The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  Oddly enough—or at least, oddly enough to William’s expectations of people like Mrs. Arcanum—she wasn’t adverse to dwarfs and trolls. At least, the Clean and Decent ones. Mrs. Arcanum rated Decency above species.

  “It says here fifty-six people were hurt in a brawl,” said Mr. Mackleduff, who by dint of being the longest-surviving lodger acted as a kind of president at mealtimes. He had bought a copy of the Times on his way home from the bakery, where he was night-shift foreman.

  “Fancy,” said Mrs. Arcanum.

  “I think it must have been five or six,” said William.

  “Says fifty-six here,” said Mr. Mackleduff sternly. “In black and white.”

  “It must be right,” said Mrs. Arcanum, to general agreement, “otherwise they wouldn’t let them put it in.”

  “I wonder who’s doing it?” said Mr. Prone, who traveled in wholesale boots and shoes.

  “Oh, they’d be special people for doing this,” said Mr. Mackleduff.

  “Really?” said William.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Mackleduff, who was one of those large men who were instantly expert on anything. “They wouldn’t allow just anyone to write what they like. That stands to reason.”

  So it was in a thoughtful mood that William made his way to the shed behind the Bucket.

  Goodmountain looked up from the stone where he was carefully setting the type for a playbill.

  “There’s a spot of cash for you over there,” he said, nodding to a bench.

  It was mostly in coppers. It was almost thirty dollars.

  William stared at it.

  “This can’t be right,” he whispered.

  “Mr. Ron and his friends kept coming back for more,” said Goodmountain.

  “But…but it was only the usual stuff,” said William. “It wasn’t even anything very important. Just…stuff that happened.”

  “Ah, well, people like to know about stuff that happened,” said the dwarf. “And I reckon we can sell three times as many tomorrow if we halve the price.”

  “Halve the price?”

  “People like to be in the know. Just a thought.” The dwarf grinned again. “There’s a young lady in the back room.”

  In the days when this place had been a laundry, back before the pre–rocking horse age, one area had been partitioned off with some cheap paneling to waist height, to segregate the clerks and the person whose job it was to explain to customers where their socks had gone. Sacharissa was sitting primly on a stool, clutching her handbag to her with her elbows close to her sides in order to expose herself to as little of the grime as possible.

  She gave him a nod.

  Now, why had he asked her to come along? Oh, yes…she was sensible, more or less, and did her grandfather’s books and, frankly, William didn’t meet many literate people. He met the sort to whom a pen was a piece of difficult machinery.

  If she knew what an apostrophe was, he could put up with the fact that she acted as if she was living in a previous century.

  “Is this your office now?” she whispered.

  “I suppose so.”

  “You didn’t tell me about the dwarfs!”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Oh, no. Dwarfs are very law-abiding and respectable, in my experience.”

  William now realized that he was talking to a girl who had never been in certain streets when the bars were closing.

  “I’ve already got two good items for you,” Sacharissa went on, as if imparting State secrets.

  “Er…yes?”

  “My grandfather says this is the longest, coldest winter he can remember.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, he’s eighty. That’s a long time.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the meeting of the Dolly Sisters Baking and Flower Circle Annual Competition had to be canceled last night because the cake table got knocked over. I found out all about it from the secretary, and I’ve written it all down neatly…”

  “Oh? Um. Is that really interesting, do you think?”

  She handed him a page torn from a cheap exercise book.

  He read:

  “The Dolly Sisters Baking and Flower Circle Annual Competition was held in the Reading Room in Lobbin Clout Street, Dolly Sisters. Mrs. H. Rivers was the President. She welcomed all members and commented on the Sumptuous Offerings. Prizes were awarded as follows…”

  William ran his eye down the meticulous list of names and awards.

  “‘Specimen in Jar’?” he queried.

  “That was the competition for dahlias,” said Sacharissa.

  William carefully inserted the word “dahlia” after the word “specimen,” and read on.

  “‘A fine display of Loose Stool Covers’?”

  “Well?”

  “Oh…nothing.” William carefully changed this to “Loose Covers for Stools,” which was barely an improvement, and continued to read with the air of a jungle explorer who might expect any kind of exotic beast to spring out of the peaceful undergrowth. The piece concluded:

  “…however, everyone’s Spirits were Dampened when a naked man, hotly pursued by Members of the Watch, burst through the Window and ran around the Room, causing much Disarray of the Tarts before being Apprehended by the Trifles.

  “The meeting closed at 9 P.M. Mrs. Rivers thanked all Members.”

  “What do you think?” said Sacharissa, with just a hint of nervousness.

  “You know,” said William, in a sort of distant voice, “I think it is quite likely that it would be impossible to improve this piece in any way. Um…what would you say was the most important thing that happened at the meeting?”

  Her hand flew to her mouth in dismay.

  “Oh, yes! I forgot to put that in! Mrs. Flatter won first prize for her sponge! She’s been runner-up for six years, too.”

  William stared at the wall.

  “Well done,” he said. “I should put that in, if I was you. But you could drop in at the Watch House in Dolly Sisters and ask about the naked man—”

  “I shall do no such thing! Respectable women don’t have anything to do with the Watch!”

  “I meant, ask why he was being chased, of course.”

  “But why should I do that?”

  William tried to put words around a vague idea.

  “People will want to know,” he said.

  “But won’t the Watch mind me asking?”

  “Well, they’re our Watch. I don’t see why they should. And perhaps you could find some more really old people to ask about the weather. Who is the oldest inhabitant in the city?”

  “I don’t know. One of the wizards, I expect.”

  “Could you go to the university and find him and ask him if he ever remembers it being colder than this?”

  “Is this where you put things in the paper?” said a voice at the doorway.

  It belonged to a small man with a beaming red face, one of those people blessed with the permanent expression of someone who has just heard a rather saucy joke.

  “Only I grew this carrot,” he went on, “and I reckon it’s grown into a very interesting shape. Eh? What d’you think, eh? Talk about a giggle, eh? I took it down to the pub and everyone was killin’ ’emselves! They said I should put it in your paper!”

  He held it aloft. It was a very interesting shape. And William went a very interesting shade.

  “That’s a very strange carrot,” said Sacharissa, eyeing it critically. “What do you think, Mr. de Worde?”

  “Er…er…you go along to the university, why don’t you? And I’ll see to this…gentleman,” said William, when he felt he could speak again.

  “My wife couldn’t stop laughin’!”

  “What a lucky man you are, sir,” said William, solemnly.

  “It’s a shame you can’t put pictures in your paper, eh?”

  “Yes, but I think I may be in enough trouble already,” said William, opening his notebook.

  When the man and his hilarious vegetable had bee
n dealt with, William wandered out into the printing shop. The dwarfs were talking in a group, around a trapdoor in the floor.

  “Pump’s frozen again,” said Goodmountain. “Can’t mix up any more ink. Old man Cheese says there used to be a well somewhere round here…”

  There was a shout from below. A couple of dwarfs descended the ladder.

  “Mr. Goodmountain, can you think of any reason I should put this in the paper?” said William, handing him Sacharissa’s report of the Flowers and Cookery meeting. “It’s a bit…dull…”

  The dwarf read the copy.

  “There’s seventy-three reasons,” he said. “That’s ’cos there’s seventy-three names. I expect people like to see their names in the paper.”

  “But what about the naked man?”

  “Yeah…shame she didn’t get his name.”

  There was another shout from below.

  “Shall we have a look?” said Goodmountain.

  To William’s complete lack of surprise, the little cellar under the shed was much better built than the shed itself. But then, practically everywhere in Ankh-Morpork had cellars that were once the first or even second or third floors of ancient buildings, built at the time of one of the city’s empires when men thought that the future was going to last forever. And then the river had flooded and brought mud with it, and walls had gone higher and, now, what Ankh-Morpork was built on was mostly Ankh-Morpork. People said that anyone with a good sense of direction and a pickax could cross the city underground by simply knocking holes in walls.

  Rusted tins and piles of timber rotted to tissue strength were piled up against one wall. And in the middle of the wall was a bricked-up doorway, the more recent bricks already looking worn and tatty compared to the ancient stone surrounding them.

  “What’s through there?” said Boddony.

  “The old street, probably,” said William.

  “The street has a cellar? What does it keep there?”

  “Oh, when parts of the city keep getting badly flooded, people just keep building on up,” said William. “This was probably a ground-floor room once, you see. People just bricked up the doors and windows and built on another story. In some part of the city, they say, there’s six or seven levels underground. Mostly full of mud. And that’s choosing my words with care—”

  “I am looking for Mister William der Worde,” rumbled a voice above them.

  An enormous troll was blocking out the light from the cellar trapdoor.

  “That’s me,” said William.

  “Der Patrician will see you now,” said the troll.

  “I didn’t have an appointment with Lord Vetinari!”

  “Ah, well,” said the troll, “you’d be amazed at how many people has appointments wid der Patrician an’ dey don’t know it. So you’d better hurry. I would hurry, if I was you.”

  There was no sound but the ticking of the clock. William watched in apprehension as, apparently forgetting his presence, Lord Vetinari read his way through the Times again.

  “What a very…interesting document,” said the Patrician, suddenly laying it aside. “But I’m forced to ask…why?”

  “It’s just my news sheet,” said William. “But bigger. Er…people like to know things.”

  “Which people?”

  “Well…everyone, really.”

  “Do they? Did they tell you this?”

  William swallowed. “Well…no. But you know I’ve been writing my newsletter for some time now—”

  “For various foreign notables and similar people.” Lord Vetinari nodded. “People who need to know. Knowing things is part of their profession. But you are selling this to anyone in the street, is that correct?”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “Interesting. Then you wouldn’t entertain the idea, would you, that a state is, say, rather like one of those old rowing galleys? The ones which had banks of oarsmen down below, and a helmsman and so on above? It is certainly in everyone’s interest that the ship does not founder but, I put it to you, it is perhaps not in the interest of the rowers that they know of every shoal avoided, every collision fended off…it would only serve to worry them and put them off their stroke. What the rowers need to know is how to row, hmm?”

  “And that the helmsman is a good one,” said William. He couldn’t stop the sentence. It said itself. It was out there, hanging in the air.

  Lord Vetinari gave him a stare, then went on for several seconds beyond the necessary time. Then his face instantly broke into a broad smile.

  “To be sure. And so they should, so they should. This is the age of words, after all. Fifty-six hurt in tavern brawl, eh? Astounding. What further news do you have for us, sir?”

  “Well, er…it’s been very cold…”

  “Has it? Has it, indeed? My word!” On his desk, the tiny iceberg bumped against the side of Lord Vetinari’s inkwell.

  “Yes, and there was a bit of a…fracas…at some cookery meeting last night…”

  “A fracas, eh?”

  “Well, probably more of a rumpus, really.* And someone has grown a funny-shaped vegetable.”

  “That’s the stuff. What shape?”

  “A…an amusing shape, sir.”

  “Could I give you a little bit of advice, Mr. de Worde?”

  “Please do, sir.”

  “Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds. I can see you’ve got the hang of it already.”

  “Yes, sir,” said William, not at all sure he fully understood this, but certain that he didn’t like the bit he did understand.

  “I believe the Guild of Engravers has some things it wishes to discuss with Mr. Goodmountain, William, but I have always thought that we should go forward to the future.”

  “Yes, sir. Quite hard to go any other way.”

  Once again, there was the too-long stare and then the sudden unfreezing of the face.

  “Indeed. Good day, Mr. de Worde. Oh…and do tread carefully. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to become news…would you?”

  William turned over the Patrician’s words as he walked back to Gleam Street, and it is not wise to be thinking too deeply when walking the streets of Ankh-Morpork.

  He walked past Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler with barely a nod, but in any case Mr. Dibbler was otherwise engaged.

  He had two customers. Two at once, unless one was daring another, was a great rarity. But these two were worrying him. They were inspecting the merchandise.

  C.M.O.T. Dibbler sold his buns and pies all around the city, even outside the Assassins’ Guild. He was a good judge of people, especially when it involved judging when to step innocently around a corner and then run like hell, and he had just decided that he was really unlucky to be standing here and also that it was too late.

  He didn’t often meet killers. Murderers, yes, but murderers usually had some strange reason and in any case generally murdered friends and relations. And he’d met plenty of assassins, but assassination had a certain style and even certain rules.

  These men were killers. The big one with the powdery streaks down his jacket and the smell of mothballs was just a vicious thug, no problem there, but the small one with the lank hair had the smell of violent and spiteful death about him.

  You didn’t often look into the eyes of someone who’d kill because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Moving his hands carefully, Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were (1) meat (2) from a known four-footed creature (3) probably land-dwelling.

  “Or may I recommend these, gentlemen,” he said, and because old habits die hard he c
ouldn’t stop himself from adding, “Finest pork.”

  “Good, are they?”

  “You’ll never want to eat another, sir.”

  The other man said, “How about the other sort?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Hooves and pig snot and rats what fell in the —ing mincer.”

  “What Mr. Tulip here means,” said Mr. Pin, “is a more organic sausage.”

  “Yeah,” said Mr. Tulip. “I’m very —ing environmental like that.”

  “Are you sure? No, no, fine!” Dibbler raised a hand. The manner of the two men had changed. They were clearly very sure of everything. “We-ell, you want a bad—a less good sausage, then…er?”

  “With —ing fingernails in it,” said Mr. Tulip.

  “Well, er…I do…I could…” Dibbler gave up. He was a salesman. You sold what you sold. “Let me tell you about these sausages,” he went on, smoothly shifting an internal motor into reverse. “When someone chopped off his thumb in the abattoir, they didn’t even stop the grinder. You prob’ly won’t find any rat in them ’cos rats don’t go near the place. There’s animals in there that…well, you know how they say life began in some kind of big soup? Same with these sausages. If you want a bad sausage, you won’t get better than these.”

  “You keep ’em for your special customers, do you?” said Mr. Pin.

  “To me, sir, every customer is special.”

  “And you got mustard?”

  “People call it mustard,” Dibbler began, getting carried away, “but I call it—”

  “I like —ing mustard,” said Mr. Tulip.

  “—really great mustard,” said Dibbler, not missing a beat.

  “We’ll take two,” said Mr. Pin. He did not reach for his wallet.

  “On the house!” said Dibbler. He stunned two sausages, enbunned them, and thrust them forward. Mr. Tulip took both of them, and the mustard pot.