The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  “Do you know what they called a sausage-in-a-bun in Quirm?” said Mr. Pin, as the two walked away.

  “No?” said Mr. Tulip.

  “They call it le sausage-in-le-bun.”

  “What, in a —ing foreign language? You’re —ing kidding!”

  “I’m not a —ing kidder, Mr. Tulip.”

  “I mean, they ought to call it a…a…sausage dans lar derriere,” said Mr. Tulip. He took a bite of his Dibbler delight. “Hey, that’s what this —ing thing tastes of,” he added, with his mouth full.

  “In a bun, Mr. Tulip.”

  “I know what I meant. This is a —ing awful sausage…”

  Dibbler watched them go. It wasn’t often you heard language like that in Ankh-Morpork. Most people talked without leaving gaps in their sentences, and he wondered what the word “ing” meant.

  A crowd was gathered outside a large building in Welcome Soap, and the cart traffic was already backed up all the way to Broad Way. And, thought William, wherever a large crowd is gathered, someone ought to write down why.

  The reason in this case was clear. A man was standing on the flat parapet just outside the fourth-story window, back against the wall, staring downwards with a frozen expression.

  Far below, the crowd were trying to be helpful. It was not in the robust Ankh-Morpork nature to dissuade anyone in this position. It was a free city, after all. So was the advice.

  “Much better to try the Thieves’ Guild!” a man yelled. “Six floors, and then you’re on good solid cobbles! Crack your skull first go!”

  “There’s proper flagstones around the Palace,” advised the man next to him.

  “Well, certainly,” said his immediate neighbor. “But the Patrician’ll kill him if he tries to jump from up there, am I right?”

  “Well?”

  “Well…it’s a question of style, isn’t it?”

  “Tower of Art’s good,” said a woman confidently. “Nine hundred feet, almost. And you get a good view.”

  “Granted, granted. But you also get a long time to think about things. On the way down, I mean. Not a good time for introspection, in my view.”

  “Look, I’ve got a load of prawns on my wagon and if I’m held up any longer they’re gonna be walking home,” moaned a carter. “Why doesn’t he just jump?”

  “He’s thinking about it. It’s a big step, after all.”

  The man on the edge turned his head when he heard a shuffling noise. William was sidling along the ledge, trying hard not to look down.

  “Morning. Come to try and talk me out of it, ’ave yer?”

  “I…I…” William really tried not to look down. The ledge had looked a lot wider from below. He was regretting the whole thing. “I wouldn’t dream of it…”

  “I’m always open to being talked out of it.”

  “Yes, yes…er…would you care to give me your name and address?” said William. There was a hitherto unsuspected nasty breeze up here, gusting treacherously around the rooftops. It fluttered the pages of his notebook.

  “Why?”

  “Er…because from this height onto solid ground it’s often hard to find out that sort of thing afterwards,” said William, trying not to breathe out too much. “And if I’m going to put this in the paper, it’d look much better if I say who you were.”

  “What paper?”

  William pulled a copy of the Times out of his pocket. It rattled in the wind as he wordlessly handed it over.

  The man sat down and read it, his lips moving, his legs dangling over the drop.

  “So this is, like, things that happen?” he said. “Like a town crier, but written down?”

  “That’s right. So…what was your name?”

  “What do you mean, was?”

  “Well, you know…obviously…” said William wretchedly. He waved his hand towards the void, and almost lost his balance. “If you…”

  “Arthur Crank.”

  “And where did you live, Arthur?”

  “Prattle Alley.”

  “And what was your job?”

  “There you go with the was again. The Watch usually give me a cup of tea, you know.”

  A warning bell went off in William’s head.

  “You…jump a lot, do you?”

  “Only the difficult bits.”

  “And they are…?”

  “The climbing-up bits. I don’t do the actual jumping, obviously. That’s not a skilled job. I’m more into the ‘cry for help’ aspect.”

  William tried to grip sheer wall.

  “And the help you want is…?”

  “Could you make it twenty dollars?”

  “Or you jump?”

  “Ah, well, not exactly jump, obviously. Not the whole jump. Not as per such. But I shall continue to threaten to jump, if you get my drift.”

  The building seemed a lot higher to William than it had when he climbed the stairs. The people below were a lot smaller. He could make out faces looking up. Foul Ole Ron was there, with his scabby dog and the rest of the crew, because they had an uncanny gravitational attraction to impromptu street theater. He could even make out Coffin Henry’s “Will Threaten for Food” sign. And he could see the queues of wagons, by now paralyzing half the city. He could feel his knees buckling…

  Arthur grabbed him.

  “Oi, this is my patch,” he said. “Find your own spot.”

  “You said the jumping off wasn’t a skilled job,” said William, trying to concentrate on his notes as the world spun gently around him. “What was your job, Mr. Crank?”

  “Steeplejack.”

  “Arthur Crank, you come down here right this minute!”

  Arthur looked down.

  “Oh gawds, they’ve gone and fetched the wife,” he said.

  “Constable Fiddyment here says you’re…” the distant pink face of Mrs. Crank paused to listen again to the watchman standing next to her, “interferin’ with the merc-ant-ile well-bein’of the city, you ole fool!”

  “Can’t argue with the wife,” said Arthur, giving William a sheepish look.

  “I’ll hide your trousers another time, you silly ole man! You come down here or I’ll give you what for!”

  “Three happy married years,” said Arthur cheerfully, waving at the distant figure. “The other thirty-two haven’t been too bad, either. But she can’t cook cabbage worth a damn.”

  “Really?” said William, and dreamily fell forward.

  He woke up lying on the ground, which was what he’d expected, but still in a three-dimensional shape, which he hadn’t. He realized that he was not dead. One reason for this was the face of Corporal Nobbs of the Watch looking down at him. William considered that he had lived a relatively blameless life and, if he died, did not expect to encounter anything with a face like Corporal Nobbs’s, the worst thing ever to hit a uniform if you didn’t count seagulls.

  “Ah, you’re all right,” said Nobbs, looking slightly disappointed.

  “Feel…faint,” William murmured.

  “I could give you the kiss of life if you like,” said Nobbs.

  Unbidden by William, various muscles spasmed and jerked him vertical so fast that his feet momentarily left the ground.

  “Much better now!” he shouted.

  “Only we learned it down the Watch House and I haven’t had a chance to try it yet…”

  “Fit as a fiddle!” William wailed.

  “…I’ve been practicing on my hand and everything…”

  “Never felt better!”

  “Old Arthur Crank’s always doing that,” said the watchman. “He’s just after tobacco money. Still, everyone clapped when he carried you down. It’s amazing how he can still climb drainpipes like that.”

  “Is it really…” William felt oddly empty.

  “It was great when you were sick. I mean, from four stories up, it looked quite pretty. Someone ought to have taken a picture—”

  “Got to be going!” William screamed.

  I must be going mad, he tho
ught, as he hurried towards Gleam Street. Why the hell did I do it? It wasn’t as if it was my business.

  Except, come to think of it, it is now.

  Mr. Tulip burped.

  “What’re we going to do now?” he said.

  Mr. Pin had acquired a map of the city, and was examining it closely.

  “We are not your old-style bother boys, Mr. Tulip. We are thinking men. We learn. We learn fast.”

  “What’re we going to do now?” Mr. Tulip repeated. Sooner or later he’d be able to catch up.

  “We’re going to buy ourselves a little insurance, that’s what we’re going to do. I don’t like no lawyer having all that muck on us. Ah…here we are. It’s the other side of the university.”

  “We’re going to buy some magic?” said Mr. Tulip.

  “Not exactly magic.”

  “I fort you said this city was a —ing pushover?”

  “It has its good points, Mr. Tulip.”

  Mr. Tulip grinned. “—ing right,” he said. “I want to go back to the Museum of Antiquities!”

  “Now, now, Mr. Tulip. Business first, pleasure later,” said Mr. Pin.

  “I want to —ing see all of ’em!”

  “Later on. Later on. Can you wait twenty minutes without exploding?”

  The map led them to the Thaumatological Park, just hub-wards of Unseen University. It was still so new that the modern flat-roofed buildings, winners of several awards from the Guild of Architects, hadn’t even begun to let in water and shed window-panes in a breeze.

  An attempt had been made to pretty up the immediate area with grass and trees, but since the site had been partly built on the old ground known as the “unreal estate” this had not worked as planned. The area had been a dump for Unseen University for thousands of years. There was a lot more below that turf than old mutton bones, and magic leaks. On any map of thaumic pollution, the unreal estate would be the center of some worrying concentric circles.

  Already the grass was multicolored and some of the trees had walked away.

  Nevertheless, several businesses were thriving there, products of what the Archchancellor, or at least his speechwriter, had called “a marriage between magic and modern business; after all, the modern world doesn’t need very many magic rings and magic swords, but it does need some way to keep its appointments in order. Lot of garbage, really, but I suppose it makes everyone happy. Is it time for that lunch yet?”

  One of the results of this joyful union was now on the counter in front of Mr. Pin.

  “It’s the Mk II,” said the wizard, who was glad there was a counter between him and Mr. Tulip. “Er…cutting edge.”

  “That’s good,” said Mr. Tulip. “We —ing love cutting edges.”

  “How does it work?” said Mr. Pin.

  “It’s got contextual help,” said the wizard. “All you have to do is, er, open the lid.”

  To the wizard’s horror a very thin knife appeared magically in his customer’s hand and was used to release the catch.

  The lid sprang back. A small green imp sprang up.

  “Bingely-bingely-bee—”

  It froze. Even a creation of biothaumic particles will hesitate when a knife is pressed to its throat.

  “What the hell’s this?” said Mr. Pin. “I said I want something that listens!”

  “It does listen, it does listen!” said the wizard hurriedly. “But it can say things too!”

  “Like what? Bingely-bingely?”

  The imp gave a nervous cough.

  “Good for you!” it said. “You have wisely purchased the Dis-organizer Mk II, the latest in biothaumaturgic design, with a host of useful features and no resemblance whatsoever to the Mk I, which you may have inadvertently destroyed by stamping on it heavily!” it said, adding, “This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect of any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may be substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.”

  The imp took a deep breath. “May I introduce to you the rest of my wide range of interesting and amusing sounds, Insert Name Here?”

  Mr. Pin glanced at Mr. Tulip. “All right.”

  “For example, I can go ‘tra-la!’”

  “No.”

  “An amusing bugle call?”

  “No.”

  “‘Ding!’?”

  “No.”

  “Or I can be instructed to make droll and diverting comments when performing various actions.”

  “Why?”

  “Er…some people like us to say things like ‘I’ll be back when you open the box again,’ or something like that…”

  “Why do you do noises?” said Mr. Pin.

  “People like noises.”

  “We don’t,” said Mr. Pin.

  “We —ing hate noises,” said Mr. Tulip.

  “Good for you! I can do lots of silence,” the imp volunteered. But suicidal programming forced it to continue: “And would you like a different color scheme?”

  “What?”

  “What color would you like me to be?” As it spoke, one of the imp’s long ears slowly turned purple and its nose became a vaguely disquieting shade of blue.

  “We don’t want any colors,” said Mr. Pin. “We don’t want noises. We don’t want cheerfulness. We just want you to do what you’re told.”

  “Perhaps you would like to take a moment to fill in your registration card?” said the imp desperately, holding it up.

  A knife thrown at snake speed snapped the card out of its hand and nailed it to the desk.

  “Or perhaps you would like to leave it until later…”

  “Your man here—” Mr. Pin began. “Where did he go?”

  Mr. Tulip reached behind the counter and hauled up the wizard.

  “Your man here says you’re one of those imps that can repeat everything you hear,” said Pin.

  “Yes, Insert Name Here, sir,” said the imp.

  “And you don’t make stuff up?”

  “They can’t,” the wizard panted. “They have no imagination at all.”

  “So if someone heard it, they’d know it was real?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Sounds just the thing we’re looking for,” said Mr. Pin.

  “And how will you be paying?” said the wizard.

  Mr. Pin snapped his fingers. Mr. Tulip drew himself up and out, squared his shoulders, and cracked knuckles that were like two bags of pink walnuts.

  “Before we —ing talk about paying,” said Mr. Tulip, “we want to talk to the bloke that wrote that —ing warranty.”

  What William now had to think of as his office had changed quite a lot. The old laundry fixings, dismembered rocking horses, and other rubbish had been spirited away, and two desks stood back to back in the middle of the floor.

  They were ancient and battered and to stop them wobbling they needed, against all common sense, bits of folded cardboard under all four legs.

  “I got them from the secondhand shop along the road,” said Sacharissa, nervously. “They weren’t very expensive.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Er…Miss Cripslock…I’ve been thinking…your grandfather can engrave a picture, can he?”

  �
��Yes, of course. Why have you got mud all over you?”

  “And if we got an iconograph and learned how to use it to take pictures,” William went on, ignoring this, “could he engrave the picture that the imp paints?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And do you know any good iconographers in the city?”

  “I could ask around. What happened to you?”

  “Oh, there was a threatened suicide in Welcome Soap.”

  “Any good?” Sacharissa looked startled at the sound of her own voice. “I mean, obviously I wouldn’t wish anyone to die, but, er, we’ve got quite a lot of space…”

  “I might be able to make something off it. He, er, saved the life of the man who climbed up to talk him down.”

  “How brave. Did you get the name of the man who climbed up after him?”

  “Um, no. Er…he was a Mystery Man,” said William.

  “Oh, well, that’s something. There’s some people waiting to see you outside,” said Sacharissa. She glanced at her notes. “There’s a man who’s lost his watch, a zombie who…well, I can’t make out what he wants, there’s a troll who wants a job, and there’s someone who’s got a complaint about the story of the fight at the Mended Drum and wants to behead you.”

  “Oh, dear. All right…one at a time…”

  The watch loser was easy.

  “It was one of the new clockwork ones my father gave to me,” said the man. “I’ve been looking for it all week!”

  “It’s not exactly—”

  “If you can put in the paper that I’ve lost it, maybe someone who has found it will turn it in?” said the man, with unwarranted hopefulness. “And I will give you sixpence for your trouble.”

  Sixpence was sixpence. William made a few notes.

  The zombie was more difficult. For a start he was gray, shading to green in places, and smelled very strongly of artificial hyacinth aftershave, some of the more recent zombies having realized that their chance of making friends in their new life would be greatly improved if they smelled of flowers rather than just smelled.

  “People like to know about people who are dead,” he said. His name was Mr. Bendy, and he pronounced it in a way that made it clear that the “Mr.” was very much a part of the name.