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September 4 - November 28, 2023
“Religion is all very well, but what do prophets know about profits, eh? Hmm . . .”
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other.
So that’s your life now, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. A jumped-up copper to the nobs and a nob to the rest, eh?
Letters from his parents were always interesting, being full of mining statistics and exciting news about new shafts and promising seams. All he had to write about were murders and such things as that.
Carrot paused. It said a lot about Captain Carrot that, even after almost two years in Ankh-Morpork, he was still uneasy about “d*mned.”
Every restaurant and eatery in Ankh-Morpork offered free food to Carrot, in the certain and happy knowledge that he would always insist on paying.
In the Dwarf Bread Museum, in Whirligig Alley, Mr. Hopkinson the curator was somewhat excited. Apart from other considerations, he’d just been murdered. But at the moment he was choosing to consider this as an annoying background detail. He’d been beaten to death with a loaf of bread. This is unlikely even in the worst of human bakeries, but dwarf bread has amazing properties as a weapon of offense. Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended. “Look at this dent here,” said Hopkinson. “It’s quite ruined the crust!” AND YOUR SKULL TOO,
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Sergeant Colon went back to his desk, surreptitiously opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He’d been a bit worried about the title—you heard stories about strange folk in the country—but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed.
“You know the gentleman?” Vimes regarded with amazement a serious and positive sentence about Corporal Nobbs that included the word “gentleman.” “Er . . . yes,” he said.
“Apparently there’s going to be a huge firework display after the celebrations next year,” said Carrot. “I like fireworks.” “It beats me why Ankh-Morpork wants to celebrate the fact it had a civil war three hundred years ago,” said Angua, coming back to the here-and-now. “Why not? We won,” said Carrot. “Yes, but you lost, too.” “Always look on the positive side, that’s what I say. Ah, here we are.”
One of the advantages of a life much longer than average was that you saw how fragile the future was. Men said things like “peace in our time” or “an empire that will last a thousand years,” and less than half a lifetime later no one even remembered who they were, let alone what they had said or where the mob had buried their ashes. What changed history were smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen would do the trick.
Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets,
“You know, sometimes I envy you. It must be nice to be a wolf. Just for a while.” “It has its drawbacks.” Like fleas, she thought, as they locked up the museum. And the food. And the constant nagging feeling that you should be wearing three bras at once.
Who was she kidding? It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort.
Rumor is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything.
“His Lordship’s just a bit . . .” Vimes began—then he grabbed Colon and dragged him out of the room. “I reckon he’s been poisoned, Fred, and that’s the truth of it.” Colon looked horrified. “Ye gods! Do you want me to get a doctor?” “Are you mad? We want him to live!”
“Tell me, young man, are you a policeman?” “Er . . . just started, sir.” “You appear to be of the dwarf persuasion.” Cheery didn’t bother to answer. There was no use denying it. Somehow, people could tell if you were a dwarf just by looking at you.
Detritus came in, nodded at Cheery, and looked carefully around the room. Finally he picked up a battered chair. “Dis’ll have to do,” he said. “If he want, I can break der back off’f it.” “What?” said Cheery. “Ole Doughnut said for to get a stool sample,” said Detritus, going out again.
No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept resonated in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were . . . sort of . . . bad on equal terms. What set Vimes’s teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical. But, huh, there was some magic, at that. Ankh-Morpork still seemed to be littered with Royal this and Royal that, little old men who got paid a few pence a week to do a few meaningless chores, like the Master of the King’s Keys
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Strange opinion forc a British knight, Sir Terry
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: “Kings. What a good idea.” Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
When Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp’s Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn’t find slum-dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.
It was easy enough to imagine an ennobled Nobbs. Because where Nobby went wrong was in thinking small. He sidled into places and pinched things that weren’t worth much. If only he’d sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he’d have been a pillar of the community.
And if anything happens to Vetinari, Vimes added to himself as the dejected Carrot went out, no one will be able to say you were anywhere near him.
“I got re-seats,” he said. “Every bit prop’ly paid for.” Angua nodded. It was probably true. Igneous, despite giving the appearance of not being able to count beyond ten without ripping off someone else’s arm, and having an intimate involvement in the city’s complex hierarchy of crime, was known to pay his bills. If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.
Angua sighed. “Vampires, zombies, bogeymen, ghouls, oh my. The und—” She corrected herself. “The differently alive,” she said.
“Sounds almost decent, as gods go.” Visit looked disapproving. “The Cenotines died through five hundred years of waging some of the bloodiest wars on the continent, sir.” “Spare the thunderbolts and spoil the congregation, eh?” said Vimes.
The clash was bringing on her PLT.
And then Carrot had arrived, and suddenly the narrow circuit of their lives had opened up, and there were nearly thirty men (oh, including trolls and dwarfs and miscellaneous) in the Watch now, and they didn’t skulk around keeping out of trouble, they went looking for trouble, and they found it everywhere they looked. Funny, that. As Vetinari had pointed out in that way of his, the more policemen you had, the more crimes seemed to be committed.
Something big and dark leapt down, knocked him to the ground and disappeared into the gloom. Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.
There were other letters. The Community Coordinator of Equal Heights for Dwarfs was demanding that dwarfs in the Watch be allowed to carry an axe rather than the traditional sword, and should be sent to investigate only those crimes committed by tall people. The Thieves’ Guild was complaining that Commander Vimes had said publicly that most thefts were committed by thieves.
Sergeant Colon and Nobby had gone off-duty, to everyone’s relief. Colon in particular had great difficulty with the idea that you went on investigating after someone had confessed. It outraged his training and experience. You got a confession and there it ended. You didn’t go around disbelieving people. You disbelieved people only when they said they were innocent. Only guilty people were trustworthy. Anything else struck at the whole basis of policing.
“’Cos . . . what good’d a lot of moneneney do me, hey?” The clientele looked puzzled. This seemed to be a question on the lines of “Alcohol, is it nice?” or “Hard work, do you want to do it?”
Vimes sat gloomily behind a glass of lemonade. He wanted one drink, and understood precisely why he wasn’t going to have one. One drink ended up arriving in a dozen glasses. But knowing this didn’t make it any better.
Throwing a punch could stop a fight, of course, but in this case it had a quarter of rum, gin, and sixteen chopped lemons floating in it.
“There must be more interesting things. Hair. Clothes. People.” “Good grief. You mean girl talk?” “I don’t know, I’ve never talked girl talk before,” said Cheery. “Dwarfs just talk.” “It’s like that in the Watch, too.” said Angua. “You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle. You’ll soon get the hang of it. And you’ll have to be prepared for sexually
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Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: “Do not fight, or we will kill you.” The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: “If you fight, we’ll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that’s my pike you’re pointing at me. I paid for that shield you’re holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.”
“How do you mean, ‘hygienically prepared’?” said Carrot. “The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.” The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn’t want people going around with ratty hands.
The Patrician prodded at the plate with the air of an explorer in a strange country. “Has someone already eaten this, Vimes?” “No, sir. That’s just how they chop up the food.” “Oh, I see. I thought perhaps the food-tasters were getting over-enthusiastic,” said the Patrician.
“D*mn!” said Carrot, a difficult linguistic feat.
When they were out in the fog Carrot said, “Do you think there’s something a bit . . . odd about Littlebottom?” “Seems like a perfectly ordinary female to me,” said Angua. “Female? He told you he was female?” “She,” Angua corrected. “This is Ankh-Morpork, you know. We’ve got extra pronouns here.”
He must be over one of the numerous streams that flowed through the city, although they had of course been built-over centuries before and were now used—if their existence was even remembered—for those purposes to which humanity had always put clean fresh water; i.e., making it as turbid and undrinkable as possible.
“Give him his pint of beer and a plate of whatever those things with toenails were and he seems as happy as a pig in muck.” “I think that’s somewhat insulting.” “I’m sorry.” “I’ve known some splendid pigs.”
“Dragon did well. I suppose the little tit isn’t really an earl, by any chance?”
Whoa
There was a press of bodies in front of Carrot. He put both hands together and rammed them between a couple of people, and then moved them apart. Grunting and struggling, the crowd opened up like a watercourse in front of the better class of prophet.
Part of her said: Someone has to be very complex indeed to be as simple as Carrot.
“Why do you hate them so much?” he said. “You wouldn’t understand. I really think you wouldn’t understand,” said Angua. “It’s an . . . undead thing. They . . . sort of throw in your face the fact you’re not human.” “But you are human!” “Three weeks out of four. Can’t you understand that, when you have to be careful all the time, it’s dreadful to see things like that being accepted? They’re not even alive. But they can walk around and they never get people passing remarks about silver or garlic . . . up until now, anyway. They’re just machines for doing work!”
Sergeant Colon tried to clean himself up, but trying to clean yourself up with water from the Ankh was a difficult maneuver. The best you could hope for was an all-over gray.
Fred Colon hadn’t reached Vimes’s level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.
It is traditionally the belief of policemen that they can tell what a substance is by sniffing it and then gingerly tasting it, but this practice had ceased in the Watch ever since Constable Flint had dipped his finger into a blackmarket consignment of ammonium chloride cut with radium, said “Yes, this is definitely slab wurble wurble sclup,” and had to spend three days tied to his bed until the spiders went away.
“You wanted me, Commander?” said Cheri. “Oh, yes. Is this arsenic?” said Vimes, handing her the packet. Cheri sniffed at it. “It could be arsenous acid, sir. I’ll have to test it, of course.” “I thought acids sloshed about in jars,” said Vimes. “Er . . . what’s that on your hands?” “Nail varnish, sir.” “Nail varnish?” “Yes, sir.” “Er . . . fine, fine. Funny, I thought it would be green.” “Wouldn’t look good on the fingers, sir.” “I meant the arsenic, Littlebottom.”
