Truth

by Pratchett, Terry

  Click.

  WHOOMPH.

  ‘… aaarghaaarghaaarghaaaaaagh …’

  William reached the falling iconograph just ahead of Mr Slant, who could move very fast for a man with no apparent knees.

  ‘It’s ours,’ he said, holding it firmly, while the dust of Otto Chriek settled around them.

  ‘What are you intending to do with this picture?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you. This is our workshop. We didn’t ask you to come here.’

  ‘But I am here on legal business!’

  ‘Then it can’t be wrong to take a picture of you, can it?’ said William. ‘But if you think differently, then I will of course be happy to quote you!’

  Slant glared at him and then marched back to the group by the door. William heard him say, ‘It is my considered legal opinion that we leave at this juncture.’

  ‘But you said you could—’ Carney began, glaring at William.

  ‘My very considered opinion,’ said Mr Slant again, ‘is that we go right now, in silence.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘In silence, I suggest!’

  They left.

  There was a group sigh of relief from the dwarfs, and a replacement of axes.

  ‘You want me to set this properly?’ said Goodmountain.

  ‘There’ll be trouble over it,’ said Sacharissa.

  ‘Yes, but how much trouble are we in already?’ said William. ‘On a scale of one to ten?’

  ‘At the moment … about eight,’ said Sacharissa. ‘But when the next edition is on the streets …’ she shut her eyes a moment and her lips moved in calculation ‘… about two thousand, three hundred and seventeen?’

  ‘Then we’ll put it in,’ said William.

  Goodmountain turned to his workers. ‘Leave the axes where you can see ’em, boys,’ he said.

  ‘Look, I don’t want anyone else to get into trouble,’ said William. ‘I’ll even set the rest of the type myself, and I can run some copies off on the press.’

  ‘Needs three to operate and you won’t get much speed,’ said Goodmountain. He saw William’s expression, grinned and slapped him as high up the back as a dwarf could manage. ‘Don’t worry, lad. We want to protect our investment.’

  ‘And I’m not leaving,’ said Sacharissa. ‘I need that dollar!’

  ‘Two dollars,’ said William absently. ‘It’s time for a rise. What about you, Ott— Oh, can someone sweep up Otto, please?’

  A few minutes later the restored vampire pulled himself upright against his tripod and lifted out a copper plate with trembling fingers.

  ‘Vot is happenink next, please?’

  ‘Are you staying with us? It could be dangerous,’ said William, realizing that he was saying this to a vampire iconographer who undied every time he took a picture.

  ‘Vot kind of danger?’ said Otto, tilting the plate this way and that in order to examine it better.

  ‘Well, legal, to start with.’

  ‘Has anyvun mentioned garlic zo far?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I have vun hundred and eighty dollars for the Akina TR-10 dual-imp iconograph viz the telescopic seat and big shiny lever?’

  ‘Er … not yet.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Otto philosophically. ‘Zen I shall require five dollars for repairs and improvements. I can see zis is a different kind of job.’

  ‘All right. All right, then.’ William looked around the press room. Everyone was silent, and everyone was watching him.

  A few days ago he’d have expected today to be … well, dull. It usually was, just after he’d sent out his news letter. He generally spent the time wandering around the city or reading in his tiny office while waiting for the next client with a letter to be written or, sometimes, read out.

  Often both kinds were difficult. People prepared to trust a postal system that largely depended on handing an envelope to some trustworthy-looking person who was heading in the right direction generally had something important to say. But the point was that they weren’t his difficulties. It wasn’t him making a last-minute plea to the Patrician, or hearing the terrible news about the collapse of shaft #3, although of course he did his best to make things easier for the customer. It had worked very well. If stress were food, he’d succeeded in turning his life into porridge.

  The press waited. It looked, now, like a great big beast. Soon he’d throw a lot of words into it. And in a few hours it would be hungry again, as if those words had never happened. You could feed it, but you could never fill it up.

  He shuddered. What had he got them all into?

  But he felt on fire. There was a truth somewhere, and he hadn’t found it yet. He was going to, because he knew, he knew that once this edition hit the streets—

  ‘Bugrit!’

  ‘Hawrrak … pwit!’

  ‘Quack!’

  He glanced at the crowd coming in. Of course, the truth hid in some unlikely places and had some strange handmaidens.

  ‘Let’s go to press,’ he said.

  It was an hour later. The sellers were already coming back for more. The rumbling of the press made the tin roof shake. The piles of copper mounting up in front of Goodmountain leapt into the air at every thump.

  William examined his reflection in a piece of polished brass. Somehow he’d got ink all over himself. He did the best he could with his handkerchief.

  He’d sent Altogether Andrews to sell the papers near Pseudopolis Yard, reckoning him to be the most consistently sane of the fraternity. At least five of his personalities could hold a coherent conversation.

  By now, surely, the Watch would have had time to read the story, even if they’d had to send out for help with the longer words.

  He was aware of someone staring at him. He turned and saw Sacharissa’s head bend down over her work again.

  Someone sniggered, behind him.

  There was no one there who was paying him any attention. There was a three-way argument over a matter of sixpence going on between Goodmountain, Foul Ole Ron and Foul Ole Ron, Ron being capable of keeping a pretty good row going all by himself. The dwarfs were hard at work around the press. Otto had retired to his darkroom, where he was once again mysteriously also hard at work.

  Only Ron’s dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look.

  A couple of months ago someone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. It was the third time this year. William had explained that it was an urban myth. It was always a friend of a friend who had heard it talk, and it was never anyone who had seen the dog. The dog in front of William didn’t look as if it could talk, but it did look as if it could swear.

  There seemed to be no stopping that kind of story. People swore that there was some long-lost heir to the throne of Ankh living incognito in the town. William certainly recognized wishful thinking when he heard it. There was the other old chestnut about a werewolf being employed in the Watch, too. Until recently he’d dismissed that one, but he was having some doubts lately. After all, the Times employed a vampire …

  He stared at the wall, tapping his teeth with his pencil.

  ‘I’m going to see Commander Vimes,’ he said at last. ‘It’s better than hiding.’

  ‘We’re being invited to all sorts of things,’ said Sacharissa, looking up from her paperwork. ‘Well, I say invited … Lady Selachii has ordered us to attend her ball on Thursday next week and write at least five hundred words which we will of course let her see before publication.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Goodmountain called over his shoulder. ‘Lots of names at balls, and—’

  ‘—names sell newspapers,’ said William. ‘Yes. I know. Do you want to go?’

  ‘Me? I haven’t got anything to wear!’ said Sacharissa. ‘It’d cost forty dollars for the kind of dress you wear to that sort of thing. And we can’t afford that kind of money.’

  William hesitated. Then he said
: ‘Stand up and twirl around, could you?’

  She actually blushed. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I want to see what size you are … you know, all over.’

  She stood up and turned around nervously. There was a chorus of whistles from the crew and a number of untranslatable comments in dwarfish.

  ‘You’re pretty close,’ said William. ‘If I could get you a really good dress, could you find someone to make any adjustments you need? It might have to be let out a bit in the, in the, you know … in the top.’

  ‘What kind of dress?’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘My sister’s got hundreds of evening dresses and she spends all her time at our place in the country,’ said William. ‘The family never comes back to the city these days. I’ll give you the key to the town house this evening and you can go and help yourself.’

  ‘Won’t she mind?’

  ‘She’ll probably never notice. Anyway, I think she’d be shocked to find that anyone could spend as little as forty dollars on a dress. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Town house? Place in the country?’ said Sacharissa, displaying an inconveniently journalistic trait of picking on the words you hoped wouldn’t be noticed.

  ‘My family’s rich,’ said William. ‘I’m not.’

  He glanced at the rooftop opposite when he stepped outside, because something in its outline was different, and saw a spiky head outlined against the afternoon sky.

  It was a gargoyle. William had got used to seeing them everywhere in the city. Sometimes one would stay in the same place for months at a time. You seldom saw them actually moving from one roof to another. But you also seldom saw them at all in districts like this. Gargoyles liked high stone buildings with lots of gutters and fiddly architecture, which attracted pigeons. Even gargoyles have to eat.

  There was also something going on further down the street. Several large carts were outside one of the old warehouses, and crates were being carried inside.

  He spotted several more gargoyles on the way across the bridge to Pseudopolis Yard. Every single one of them turned its head to watch him.

  Sergeant Detritus was on duty at the desk. He looked at William in surprise.

  ‘By damn, dat was quick. You run all der way?’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Mister Vimes only sent for you a coupla minutes ago,’ said Detritus. ‘Go on up, I should. Don’t worry, he’s stopped shoutin’.’ He gave William a rather-you-than-me look. ‘But he are not glad about being in a tent, as dey say.’

  ‘Has he ever been a happy camper?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Detritus, grinning evilly.

  William climbed the stairs and knocked at the door, which swung open.

  Commander Vimes looked up from his desk. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Well, well, that was quick,’ he said. ‘Ran all the way, did you?’

  ‘No, sir, I was coming here hoping to ask you some questions.’

  ‘That was kind of you,’ said Vimes.

  There was a definite feeling that although the little village was quiet at the moment – women hanging out washing, cats sleeping in the sun – soon the volcano was going to explode and hundreds were going to be buried in the ash.

  ‘So—’ William began.

  ‘Why did you do this?’ said Vimes. William could see the Times on the desk in front of the commander. He could read the headlines from here:

  ‘Baffled, am I?’ said Vimes.

  ‘If you are telling me that you are not, Commander, I will be happy to make a note of the fa—’

  ‘Leave that notebook alone!’

  William looked surprised. The notebook was the cheapest kind, made of paper recycled so many times you could use it as a towel, but once again someone was glaring at it as if it was a weapon.

  ‘I won’t have you doing to me what you did to Slant,’ said Vimes.

  ‘Every word of that story is true, sir.’

  ‘I’d bet on it. It sounds like his style.’

  ‘Look, Commander, if there’s something wrong with my story, tell me what it is.’

  Vimes sat back and waved his hands.

  ‘Are you going to print everything you hear?’ he said. ‘Do you intend to run around my city like some loose … loose siege weapon? You sit there clutching your precious integrity like a teddy bear and you haven’t the faintest idea, have you, not the faintest idea how hard you can make my job?’

  ‘It’s not against the law to—’

  ‘Isn’t it? Isn’t it, though? In Ankh-Morpork? Stuff like this? It reads like Behaviour Likely to Cause a Breach of the Peace to me!’

  ‘It might upset people, but this is important—’

  ‘And what will you write next, I wonder?’

  ‘I haven’t printed that you have a werewolf employed in the Watch,’ said William. He regretted it instantly, but Vimes was getting on his nerves.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ said a quiet voice behind him. He turned in his chair. A fair-haired young woman in Watch uniform was leaning against the wall. She must have been there all the time.

  ‘This is Sergeant Angua,’ said Vimes. ‘You can speak freely in front of her.’

  ‘I’ve … heard rumours,’ said William. He’d seen the sergeant in the streets. She had a habit of staring a bit too sharply at people, he’d considered.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Look, I can see this is worrying you,’ said William. ‘Please let me assure you that Corporal Nobbs’s secret is safe with me.’

  No one spoke. William congratulated himself. It had been a shot in the dark, but he could tell by Sergeant Angua’s face that he’d won this one. It seemed to have shut down, locking away all expression.

  ‘We don’t often talk about Corporal Nobbs’s species,’ said Vimes, after a while. ‘I would deem it a small favour if you would take the same approach.’

  ‘Yes, sir. So could I ask you why you’re having me watched?’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘The gargoyles. Everyone knows a lot of them work for the Watch these days.’

  ‘We’re not watching you. We’re watching to see what happens to you,’ said Sergeant Angua.

  ‘Because of this,’ said Vimes, slapping the newspaper.

  ‘But I’m not doing anything wrong,’ said William.

  ‘No, it may just be you’re not doing anything illegal,’ said Vimes. ‘Although you’re coming damn close. Other people do not have my kind and understanding disposition, though. All I ask is that you try not to bleed all over the street.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘And don’t write that down.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And don’t write down that I said don’t write that down.’

  ‘Okay. Can I write down that you said that I shouldn’t write down that you said—’ William stopped. The mountain was rumbling. ‘Only joking.’

  ‘Haha. And no tapping my officers for information.’

  ‘And no giving dog biscuits to Corporal Nobbs,’ said Sergeant Angua. She walked around behind Vimes and peered over his shoulder. ‘“The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret”?’

  ‘Printer’s error,’ said William shortly. ‘Anything else I shouldn’t do, Commander?’

  ‘Just don’t get in the way.’

  ‘I’ll make a— I’ll remember,’ said William. ‘But, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s in it for me?’

  ‘I’m Commander of the Watch and I’m asking you politely.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘I could ask you impolitely, Mr de Worde.’ Vimes sighed. ‘Look, can you see things my way? A crime has been committed. The Guilds are in an uproar. You’ve heard of too many chiefs? Well, right now there’s a hundred many chiefs. I’ve Captain Carrot and a lot of men I really can’t spare guarding the Oblong Office and the rest of the clerks, which means I’m short-handed everywhere else. I’ve got to deal with all this and … actively pursue a state of non-bafflement. I’ve got Vetinari in the cells
. And Drumknott, too—’

  ‘But wasn’t he the victim, sir?’

  ‘One of my men is tending him.’

  ‘Not one of the city doctors?’

  Vimes stared fixedly at the notebook. ‘The doctors of this city are a fine body of men,’ he said in a level tone, ‘and I would not see a word written against them. One of my staff just happens to have … special skills.’

  ‘You mean he can tell someone else’s arse from their elbow?’

  Vimes was a fast learner. He sat with his hands folded and a completely impassive expression.

  ‘Can I ask another question?’ said William.

  ‘Nothing will stop you, will it?’

  ‘Have you found Lord Vetinari’s dog?’

  Again, total blankness. But this time William had the impression that behind it several dozen wheels had begun to spin.

  ‘Dog?’ said Vimes.

  ‘Wuffles, I believe he’s called,’ said William.

  Vimes sat watching him impassively.

  ‘A terrier, I think,’ said William.

  Vimes failed to move a muscle. ‘Why was there a crossbow bolt sticking in the floor?’ said William. ‘That doesn’t make sense to me, unless there was someone else in the room. And it had gone in a long way. That’s not a rebound. Someone was firing at something on the floor. Dog-sized, perhaps?’

  Not a feature twitched on the commander’s face.

  ‘And then there’s the peppermint,’ William went on. ‘There’s a puzzle. I mean, why peppermint? And then I thought, maybe someone didn’t want to be traced by their smell? Perhaps they’d heard about your werewolf too? A few jars of peppermint oil thrown down would confuse things a bit?’

  There it was, a faint flicker as Vimes glanced momentarily at some paperwork in front of him. Lotto! thought William.9

  At last, like some oracle that speaks once a year, Vimes said, ‘I don’t trust you, Mr de Worde. And I’ve just realized why. It’s not just that you’re going to cause trouble. Dealing with trouble is my job, it’s what I’m paid for, that’s why they give me an armour allowance. But who are you responsible to? I have to answer for what I do, although right now I’m damned if I know who to. But you? It seems to me you can do what the hell you like.’

  ‘I suppose I’m answerable to the truth, sir.’