The Truth

by Terry Pratchett

  “Nor is stabbing your clerk and trying to run off with a very heavy sack of cash,” said Vimes. “Yes, we noticed that, too. We’re not stupid. We only look stupid. Oh…and the guard said he smelled spirits on His Lordship’s breath.”

  “Does he drink?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “He’s got a drinks cabinet in his office.”

  Vimes smiled. “You noticed that? He likes other people to drink.”

  “But all that might mean was that he was plucking up the courage to—” William began, and stopped. “No, that’s not Vetinari. He’s not that sort.”

  “No. He isn’t,” said Vimes. He sat back. “Perhaps you’d better…think again, Mr. de Worde. Maybe…maybe…you can find someone to help you think better.”

  Something in his manner suggested that the informal part of the discussion was well and truly over.

  “Do you know much about Mr. Scrope?” said William.

  “Tuttle Scrope? Son of old Tuskin Scrope. President of the Guild of Shoemakers and Leatherworkers for the past seven years,” said Vimes. “Family man. Old established shop in Wixon’s Alley.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Mr. de Worde, that’s all the Watch knows about Mr. Scrope. You understand? You wouldn’t want to know about some of the people we know a lot about.”

  “Ah.” William’s brow wrinkled. “But there’s not a shoe shop in Wixon’s Alley.”

  “I never mentioned shoes.”

  “In fact the only shop that is even, er, remotely connected with leather is—”

  “That’s the one,” said Vimes.

  “But that sells—”

  “Comes under the heading of leatherwork,” said Vimes, picking up his truncheon.

  “Well, yes…and rubber work, and…feathers…and whips…and…little jiggly things,” said William, blushing. “But—”

  “Never been in there myself, although I believe Corporal Nobbs gets their catalogue,” said Vimes. “I don’t think there’s a Guild of Makers of Little Jiggly Things, although it’s an interesting thought. Anyway, Mr. Scrope is all nice and legal, Mr. de Worde. Nice old family atmosphere, I understand. Makes buying…this and that, and little jiggly things…as pleasant as half a pound of humbugs, I don’t doubt. And what rumor is telling me is that the first thing nice Mr. Scrope will do is pardon Lord Vetinari.”

  “What? Without a trial?”

  “Won’t that be nice?” said Vimes, with horrible cheerfulness. “A good start to his term of office, eh? Clean sheet, fresh start, no sense in raking up unpleasantness. Poor chap. Overwork. Bound to crack. Didn’t get enough fresh air. And so on. So he can be put away in some nice quiet place and we’ll be able to stop worrying about this whole wretched affair. A bit of a relief, eh?”

  “But you know he didn’t—”

  “Do I?” said Vimes. “This is an official truncheon of office, Mr. de Worde. If it was a club with a nail in it, this’d be a different sort of city. I’m off now. You’ve been thinking, you tell me. Maybe you ought to think some more.”

  William watched him go.

  Sacharissa had pulled herself together, perhaps because no one was trying to comfort her anymore.

  “What are we going to do now?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Get a paper out, I suppose. That’s our job.”

  “But what happens if those men come back?”

  “I don’t think they will. This place is being watched now.”

  Sacharissa started to pick papers up off the floor. “I suppose I’ll feel better if I do something…”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “If you can give me a few paragraphs about that fire…”

  “Otto got a decent picture,” said William. “Didn’t you, Otto?”

  “Oh yes. That vun is okay. But…”

  The vampire was staring down at his iconograph. It was smashed.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said William.

  “I have ozzers.” Otto sighed. “You know, I thought it vould be easy in zer big city,” he said. “I thought it would be civilized. Zey told me mobs don’t come after you viz pitchforks in zer big city like zey do back in Schüschien. I mean, I try. Gods know I try. Three months, four days, and seven hours on zer vagon. I give up zer whole thing! Even zer pale ladies viz the velvet basques vorn on zer outside and zer fetching black lace dresses and zose little tiny, you know, high-heeled boots, and zat vas a wrench, I don’t mind telling you…” He shook his head miserably, and stared at his ruined shirt. “And stuff all gets broken and now my best shirt is all covered viz…blood…covered viz red, red blood…rich dark blood…zer blood…covered with zer blood…zer blood…”

  “Quick!” said Sacharissa, pushing past William. “Mister Goodmountain, you hold his arms!” She waved at the dwarfs. “I was ready for this! Two of you hold his legs! Dozy, there’s a huge blutwurst in my desk drawer!”

  “…Let me valk in sunshine, living not in vein…” Otto crooned.

  “Oh, my gods, his eyes are glowing red!” said William. “What shall we do?”

  “We could try cutting his head off again?” said Boddony.

  “That was a very poor joke, Boddony,” Sacharissa snapped.

  “Joke? I was smiling?”

  Otto stood up, the cursing dwarfs hanging off his sparse frame.

  “Through thunderstorm and dreadful night, ve will carry on zer fight…”

  “He’s as strong as an ox!” said Goodmountain.

  “Hang on, maybe it would help if we joined in!” said Sacharissa. She fumbled in her bag and produced a slim blue pamphlet. “I picked this up this morning, from the mission in Abattoirs Lane. It’s their songbook! And”—she started to sniff again—“it’s so sad, it’s called ‘Walking in Sunshine’ and it’s so—”

  “You want us to have a singsong?” said Goodmountain, as the struggling Otto lifted him off the ground.

  “Just to give him moral support!” Sacharissa dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “You can see he’s trying to fight it! And he did lay down his life for us!”

  “Yes, but then he picked it up again!”

  William bent down and took up something from the wreckage of Otto’s iconograph. The imp had escaped, but the picture that it had painted was just visible. Perhaps it’d show—

  It wasn’t a good one of the man who’d called himself Brother Pin; his face was just a white blob in the glare of the light that humans couldn’t see. But the shadows behind him…

  He looked closer.

  “Oh, my gods…”

  The shadows behind him were alive.

  It was sleeting. Brother Pin and Sister Tulip slid and slithered through the freezing drops. Behind them, whistles were blowing in the murk.

  “Come on!” Pin yelled.

  “These —ing sacks are heavy!”

  There were whistles blowing off to one side now, too. Mr. Pin wasn’t used to this. Watchmen shouldn’t be enthusiastic, or organized. He had been chased by watchmen before, when plans hadn’t quite worked out. Their job was to give up at the second corner, out of breath. He felt quite angry about that. The watchmen here were doing it wrong.

  He was aware of an open space to one side of him, full of damp swirling flakes. Below him there was a sluggish sucking noise, like a very bad digestion.

  “This is a bridge! Chuck ’em in the river!” he commanded.

  “I fort we wanted to find—”

  “Doesn’t matter! Get rid of all of ’em! Right now! End of problem!”

  Sister Tulip grunted a reply, and skidded to a halt at the parapet. The two whining, yapping sacks went straight on over.

  “Did that sound like a —ing splash to you?” said Sister Tulip, peering through the sleet.

  “Who cares? Now run!”

  Mr. Pin shivered as he sped on. He didn’t know what had been done to him back there, but he’d felt like he’d walked over his own grave.

  He felt he had more than just watchmen afte
r him. He speeded up.

  In reluctant but marvelous harmony, because no one could sing like a group of dwarfs, even if the song was “May I Suck of Water Pure,”* the dwarfs seemed to be calming Otto down.

  Besides, the horrible black emergency blutwurst had finally been produced. For a vampire this was the equivalent of a cardboard cigarette to a terminal nicotine addict, but it was at least something he could get his teeth into. When William finally tore his gaze away from the horror of the shadows, Sacharissa was mopping Otto’s brow.

  “Oh, vunce again I am so ashamed, vhere can I put my head, it’s so—”

  William held up the picture.

  “Otto, what’s this?”

  In the shadows were mouths, screaming. In the shadows were eyes, wide. They didn’t move while you watched them, but if you looked at the picture a second time you got a feeling that they weren’t quite in the same place.

  Otto shuddered.

  “Oh, I used all zer eels I had,” he said.

  “And—?”

  “Oh, they’re awful,” breathed Sacharissa, looking away from the tortured shadows.

  “I feel so wretched,” said Otto. “Obviously they vere too stronk—”

  “Tell us, Otto!”

  “Vell…the iconograph does not lie, you have heard zis?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yes? Vell…under stronk dark light, the picture really does not lie. Dark light reveals zer truth to the dark eyes of zer mind…” He paused, and sighed. “Ah, vunce again no ominous roll of thunder, vot a vaste. But at least you could look apprehensively at the shadows.”

  All heads turned towards the shadows, in the corner of the room and under the roof. They were simply shadows, haunted by nothing more than dust and spiders.

  “But there’s just dust and—” Sacharissa began.

  Otto held up a hand.

  “Dear lady…I have told you. Philosophically, the truth can be vot is metaphorically there…”

  William stared at the picture again.

  “I had hoped that I could use filters and so on to cut down zer, er, unvanted effects,” said Otto behind him. “But alas—”

  “This is getting worse and worse,” said Sacharissa. “It gives me the humorous vegetables.”

  Goodmountain shook his head. “This is unholy stuff,” he said. “No more meddling with it, understand?”

  “I didn’t think dwarfs were religious,” said William.

  “We’re not,” said Goodmountain. “But we know unholy when we see it, and I’m looking at it right now, I’m telling you. I don’t want any more of these, these…prints of darkness!”

  William grimaced. It shows the truth, he thought. But how do we know the truth when we see it? The Ephebian philosophers think that a hare can never outrun a tortoise, and they can prove it. Is that the truth? I heard a wizard say that everything is made of little numbers, whizzing around so fast that they become stuff. Is that true? I think a lot of things that have been happening over the last few days are not what they seem, and I don’t know why I think that, but I think it’s not the truth…

  “Yes, no more of this stuff, Otto,” he said.

  “Damn right,” said Goodmountain.

  “Let’s just try to get back to normal and get a paper out, shall we?”

  “You mean normal where mad priests start to collect dogs, or normal where vampires mess around with evil shadows?” said Gowdie.

  “I mean like normal before that,” said William.

  “Oh, I see. You mean like back in the old days,” said Gowdie.

  After a while, though, silence settled on the pressroom, although there was an occasional sniff from the desk opposite.

  William wrote a story about the fire. That was easy. Then he tried to write a coherent account of the recent events, but found he couldn’t get beyond the first word. He’d written “The.” It was a reliable word, the definite article. The trouble was, all the things he was definite about were bad.

  He’d expected that to…what? Inform people? Yes. Annoy people? Well, some people, at least. What he hadn’t expected was that it wouldn’t make any difference. The paper came out, and it didn’t matter.

  People just seemed to accept things. What was the point of writing another story of the Vetinari business? Well, of course, it had a lot of dogs in it, and there was always a lot of human interest in a story about animals.

  “What did you expect?” said Sacharissa, as if she was reading his thoughts. “Did you think people would be marching in the streets? Vetinari isn’t a very nice man, from what I hear. People say he probably deserves to be locked up.”

  “Are you saying people aren’t interested in the truth?”

  “Listen, what’s true to a lot of people is that they need the money for the rent by the end of the week. Look at Mr. Ron and his friends. What’s the truth mean to them? They live under a bridge!”

  She held up a piece of lined paper, crammed edge to edge with the careful looped handwriting of someone for whom holding a pen was not a familiar activity.

  “This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society,” she said. “They’re just ordinary people who breed canaries and things as a hobby. Their chairman lives next door to me, which is why he gave me this. This stuff is important to him! My goodness, but it’s dull. It’s all about Best of Breed and some changes in the rules about parrots which they argued about for two hours. But the people who were arguing were people who mostly spend their day mincing meat or sawing wood and basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They’ve got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren’t lumped in with parrots. It’s not their fault. It’s just how things are. Why are you sitting there with your mouth open like that?”

  William closed his mouth.

  “All right, I understand—”

  “No, I don’t think you do,” she snapped. “I looked you up in Twurp’s Peerage. Your family have never had to worry about the small stuff, have they? They’ve been some of the people who really run things. This…paper is a kind of hobby for you, isn’t it? Oh, you believe in it, I’m sure you do, but if it all goes wahooni-shaped, you’ll still have money. I won’t. So if the way it can be kept going is by filling it with what you sneer at as olds, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  “I don’t have money! I make my own living!”

  “Yes, but you were able to choose! Anyway, aristocrats don’t like to see other toffs starving. They find them silly jobs to do for serious wages—”

  She stopped, panting, and pushed some hair out of her eyes. Then she looked at him like someone who has lit the fuse and is now wondering if the barrel at the other end is bigger than she thought.

  William opened his mouth, went to shape a word, and stopped. He did it again. Finally, a little hoarsely, he said: “You’re more or less right—”

  “The next word’s going to be ‘But,’ I just know it,” said Sacharissa.

  William was aware that the printers were all watching.

  “Yes, it is—”

  “Aha!”

  “But it’s a big but. Do you mind? It’s important! Someone has to care about the…the big truth. What Vetinari mostly does not do is a lot of harm. We’ve had rulers who were completely crazy and very, very nasty. And it wasn’t that long ago, either. Vetinari might not be ‘a very nice man,’ but I had breakfast today with someone who’d be a lot worse if he ran the city, and there are lots more like him. And what’s happening now is wrong. And as for your damn parrot fanciers, if they don’t care about anything much beyond things that go squawk in cages then one day there’ll be someone in charge of this place who’ll make them choke on their own budgies. You want that to happen? If we don’t make an effort all they’ll get is silly…stories about talking dogs and Elves Ate My Gerbil, so don’t give me lectures on what’s important and what’s not, understand?”

  They glared at one another.
r />   “Don’t you talk to me like that.”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that.”

  “We’re not getting enough advertising. The Inquirer’s getting huge adverts from the big Guilds,” said Sacharissa. “That’s what’ll keep us going, not stories about how much gold weighs.”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Find a way of getting more ads!”

  “That’s not my job!” William shouted.

  “It’s part of saving your job! We’re just getting penny-a-line advertisements from people wanting to sell surgical supports and backache cures!”

  “So? The pennies add up!”

  “So you want us to be known as The Paper You Can Put Your Truss In?”

  “Er…excuse me, but are we producing an edition?” said Goodmountain. “Not that we aren’t enjoying all this, but the color’s going to take a lot of extra time.”

  William and Sacharissa looked around. They were the focus of attention.

  “Look, I know this means a lot to you,” said Sacharissa, lowering her voice, “but all this…political stuff, this is the Watch’s job, not ours. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “They’re stuck. That’s what Vimes was telling me.”

  Sacharissa stared at his frozen expression. Then she leaned over and, to his shock, patted his hand.

  “Perhaps you are having an effect, then.”

  “Hah!”

  “Well, if they’re going to pardon Vetinari, maybe it’s because they’re worried about you.”

  “Hah! Anyway, who are ‘they’?”

  “Well…you know…them. The people who run things. They notice things. They probably read the paper.”

  William gave her a wan smile.

  “Tomorrow we’ll find someone to get more ads,” he said. “And we’ll definitely need those extra staff. Er…I’m going to go for a little walk,” he added. “And I’ll get you that key.”

  “Key?”

  “You wanted a dress for the ball?”

  “Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

  “And I don’t think those men will be back,” said William. “I’ve got a feeling that there isn’t a shed anywhere in town that’s as well guarded as this one right at the moment.”