by The Wit
By law and tradition the great Library of Unseen University is open to the public, although they aren’t allowed as far as the magical shelves. They don’t realize this, however, since the rules of time and space are twisted inside the Library and so hundreds of miles of shelving can easily be concealed inside a space roughly the thickness of paint.
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: ‘Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.’
*
The hub or nerve centre of the coach business was a big shed next to the stable. It smelled - no, it stank - no, it fugged of horses, leather, veterinary medicine, bad coal, brandy and cheap cigars. That’s what a fug was. You could have cut cubes out of the air and sold it for cheap building material.
*
Ankh-Morpork was a lot more civilized these days. Between them the Watch and the Guilds had settled things down enough to ensure that actually being attacked while going about your lawful business in Ankh-Morpork was now merely a possibility instead of, as it once was, a matter of course. And the streets were so clean now that you could sometimes even see the street.
*
The Mended Drum could be depended upon. If someone didn’t come out of the door backwards and fall down in the street just as you passed, then there was something wrong with the world.
*
Stanley took down, from the shelf, the Book of Regulations. He turned the pages methodically until he came to the bookmark he’d put in a minute ago, on the page What To Do In Case Of Fire.
So far he’d done 1: Upon Discovery of the Fire, Remain Calm.
Now he came to 2: Shout ‘Fire!’ in a Loud, Clear Voice.
‘Fire!’ he shouted, and then ticked off 2 with his pencil.
Next was: 3: Endeavour to Extinguish Fire If Possible.
Stanley went to the door and opened it. Flames and smoke billowed in. He stared at them for a moment, shook his head, and shut the door.
Paragraph 4 said: If Trapped by Fire, Endeavour to Escape. Do Not Open Doors If Warm. Do Not Use Stairs If Burning. If No Exit Presents Itself Remain Calm and Await a) Rescue or b) Death.
This seemed to cover it.
*
… Anoia, a minor goddess of Things That Stick In Drawers. Often, but not uniquely, a ladle, but sometimes a metal spatula or, rarely, a mechanical egg-whisk that nobody in the house admits to ever buying. The desperate mad rattling and cries of ‘How can it close on the damn thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?’ is as praise unto Anoia. She also eats corkscrews.
*
Ankh-Morpork never slept; the city never did more than doze, and would wake up around 3 a.m. for a glass of water.
Ridcully practised the First Available Surface method of filing.
‘Was there something else, Mr Stibbons?’
Ponder looked at his clipboard. ‘There’s a polite letter from Lord Vetinari asking on behalf of the city whether the University might consider including in its intake, oh, twenty-five per cent of less able students, sir?’
‘Can’t have a bunch of grocers and butchers telling a university how to run itself, Stibbons!’ Ridcully said firmly. ‘Thank them for their interest and tell them we’ll continue to take one hundred per cent of complete and utter dullards, as usual. Take ‘em in dull, turn ‘em out sparklin’, that’s always been the UU way!’
*
If there’s one thing a wizard hates, it’s having to wait while the person in front of them is in two minds about coleslaw. It’s a salad bar, they say, it’s got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn’t be a salad bar, you’re not here to look at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth?
The Lecturer in Recent Runes ladled more bacon bits into his salad bowl, having artfully constructed buttresses of celery and breastworks of cabbage to increase its depth five times.
*
‘The Grand Trunk will remain closed in the interim,’ said Lord Vetinari.
‘It’s private property!’ Greenham burst out.
‘Tyrant, remember,’ said Vetinari.
See a pin and pick it up, and all day long you’ll have a pin.
KOOM Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago.
But if he doesn’t solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam? Vimes of Ankfe-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office.
With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he rnust unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.
Oh … and at six o’clock every day, without fail, with no excuses, he rnust go home to read Where’s My Cow?, with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy.
There are some things you have to do.
Vimes is chatting to his butler:
‘Tell me, Willikins, did you fight much when you were a kid? Were you in a gang or anything?’
‘I was privileged to belong to the Shamlegger Street Rude Boys, sir,’ said the butler.
‘Really?’ said Vimes, genuinely impressed. ‘They were pretty tough nuts, as I recall.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Willikins smoothly. ‘I pride myself I used to give somewhat more than I got if we needed to discuss the vexed area of turf issues with the young men from Rope Street. Stevedore’s hooks were their weapon of choice, as I recall.’
‘And yours … ?’ said Vimes, agog.
‘A cap-brim sewn with sharpened pennies, sir.’
‘Ye gods, man! You could put someone’s eye out with something like that.’
‘With care, sir, yes,’ said Willikins, meticulously folding a towel.
*
Vimes knew all the arguments for having different species in the Watch. They were good arguments. Some of the arguments against them were bad arguments. There were trolls in the Watch, plenty of dwarfs, one werewolf, three golems, an Igor and, not least, Corporal Nobbst† …
*
Fred Colon was not the greatest gift to policing. He was slow, stolid and not very imaginative. But he’d plodded his way around the streets for so long that he’d left a groove and somewhere inside that stupid fat head was something very smart, which sniffed the wind and heard the buzz and read the writing on the wall, admittedly doing the last bit with its lips moving.
*
To look at Fred Colon, you’d see a man who might well, if he fell over a cliff, have to stop and ask directions on the way down.
*
‘… that girl you’re going out with … She’s nearly six feet tall and she’s got a bosom like … well, she’s a big girl, Nobby’ Fred Colon was at a loss. ‘She told me, Nobby, that she’s been Miss May on the centrefold of Girls, Giggles and Garters] Well, I mean …!’
‘What do you mean, sarge? Anyway, she wasn’t just Miss May, she was the first week in June as well,’ Nobby pointed out. ‘It was the only way they had room.’
‘Err, well, I ask you,’ Fred floundered, ‘is a girl who displays her body for money the right kind of wife for a copper? Ask yourself that!’
Nobby’s face wrinkled up in deep thought.
‘Is this a trick question, sarge?’ he said, at last.
*
Corporal Nobbs attends a burglary at the Royal Art Museum.
‘Hey, this must be a clue, sarge!’ said Nobby. ‘Look, someone dumped a load of stinking ol’ rubbish here!’
‘Don’t touch that, please!’ said Sir Reynold, rushing over. ‘That’s Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! It’s Daniellarina Pouter’s most controversial hwork!’
‘It’s only a lot of old rubbish,’ Nobby protested, backing away.
‘Art is greater than the
sum of its mere mechanical components, corporal,’ said the curator.
‘What about this one, then?’ said Nobby, pointing to the adjacent plinth. ‘It’s just a big stake with a nail in it! Is this art, too?’
‘Freedom? If it hwas ever on the market, it hwould probableah fetch thirty thousand dollars,’ said Sir Reynold.
‘For a bit of wood with a nail in it?’ said Fred Colon. ‘Who did it?’
‘After he viewed Don’t Talk to Me About Mondays! Lord Vetinari graciously had Ms Pouter nailed to the stake by her ear,’ said Sir Reynold. ‘However, she did manage to pull free during the afternoon.’
‘I bet she was mad!’ said Nobby.
‘Not after she hwon several awards for it. I believe she’s planning to nail herself to several other things. It could be a very exciting exhibition.’
*
Colon knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.
*
‘Dave said the government hushed it up.’
‘Yeah, but your mate Dave says the government always hushes things up, Nobby’ said Fred.
‘Well, they do.’
‘Except he always gets to hear about ‘em, and he never gets hushed up,’ said Fred.
‘I know you like to point the finger of scoff, sarge, but there’s a lot goes on that we don’t know about.’
‘Like what, exactly?’ Colon retorted. ‘Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about.’
*
‘Don’t try to put me at my ease,’ said Vimes. ‘It makes me nervous when people do that.’
*
Coppers stayed alive by trickery. That’s how it worked. You had your Watch Houses with the big blue lights outside, and you made certain there were always burly watchmen visible in the big public places, and you swanked around like you owned the place. But you didn’t own it. It was all smoke and mirrors. You magicked a little policeman into everyone’s head. You relied on people giving in, knowing the rules. But in truth a hundred well-armed people could wipe out the Watch, if they knew what they were doing. Once some madman finds out that a copper taken unawares dies just like anyone else, the spell is broken.
*
Ankh-Morpork was built on Ankh-Morpork. Everyone knew that. They had been building with stone here ten thousand years ago. As the annual flooding of the Ankh brought more silt, so the city had risen on its walls until attics had become cellars. Even at basement level today, it was always said, a man with a pickaxe and a good sense of direction could cross the city by knocking his way through underground walls, provided he could also breathe mud.
*
Blackboard monitor. Well, he had been, in that little street school more than forty-five years ago. Mum had insisted. Gods knew where she’d sprung the penny a day it cost, although most of the time Dame Slightly had been happy to accept payment in old clothes and firewood. Numbers, letters, weights, measures; it was not what you’d call a rich curriculum. Vimes had attended for nine months or so, until the streets demanded he learn much harder and sharper lessons. But, for a while, he’d been trusted to hand out the slates and clean the blackboard. Oh, the heady, strutting power of it, when you’re six years old!
*
Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BLT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all.
A young man of godlike proportions† was standing in the doorway.
Vimes takes parental duty seriously …
He’d be home in time. Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although Young Sam appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes then you’d go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours … and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o’clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He’d promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.
*
and the book he reads …
It was called Where’s My Cow?
The unidentified complainant had lost their cow. That was the story, really.
Page one started promisingly:
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, ‘Baa!’
It is a sheep!
That’s not my cow!
Then the author began to get to grips with their material:
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, ‘Neigh!’
It is a horse!
That’s not my cow!
At this point the author had reached an agony of creation and was writing from the racked depths of their soul.
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, ‘Hruuugh!’
It is a hippopotamus!
That’s not my cow!
(Rest assured: the cow is found.)
*
‘When did you last eat?’ said Sybil.
‘I had a lettuce, tomato and bacon sandwich, dear,’ Vimes said, endeavouring by tone of voice to suggest that the bacon had been a mere condiment rather than a slab barely covered by the bread.
‘I expect you jolly well did,’ said Sybil, rather more accurately conveying the fact that she didn’t believe a word of it.
Tomato ketchup is not a vegetable.
‘What’s the password?’ Vimes said quickly.
The shadowy figure, who was cloaked and hooded, hesitated.
‘Pathword? Ecthcuthe me, I’ve got it written down thomewhere—’
‘Okay, Igor, come on in,’ said Carrot.
‘How did you know it wath me, thur?’ said Igor.
*
‘I’m going to have a look for Angua,’ said Carrot. ‘She hasn’t slept in her bed.’
‘But at this time of the month—’
‘I know, sir. She hasn’t slept in her basket, either.’
*
Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. ‘What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?’
‘I’d tell you a downright lie, sir’
‘Then I will not do so,’ said Vetinari, smiling faintly.
‘Thank you, sir. Nor will I.’
*
‘We need to talk to you,’ said Carrot. ‘Do you want a lawyer?’
‘No, I ate already’
‘You eat lawyers?’ said Carrot.
Brick gave him an empty stare until sufficient brain cells had been mustered.
‘What d’y’call dem fings, dey kinda crumble when you eat dem?’ he ventured.
Carrot looked at Detritus and Angua, to see if there was going to be any help there.
‘Could be lawyers,’ he conceded.
‘Dey go soggy if you dips ‘em in somefing,’ said Brick.
‘More likely to be biscuits, then?’ Carrot suggested.
*
There was an old military saying that Fred Colon used to describe total bewilderment and confusion. An individual in that state, according to Fred, ‘couldn’t tell if it was arsehole or breakfast time’.
*
The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she was actually very likeable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out in any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: ‘Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that’s not going to matter’
‘It’s the jerk syndrome. It means … sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn’t going to think of asking her out, okay? Because it’s obvious that she’s far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, that’s Tawneee. And, for the purposes of this explanation, Nobby has not got half a brain. He’s so used to women saying no when he asks them out that he’s not afraid of being blown out. So he asks her, because he figures, why not? And she, who by now thinks there’s something wrong with her, is so grateful she says okay’
*
‘Needs eating up.’ That was a phrase of Sybil’s that got to Vimes. She’d announce at lunch: ‘We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up.’ Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he’d been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favour.
*
When did Lord Vetinari sleep? Presumably the man must get his head down at some point, Vimes reasoned. Everyone slept. Catnaps could get you by for a while, but sooner or later you need a solid eight hours, right?
It was almost midnight, and there was Vetinari at his desk, fresh as a daisy and chilly as morning dew.
*
Mustrum Ridcully was capable of enormous powers of concentration when absolutely no alternative presented itself.
*
‘This is all rather fun,’ said Sybil, as the coaches headed out of the city. ‘Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?’
‘That wasn’t really a holiday, dear,’ said Vimes.
‘Well, it was very interesting, all the same,’ said Sybil.
‘Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.’
*
Historical Re-creation. With people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.
† This was a bit of a slur on Nobby, Vimes had to admit. Nobby was human, just like many other officers. It was just that he was the only one who had to carry a certificate to prove it.
