Authors: Terry Pratchett
“Excuse me, Constable, but what is your name?” she said meekly.
“Er…Fittly, miss…”
“Are these from you?” Sally demanded. She let her canines extend just enough to notice.
“…er, only a joke, miss…”
“Nothing funny about it,” said Sally sweetly. “I like garlic. I
love
garlic. Don’t you?”
“Er…yeah…” said the unhappy Fittly.
“Good,” said Sally.
With a speed that made him flinch, she rammed a bulb into her mouth and bit down heavily.
The crunching was the only sound in the locker room.
And then she swallowed.
“Oh dear, where
are
my manners, Constable?” she said, holding out the other bulb. “This one’s yours…”
Laughter broke out around the room. Coppers are like any other mob. The table’s been turned, and this way around it’s funnier. It’s a bit of a laugh, a bit of fun. No harm done, eh?
“Come on, Fittly,” said someone. “It’s only fair. She ate hers!” And someone else, as someone always does, began to clap and urge “Eat! Eat!” Others took it up, encouraged by the fact that Fittly had gone bright red.
“Eat! eat! eat! eat! eat! eat! eat! eat! eat!eat!eat!—”
A man without an option, Fittly grabbed the bulb, forced it into his mouth, and bit it hard, to the accompaniment of cheers. A moment later, Sally saw his eyes widen.
“Lance Constable von Humpeding?”
She turned. A young man of godlike proportions
*
was standing in the doorway. Unlike the armor of the other officers, his breastplate shone and the chain mail was quite devoid of rust.
“Everything all right?” The officer glanced at Fittly, who’d dropped to his knees and was coughing garlic across the room, but somehow quite failed to see him.
“Er, fine, sir,” said Sally, puzzled, as Fittly began to throw up.
“We’ve met already. Everyone calls me Captain Carrot. Come with me, please.”
Out in the main office, Carrot stopped and turned. “All right, Lance Constable…you had a bulb already prepared, right? Don’t look like that, there’s a vegetable barrow out in the square today. It’s not hard to work out.”
“Er…Sergeant Angua did warn me…”
“So…?”
“So I carved a garlic out of a turnip, sir.”
“And the one you gave Fittly?”
“Oh, that was a carved turnip, too. I try not to touch garlic, sir,” said Sally. Oh gods, this one really was attractive…
“Really? Turnip? He seemed to take it badly,” said Carrot.
“I put a few fresh chili seeds in it,” Sally added. “About thirty, I think.”
“Oh? Why did you do that?”
“Oh, you know, sir,” said Sally, radiating innocence. “A bit of a laugh, a bit of fun. No harm done, eh?”
The captain appeared to consider this.
“We’ll leave it at that, then,” he said. “Now, Lance Constable, have you ever seen a dead body?”
Sally waited to see if he was serious. Apparently, he was.
“Strictly speaking, no, sir,” she said.
V
imes fretted
through the afternoon. There was, of course
, the paperwork. There was always the paperwork. The trays were only the start. Heaps of it were ranged accusingly along one wall, and gently merging.
*
He knew that he had to do it. Warrants, dockets, Watch orders, signatures—that was what made the Watch a police force rather than just a bunch of fairly rough fellows with inquisitive habits. Paperwork: you had to have lots of it, and it had to be signed by him.
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.”