Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

by Terry Pratchett

“My curvy sword at your neck, you unclean son of a dog of the female persuasion!”

There was not, on the whole, a lot of geological excitement. The sinking of continents is usually accompanied by volcanoes, earthquakes and armadas of little boats containing old men anxious to build pyramids and mystic stone circles in some new land where being the possessor of genuine ancient occult wisdom might be expected to attract girls. But the rising of this one caused barely a ripple in the purely physical scheme of things. It more or less sidled back, like a cat who’s been away for a few days and knows you’ve been worrying.

Les caught Akhan’s eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there.

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

On the roof of the Thieves’ Guild a real if rather deceased unlicensed thief turned gently, which shows what you are capable of if you try, or at least if you try stealing without a license.

People’d live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.

He took a handful of corn out of his pocket. The pigeon, obedient to its careful training, settled on his shoulder. In obedience to internal pressures, it relieved itself.

Lord Vetinari looked attentive, because he’d always found that listening keenly to people tended to put them off. And at meetings like this, when he was advised by the leaders of the city, he listened with great care because what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That’s where the things were that they hoped he didn’t know and didn’t want him to find out.

The voice, eventually, came to a stop in the face of Vetinari’s aggressive listening.

“What is the nature of these records and do they tell us who was doing the considering?” said the Patrician. The door opened and Vimes stepped in. “Ah, commander, do take a seat. Continue, Mr. Slant.”

You saw some lad with a face that’d got camels written all over it, and when he opened his mouth it’d turn out he had an Ankhian accent so thick you could float rocks.

“The Commander of the Watch leads the procession in full dress uniform. It’s an ancient custom.” “Me? Walk in front of everyone?” “Indeed. Very . . . civic. As I’m sure you recall. It demonstrates the friendly alliance between the University and the civil government which, I may say, seems to consist of their promising to do anything we ask provided we promise not to ask them to do anything. Anyway, it is your duty. Tradition decrees it. And Lady Sybil has agreed to see to it that you are there with a crisp bright shining morning face.” Vimes took a deep breath. “You asked my wife?” “Certainly. She is very proud of you. She believes you are capable of great things, Vimes. She must be a great comfort to you.”

Constable Shoe looked over the wall in horror. There were about fifty youths in the wide alleyway. Average age in years: about eleven. Average age in cynicism and malevolent evil: about 163.

Constable Shoe wondered if he ought to go and get help, but the man seemed quite at ease. “Er, captain?” he ventured. “Oh, hello, Reg. We were just having a friendly game of football. This is Constable Shoe, lads.” Fifty pairs of eyes said: We’ll remember your face, copper.

Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.

“Please! We’re just robbers and thieves! We’re not bad men!”

She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a

skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows. Except for Carrot. That was almost . . . almost one of the annoying things about him. She suspected he wouldn’t mind if she shaved her head or grew a beard. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t notice, he just wouldn’t mind, and for some reason that was very aggravating.

The young man ripped off a salute—at godsdamn three in the morning, Vimes thought—that would have brought a happy tear to the eye of the most psychotic drill sergeant.

Vimes’s desk was becoming famous. Once there were piles, but they had slipped as piles do, forming this dense compacted layer that was now turning into something like peat. It was said there were plates and unfinished meals somewhere down there. No one wanted to check. Some people said they’d heard movement.

“I think we had better proceed with alacrity, Sir Samuel. I have brought your dress uniform, and your shaving things are by the basin.” “What? What?” “You are due at the University in half an hour. Lady Sybil has vouchsafed to me that if you are not there she will utilize your intestines for hosiery accessories, sir.” “Was she smiling?” said Vimes, staggering to his feet and making his way to the steaming basin on the washstand. “Only slightly, sir.” “Oh gods . . .” “Yes, sir.”

“And you will try to look dignified, won’t you?” said Lady Sybil, adjusting his cloak. “Yes, dear.” “What will you try to look?” “Dignified, dear.” “And please try to be diplomatic.” “Yes, dear.” “What will you try to be?” “Diplomatic, dear.” “You’re using your ‘henpecked’ voice, Sam.” “Yes, dear.” “You know that’s not fair.” “No, dear.” Vimes raised a hand in a theatrical gesture of submission. “All right, all right. It’s just these feathers. And these tights.” He winced and tried to do some surreptitious rearranging in an effort to prevent himself becoming the city’s first hunchgroin. “I mean, supposing people see me?”

It wasn’t proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren’t doing.

“Why has Mr. Ahmed got such a big curved sword slung on his back?” he said. “Ah, you are a policeman, you notice such things—” “It’s hardly a concealed weapon, is it? It’s nearly bigger than him. He’s practically a concealed owner!” “It’s ceremonial,” said the Prince. “And he does fret so if he has to leave it behind.”

“One of the advantages of horses that people often point out,” said Vetinari, after some thought, “is that they very seldom explode. Almost never, in my experience, apart from that unfortunate occurrence in the hot summer a few years ago.”

After all, when you seek advice from someone it’s certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself.

“So he was shot in the back by a man in front of him who could not possibly have used the bow that he didn’t shoot him with from the wrong direction . . .”

The unofficial entrance to the University has always been known only to students. What most students failed to remember was that the senior members of the faculty had also been students once, and also liked to get out and about after the official shutting of the gates. This naturally led to a certain amount of embarrassment and diplomacy on dark evenings.

In the imaginations of the less civically minded the majesty of the rule of law didn’t carry anything like as much weight as the dread of Detritus.

And yet all the time there was this feeling that the greater part of him was always deep, deep inside, looking out. No one could be so simple, no one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent.

“A watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!”

Colon looked awkward, as if the bunched underwear of the past was tangling itself in the crotch of recollection.

Nobby turned. He was being addressed by an elderly lady with a certain turkey-like cast of feature and a capital punishment expression.

my shield,” said Nobby. “No problem there.” “Nobby,” sighed Colon, “you used to come back with your shield, everyone else’s shield, a sack of teeth and fifteen pairs of still-warm boots. On a cart.”

He looked at the face in the mirror. Unfortunately, it was his.

“Not like when we were kids, sarge.” “Not like when we were kids indeed, Nobby.” “People trusted one another in them days, didn’t they, sarge?” “People trusted one another, Nobby.” “Yes, sarge. I know. And people didn’t have to lock their doors, did they?” “That’s right, Nobby. And people were always ready to help. They were always in and out of one another’s houses.” “’sright, sarge,” said Nobby vehemently. “I know no one ever locked their houses down our street.” “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s my point.” “It was ’cos the bastards even used to steal the locks.”

Rust stopped to think again. He had the look of a lawnmower just after the

grass has organized a workers’ collective.

was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make

Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.

The Librarian shyly held out a small, battered green book. Vimes had been expecting something bigger, but he took it anyway. It paid to look at any book the orangutan gave you. He matched you up to books. Vimes supposed it was a knack, in the same way that an undertaker was very good at judging heights.

“’ere,

“’ere, have you got another one of these rockets?” said Nobby, hefting the tube onto his shoulder again. He had the special gleam in his eye that a small man gets when he’s laid his hands on a big, big weapon. “I may have,” said Leonard, and the gleam in his eye was the mad twinkle of the naturally innocent when they think they’re being cunning. “Why don’t we go and see? You see, I was told to fetch you by any means necessary.”

He’d assemble the facts, analyze them, look at them from every angle with an open mind, and find out exactly how Lord Rust had organized it

“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country,” he read. “This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind

This is Mine, and that is Yours. Trespass on Mine, and you’ll get Yours.

The only attempt ever to set up a printing press in Ankh-Morpork had ended in a mysterious fire and the death by suicide of the luckless printer. Everyone knew it was suicide because he’d left a note. The fact that this had been engraved on the head of a pin was considered an irrelevant detail.

“Ah, Captain Jenkins! This is your lucky day!” The captain looked up from the rope he was coiling. No one likes being told it’s their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it’s your lucky day, something bad is about to happen.

Odd thing, ain’t it . . . you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”

“Are we entirely ready, sir?” said Lieutenant Hornett, with the special inflection that means “We are not entirely ready, sir.”