people like you, who think they are dumb.
