Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  And Tears of the Mushroom laughed. It was a rather staccato laugh, reminding Vimes of the laughter of certain kinds of women, after certain kinds of too much gin. But it was laughter—straight, genuine and unaffected—and Young Sam bathed in it, giggling, and so did Sam Vimes, with sweat beginning to cool on his neck.

  Then Young Sam said, “I wish I had big hands like you. What’s your name?”

  In that clipped way Vimes was learning to recognize, the goblin girl said, “I am the Tears of the Mushroom.”

  Instantly Young Sam threw his arms around as much of her as he could encompass and shouted, “Mushrooms shouldn’t cry!”

  The look that the goblin girl gave Vimes was one that he had seen many times before on the face of someone in receipt of Young Sam’s hugs: a mixture of surprise and what Vimes had to call non-plussedness.

  At this point Miss Beedle came back into the room holding a plate which she passed to Tears of the Mushroom. “Please be so good as to serve our guests, my dear.”

  Tears of the Mushroom picked up the plate and tentatively pushed it toward Vimes, and said something that sounded like half a dozen coconuts rolling downstairs, but somehow managed to include the syllables you and eat and I make. There seemed to be a pleading in her expression, as if trying to make him understand.

  Vimes stared at her face a while and then thought, Well, I could understand, couldn’t I? It has to be worth a try, and closed his eyes, an errand of some dubiousness when you were face-to-longer-face with a jaw like that. With eyes firmly shut, and one hand over them to cut out the last vestige of light, he said, “Will you say that again, young …lady?” And in the darkness of his skull he heard, quite clearly, “I have baked biscuits today Mr. Po-leees-man. I washed my hands,” she added nervously. “They are clean and tasty. This I have said and it is a thing exact.”

  Baked by a goblin, thought Vimes as he opened his eyes and took a knobbly but appetizing-looking biscuit from the plate in front of him, then shut his eyes again and asked, “Why does the mushroom cry?”

  In the dark he heard the goblin girl gasp, and then say, “It cries so that there are many more mushrooms. This is a certain thing.”

  Vimes heard the faint chink of crockery behind him, but as he took his hands away from his eyes Miss Beedle said, “No, stay in darkness, commander. So it’s true what the dwarfs say about you.”

  “I wouldn’t know. What do the dwarfs say about me, Miss Beedle?”

  Vimes opened his eyes. Miss Beedle sat down on a chair almost opposite, while Tears of the Mushroom waited for more biscuit activity with the air of someone who would probably wait forever or until told not to. She looked imploringly at Vimes and then at Young Sam, who was studying Tears of the Mushroom with interest, although, knowing Young Sam, most of the interest had to do with the plate of biscuits. So he said, “Okay, lad, you may ask the lady for a biscuit, but mind your manners.”

  “They say that the dark is in you, commander, but you keep it in a cage. A present from Koom Valley, they say.”

  Vimes blinked in the light. “A dwarf superstition in a goblin cave? You know a lot about dwarfs?”

  “Quite a lot,” said Miss Beedle, “but far more about goblins, and they believe in the Summoning Dark, just like the dwarfs, after all, they are both creatures of the caves and the Summoning Dark is real. It’s not all in your head, commander: no matter what you hear, I sometimes hear it too. Oh dear, you of all people must recognize a substition when you’re possessed by it? It’s the opposite of a superstition: it’s real even if you don’t believe in it. My mother taught me that; she was a goblin.”

  Vimes looked at the pleasant brown-haired woman in front of him and said, politely, “No.”

  “All right, perhaps you’ll allow me a little theatricality and misdirection for effect? Truthfully, my mother was found as a child when she was three and raised by goblins in Uberwald. Until she was about eleven—and I say about because she was never quite certain about the passage of time—she pretty much thought and acted like a goblin and picked up their language, which is insanely difficult to learn if you’re not brought up to it. She ate with them, had her own plot in the mushroom farm and was very highly thought of among them for the way she looked after the rat farm. She once told me that until she met my father, all her best recollections were of those years in the goblin cave.”

  Miss Beedle stirred her coffee and continued. “And she also told me her worst recollections, the ones that haunted her nightmares and, I might say, haunt mine now: of one day after some nearby humans had found out that there was a golden-haired, pink-cheeked human girl running around underground with evil, treacherous brutes who, as everybody knows, eat babies. Well, she screamed and fought as they tried to take her away, especially since people who she had thought of as family were being slaughtered around her.”

  There was a pause. And Vimes glanced somewhat fearfully at Young Sam, who, thankfully, had returned to The Joy of Earwax and was therefore oblivious of all else.

  “You haven’t touched your coffee, commander. You’re just holding it in your hand and looking at me.”

  Vimes took a deep draft of very hot coffee, which at the moment suited him just fine. He said, “This is true? I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.”

  Tears of the Mushroom was watching him carefully, ready should he feel a biscuit attack coming on. They were in fact pretty good, and to hide his confusion he thanked her and took another one.

  “Best not to say anything, then,” said Miss Beedle. “All slaughtered, for no reason. It happens. Everybody knows they’re a worthless people, don’t they? I tell you, commander, it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved. Well, it took a lot of those things, and quite a lot of time, to convince a little girl that she wasn’t one of the nasty goblins anymore and was really one of the human beings who were not nasty at all, because one day they were certain she would understand that all this terrible business with the bucket of cold water and the beatings every time she spoke in the goblin tongue, or started absentmindedly to sing a goblin song, was in her best interest. Fortunately, although she probably didn’t think so at the time, she was strong and clever and she learned: learned to be a good girl, learned to wear proper dresses and eat with a knife and fork and kneel down to pray her thanks for all that she was receiving, including the beatings. And she learned not to be a goblin so successfully that they allowed her to work in the garden, where she vaulted over the wall. They never broke her, and she said to me that there would always be some goblin in her. I never met my father. According to my mother he was a decent and hardworking man, and a considerate and understanding one too, I suspect.”

  Miss Beedle stood up and brushed at her dress, as if trying to remove the crumbs of history. Standing there, in the chintzy room with the harp in it, she said, “I don’t know who those people were who killed the goblins and beat my mother, but if I ever found out I would slaughter them without a thought, because good people have no business being so bad. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to. And that’s how it went,” she said. “My father was a jeweler, and he soon found out that my mother was absolutely gifted in that respect, probably because of her goblin background that led her to have a feel for stones. I’m sure that made up for having a wife who would swear in goblin when she was annoyed—and let me tell you a good goblin swear can go on for at least a quarter of an hour. She wasn’t one for the books, as you might expect, but my dad had been, and one day I thought, “How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be and, the and I and it, and so on, and there’s a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has already been done for you. That was fifty-seven books ago. It seems to have worked.”

  Miss Beedle sat back down in her chair and l
eaned forward. “They have the most complex language you could possibly imagine, commander. The meaning of every word is contingent on the words around it, the speaker, the listener, the time of year, the weather, oh, and so many other things. They have something equivalent to what we think of as poetry; they use and control fire …And about three years ago nearly all of them in this countryside were rounded up and carted away, because they were a nuisance. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Vimes took a deep breath. “Actually, Miss Beedle, I came here to see my wife’s family estate and let my lad learn about the countryside. In the process of which I’ve already been arrested on suspicion of killing a blacksmith and have seen the brutally slaughtered body of a goblin woman. On top of this I have no knowledge of the whereabouts of said blacksmith and, Miss Beedle, would like somebody to enlighten me, preferably yourself.”

  “Yes, I saw the poor thing, and I’m sorry that I can’t tell you where Jethro is.”

  Vimes stared at her and thought, she’s probably telling the truth. “He’s not hiding in some part of the mine, is he?”

  “No, I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere. No note, nothing. And his parents have no idea either. He’s a bit of a free spirit, but he’s not the sort of person to go away without telling me.” She looked down, clearly embarrassed.

  The silence said a lot. Vimes broke it by saying, “The murder of that poor girl on the hill will not go unpunished while I live. I’m taking it personally, you might say. I think someone was trying to set me up and mud sticks.” He paused. “Tell me—these pots the goblins make. Do they carry them around all the time?”

  “Well, yes, of course, but only the ones they’re filling at the moment, obviously,” said Miss Beedle, with a trace of annoyance. “Is this relevant?”

  “Well, a policeman, you might say, thinks in goblin language: everything is contingent on everything else. Incidentally, how many other people know that you have a tunnel into the hill?”

  “What makes you think I have a tunnel going into the hill?”

  “Let me see now. This place is practically at the foot of the hill, and if I lived here I’d have dug out a decent wine cellar for myself. That’s one reason, and the other is because I saw the flash in your eyes when I asked you the question. Would you like me to ask you the question again?”

  The woman opened her mouth to speak, and Vimes raised a finger. “Not finished yet. What isn’t as simple is the fact that the other day you arrived in the cave without anybody seeing you walk up the hill. Everyone tells me that there are eyes watching you everywhere in the country and, as luck would have it, I had a few working for me yesterday. Please don’t waste my time. You’ve committed no crime that I know of—you understand being kind to goblins is not a crime?” He thought about that and added, “Although perhaps some people round here might think it is. But I don’t and I’m not stupid, Miss Beedle. I saw that goblin head in the pub. It looked as if it’s been there for years. Now, I just want to go back up to the cave without anybody seeing me, if you don’t mind, because I have a few questions to ask.”

  Miss Beedle said, “You want to interrogate the goblins?”

  “No, that word suggests that I mean to bully them. I simply have to obtain the information I need to know before I start to investigate the murder of the girl. If you don’t want to help me, I’m afraid that will be your choice.”

  The next day Sergeant Colon did not turn up for work. Mrs. Colon sent a note around by a boy as soon as she got back from work herself.*

  There was nothing romantic about Fred Colon when she got home, and so after sweeping the floor, doing the washing-up, wiping all the surfaces and spending some time teasing out the lumps of mud that had got caught on the doormat, she made haste to Pseudopolis Yard—after visiting her friend Mildred who had a rather nice porcelain jug and basin set she wanted to sell. When she eventually got to the Watch House she explained that Fred was terribly poorly, and sweating cobs and gabbling about rabbits.

  Sergeant Littlebottom was sent to investigate, and returned looking solemn as she climbed the steps to Vimes’s office, now occupied by Captain Carrot. You could tell he was the occupant now not simply because he was sitting in the chair, which was a persuasive hint, but also because all the paperwork was done and aligned, a trait which always impressed Inspector A. E. Pessimal, a small man who had the heart of a lion and the physical strength of a kitten and the face, disposition and general demeanor that would make even hardened accountants say, “Just look at him. Doesn’t he look like a typical accountant to you?”

  But this didn’t worry the lion heart of A. E. Pessimal. He was the Watch’s secret weapon. There wasn’t a bookkeeper in the city who would like to see a visit from A. E. Pessimal unless, of course, he was perfectly innocent—although generally that could be ruled out, because Mr. and Mrs. Pessimal’s little boy could track an error all the way through the ledger and down into the cellar where the real books had been hidden. And all Inspector A. E. Pessimal wanted for his genius was a meticulously calculated wage and a chance, every now and again, to go out on the streets with a real policeman, swinging his truncheon and glaring at trolls.

  Carrot leaned back. “So how’s Fred getting on, Cheery?”

  “Nothing much that I can see, really, um … ”

  “That was a big um, Cheery.”

  The trouble was that Captain Carrot had a friendly, honest and open face, that made you want to tell him things. It didn’t help that Sergeant Littlebottom held a small torch for the captain, even though he was well and truly spoken for—he was also a dwarf, well, technically, and you can’t help how you dream. “Well … ” she began reluctantly.

  Carrot leaned forward. “Yes, Cheery?”

  She gave in. “Well, sir, it’s unggue. You come from Copperhead …Did you run into many goblins up there?”

  “No, but I know that unggue is their religion, if you can call it that.”

  Cheery Littlebottom shook her head, trying to get out of her mind some speculation about the part a reasonably high stool might play in a relationship, and telling herself that Sergeant Hammer-of-Gold, over in the Dolly Sisters Watch House, caught her eye every time she was busily catching his eye when they happened to meet on patrol, and was probably a really good catch if she could pluck up the courage to ask him if he was actually male.* She said, “Onggue is not a religion, it’s a superstition. The goblins don’t believe in Tak,* sir, they’re savages, scavengers, but … ” She hesitated again. “There’s something I was told once, and it’s unbelievable, but sometimes they eat their babies, sir, or at least, the mother will eat her child, her newborn child, if there’s famine. Can you believe that?”

  Carrot’s mouth dropped open for a moment, and then a small voice said, “Yes, I think I can, sergeant, if you would excuse my saying so.”

  A. E. Pessimal looked defiantly at their expressions and tried to stand a little straighter. “It’s a matter of logic, you see? No food? But the mother may survive by reconsuming the child, as it were, whereas, if all other food has been exhausted, then the child will die. In fact the child is dead as soon as the conundrum is postulated. The mother, on the other hand, might, by so doing, survive for long enough for more food to be found and become available, and in the course of time may bear another child.”

  “You know, that is a very accountancy thing to say!” said Cheery.

  A. E. Pessimal remained calm. “Thank you, Sergeant Littlebottom, I shall take that as a compliment because the logic is impeccable. It’s what is known as the dreadful logic of necessity. I’m well versed in the logistics of survival situations.”

  The chair creaked as Captain Carrot leaned forward. “No offense meant, Inspector Pessimal, but may I enquire as to what kind of issues of survival arise during double-entry bookkeeping?”

  A. E. Pessimal sighed. “It can get pretty hazardous as the end
of the fiscal year draws near, captain. However, I take your point and would like you to understand that I believe I have read every single memoir, manual, log, and message in a bottle—by which I mean, of course, message taken from a bottle—that is currently available, and I can assure you that you would be amazed at the terrible decisions that sometimes have to be made by a group of people so that some, if not all, may live. Classically we have the shipwrecked sailors adrift in an open boat far on the ocean with succor extremely unlikely. Generally, the procedure is to eat one another’s legs, although sooner or later the supply of legs is going to run, if I may use the word, out; and then arises the question who will die so that some may live. Dreadful algebra, captain.” Only then did A. E. Pessimal blush. “I’m sorry. I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.”

  “Perhaps you should walk through the Shades, inspector,” said Carrot, “you wouldn’t have to dream. Do carry on, Cheery.”

  Cheery Littlebottom shrugged. “But eating your own child, that’s got to be wrong, yes?”

  “Well, sergeant,” said A. E. Pessimal, “I have read about such things and if you think of the outcomes, which are the death of both mother and child or the death of the child but the possible life of the mother, the conclusion must be that her decision is right. In his book A Banquet of Worms Colonel F. J. Massingham does mention this about the goblins and apparently, according to the goblins’ world view, a consumed child, which clearly did emerge from the mother, has been returned whence it came and will, hopefully, be reborn anew at some future date when circumstances are more favorable with, therefore, no actual harm done. You may think that this view does not stand up to scrutiny, but when you’re faced with the dreadful algebra, the world becomes quite a different place.”

  There was silence while they all contemplated this.