The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  “Snuff?” he said, offering the box to William. “Best thing you humans ever invented. Watson’s Red Roasted. Clears the mind a treat. No?”

  William shook his head.

  “What are you doing all this for, Mr. de Worde?” said Goodmountain, taking a monstrous suction of snuff up each nostril.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not saying we don’t appreciate it, mark you,” said Goodmountain. “It’s keeping the money coming in. The jobbing stuff is drying up more every day. Seems like every engraving shop was poised to go over to printing. All we did was give the young rips an opening. They’ll get us in the end, though. They’ve got money behind them. I don’t mind saying some of the lads are talking about selling up and going back to the lead mines.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Ah, well,” said Goodmountain. “You mean you don’t want us to. I understand that. But we’ve been putting money by. We should be all right. I daresay we can flog the press to someone. We might have a spot of cash to take back home. That’s what this was all about, money. What were you doing it for?”

  “Me? Because—” William stopped. The truth was that he’d never decided to do anything. He’d never really made that kind of decision in his whole life. One thing had just gently led to another, and then the press had to be fed. It was waiting there now. You worked hard, you fed it, and it was still just as hungry an hour later, and out in the world all your work was heading for Bin Six in Piss Harry’s and that was only the start of its troubles. Suddenly he had a proper job, with working hours, and yet everything he did was only as real as a sand castle, on a beach where the tide forever came in.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I suppose it’s because I’m no good at anything else. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

  “But I heard your family’s got pots of money.”

  “Look, Mr. Goodmountain, I’m useless. I was educated to be useless. What we’ve always been supposed to do is hang around until there’s a war and do something really stupidly brave and then get killed. What we’ve mainly done is hang on to things. Ideas, mostly.”

  “You don’t get on with them, then.”

  “Look, I don’t need a heart-to-heart about this, can you understand? My father is not a nice man. Do I have to draw you a picture? He doesn’t much like me, and I don’t like him. If it comes to that, he doesn’t like anyone very much. Especially dwarfs and trolls.”

  “No law says you have to like dwarfs and trolls,” said Goodmountain.

  “Yes, but there ought to be a law against disliking them the way he does.”

  “Ah. Now you’ve drawn me a picture.”

  “Maybe you’ve heard the term ‘lesser races’?”

  “And now you’ve colored it in.”

  “He won’t even live in Ankh-Morpork anymore. Says it’s polluted.”

  “That’s observant of him.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” said Goodmountain. “I’ve met humans like him.”

  “You said this was all about money?” said William. “Is that true?”

  The dwarf nodded at the ingots of lead stacked up neatly by the press.

  “We wanted to turn lead into gold,” he said. “We’d got a lot of lead. But we need gold.”

  William sighed. “My father used to say that gold is all dwarfs think about.”

  “Pretty much.” The dwarf took another pinch of snuff. “But where people go wrong is…see, if all a human thinks about is gold, well, he’s a miser. If a dwarf thinks about gold, he’s just being a dwarf. It’s diff’rent. What do you call them black humans that live in Howondaland?”

  “I know what my father calls them,” said William. “But I call them ‘people who live in Howondaland.’”

  “Do you really? Well, I hear tell where there’s one tribe where, before he can get married, a man has to kill a leopard and give the skin to the woman? It’s the same as that. A dwarf needs gold to get married.”

  “What…like a dowry? But I thought dwarfs didn’t differentiate between—”

  “No, no, the two dwarfs getting married each buy the other dwarf off their parents.”

  “Buy?” said William. “How can you buy people?”

  “See? Cultural misunderstanding once again, lad. It costs a lot of money to raise a young dwarf to marriageable age. Food, clothes, chain mail…it all adds up over the years. It needs repaying. After all, the other dwarf is getting a valuable commodity. And it has to be paid for in gold. That’s traditional. Or gems. They’re fine, too. You must’ve heard our saying ‘worth his weight in gold’? Of course, if a dwarf’s been working for his parents, that gets taken into account on the other side of the ledger. Why, a dwarf who’s left off marrying till late in life is probably owed quite a tidy sum in wages—You’re still looking at me in that funny way…”

  “It’s just that we don’t do it like that…” mumbled William.

  Goodmountain gave him a sharp look.

  “Don’t you, now?” he said. “Really? What do you use instead, then?”

  “Er…gratitude, I suppose,” said William. He wanted this conversation to stop, right now. It was heading out over thin ice.

  “And how’s that calculated?”

  “Well…it isn’t, as such…”

  “Doesn’t that cause problems?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Ah. Well, we know about gratitude, too. But our way means the couple start their new lives in a state of…g’daraka…er, free, unencumbered, new dwarfs. Then their parents might well give them a huge wedding present, much bigger than the dowry. But it is between dwarf and dwarf, out of love and respect, not between debtor and creditor…though I have to say these human words are not really the best way of describing it. It works for us. It has worked for a thousand years.”

  “I suppose to a human it sounds a bit…chilly,” said William.

  Goodmountain gave him another studied look.

  “You mean by comparison to the warm and wonderful ways humans conduct their affairs?” he said. “You don’t have to answer that one. Anyway, me and Boddony want to open up a mine together, and we’re expensive dwarfs. We know how to work lead, so we thought a year or two of this would see us right.”

  “You’re getting married?”

  “We want to,” said Goodmountain.

  “Oh…well, congratulations,” said William. He knew enough not to comment on the fact that both dwarfs looked like small barbarian warriors with long beards. All traditional dwarfs looked like that.*

  Goodmountain grinned. “Don’t worry too much about your father, lad. People change. My grandmother used to think humans were sort of hairless bears. He doesn’t anymore.”

  “What changed his mind?”

  “I reckon it was the dying that did it.”

  Goodmountain stood up and patted William on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get the paper finished. We’ll start the run when the lads wake up.”

  Breakfast was cooking when William got back, and Mrs. Arcanum was waiting. Her mouth was set in the firm line of someone hot on the trail of unrespectable behavior.

  “I shall require an explanation of last night’s affair,” she said, confronting him in the hallway, “and a week’s notice, if you please.”

  William was too exhausted to lie. “I wanted to see how much seventy thousand dollars weighed,” he said.

  Muscles moved in various areas of the landlady’s face. She knew William’s background, being the kind of woman who finds out about that kind of thing very quickly, and the twitching was a sign of some internal struggle based around the definite fact that seventy thousand dollars was a respectable sum.

  “I may perhaps have been a little hasty,” she ventured. “Did you find out how much the money weighed?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Would you like to keep the scales for a few days in case you want to weigh any more?”

  “I think I
’ve finished the weighing, Mrs. Arcanum, but thank you all the same.”

  “Breakfast has already begun, Mr. de Worde, but…well, perhaps I can make allowances this time.”

  He got given a second boiled egg, too. This was a rare sign of favor.

  The latest news was already the subject of deep discussion.

  “I am frankly amazed,” said Mr. Cartwright. “It beats me how they find this stuff out.”

  “It certainly makes you wonder what’s going on that we aren’t told,” said Mr. Windling.

  William listened for a while, until he couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Something interesting in the paper?” he asked innocently.

  “A woman in Kicklebury Street says her husband has been kidnapped by elves,” said Mr. Mackleduff, holding up the Inquirer. The heading was very clear on the subject:

  ELVES STOLE MY HUSBAND!

  “That’s made up!” said William.

  “Can’t be,” said Mackleduff. “There’s the lady’s name and address, right there. They wouldn’t put that in the paper if they were telling lies, would they?”

  William looked at the name and address. “I know this lady,” he said.

  “There you are, then!”

  “She was the one last month who said her husband had been carried off by a big silver dish that came out of the sky,” said William, who had a good memory for this sort of thing. He’d nearly put it in his newsletter as an “On a lighter note” but had thought better of it. “And you, Mr. Prone, said everyone knew her husband had carried himself off with a lady called Flo who used to work as a waitress in Harga’s House of Ribs.”

  Mrs. Arcanum gave William a sharp look which said that the whole subject of nocturnal kitchenware theft could be reopened at any time, extra egg or no.

  “I am not partial to that kind of talk at the table,” she said coldly.

  “Well then, it’s obvious,” said Mr. Cartwright. “He must’ve come back.”

  “From the silver dish or from Flo?” said William.

  “Mr. de Worde!”

  “I was only asking,” said William. “Ah, I see they’re revealing the name of the man who broke into the jeweler’s the other day. Shame it’s Done It Duncan, poor old chap.”

  “A notorious criminal, by the sound of it,” said Mr. Windling. “It’s shocking that the Watch won’t arrest him.”

  “Especially since he calls on them every day,” said William.

  “Whatever for?”

  “A hot meal and a bed for the night,” said William. “Done It Duncan confesses to everything, you see. Original sin, murders, minor thefts…everything. When he’s desperate he tries to turn himself in for the reward.”

  “Then they ought to do something about him,” said Mrs. Arcanum.

  “I believe they generally give him a mug of tea,” said William. He paused, and then ventured: “Is there anything in the other paper?”

  “Oh, they’re still trying to say that Vetinari didn’t do it,” said Mr. Mackleduff. “And the King of Lancre says women in Lancre don’t give birth to snakes.”

  “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” said Mrs. Arcanum. “Vetinari must’ve done something,” said Mr. Windling. “Otherwise why would he be helping the Watch with their inquiries? That’s not the action of an innocent man, in my humble opinion.”*

  “I believe there’s plenty of evidence that throws doubt on his guilt,” said William.

  “Really,” said Mr. Windling, making the word suggest that William’s opinion was considerably more humble than his. “Anyway, I understand the Guild leaders are meeting today.” He sniffed. “It’s time for a change. Frankly, we could do with a ruler who is a little more responsive to the views of ordinary people.”

  William glanced at Mr. Longshaft, the dwarf, who was peacefully cutting some toast into soldiers. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed. Perhaps there was nothing to notice and William was being overly sensitive. But years of listening to Lord de Worde’s opinions had given him a certain ear. It told him when phrases like “the views of ordinary people,” innocent and worthy in themselves, were being used to mean that someone should be whipped.

  “How do you mean?” he said.

  “The…city is getting too big,” said Mr. Windling. “In the old days the gates were kept shut, not left open to all and sundry. And people could leave their doors unlocked.”

  “We didn’t have anything worth stealing,” said Mr. Cartwright.

  “That’s true. There’s more money around,” said Mr. Prone.

  “It doesn’t all stay here, though,” said Mr. Windling. That was true, at least. “Sending money home” was the major export activity of the city, and dwarfs were right at the front of it. William also knew that most of it came back again, because dwarfs bought from the best dwarf craftsmen and, mostly, the best dwarf craftsmen worked in Ankh-Morpork these days. And they sent money back home. A tide of gold coins rolled back and forth, and seldom had a chance to go cold. But it upset the Windlings of the city.

  Mr. Longshaft quietly picked up his boiled egg and inserted it into an eggcup.

  “There’s just too many people in the city,” Mr. Windling repeated. “I’ve nothing against…outsiders, heavens know, but Vetinari let it go far too far. Everyone knows we need someone who is prepared to be a little more firm.”

  There was a metallic noise. Mr. Longshaft, still staring fixedly at his egg, had reached down and drawn a smallish but still impressively axlike ax from his bag. Watching the egg carefully, as if it was about to run away, he leaned slowly back, paused for a moment, then brought the blade around in an arc of silver.

  The top of the egg flew up with hardly a noise, turned over in midair several feet above the plate, and landed beside the eggcup.

  Mr. Longshaft nodded to himself, and then looked up at the frozen expressions.

  “I’m sorry?” he said. “I wasn’t listening.”

  At which point, as Sacharissa would have put it, the meeting broke up.

  William purchased his own copy of the Inquirer on the way to Gleam Street and wondered, not for the first time, who was writing this stuff. They were better at it than he would be, that was certain. He’d wondered once about making up a few innocent paragraphs, when not much was happening in the city, and found that it was a lot harder than it looked. Try as he might, he kept letting common sense and intelligence get the better of him. Besides, telling lies was Wrong.

  He noted glumly that they’d used the talking dog story. Oh, and one he hadn’t heard before: a strange figure had been seen swooping around the rooftops of Unseen University at night, HALF MAN, HALF MOTH? Half invented and half made up, more likely.

  The curious thing was, if the breakfast table jury was anything to go by, that denying stories like this only proved that they were true. After all, no one would bother to deny something if it didn’t exist, would they?

  He took a shortcut through the stables in Creek Alley. Like Gleam Street, Creek Alley was there to mark the back of places. This part of the city had no real existence other than as a place you passed through to somewhere more interesting. The dull street was made up of high-windowed warehouses and broken-down sheds and, significantly, Hobson’s Livery Stable.

  It was huge, especially since Hobson had realized that you could go multistory.

  Willie Hobson was another businessman in the mold of King of the Golden River; he’d found a niche, occupied it, and forced it open so wide that lots of money dropped in. Many people in the city occasionally needed a horse, and hardly anyone had a place to park one. You needed a stable, you needed a groom, you needed a hayloft…but to hire a horse from Willie, you just needed a few dollars.

  Lots of people kept their own horses there, too. People came and went all the time. The bandy-legged, goblinlike little men who ran the place never bothered to stop anyone unless they appeared to have hidden a horse about their person.

  William looked around when a voice out of the gloom of the loose boxes said,
“’Scuse me, friend.”

  He peered into the shadows. A few horses were watching him. In the distance, around him, other horses were being moved, people were shouting, there was the general bustle of the stables. But the voice had come out of a little pool of ominous silence.

  “I’ve still got two months to go on my last receipt,” he said to the darkness. “And may I say that the free canteen of cutlery seemed to be made of an alloy of lead and horse manure?”

  “I’m not a thief, friend,” said the shadows.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Do you know what’s good for you?”

  “Er…yes. Healthy exercise, regular meals, a good night’s sleep.” William stared at the long lines of loose boxes. “I think what you meant to ask was: do I know what’s bad for me, in the general context of blunt instruments and sharp edges. Yes?”

  “Broadly, yes. No, don’t move, mister. You stand where I can see you, and no harm will come to you.”

  William analyzed this. “Yes, but if I stand where you can’t see me, I don’t see how any harm could come to me there, either.”

  Something sighed. “Look, meet me halfway here—No! Don’t move!”

  “But you said to—”

  “Just stand still and shut up and listen, will you?”

  “All right.”

  “I am hearing where there’s a certain dog that people are lookin’ for,” said the mystery voice.

  “Ah. Yes. The Watch want him, yes. And…?” William thought he could just make out a slightly darker shape. More important, he could smell a smell, even above the general background odor of the horses.

  “Ron?” he said.

  “Do I sound like Ron?” said the voice.

  “Not…exactly. So who am I talking to?”

  “You can call me…Deep Bone.”

  “Deep Bone?”

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  “I suppose not. What can I do for you, Mr. Bone?”

  “Just supposin’ someone knew where the doggie was but didn’t want to get involved with the Watch?” said the voice of Deep Bone.