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There was someone to do nearly everything for him, but there were some things a man ought to do for himself, and one of them was shaving.
Vimes had protested that he’d spent too many years trudging the night-time streets to be happy about anyone else wielding a blade anywhere near his neck, but the real reason, the unspoken reason, was that he hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them.
“I suspect on reflection, that it was foolish of me to choose the roof,” said the assassin. “Probably,” said Vimes. He’d spent several hours a few weeks ago sawing through joists and carefully balancing the roof tiles. “I should have dropped off the wall and used the shrubbery.” “Possibly,” said Vimes. He’d set a bear-trap in the shrubbery.
Sergeant Colon is going to retire at the end of the month, he says Mrs. Colon wants him to buy a farm, he says he is looking forward to the peace of the country and being Close to Nature,
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.
“Look at this dent here,” said Hopkinson. “It’s quite ruined the crust!” AND YOUR SKULL TOO, said Death.
MR. HOPKINSON, ARE YOU FULLY AWARE THAT YOU ARE DEAD? “Dead?” trilled the curator. “Oh, no. I can’t possibly be dead. Not at the moment. It’s simply not convenient.
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
Even so, it paid to be careful. Vimes was good at making the kind of rich enemies who could afford to employ assassins. The assassins had to be lucky only once, but Vimes had to be lucky all the time.
“I can’t say I like dwarfs much, Littlebottom. But I don’t like trolls or humans either, so I suppose that’s OK.
I expect you to work to the job not the clock. There’s some mythical creature called, ‘overtime,’ only no one’s even seen its footprints.
Mister Vimes is lettin’ me run a”—Detritus concentrated—“pub-lic a-ware-ness campaign tellin’ people what happens to buggers who sells it to kids . . .” He waved a hand at a large and rather crudely done poster on the wall. It said: “SLAB: JUS’ SAY ‘AARRGHAARRGHPLEEASSENNONONOUGH.’”
“Pray enter.” For some reason the words re-spelled themselves in Vimes’s hindbrain as “prey, enter.”
“Sorry . . . let me make sure I understand this. Corporal Nobbs . . . my Corporal Nobbs . . . is the Earl of Ankh?”
It was Carrot who’d suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to “serve the community” by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork’s crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get into it sideways.*
Bread’s his life. He wrote the definitive work on offensive baking.
Most of them were the classic cowpat-like shape, an echo of their taste, but there were also buns, close-combat crumpets, deadly throwing toast and a huge dusty array of other shapes devised by a race that went in for food-fighting in a big and above all terminal way.
“Did she touch him?” he said. “She says not, sir.” Which meant the old priest had somehow achieved the neatest death Vimes had ever seen. His hands were crossed on his chest. His eyes had been closed.
Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool. But the only thing more difficult than getting him to grasp an idea was getting him to let go of it.*
It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning.
Rumor is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows—sometimes it doesn’t even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.
“What about Lord Vetinari?” said Carrot. “I’m putting my best man on that,” said Vimes. “Trustworthy, reliable, knows the ins and outs of this place like the back of his hand. I’m handling it, in other words.”
“But you’ve got only a sword and I haven’t even got that!” “Don’t worry, we won’t need weapons.” “Oh, good.” “They wouldn’t be any use.” “Oh.”
MEN AND TROLLS HERE ON EVERY SHIFT, THEY WILL TELL YOU. DURING THE DAY I MUST SLAUGHTER, DRESS, QUARTER, JOINT AND BONE, AND AT NIGHT WITHOUT REST I MUST MAKE SAUSAGES AND BOIL UP THE LIVERS, HEARTS, TRIPES, KIDNEYS AND CHITTERLING. “That’s awful,” said Cheery. The pencil blurred briefly. CLOSE.
The Thieves’ Guild was complaining that Commander Vimes had said publicly that most thefts were committed by thieves.
That’s just ordinary rebellion.” “What do you mean, ‘rebellion’?” “Dumbly obeying orders, sir. You know . . . someone shouts at it ‘Go and make teapots,’ so it does. Can’t be blamed for obeying orders, sir. No one told them how many. No one wants them to think, so they get their own back by not thinking.” “They rebel by working?” “It’s just a thought, sir.
“I hope you’re not going to kill anyone,” said Carrot. “That’s up to us!” “Sorry, was I talking to you?” said Carrot. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” said Angua.
Some people were still upright, however. They were the serious drinkers, who drank as if there was no tomorrow and rather hoped this would be the case.
As her tutors had said, there were two signs of a good alchemist: the Athletic and the Intellectual. A good alchemist of the first sort was someone who could leap over the bench and be on the far side of a safely thick wall in three seconds, and a good alchemist of the second sort was someone who knew exactly when to do this.
“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 explicit jokes in the Watch House.”
“Mind you, that seems to have ended now,” said Angua. “Why? Did you complain?” “No, after I joined in it all seemed to stop,” said Angua. “And, you know, they didn’t laugh? Not even when I did the hand gestures too? I thought that was unfair. Mind you, some of them were quite small gestures.”
Because, although trained canines as aids for those bereft of sight, and even of hearing, have frequently been used throughout the universe, Foul Ole Ron was the first person ever to own a Thinking-Brain Dog.
“I hate bloody golems, takin’ our jobs . . .” “We ain’t got jobs.” “See what I mean?”
THE OLD MEN HELPED US! THOU SHALT NOT KILL! CLAY OF MY CLAY! SHAME SORROW.
Something roared, very close by. It was long and low, like a foghorn in serious distress. It was the sound you might hear from a cattleyard on a nervous night, and it went on and on, and then stopped so abruptly it caught the silence unawares.
The sound had done the work of an ice-cold shower and about two pints of black coffee.
No one heard the cry that came back from the dead skull, because there was no mouth to utter it and not even a mind to guide it, but it screamed out into the night: CLAY OF MY CLAY, THOU SHALT NOT KILL! THOU SHALT NOT DIE!
It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities.
sometimes worried Vimes, the way he suspected everything. If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad.
“And, indeed, a man may visit a house of ill—” “Negotiable hospitality,” said Mrs. Palm quickly. “Aye indeed, and be quite confident of not waking up stripped stark naked and beaten black and blue,” said Sick.
“He does have all street-theater players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit,” said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild. “True. But let’s not forget that he has his bad points too. The man is capricious.”
Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He’d tamed it like a dog. He’d taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he’d aimed it at the throat of the world.
“Captain?” said Mr. Slant. “I’m sorry to say his natural talents have thus far not commended him to that extent. He is a corporal. Corporal C. W. St. J. Nobbs.”
For Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t know how poor they were.
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?
There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.
“All hygienically prepared.” “How do you mean, ‘hygienically prepared’?” said Carrot. “The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.”
People put money by. Vimes remembered that. You always put money by, in Cockbill Street. You saved up for a rainy day even if it was pouring already. And you’d die of shame if people thought you could afford only a cheap funeral.
He hated the way his mind worked. A proper human being would have shown respect and quietly walked away. But, as he’d stood among the chilly stones, a horrible apprehension had stolen over him that almost all the answers were in place now, if only he could work out the questions.
The kicks of a man not much more than six inches high should not hurt, but Wee Mad Arthur seemed to have a lot more mass than his size would allow. Being nutted by Arthur was like being hit by a steel ball from a slingshot. A kick seemed to have all the power of one from a large man, but very painfully concentrated into a smaller area.
