The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  “They do?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Bendy, emphatically. “Dead people can be very interesting. I expect people would be very interested in reading about dead people.”

  “Do you mean obituaries?”

  “Well…yes, I suppose they would be. I could write them in an interesting way.”

  “All right. Twenty pence each, then.”

  Mr. Bendy nodded. It was clear that he would have done it for nothing. He handed William a wad of yellow, crackling paper. “Here’s an interesting one to start you off,” he said.

  “Oh? Whose is it?”

  “Mine. It is very interesting. Especially the bit where I died.”

  The next man to come in was in fact a troll. Unusually for trolls, who usually wore just enough to satisfy humanity’s mysterious demands for decency, this one actually wore a suit. At least, it was largely tubes of cloth that covered his body, and “suit” was about the only word.

  “’m Rocky,” he mumbled, looking down. “I’ll take any job, guv.”

  “What was your last job?” said William.

  “Boxer, guv. But I wasn’t happy wiv it. Kept getting knocked down.”

  “Can you write or take pictures?” said William, wincing.

  “No, guv. I can do heavy liftin’. ’n’ I can whistle tunes, guv.”

  “That’s…a good talent, but I don’t think we—”

  The door flew open and a thick-shouldered, leather-clad man burst in, flourishing an ax.

  “You got no right putting that about me in the paper!” he said, waving the blade under William’s nose.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Brezock the Barbarian, and I—”

  The brain works fast when it thinks it is about to be cut in half.

  “Oh, if it’s a complaint you have, you have to take it up with the Complaints, Beheadings, and Horsewhippings Editor,” said William. “Mr. Rocky here.”

  “Dat’s me,” boomed Rocky cheerfully, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder. There was only room for three of his fingers. Brezock sagged.

  “I…just…want to say,” said Brezock, slowly, “that you put in I hit someone with a table. I never done that. What’d people think of me if they heard I go around hitting people with a table? What’d that do to my reputation?”

  “I see.”

  “I knifed him. A table’s a sissy weapon.”

  “We shall certainly print a correction,” said William, picking up his pencil.

  “You couldn’t add that I tore Slicer Gadley’s ear off with my teeth, could you? That’d make people sit up. Ears aren’t easy to do.”

  When they had all gone, Rocky to sit on a chair outside the door, William and Sacharissa stared at one another.

  “It’s been a very strange morning,” he said.

  “I’ve found out about the winter,” said Sacharissa. “And there was an unlicensed theft from a jewelry shop in the Artificers Street. They got quite a lot of silver.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “One of the journeyman jewelers told me.” Sacharissa gave a little cough. “He, um, always comes to have a little chat with me when he sees me walking past.”

  “Really? Well done!”

  “And while I was waiting for you I had an idea. I got Gunilla to set this in type.” She shyly pushed a piece of paper across the desk.

  “It looks more impressive at the top of the page,” she said nervously. “What do you think?”

  “What are all the fruit salads and leaves and things?” said William.

  Sacharissa blushed. “I did that. A bit of unofficial engraving. I thought it might make it look…you know, high class and impressive. Er…do you like it?”

  “It’s very good,” said William hurriedly. “Very nice…er, cherries—”

  “Grapes.”

  “Yes, of course, I meant grapes. What’s the quote from? It’s very meaningful without, er, meaning anything very much.”

  “I think it’s just a quote,” said Sacharissa.

  Mr. Pin lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the still damp air of the wine cellar.

  “Now, it seems to me what we got here is a failure to communicate,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like we’re asking you to memorize a book or anything. You just got to look at Mr. Tulip here. Is this hard? Lots of people do it without any kinda special training.”

  “I sort of…l-l-lose my bottle,” said Charlie. His feet clanked against several empty ones.

  “Mr. Tulip is not a scary man,” said Mr. Pin. This was flying in the face of the current evidence, he had to admit. His partner had bought a twist of what the dealer had sworn was Devil Dust but which looked to Mr. Pin very much like powdered copper sulfate, and this had apparently reacted to the chemicals from the Slab which had been Mr. Tulip’s afternoon snack and turned one of his sinuses into a small bag of electricity. His right eye was spinning slowly, and sparks twinkled on his nasal hairs.

  “I mean, does he look scary?” Mr. Pin went on. “Remember, you are Lord Vetinari. Understand? You’re not going to take anything from some guard. If he talks back to you, just look at him.”

  “Like this,” said Mr. Tulip, half his face flashing on and off.

  Charlie leapt back.

  “Not quite like that, perhaps,” said Mr. Pin. “But close.”

  “I don’t want to do this anymore!” Charlie wailed.

  “Ten thousand dollars, Charlie,” said Mr. Pin. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I’ve heard of this Vetinari,” said Charlie. “If this goes wrong, he’ll have me thrown in the scorpion pit!”

  Mr. Pin spread his hands expansively. “Well, the scorpion pit isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be, you know?”

  “It’s a —ing picnic compared to me,” rumbled Mr. Tulip, his nose lighting up.

  Charlie’s eyes sought a way out. Unfortunately, one of them was cleverness. Mr. Pin hated the sight of Charlie trying to be clever. It was like watching a dog try to play the trombone.

  “I’m not doing it for ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I mean…you need me…”

  He let it hang in the air, which was very much what Mr. Pin was considering doing with Charlie.

  “We had a deal, Charlie,” he said mildly.

  “Yeah, well…I reckon there’s more money in this now,” said Charlie.

  “What do you think, Mr. Tulip?”

  Tulip opened his mouth to reply, but sneezed instead. A thin bolt of lightning earthed itself on Charlie’s chain.

  “Maybe we could go to fifteen thousand,” said Mr. Pin. “And that’s coming out of our share, Charlie.”

  “Yeah, well…” said Charlie. He was as far away from Mr. Tulip as possible now, because the man’s dry hair was standing out from his head.

  “But we want to see some extra effort, right?” said Mr. Pin. “Starting right now. All you have to do is say…what do you have to say?”

  “‘You are relieved of your post, my man. Go away,’” said Charlie.

  “Except we don’t say it like that, do we, Charlie?” said Mr. Pin. “It’s an order. You are his boss. And you have to give him a haughty stare…look, how can I put it? You’re a shopkeeper. Imagine that he’s asked for credit.”

  It was six in the morning. Freezing fog held the city in its breathless grip.

  Through the mists they came, and into the press room behind the Bucket they lurched, and out into the mists they went again, on a variety of legs, crutches, and wheels.

  “Mrpikeerah-Tis!”

  Lord Vetinari heard the cry and sent the overnight clerk down to the gate again.

  He noted the title. He smiled at the motto.

  He read the words:

  And Lord Vetinari smiled.

  And someone knocked softly at the door.

  And he glanced at the clock.

  “Come,” he said.

  Nothing happened. After a few seconds, the soft knock came again.

  “Come in.”
>
  And there was the pregnant silence again.

  And Lord Vetinari touched an apparently ordinary part of his desktop.

  And a long drawer appeared out of what had seemed to be the solid walnut of the desk, sliding forward as though on oil. It contained a number of slim devices on a bed of black velvet, and a description of any one of them would certainly involve the word “sharp.”

  And he chose one, held it casually by his side, crossed soundlessly towards the door and turned the handle, stepping back quickly in case of a sudden rush.

  No one pushed.

  And the door, yielding to an unevenness in the hinges, swung inwards.

  Mr. Mackleduff smoothed out the paper. It was already accepted by all around the breakfast table that, as the man who bought the paper, he was not simply its owner but, as it were, its priest, replaying its contents to the appreciative masses.

  “It says here a man in Martlebury Street has grown a vegetable that’s a funny shape,” he said.

  “I should very much like to see that,” said Mrs. Arcanum. There was a choking noise from further down the table. “Are you all right, Mister de Worde?” she added, as Mr. Prone thumped him on the back.

  “Yes…yes, really,” gasped William. “S…sorry. Some tea went down the wrong way.”

  “There’s good soil over that way,” opined Mr. Cartwright, traveling seed salesman.

  William concentrated desperately on his toast, while over his head every item was presented with the care and veneration of a blessed relic.

  “Someone held up a shopkeeper at knifepoint,” Mr. Mackleduff went on.

  “Soon we will not be safe in our beds,” said Mrs. Arcanum.

  “I don’t think this is the coldest winter for more than a hundred years, though,” said Mr. Cartwright. “I’m sure that one we had ten years ago was worse. Hit my sales something cruel.”

  “It’s in the paper,” said Mr. Mackleduff, in the quiet voice of someone laying down an ace.

  “It was a very strange obituary that you read out, too,” said Mrs. Arcanum. William nodded silently over his boiled egg. “I’m sure it’s not usual to talk about the things someone’s done since they died.”

  Mr. Longshaft, who was a dwarf and something in the jewelry business, helped himself to another slice of toast.

  “I suppose it takes all sorts,” he said, calmly.

  “The city is getting rather crowded, though,” said Mr. Windling, who had some unspecified clerical job. “Still, at least zombies are human. No offense meant, of course.”

  Mr. Longshaft smiled faintly as he buttered the toast, and William wondered why he always disliked people who said “no offense meant.” Maybe it was because they found it easier to say “no offense meant” than actually to refrain from giving offense.

  “Well, I suppose we have to move with the times,” said Mrs. Arcanum. “And I hope that other poor man finds his watch.”

  In fact Mr. Harry was waiting outside the office when William arrived. He grabbed his hand and shook it.

  “Amazing, sir, amazing!” he said. “How did you do it? It must be magic! You put that notice in your newspaper and when I got home, blow me down if the watch wasn’t in my other jacket! Gods bless your paper, say I!”

  Inside, Goodmountain gave William the news. The Times had sold eight hundred copies so far today. At five pence each, William’s share came to forty dollars. In pennies, it came to quite a large heap on the desk.

  “This is insane,” said William. “All we did was write things down!”

  “There is a bit of a problem, lad,” said Goodmountain. “Are you going to want to do another one for tomorrow?”

  “Good gods, I hope not!”

  “Well, I’ve got a story for you,” said the dwarf glumly. “I hear the Guild of Engravers are already setting up their own press. They’ve got a lot of money behind ’em, too. They could put us right out of business when it comes to general printing.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “Of course. They use presses anyway. Type isn’t hard to make, especially when you’ve got a lot of engravers. They can do really good work. To be honest, we didn’t reckon they’d cotton on this soon.”

  “I’m amazed!”

  “Well, younger members of the Guild have seen the work coming out of Omnia and the Agatean Empire. Turns out they’ve been looking for a chance like this. I hear there was a special meeting last night. A few changes of officers.”

  “That must have been worth seeing.”

  “So if you could keep your paper going…” said the dwarf.

  “I don’t want all this money!” William wailed. “Money causes problems!”

  “We could sell the Times cheaper,” said Sacharissa, giving him an odd look.

  “We’d only make more money,” said William gloomily.

  “We could…we could pay the street vendors more,” said Sacharissa.

  “Tricky,” said Goodmountain. “A body can only take so much turpentine.”

  “Then we could at least make sure they get a good breakfast,” said Sacharissa. “A big stew with named meat, perhaps.”

  “But I’m not even sure there is enough news to fill a—” William began, and stopped. That wasn’t the way it worked, was it. If it was in the paper, it was news. If it was news it went in the paper, and if it was in the paper it was news. And it was the truth.

  He remembered the breakfast table. “They” wouldn’t let “them” put it in the paper if it wasn’t true, would they?

  William wasn’t a very political person. But he found himself using unfamiliar mental muscles when he thought about “they.” Some of them had to do with memory.

  “We could employ more people to help us get the news,” said Sacharissa. “And what about news from other places? Pseudopolis and Quirm? We just have to talk to passengers getting off the coaches—”

  “Dwarfs would like to hear what’s been happening in Uberwald and Copperhead,” said Goodmountain, stroking his beard.

  “It takes nearly a week for a coach to get there from here!” said William.

  “So? It’s still news.”

  “I suppose we couldn’t use the clacks, could we?” said Sacharissa.

  “The semaphore towers? Are you mad?” said William. “That’s really expensive!”

  “Well? You were the one who was worried we had too much money!”

  There was a flash of light. William spun around.

  A…thing occupied the doorway. There was a tripod. There were a pair of skinny, black-clad legs behind it and a large black box on top of it. One black-clad arm extended out from behind the box and was holding a sort of small hod, which was smoking.

  “Nice vun,” said a voice from behind the box. “The light vas shinink so good off the dvarf’s helmet, I could not resist it. You vanted an iconographer? My name is Otto Chriek.”

  “Oh. Yes?” said Sacharissa. “Are you any good?”

  “I am a vizard in zer darkroom. I am experimenting all the time,” said Otto Chriek. “And I have all my own equipment and also a keen and positive attitude!”

  “Sacharissa!” hissed William urgently.

  “We could probably start you at a dollar a day—”

  “Sacharissa!”

  “Yes? What?”

  “He’s a vampire!”

  “I object most stronkly,” said the hidden Otto. “It iss such an easy assumption to believe that everyvun with an Uberwald accent is a vampire, is it not? There are many thousands of people from Uberwald who are not vampires!”

  William waved his hand aimlessly, trying to shrug off the embarrassment.

  “All right, I’m sorry, but—”

  “I am a vampire, as it happens,” Otto went on. “But if I had said, ‘Hello my cheeky cock sparrow mate old boy by crikey,’ what vould you have said zen, eh?”

  “We’d have been completely taken in,” said William.

  “Anyway, your notice did say ‘vanted,’ so I thought it vas, you know, a
ffirmative action,” said Otto. “Alzo, I have zis…” A thin, blue-veined hand was held up, gripping a small twist of shiny black ribbon.

  “Oh? You’ve signed the pledge?” said Sacharissa.

  “At the Meeting Rooms in Abattoirs Lane,” said Otto triumphantly, “where I attend every veek for our big singsong and tea and a bun and wholesome conversation on themes of positive reinforcement keeping off the whole subject of bodily fluids by stvict instruction. I am not any longer any stupid sucker!”

  “What do you think, Mr. Goodmountain?” said William.

  Goodmountain scratched his nose. “It’s up to you,” he said. “If he tries anything with my lads, he’ll be looking for his legs. What’s this pledge?”

  “It’s the Uberwald Temperance Movement,” said Sacharissa. “A vampire signs up and forswears any human blood—”

  Otto shuddered. “Ve prefer zer ‘b-vord,’” he said.

  “The b-word,” Sacharissa corrected herself. “The movement is becoming very popular. They know it’s the only chance they’ve got.”

  “Well…okay,” said William. He was uneasy about vampires himself, but turning the newcomer down after all this would be like kicking a puppy. “Do you mind setting up your stuff in the cellar?”

  “A cellar?” said the Otto. “Top hole!”

  First the dwarfs had come, William thought as he went back to his desk. They’d been insulted because of their diligence and because of their height, but they had kept their heads down* and prospered. Then the trolls had come, and they got on a little better, because people don’t throw as many stones at creatures seven feet tall who could throw rocks back. Then the zombies had come out of the casket. One or two werewolves had crept in under the door. The gnomes had integrated quickly, despite a bad start, because they were tough and even more dangerous to cross than a troll; at least a troll couldn’t run up your trouser leg. There weren’t that many species left.

  The vampires had never made it. They weren’t sociable, even amongst themselves; they didn’t think as a species; they were unpleasantly weird; and they sure as hell didn’t have their own food shops.

  So now it was dawning on some of the brighter ones that the only way people would accept vampires was if they stopped being vampires. That was a high price to pay for social acceptability, but perhaps not so high as the one that involved having your head cut off and your ashes scattered on the river. A life of steak tartare wasn’t too bad if you compared it with a death of stake au naturel.†