Thud!

by Terry Pratchett

  He signed the Arrests book, the Occurrences book, even the Lost Property book. Lost Property book! They never had one of those in the old days. If someone turned up complaining that they’d lost some small item, you just held Nobby Nobbs upside down and sorted through what dropped out.

  But he didn’t know two-thirds of the coppers he employed now—not know, in the sense of knowing when they’d stand and when they’d run, knowing the little giveaways that’d tell him when they were lying or scared witless. It wasn’t really his Watch anymore. It was the city’s Watch. He just ran it.

  He went through the Station Sergeant’s reports, the Watch Officers’ reports, the Sick reports, the Disciplinary reports, the Petty Cash reports—

  “Duddle-dum-duddle-dum-duddle—”

  Vimes slammed the Gooseberry down on the desk and picked up the small loaf of dwarf bread that for the last few years he’d used as a paperweight.

  “Switch off or die,” he growled.

  “Now, I can see you’re slightly upset,” said the imp, looking up at the looming loaf, “but could I ask you to look at things from my point of view? This is my job. This is what I am. I am, therefore I think. And I think we could get along famously if you would only read the manu—please, no! I really could help you!”

  Vimes hesitated in mid-thump, and then carefully put down the loaf.

  “How?” he said.

  “You’ve been adding up the numbers wrong,” said the imp. “You don’t always carry the tens.”

  “And how would you know that?” Vimes demanded.

  “You mutter to yourself,” said the imp.

  “You eavesdrop on me?”

  “It’s my job! I can’t switch my ears off! I have to listen! That’s how I know about the appointments!”

  Vimes picked up the Petty Cash report and glanced at the messy columns of figures. He prided himself on what he had, since infancy, called “sums.” Yes, he knew he plodded a bit, but he got there in the end.

  “You think you could do better?” he said.

  “Let me out and give me a pencil!” said the imp. Vimes shrugged. It had been a strange day, after all. He opened the little cage door.

  The imp was a very pale green and translucent, little more than a creature made out of colored air, but it was able to grip the tiny pencil stub. It ran up and down the column of figures in the Petty Cash book and, Vimes was pleased to hear, it muttered to itself.

  “It’s out by three dollars and five pence,” it reported after a few seconds.

  “That’s fine, then,” said Vimes.

  “But the money is not accounted for!”

  “Oh yes it is,” said Vimes. “It was stolen by Nobby Nobbs. It always is. He never steals more than four dollars fifty.”

  “Would you like me to make an appointment for a disciplinary interview?” said the imp hopefully.

  “Of course not. I’m signing it off now. Er…thank you. Can you add up the other dockets?”

  The imp beamed.

  “Absolutely!”

  Vimes left the imp scribbling happily and walked over to the window.

  They don’t acknowledge our law and they undermine our city. That’s not just a bunch of deep-downers here to keep their fellow dwarfs on the straight seam. How far do those tunnels go? Dwarfs dig like crazy. But why here? What are they looking for? As sure as any hell you choose, there’s no treasure trove under this city, no sleeping dragon, no secret kingdom. There’s just water and mud and darkness.

  How far do they go? How much—hold on, we know this, we know this, don’t we. We know about numbers and figures in today’s Watch…

  “Imp?” he said, turning around.

  “Yes, Insert Name Here?”

  “You see that big pile of paper in the corner?” said Vimes, pointing. “Somewhere in there are the gate guard reports for the past six months. Can you compare them with last week’s? Can you compare the number of dunny wagons leaving the city?”

  “Dunny Wagon not found in root dictionary. Searching slang dictionary…mip…mip…mip…Dunny Wagon, n.: cart for carrying night soil (see also Honey Wagon, Treacle Wagon, Midnight Special, Gong Wagon, and variants),” said the imp.

  “That right,” said Vimes, who hadn’t heard the Midnight Special one before. “Can you?”

  “Ooh, yes!” said the imp. “Thank you for using the Dis-Organizer Mark five, the Gooseberry, the most advanced—”

  “Yeah, don’t mention it. Just look at the ones for the Hubwards Gate. That’s closest to Treacle Street.”

  “Then I suggest you stand back, Insert Name Here,” said the imp.

  “Why?”

  The imp leapt into the pile. There was some rustling noises, a couple of mice scampered out—and the pile exploded. Vimes backed away hurriedly as papers fountained into the air, borne aloft on a very pale green cloud.

  Vimes had instigated record keeping at the gates not because he had a huge interest in the results, but because it kept the lads on their toes. It wasn’t as if it was security duty. Ankh-Morpork was so wide open it was gaping. But the cart census was handy. It topped watchmen falling asleep at their posts, and it gave them an excuse to be nosy.

  You had to move soil. That was it. This was a city. If you were a long way from the river, the only way to do that was on a cart. Blast it, he thought, I should have asked the thing to see if there’s been any increase in stone and timber loads, too. Once you’ve dug a hole in mud, you’ve got to keep it open—

  The circling, swooping papers snapped back into piles. The green haze shrank with a faint zzzzp noise, and there was the little imp, ready to burst with pride.

  “An extra one-point-one dunny carts a night over six months ago!” it announced. “Thank you, Insert Name Here! Cogito ergo sum, Insert Name Here. I exist, therefore I do sums!”

  “Right, yes, thank you,” said Vimes. Hmm. A bit more than one cart a night? They held a couple of tons, maximum. You couldn’t make much of that. Maybe people living near that gate had been really ill lately. But…what would he do, in the dwarfs’ position?

  He damn well wouldn’t send stuff out of the nearest gate, that’s what. Ye gods, if they were tunneling in enough places, they could dump it anywhere.

  “Imp, could you…” Vimes paused. “Look, don’t you have some kind of a name?”

  “Name, Insert Name Here?” said the imp, looking puzzled. “Oh, no. I am created by the dozen, Insert Name Here. A name would be a bit stupid, really.”

  “I’ll call you Gooseberry, then. So…Gooseberry, can you give me the same figures for every city gate? And also the numbers of timber and stone carts?”

  “It will take some time, Insert Name Here, but yes! I should love to!”

  “And while you’re about it, see if there were any reports of subsidence. Walls falling down, houses cracking, that sort of thing?”

  “Certainly, Insert Name Here. You can rely on me, Insert Name Here!”

  “Snap to it, then!”

  “Yes, Insert Name Here! Thank you, Insert Name Here. I think much better outside the box, Insert Name Here!”

  Zzzzp. Paper started to fly.

  Well, who’d have thought it, Vimes wondered. Maybe the damned thing could be useful after all.

  The speaking tube whistled. He unhooked it and said, “Vimes.”

  “I’ve got the evening edition of the Times, sir,” said the distant voice of Sergeant Littlebottom. She sounded worried.

  “Fine. Send it up.”

  “And there’s a couple of people here who want to see you, sir.” Now there was a guarded tone to her voice.

  “And they can hear you?” said Vimes.

  “That’s right, sir. Trolls. They insist on seeing you personally. They say they have a message for you.”

  “Do they look like trouble?”

  “Every inch, sir.”

  “I’m coming down.”

  Vimes hung up the tube. Trolls with a message. It was unlikely to be an invitation to a literary lunch
.

  “Er…Gooseberry?” he said.

  Once again, the faint green blur coalesced into the beaming imp.

  “Found the figures, Insert Name Here. Just working on them!” it said, and saluted.

  “Good, but get back in the box, will you? We’re going out.”

  “Certainly, Insert Name Here! Thank you for choosing the—”

  Vimes pushed the box into his pocket, and went downstairs.

  The main office included not only the duty officer’s desk but also half a dozen smaller ones, where watchmen sat when they had to do the really tricky parts of police work, like punctuating a sentence correctly. A lot of rooms and corridors opened into it. A useful result of all this was that any action there attracted a lot of attention very quickly.

  If the two trolls very conspicuously in the middle of the room had intended trouble, they’d picked a bad time. It was between shifts. Currently, they were trying without success to swagger whilst standing still, watched with deep suspicion by seven or eight officers of various shapes.

  They’d brought it on themselves. They were baaad trolls. At least, they’d like everyone to think so. But they’d got it wrong. Vimes had seen bad trolls, and these didn’t come close. They’d tried. Oh, they’d tried. Lichen covered their heads and shoulders. Clan graffiti adorned their bodies; one of them had even had his arm carved, which must have hurt, for that stone-cool troll look. Since wearing the traditional belt of human or dwarf skulls would have resulted in the wearer’s heels leaving a groove all the way to the nearest nick, and monkey skulls left the wearer liable to ambush by dwarfs with no grounding in forensic anthropology, these trolls—

  Vimes grinned. These boys had done the best they could with, oh dear, sheep and goat skulls. Well done, boys, that’s really scary.

  It was depressing. The old-time bad trolls didn’t bother with all that stuff. They just beat you over the head with your own arm until you got the message.

  “Well, gentlemen?” he said. “I’m Vimes.”

  The trolls exchanged glances through the mats of lichen, and one of them lost.

  “Midder Chrysophrase he wanna see you,” said Carved Arm sulkily.

  “Is that so?” said Vimes.

  “He wanna see you now,” said the troll.

  “Well, he knows where I live,” said Vimes.

  “Yeah. He does.”

  Three words, smacking into the silence like lead. It was the way the troll said them. A suicidal kind of way.

  The silence was broken by the steely sound of bolts being shot home, followed by a click. The trolls turned. Sergeant Detritus was taking the key out of the lock of the Watch house’s big, thick, double doors. Then he turned around and his heavy hands landed on the trolls’ shoulders.

  He sighed. “Boys,” he said, “if dere was a Ph.D. in bein’ fick, youse wouldn’t be able to find a pencil.”

  The troll who’d uttered the not-very-veiled threat then made another mistake. It must have been terror that moved his arms, or dumb machismo. Surely no one with a functioning brain cell would have selected that moment to move their arms into what, for trolls, was the attack position.

  Detritus’s fist moved in a blur, and the crack, as it connected with the troll’s skull, made the furniture rattle.

  Vimes opened his mouth…and shut it again. Trollish was a very physical language. And you had to respect cultural traditions, didn’t you? It wasn’t only dwarfs who were allowed to have them, was it? Besides, you couldn’t crack a troll’s skull even with a hammer and chisel. And he threatened your family, his hind brain added. He had it coming—

  There was a twinge of pain from the wound on his hand, echoed by the stab of a headache. Oh hells. And Igor said the stuff would work!

  The stricken troll rocked for a second or two, and then went over forwards in one rigid movement.

  Detritus walked across to Vimes, kicking the recumbent figure en passant.

  “Sorry about dat, sir,” he said, and his hand clanged on his helmet as he saluted. “Dey got no manners.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” said Vimes, and addressed the remaining, suddenly-very-alone messenger. “Why does Chrysophrase want to see me?”

  “He wouldn’t tell der Brothers Fick that, would he…” said Detritus, grinning horribly at the troll. There was no swagger left now.

  “All I know is, it’s about der killin’ o’ the horug,” mumbled the troll, taking refuge in surliness. At the sound of the word the eyes of every watching dwarf narrowed further. It was a very bad word.

  “Oh boy, oh boy, oh…” Detritus hesitated.

  “Boy,” said Vimes out of the corner of his mouth.

  “—boy!” said Detritus triumphantly. “You are makin’ friends like nobody’s business today!”

  “Where’s the meeting?” said Vimes.

  “Der Pork Futures Warehouse,” said the troll. “You is to come alone…” he paused, awareness of his position dawning on him, and added, “if you don’t mind.”

  “Go and tell your boss I might choose to wander that way, will you?” said Vimes. “Now get out of here. Let him out, Sergeant.”

  “An’ take your rubbish home wid you,” Detritus roared.

  He slammed the doors behind the troll, bent under the weight of his fallen comrade.

  “Okay,” said Vimes, as tensions relaxed. “You heard the troll. A good citizen wants to help the Watch. I’ll go and see what he’s got to—”

  His eye caught the front page of the Times, spread out on the desk. Oh hell, he thought wearily. There we are, at a time like this, with a troll officer holding a dwarf with his feet off the ground.

  “It’s a good picture of Detritus, sir,” said Sergeant Littlebottom nervously.

  “ ‘The Long Arm of The Law,’ ” Vimes read aloud. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Probably it is to people who write headlines,” said Cheery.

  “Hamcrusher Murdered,” Vimes read. “Watch Investigating.”

  “Where do they get this?” he said aloud. “Who tells them? Pretty soon I’ll have to read the Times to find out what I’m doing today!” He flung the paper back on the desk. “Anything important I need to know about right now?”

  “Sergeant Colon says there’s been a robbery at the Royal—” Cheery began, but Vimes waved that away.

  “More important than robberies, I mean,” he said.

  “Er…Another two officers have quit since I sent you that note, sir,” said Cheery. “Corporal Ringfounder and Constable Schist at Chittling Street. Both say it’s for, er, personal reasons, sir.”

  “Schist was a good officer,” Detritus rumbled, shaking his head.

  “Sounds like he decided to be a good troll instead,” said Vimes. He was aware of a stirring behind him. He still had an audience. Oh well, time for the speech.

  “I know it’s hard for dwarf and troll officers right now,” he said to the room at large. “I know that giving one of your own kind a tap with your truncheon because he’s trying to kick you in the fork might feel like you’re siding with the enemy. It’s no fun for humans, either, but it’s worse for you. The badge seems a bit heavy now, right? You see your people looking at you and wondering whose side you’re on, yes? Well, you’re on the side of the people, which is where the law ought to be. All the people, I mean, who’re out there beyond the mob, who’re fearful and puzzled and scared to go out at night. Now, funnily enough, the idiots who’re out there right in front of you getting their self-defense in first are also the people, but since they don’t seem to remember that, well, you’re doing them a favor by cooling them off a bit. Hold on to that, and hold together. You think that you should stay home to make sure your ol’ mum is okay? What good would you be against a mob? Together, we can stop things going that far. This’ll go its course. I know we’re all being run ragged, but right now I need everyone I can get, and in return there will be jam tomorrow and free beer, too. Maybe I’ll even be a little blind when I’m signing the overti
me dockets, who knows. Got it? But I want you all, whatever, whoever you are, to know this: I’ve got no patience with idiots who’ll drag a grudge across five hundred miles and a thousand years. This is Ankh-Morpork. It’s not Koom Valley. You know it’s going to be a bad night tonight. Well, I’ll be on duty. If you are, too, then I’ll want to know that I can depend on you to watch my back as I’ll watch yours. If I can’t depend on you, I don’t want to see you near me. Any questions?”

  There was an embarrassed silence, as there always is on such occasions. Then a hand went up. It belonged to a dwarf.

  “Is it true a troll killed the grag?” he asked. There was a murmuring from the watchmen, and he went on, a little less timorously, “Well, he did ask.”

  “Captain Carrot is investigating,” said Vimes. “At the moment, we are still in the dark. But if indeed there has been a murder, then I will see that the murderer is brought to justice, no matter what size they are, what shape they are, who they are, or where they may be. You have my guarantee on that. My personal guarantee. Is that acceptable?”

  The general change in the atmosphere indicated that it was so.

  “Good,” he said. “Now go out there and be coppers. Go on!”

  The room emptied of all except those still laboring over the knotty problem of where they should put the comma.

  “Er…permission t’speak freely, sir?” said Detritus, knuckling closer.

  Vimes stared at him. When I first met you, you were chained to a wall like a watchdog and didn’t speak much beyond a grunt, he thought. Truly, the leopard can change his shorts.

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  “You ain’t serious, are you? You’re not going runnin’ after a coprolite like Chrysophrase, sir?”

  “What’s the worst he can do to me?”