The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s just say the Watch can be trouble to a certain kind of a person, eh? That’s one reason.”

  “All right.”

  “And let’s just say there’s people around who’d much prefer the little doggie didn’t tell what it knew, shall we? The Watch might not take enough care. They’re very uncaring about dogs, the Watch.”

  “Are they?”

  “Oh yes, the Watch fink a dog has no human rights at all. That’s another reason.”

  “Is there a third reason?”

  “Yes. I read in the paper where there’s a reward.”

  “Ah. Yes?”

  “Only it got printed wrong, ’cos it said twenty-five dollars instead of a hundred dollars, see?”

  “Oh. I see. But a hundred dollars for a dog is a lot of money for a dog, Mr. Bone.”

  “Not for this dog, if you know what I mean,” said the shadows. “This dog’s got a story to tell.”

  “Oh, yes? It’s the famous talking dog of Ankh-Morpork, is it?”

  Deep Bone growled. “Dogs can’t talk, everyone knows that,” it said. “But there’s them as can understand dog language, if you catch my drift.”

  “Werewolves, you mean?”

  “Could be people of that style of kidney, yes.”

  “But the only werewolf I know is in the Watch,” said William. “So you’re just telling me to pay you a hundred dollars so that I could hand Wuffles over to the Watch?”

  “That’d be a feather in your cap with old Vimes, wouldn’t it?” said Deep Bone.

  “But you said you didn’t trust the Watch, Mr. Bone. I do listen to what people say, you know.”

  Deep Bone went quiet for a while. Then:

  “All right, the dog and an interpreter, one hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “And the story this dog could tell deals with events in the Palace a few mornings ago?”

  “Could be. Could be. Could very well be. Could be exactly the kind of fing I’m referrin’ to.”

  “I want to see who I’m talking to,” said William.

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Oh, well,” said William. “That’s reassuring. I’ll just go and get a hundred and fifty dollars, shall I, and bring it back to this place and hand it over to you, just like that?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Oh, so you don’t trust me, eh?” said Deep Bone.

  “That’s right.”

  “Er…supposin’ I was to tell you a little piece of free news information for gratis and nothin’. A lick of the lolly. A little taste, as you might say.”

  “Go on…”

  “It wasn’t Vetinari who stabbed the other man. It was another man.”

  William wrote this down, and then looked at it.

  “Exactly how helpful is this?” he said.

  “That’s a good bit of news, that is. Hardly anyone knows it.”

  “There’s not a lot to know! Isn’t there a description?”

  “He’s got a dog bite on his ankle,” said Deep Bone.

  “That’ll make him easy to find in the street, won’t it? What are you expecting me to do, try a little surreptitious trouser lifting?”

  Deep Bone sounded hurt. “That’s kosher news, that is. It’d worry certain people, if you put that in your paper.”

  “Yes, they’d worry that I’d gone mad! You’ve got to tell me something better than that! Can you give me a description?”

  Deep Bone went silent for a while, and when it spoke again it sounded uncertain.

  “You mean, what he looked like?” it said.

  “Well, yes!”

  “Ah…well, it dun’t work like that with dogs, see? What w—what your average dog does, basic’ly, is look up. People are mostly just a wall with a pair of nostril holes at the top, is my point.”

  “Not a lot of help, then,” said William. “Sorry we can’t do busin—”

  “What he smells like, now, that’s somethin’ else,” said the voice of Deep Bone, hurriedly.

  “All right, tell me what he smells like.”

  “Do I see a pile of cash in front of me? I don’t think so.”

  “Well, Mr. Bone, I’m not even going to think about getting that kind of money together until I’ve got some proof that you really know something.”

  “All right,” said the voice from the shadows, after a while. “You know there’s a Committee to Unelect the Patrician? Now that’s news.”

  “What’s new about that? People have plotted to get rid of him for years.”

  There was another pause.

  “Y’know,” said Deep Bone, “it’d save a lot of trouble if you just gave me the money and I told you everything.”

  “So far you haven’t told me anything. Tell me everything, and then I’ll pay you, if it’s the truth.”

  “Oh, yes, pull one of the others, it’s got bells on!”

  “Then it looks like we can’t do business,” said William, putting his notebook away.

  “Wait, wait…this’ll do. You ask Vimes what Vetinari did just before the attack.”

  “Why, what did he do?”

  “See if you can find out.”

  “That’s not a lot to go on.”

  There was no reply. William thought he heard a shuffling noise.

  “Hello?”

  He waited a moment, and then very carefully stepped forward.

  In the gloom a few horses turned to look at him. Of an invisible informant, there was no sign.

  A lot of thoughts jostled for space in his mind as he headed out into the daylight, but surprisingly enough it was a small and theoretically unimportant one which kept oozing into center stage. What kind of phrase was “pull one of the others, it’s got bells on”? Now, “pull the other one, it’s got bells on,” he’d heard of—it stemmed from the days of a crueler than usual ruler in Ankh-Morpork who had any Morris dancers ritually tortured. But “one of the others”…where was the sense in that?

  Then it struck him.

  Deep Bone must be a foreigner. It made sense. It was like the way Otto spoke perfectly good Morporkian but hadn’t got the hang of colloquialisms.

  He made a note of this.

  He smelled the smoke at the same time as he heard the pottery clatter of golem feet. Four of the clay people thudded past him, carrying a long ladder. Without thinking, he fell in behind, automatically turning to a new page in his notebook.

  Fire was always the terror in those parts of the city where wood and thatch predominated. That was why everyone had been so dead set against any form of fire brigade, reasoning—with impeccable Ankh-Morpork logic—that any bunch of men who were paid to put out fires would naturally see to it that there was a plentiful supply of fires to put out.

  Golems were different. They were patient, hardworking, intensely logical, virtually indestructible, and they volunteered. Everyone knew golems couldn’t harm people.

  There was some mystery about how the golem fire brigade had got formed. Some said the idea had come from the Watch, but the generally held theory was that golems simply would not allow people and property to be destroyed. With eerie discipline and no apparent communication they would converge on a fire from all sides, rescue any trapped people, secure and carefully pile up all portable property, form a bucket chain along which the buckets moved at a blur, trample every last ember…and then hurry back to their abandoned tasks.

  These four were hurrying to a blaze in Treacle Mine Road. Tongues of fire curled out of first-floor rooms.

  “Are you from the paper?” said a man in the crowd.

  “Yes,” said William.

  “Well, I reckon this is another case of mysterious spontaneous combustion, just like you reported yesterday,” and he craned his neck to see if William was writing this down.

  William groaned. Sacharissa had reported a fire in Lobbin Clout, in which one poor soul had died, and left it at that. But the Inquirer had called it a Mystery Fire. />
  “I’m not sure that one was very mysterious,” he said. “Old Mr. Hardy decided to light a cigar and forgot that he was bathing his feet in turpentine.” Apparently someone had told him this was a cure for athlete’s foot and, in a way, they had been right.

  “That’s what they say,” said the man, tapping his nose. “But there’s a lot we don’t get told.”

  “That’s true,” said William. I heard only the other day that giant rocks hundreds of miles across crash into the country every week, but the Patrician hushes it up.”

  “There you are, then,” said the man. “It’s amazing the way they treat us as if we’re stupid.”

  “Yes, it’s a puzzle to me, too,” said William.

  “Gangvay, gangvay, please!”

  Otto pushed his way through the onlookers, struggling under the weight of a device the size and general shape of an accordion. He elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, balanced the device on its tripod, and aimed it towards a golem who was climbing out of a smoking window holding a small child.

  “All right, boys, zis is zer big vun!” he said, and raised the flash cage. “Vun, two, thre—aarghaarghaarghaargh…”

  The vampire became a cloud of gently settling dust. For a moment something hovered in the air. It looked like a small jar on a necklace made of string.

  Then it fell and smashed on the cobbles.

  The dust mushroomed up, took on a shape…and Otto stood blinking and running his hands over himself to check that he was all there. He caught sight of William and gave him the kind of big broad smile that only a vampire can give.

  “Mister Villiam! It vorked, your idea!”

  “Er…which one?” said William. A thin plume of yellow smoke was creeping out from under the lid of the big iconograph.

  “You said carry a little drop of emergency b-word,” said Otto. “Zo I thought: if it is in a little bottle around my neck, zen if I crumble to dust, hoopla! It vill crash and smash unt here I am!”

  He lifted the lid of the iconograph and waved the smoke away. There was the sound of very small coughing from within. “And if I am not mistaken, ve have a successfully etched picture! All of vhich only goes to show vot ve can achieve when our brains are not clouded by thoughts of open vindows and bare necks, vhich never cross my mind at all zese days because I am completely beetotal.”

  Otto had made changes to his clothing. Away had gone the traditional black evening dress preferred by his species, to be replaced by an armless vest containing more pockets than William had ever seen on one garment. Many of them were stuffed with packets of imp food, extra paint, mysterious tools, and other essentials of the iconographer’s art.

  In deference to tradition, though, Otto had made it black, with a red silk lining, and added tails.

  On making gentle inquiries of a family watching disconsolately as the smoke from the fire was turned to steam, William ascertained that the blaze had been mysteriously caused by mysterious spontaneous combustion in an overflowing mysterious chip pan full of boiling fat.

  William left them picking through the blackened remains of their home.

  “And it’s just a story,” he said, putting the notebook away. “It does makes me feel a bit of a vampire—oh…sorry.”

  “It is okay,” said Otto. “I understand. And I should like to thank you for givink me zis job. It means a lot to me, especially since I can see how nervous you are. Vhich is understandable, of course.”

  “I’m not nervous! I’m very much at home with other species!” said William hotly.

  Otto’s expression was amicable, but it was also as penetrative as the smile of a vampire can be.

  “Yes, I notice how careful you are to be friendly with the dwarfs and you are kind to me, also. It is a big effort vhich is very commendable—”

  William opened his mouth to protest, and gave up. “All right, look, it’s the way I was brought up, all right? My father was definitely very…in favor of humanity, well, ha, not humanity in the sense of…I mean, it was more that he was against—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand.”

  “And that’s all there is to it, okay? We can all decide who we’re going to be!”

  “Yes, yes, sure. And if you vant any advice about vimmin, you only have to ask.”

  “Why should I want advice about vi—women?”

  “Oh, no reason. No reason at all,” said Otto innocently.

  “Anyway, you’re a vampire. What advice could a vampire give me about women?”

  “Oh, my vord, vake up and smell zer garlic! Oh, zer stories I could tell you”—Otto paused—“but I von’t because I don’t do zat sort of thing anymore, now zat I have seen the daylight.” He nudged William, who was red with embarrassment. “Let us just say, zey don’t alvays scream.”

  “That’s a bit tasteless, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, that vas in zer bad old days,” said Otto hurriedly. “Now I like nothing better than a nice mug of cocoa and a good singsong around zer harmonium, I assure you. Oh, yes. My vord.”

  Getting into the office to write up the story turned out to be a problem. In fact, so was getting into Gleam Street.

  Otto caught William up as he stood and stared.

  “Vell, I suppose ve asked for it,” he shouted. “Tventy-five dollars is a lot of money.”

  “What?” shouted William.

  “I SAID TVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS IS A LOT OF MONEY, VILLIAM!”

  “WHAT?”

  Several people pushed past them. They were carrying dogs. Everyone in Gleam Street was carrying a dog, or leading a dog, or being dragged by a dog, or being savaged, despite the owner’s best efforts, by a dog belonging to someone else. The barking had already gone beyond mere sounds, and was now some kind of perceptible force, hitting the eardrums like a hurricane made of scrap iron.

  William pulled the vampire into a doorway, where the din was merely unbearable.

  “Can’t you do something?” he screamed. “Otherwise we’ll never get through!”

  “Like vot?”

  “Well, you know…all that children of the night business?”

  “Oh, zat,” said Otto. He looked glum. “Zat’s really very stereotypical, you know. Vy don’t you ask me to turn into a bat vhile you’re about it? I told you, I don’t do zat stuff no more!” “Have you got a better idea?”

  A few feet away a Rottweiler was doing its best to eat a spaniel.

  “Oh, very vell.”

  Otto waved his hands vaguely.

  The bark ceased instantly. And then every dog sat on its haunches and howled.

  “Not a huge improvement but at least they’re not fighting,” said William, hurrying forward.

  “Vell, I’m sorry. Stake me as you pass,” said Otto. “I shall have a very embarrassing five minutes explaining this at the next meeting, you understand? I know it’s not zer…sucking item, but I mean, vun should care about zer look of zer thing…”

  They climbed over a rotting fence and entered the shed via the back door.

  People and dogs were squeezing in through the other door and were only held at bay by a barricade of desks and also by Sacharissa, who was looking harassed as she faced a sea of faces and muzzles. William could just make out her voice above the din.

  “No, that’s a poodle. It doesn’t look a bit like the dog we’re after—”

  “—no, that’s not it. How do I know? Because it’s a cat. All right, then why’s it washing itself? No, I’m sorry, dogs don’t do that—”

  “—no, madam, that’s a bulldog—”

  “—no, that’s not it. No, sir, I know that’s not it. Because it’s a parrot, that’s why. You’ve taught it to bark and you’ve painted ‘DoG’ on the side of it but it’s still a parrot—”

  Sacharissa pushed her hair out of her eyes and caught sight of William.

  “Well, now, who’s been a clever boy?” she said.

  “Wh’s a cl’r boy?” said the DoG.

  “How many more out there?”

  “H
undreds, I’m afraid,” said William.

  “Well, I’ve just had the most unpleasant half hour of—That’s a chicken! It’s a chicken, you stupid woman, it’s just laid an egg!—of my life and I would like to thank you very much. You’ll never guess what happened. No, that’s a Schnauswitzer! And you know what, William?”

  “What?” said William.

  “Some complete muffin offered a reward! In Ankh-Morpork! Can you believe that? They were queuing three deep when I got here! I mean, what kind of idiot would do a thing like that? I mean, one man had a cow! A cow! I had a huge argument about animal physiology before Rocky hit him over the head! The poor troll’s out there now trying to keep order! There’s ferrets out there!”

  “Look, I’m sorry—”

  “I wonder, ah, if we can be of any assistance?”

  They turned.

  The speaker was a priest, dressed in the black, unadorned, and unflattering habit of the Omnians. He had a flat, broad-brimmed hat, the Omnia’s turtle symbol around his neck, and an expression of almost terminal benevolence.

  “Mm, I am Brother Upon-Which-the-Angels-Dance Pin,” said the priest, stepping aside to reveal a mountain in black, “and this is Sister Jennifer, who is under a vow of silence.”

  They stared up at the apparition of Sister Jennifer, while Brother Pin went on: “That means she does not, mm, talk. At all. In any circumstances.”

  “Oh dear,” said Sacharissa weakly. One of Sister Jennifer’s eyes was revolving, in a face that was like a brick wall.

  “Yes, mm, and we happened to be in Ankh-Morpork as part of the Bishop Horn Ministry to Animals and heard that you were looking for a little doggie who is in trouble,” said Brother Pin. “I can see you are, mm, a little overwhelmed, and perhaps we can help? It would be our duty.”

  “The dog’s a little terrier,” said Sacharissa, “but you’d be amazed at what people are bringing in—”

  “Dear me,” said Brother Pin. “But Sister Jennifer is very good at this sort of thing…”

  Sister Jennifer strode to the front desk. A man hopefully held up what was clearly a badger.

  “He’s been a bit ill—”

  Sister Jennifer brought her fist down on his head.

  William winced.

  “Sister Jennifer’s order believes in tough love,” said Brother Pin. “A little correction at the right time can prevent a lost soul taking the wrong path.”