The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  “Vhich order is this she belongs to, please?” said Otto, as the lost soul carrying his badger staggered out, his legs trying to take several paths at once.

  Brother Pin gave him a damp smile.

  “The Little Flowers of Perpetual Annoyance,” he said.

  “Really? I had not heard of zis vun. Very…outreaching. Vell, I must go and see if the imps have done zer job properly…”

  Certainly the crowd was thinning rapidly under the stress of seeing the advancing Sister Jennifer, especially the segment of it that had brought dogs that purred or ate sunflower seeds. Many of those who had brought an actual living dog were looking nervous, as well.

  A sense of unease crept over William. He knew that some sections of the Omnian Church still believed that the way to send a soul to heaven was to give the body hell. And Sister Jennifer couldn’t be blamed for her looks, or even the size of her hands. And even if the backs of said hands were rather hairy, well, that was the sort of thing that happened out in the rural districts.

  “What exactly is she doing?” he said. There were yelps and shouts in the queue as dogs were grabbed, glared at, and thrust back with more than minimum force.

  “As I said, we’re trying to find the little dog,” said Brother Pin. “It may need ministering to.”

  “But…that wirehaired terrier there looks pretty much like the picture,” said Sacharissa. “And she’s just ignored it.”

  “Sister Jennifer is very sensitive in these matters,” said Brother Pin.

  “Oh well, this is not getting the next edition filled,” said Sacharissa, heading back to her desk.

  “I expect it would help if we could print in color,” said William, when he was left alone with Brother Pin.

  “Probably,” said the reverend brother. “It was a kind of grayish brown.”

  William knew then that he was dead. It was only a matter of time.

  “You know what color you’re looking for,” he said quietly.

  “You just get on with sorting out the words, writer boy,” said Brother Pin, for his ears only. He opened the jacket of his frock coat just enough for William to see the range of cutlery holstered there, and closed it again. “This isn’t anything to do with you, okay? Shout out, and someone gets killed. Try to be a hero, and someone gets killed. Make any kind of sudden move, and someone gets killed. In fact, we might as well kill someone anyway and save some time, eh? You know that stuff about the pen being mightier than the sword?”

  “Yes,” said William hoarsely.

  “Want to try?”

  “No.”

  William caught sight of Goodmountain, who was staring at him.

  “What’s that dwarf doing?” said Brother Pin.

  “He’s setting type, sir,” said William. It was always wise to be polite to edged weapons.

  “Tell him to get on with it,” said Pin.

  “Er…if you could just get on with it, Mr. Goodmountain,” said William, raising his voice over the growls and yelps. “Everything is fine.”

  Goodmountain nodded, and turned his back. He held up one hand theatrically, and then started to assemble type.

  William watched. It was better than semaphore, as the hand dipped from box to box.

  Hes a fawe?

  W was in the box next to K…

  “Yes indeed,” said William. Pin glanced at him. “Yes indeed, what?”

  “I, er, it was just nerves,” said William. “I’m always nervous in the presence of swords.”

  Pin glanced at the dwarfs. They all had their backs to them.

  Goodmountain’s hand moved again, flicking letter after letter from its nest.

  Armed? coff 4 yes

  “Something wrong with your throat?” said Pin, after William coughed.

  “Just nerves again…sir.”

  OK will get Otto

  “Oh no,” William muttered.

  “Where’s that dwarf going?” said Pin, his hand reaching into his coat.

  “Just into the cellar, sir. To…fetch some ink.”

  “Why? Looks like you’ve got lots of ink up here already.”

  “Er, the white ink, sir. For the spaces. And the middle of the O’s.” William leaned towards Mr. Pin, and shuddered when the hand reached inside the jacket again. “Look, the dwarfs are all armed, too. With axes. And they get excited very easily. I’m the only person anywhere near you who hasn’t got a weapon. Please? I don’t want to die just yet. Just do whatever you came to do and go?”

  It was a pretty good impression of an abject coward, he thought, because it was casting for type.

  Pin glanced away.

  “How are we doing, Sister Jennifer?” he said.

  Sister Jennifer held a struggling sack.

  “Got all the —ing terriers,” he said.

  Brother Pin shook his head sharply.

  “Got all the —ing terriers!” fluted Sister Jennifer, in a much higher register. “And there’s —ing watchmen at the end of the street!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, William saw Sacharissa sit bolt upright. Death was certainly somewhere on the agenda now.

  Otto was climbing unconcernedly up the cellar steps, one of his iconograph boxes swinging from his shoulder.

  He nodded at William. Behind him, Sacharissa was pushing her chair back. Back in front of his case of type, Goodmountain was feverishly setting: Hide your eyes

  Mr. Pin turned to William. “What do you mean, white ink for the spaces?”

  Sacharissa was looking angry and determined, like Mrs. Arcanum after an uncalled-for remark.

  The vampire raised his box.

  William saw the hod above it, crammed with Uberwaldean land eels.

  Mr. Pin thrust back his coat.

  William leapt towards the advancing girl, rising through the air like a frog through treacle.

  Dwarfs started to jump over the low barrier to the print room with axes in their hands. And…

  “Boo,” said Otto.

  Time stopped. William felt the universe fold away, the little globe of walls and ceilings peeling back like the skin of an orange, leaving a chilly, rushing darkness filled with needles of ice. There were voices, cut off, random syllables of sound, and again the feeling that he’d felt before, that his body was as thin and insubstantial as a shadow.

  Then he landed on top of Sacharissa, threw his arms around her, and rolled them both behind the welcome barrier of the desks.

  Dogs howled. People swore. Dwarfs yelled. Furniture smashed. William lay still until the thunder died away.

  It was replaced by groans and swearing.

  Swearing was a positive indication. It was dwarfish swearing, and it meant that the swearer was not only alive but angry too.

  He raised his head carefully.

  The far door was open. There was no queue, no dogs. There was the sound of running feet and furious barking out in the street.

  The back door was swinging on its hinges.

  William was aware of the pneumatic warmth of Sacharissa in his arms. This was an experience of the sort which, in a life devoted to arranging words in a pleasing order, he had not dreamed would—well, obviously dreamed, his inner editor corrected him, better make that expected—would have come his way.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry,” he said. That was technically a white lie, the editor said.

  Like thanking your aunt for the lovely handkerchiefs. It’s okay. It’s okay.

  He drew away carefully, and got unsteadily to his feet. The dwarfs were also staggering upright. One or two of them were being noisily sick.

  The body of Otto Chriek was crumpled on the floor. The departing Brother Pin had gone one expert cut in, at neck height, before leaving.

  “Oh, my gods,” said William. “What a dreadful thing to happen…”

  “What, having your head cut off?” said Boddony, who’d never liked the vampire. “Yes, I expect you could say that.”

  “We…ought to do something for him…”

  “Really?�
��

  “Yes! I’d have been killed for sure if he hadn’t used those eels!”

  “Excuse me? Excuse me, please?”

  The singsong voice was coming from under the printers’ bench. Goodmountain knelt down.

  “Oh no…” he said.

  “What is it?” said William.

  “It’s…er…well, it’s Otto.”

  “Excuse, please? Could somevun get me out of here?” Goodmountain, grimacing, pushed his hand into the darkness, while the voice continued: “Oh, crikey, zere is a dead rat under here, somevun must’ve dropped zere lunch, how sordid—not zer ear please, not zer ear…by the hair, please…”

  The hand came out again, holding Otto’s head by the hair, as requested. The eyes swiveled.

  “Everyvun all right?” said the vampire. “Zat vas a close shave, yes?”

  “Are you…all right, Otto?” said William, realizing that this was a winning entrant in the Really Stupid Things to Say contest.

  “Vot? Oh, yes. Yes, I zink so. Mustn’t grumble. Pretty good, really. It’s just that I seem to have my head cut off, vhich you could say is a bit of a drawback—”

  “That’s not Otto,” said Sacharissa. She was shaking.

  “Of course it is,” said William. “I mean, who else could it—”

  “Otto’s taller than that,” said Sacharissa, and burst out laughing. The dwarfs started to laugh, too, because at that moment they would laugh at anything. Otto didn’t join in very enthusiastically.

  “Oh, yes. Ho ho ho,” he said. “Zer famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humor. Vot a funny joke. Talk about laugh. Do not mind me.”

  Sacharissa was gasping for breath. William grabbed her as gently as he could, because this was the kind of laughter you died of. And now she was crying, great racking sobs that bubbled up through the laughs.

  “I wish I was dead!” she sobbed.

  “You should try it some time,” said Otto. “Mr. Goodmountain, take me to my body, please? It is around here somevhere.”

  “Do you…should we…do you have to sew—” Goodmountain tried.

  “No. Ve heal easily,” said Otto. “Ah, zere it is. If you could just put me down by me, please? And turn around? Zis is a bit, you know, embarrassing? Like the making of zer vater?” Still wincing in the aftereffects of the dark light, the dwarfs obeyed.

  After a moment they heard: “Okay, you can look now.”

  Otto, all in one piece, was sitting up and dabbing at his neck with a black handkerchief.

  “Got to be a stake in zer heart as vell,” he said, as they stared. “Zo…what vas all zat about, please? Zer dwarf said to make a distraction—”

  “We didn’t know you used dark light!” snapped Goodmountain.

  “Excuse me? All I had ready was the land eels and you said it looked urgent! Vot did you expect me to do? I’m reformed!”

  “That’s bad luck, that stuff!” said a dwarf William had come to know.

  “Oh yes? You zink? Vell, I’m zer one who is going to have to have his collar laundered!” snapped Otto.

  William did his best to comfort Sacharissa, who was still trembling.

  “Who were they?” she said.

  “I’m…not sure, but they certainly wanted Lord Vetinari’s dog…”

  “I’m sure that she wasn’t a proper virgin, you know!”

  “Sister Jennifer certainly looked very odd,” was the most William was going to concede.

  Sacharissa snorted. “Oh, no, I was taught by worse than her at school,” she said. “Sister Credenza could bite through a door…no, it was the language! I’m sure ‘—ing’ is a bad word. She certainly used it like one. I mean, you could tell it was a bad word. And that priest, he had a knife!”

  Behind them, Otto was in trouble.

  “You use it to take pictures?” said Goodmountain.

  “Vy, yes.”

  Several of the dwarfs slapped their thighs, half turned away and did the usual little pantomime that people do to indicate that they just can’t believe someone else could be so damn stupid.

  “You know it is dangerous!” said Goodmountain.

  “Mere superstition!” said Otto. “All zat possibly happens is that a subject’s own morphic signature aligns zer resons, or thing-particles, in phase-space according to zer Temporal Relevance Theory, creating zer effect of multiple directionless vindows vhich intersect vith the illusion of zer Present and create metaphoric images according to zer dictates of quasi-historical extrapolation. You see? Nothing mysterious about it at all!”

  “It certainly frightened off those people,” said William.

  “It was the axes that did that,” said Goodmountain firmly.

  “No, it was the feeling that the top of your head has been opened and icicles have been pounded into your brain,” said William.

  Goodmountain blinked. “Yeah, okay, that too,” he said, mopping his forehead. “You’ve got a way with words, right enough…”

  A shadow appeared in the doorway. Goodmountain grabbed his ax.

  William groaned. It was Vimes. Worse, he was smiling, in a humorless predatory way.

  “Ah, Mr. de Worde,” he said, stepping inside. “There are several thousand dogs stampeding through the city at the moment. This is an interesting fact, isn’t it?”

  He leaned against the wall and produced a cigar. “Well, I say dogs,” he said, striking a match on Goodmountain’s helmet. “Mostly dogs, perhaps I should say. Some cats. More cats now, in fact, ’cos, hah, there’s nothing like a, yes, a tidal wave of dogs, fighting and biting and howling, to sort of, how can I put it, give a city a certain…busyness. Especially underfoot, because—did I mention it?—they’re very nervous dogs too. Oh, and did I mention cattle?” he went on conversationally. “You know how it is, market day and so on, people are driving the cows and, my goodness, around the corner comes a wall of wailing dogs…oh, and I forgot about the sheep. And the chickens, although I imagine there’s not much left of the chickens now…”

  He stared at William.

  “Anything you feel you want to tell me?” he said.

  “Uh…we had a bit of a problem…”

  “Never! Really? Do tell!”

  “The dogs took fright when Mr. Chriek took a picture of them,” said William. This was absolutely true. Dark light was frightening enough even if you knew what was happening.

  Vimes glared at Otto, who looked miserably at his feet.

  “Well now,” said Vimes. “Shall I tell you something? They’re electing a new Patrician today—”

  “Who?” said William.

  “I don’t know,” said Vimes.

  Sacharissa blew her nose and said: “It’ll be Mr. Scrope, of the Shoemakers and Leatherworkers.”

  Vimes gave William a suspicious look.

  “How do you know that?” he said.

  “Everyone knows,” said Sacharissa. “That’s what the young man in the bakery said this morning.”

  “Oh, where would we be without rumor,” said Vimes. “So this is not a day, Mr. de Worde, for…things to go wrong. My men are talking to some of the people who brought dogs along. Not many of them, I have to admit. Most of them don’t want to talk to the Watch. Can’t think why, we’re very good listeners. Now is there anything you want to tell me?” Vimes looked around the room and back to William. “Everyone’s staring at you. I notice.”

  “The Times does not need any help from the Watch,” said William.

  “Helping wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I’ll decide that.”

  “Really? That’s an interesting point of view.”

  Vimes glanced down. William had taken his notebook out of his pocket.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  He reached down to his own belt and pulled out a blunt, dark length of wood.

  “You know what this is?” he said.

  “It’s a truncheon,” said William. “A big stick.”

  “Alwa
ys the last resort, eh?” said Vimes evenly. “Rosewood and Llamedos silver, a lovely piece of work. And it says on this little plate here that I’m supposed to keep the peace and you, Mr. de Worde, don’t look like part of that right now.”

  They locked gazes.

  “What was the odd thing Lord Vetinari did just before the…accident?” said William, so quietly that probably only Vimes heard it.

  Vimes didn’t even blink. But after a moment he laid the truncheon down on the desk, with a click that sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.

  “Now you put your notebook down, lad,” he suggested in a quiet voice. “That way, it’s just me and you. No…clash of symbols.”

  This time, William could see where the path of wisdom lay. He put down the book.

  “Right,” said Vimes. “And now you and me are going to go over to the corner there, while your friends tidy up. Amazing, isn’t it, how much furniture can get broken, just by taking a picture.”

  He went and sat down on an upturned washtub. William made do with a rocking horse.

  “All right, Mr. de Worde, we’ll do this your way,” he said.

  “I didn’t know I had a way.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what you know, are you?”

  “I’m not sure what I know,” said William. “But I…think…Lord Vetinari did something remarkable not long before the crime.”

  Vimes pulled out his own notebook and thumbed through it.

  “He entered the Palace by the stables some time before seven o’clock and dismissed the guard,” he said.

  “He’d been out all night?”

  Vimes shrugged. “His Lordship comes and goes. The guards don’t ask him where and why. Have they been talking to you?”

  William was ready for the question. He just didn’t have an answer. But the Palace Guard, insofar as he’d met them, weren’t men chosen for imagination or flair but for a kind of obstructive loyalty. They didn’t sound like a potential Deep Bone.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Oh, you don’t think so?”

  Hold on, hold on…Deep Bone claimed to know the dog Wuffles, and a dog ought to know if his master was acting oddly…dogs liked routine…

  “I think it’s very unusual for His Lordship to be outside the Palace at that time,” said William carefully. “Not part of the…routine.”