Thud (31 page)

“More candles? Afraid of the dark?” Vimes suggested.

“Could be, sir. Igor says the trouble’s in his head.”

“Don’t let Igor try to give him a new one!” said Vimes quickly. “I’ll go down there as soon as I can.”

“I’ve tried talking to him, but he just looks blank, sir. How did you know he was the one we found?”

“I’ve got some edges and some bits that are an interesting shape,” said Vimes, sitting down at his desk. When Carrot looked blank, he went on: “Of the jigsaw puzzle, Captain. But there are lots of bits of sky. However, I think I might be nearly there, because I think I’ve been handed a corner. What talks underground?”

“Sir?”

“You know, the dwarfs were listening for something underground? You wondered if someone was trapped, right? But is there…I don’t know…something dwarf-made that talks?”

Carrot’s brow wrinkled.

“You’re not talking about a
cube
, are you, sir?”

“I don’t know. Am I? You tell me!”

“The deep-downers have some in their mine, sir, but I’m sure there’s none buried here. They’re generally found in hard rocks. Anyway, you wouldn’t listen for one. I’ve never heard of them talking when they are found. Some dwarfs have spent years learning how to use just one of them!”

“Good! Now: What Is A Cube?” said Vimes, glancing at his in-tray. Oh, good. There weren’t any memos from A. E. Pessimal.

“It’s, um…it’s like a book, sir. Which talks. A bit like your Gooseberry, I suppose. Most of them contain interpretations of dwarf lore by ancient lawmasters. It’s very old…magic, I suppose.”

“Suppose?” said Vimes.

“Well, technomantic Devices look like things that are
built
, you know, out of—”

“Captain, you’ve lost me again. What are Devices and why do you pronounce the capital
D
?”

“Cubes are a type of Device, sir. No one knows who made them or for what original purpose. They might be older than the world. They’ve been found in volcanoes and the deepest rocks. The deep-downers have most of them. They come in all sorts of—”

“Hold on, you mean that when they’re dug up, there’s dwarf voices from millions of years ago? Surely dwarfs haven’t been—”

“No, sir. Dwarfs put them on later. I’m not too well up on this. I think when they’re first found, they mostly have natural noises, like moving water or birdsong or rocks moving, that sort of thing. The grags found out how to get rid of those to make room for words, I think. I did hear about one that was the sounds of a forest. Ten million years of sounds, in a cube less than two inches across.”

“And they’re valuable, these things?”

“Unbelievably valuable, especially the cubes. Worth mining through a mountain of granite, as we say…er, that’s a dwarf ‘we,’ not a copper ‘we,’ sir.”

“So, digging through a few thousand of tons of Ankh-Morpork muck would be worth it, then?”

“For a cube? Yes! Is that what all this is about? But how would it get here? The average dwarf might never see one in his whole life. Only grags and great chieftains use them! And why would it be talking? All dwarf ones can only be brought to life by a key word!”

“Search me. What do they look like? Apart from being cubical, I assume?”

“I’ve only ever seen a few, sir. They’re, oh, up to six inches on a side, look like old bronze, and they glitter.”

“Green and blue?” Said Vimes sharply.

“Yes, sir! They had a few in the mine in Treacle Street.”

“I think I saw them,” said Vimes. “And I think they’ve got one more. Voices from the past, eh? How come I’ve never heard of them before?”

Carrot hesitated. “You’re a very busy man, sir. You can’t know everything.”

Vimes detected just a soupçon of a smidgen of a reproach there.

“Are you saying I’m a man of narrow horizons, Captain?”

“Oh no, sir. You’re interested in
every
aspect of police work and criminology.”

Sometimes it was impossible to read Captain Carrot’s face. Vimes didn’t bother to try.

“I’m missing something,” he said. “But this is about Koom Valley, I know it. Look, what
is
the secret of Koom Valley?”

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t think there is one. I suppose the big secret would be which side attacked first. You know, sir, both sides say they were ambushed by the other side.”

“Does that sound very
interesting
to you?” said Vimes. “Would it matter much now?”

“Who started it all? I should say so, sir!” said Carrot.

“But I thought they’d been scrapping since time began?”

“Yes. But Koom Valley was the first
official
one, sir.”

“Who won?” said Vimes.

“Sir?”

“It’s not a difficult question, is it? Who won the first Battle of Koom Valley?”

“I suppose you could say it was rained off, sir,” said Carrot.

“They stopped a grudge march like that because of a bit of rain?”

“For a
lot
of rain, sir. A thunderstorm just sat there in the mountains above it. There were flash floods, full of boulders. The fighters were knocked off their feet and washed away, some were struck by lightning—”

“It quite ruined the whole day,” said Vimes. “All right, Captain, do we have any idea where the bastards have gone?”

“They had an escape tunnel—”

“I bet they did!”

“—and collapsed it after them. I’ve got men digging—”

“Stand them down. They could be in a safe house, they could have got out in a cart, hell, they could all be wearing helmets and chain mail and passing for city dwarfs. Enough of that. We’ve been running people ragged. Let them go for now. I think we’ll be able to find them again.”

“Yes, sir. The grags left so fast, sir, that they left some other Devices. I have secured them for the city. They must have been very frightened. They just took the cubes and ran. Are you all right, sir? You look a bit flustered.”

“Actually, Captain, I feel inexplicably cheerful. Would you like to hear how
my
day went?”

T
he showers
in the Watch house were the talk of the city.
Vimes had paid for them himself, after Vetinari made an acidic comment about the cost. They were a bit primitive and were really no more than watering-can heads connected to a couple of water tanks on the next floor, but after a night in Ankh-Morpork’s underworld, the thought of being really clean was very attractive. Even so, Angua hesitated.

“This is
wonderful
,” said Sally, turning gently under a spray. “What’s wrong?”

“Look, I’m just dealing with it, all right?” snapped Angua, standing just beyond the spray. “It’s full moon, okay? The wolf is a bit strong.”

Sally stopped scrubbing.

“Oh, I
see
,” she said. “Is it the whole B.A.T.H. thing?”

“You just
had
to say that, didn’t you,” said Angua, and forced herself to step onto the tiles.

“Well, what do you do normally?” said Sally, handing her the soap.

“Cold water, and pretend it’s rain. Don’t you dare laugh! Change of subject, right now!”

“All right. What did you think of Nobby’s girlfriend?” said Sally.

“Tawneee? Friendly. Good-looking…”

“Try perfect physical beauty? Astonishing proportions? A walking classic?”

“Well…yes. Pretty much,” Angua conceded.

“And all that is Nobby Nobbs’s
girlfriend
?”

“She seems to think so.”

“You’re not telling me she
deserves
Nobby?” said Sally.

“Look, Verity Pushpram doesn’t deserve Nobby, and she’s got a weird squint, arms like a stevedore, and cooks shellfish for a living,” said Angua. “That’s how things are.”

“Is she his old girlfriend?”

“He used to say so. As far as I know, the physical side of the relationship consisted of her hitting him with a wet fish whenever he went near her.”

Angua squeezed the last of the slime out of her hair. It was tough stuff to loose. As it was, some of it was fighting not to go down the plug hole.

That was enough. She didn’t like to spend too much time in the S.H.O.W.E.R. Another six or so sessions, and the smell would have quite gone away. The important thing now was to remember to use a towel and not to shake herself dry.

“You think I went down there to impress Captain Carrot, don’t you,” said Sally, behind her.

Angua stopped, her head wrapped in toweling. Oh well, it was going to happen sooner or later…

“No,” she said.

“Your heartbeat says otherwise,” Sally said meekly. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have a chance. His heart beats faster every time he looks at you, and yours skips a beat every time you see him.”

Okay, then, this is it, said the wolf who was never far away, this is where we sort it out, claw against fang…
No!
Don’t listen to the wolf! But it would help, wouldn’t it, if this stupid bitch stopped listening to the bat…

“Stay out of people’s hearts,” she growled.

“I can’t. You can’t switch off your nose, can you? Can you?”

The moment of the wolf had passed. Angua relaxed a little. His heart beat faster, did it?

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Has he ever seen you without your uniform?”

Ye gods, thought Angua, and headed for her clothes.

“Well…of course…” she mumbled.

“I meant wearing something else. Like—a dress?” Sally went on. “Come
on
. Every copper spends
some
time out of uniform. That’s how you
know
you’re off duty.”

“But it’s pretty much a 24/8 job for us.” said Angua, “There’s always—”

“You mean it is for him, because he likes it that way, and so you go along with it?” said the vampire, and that one got through all Angua’s defenses.

“It’s my life! Why should I listen to advice from a vampire?”

“Because you’re a werewolf,” said Sally. “Only a vampire would dare to give it, right? You don’t have to be at his heel all the time.”

“Look, I’ve been through all this, understand? It’s a werewolf thing. We are what we are!”

“I’m not. You don’t get the black ribbon just for signing the pledge, you know. And it doesn’t mean you stop craving blood. You just don’t do anything about it. At least you can go out at night and chase chickens.”

There was a stony silence. Then Angua said: “You know about the chickens?”

“Yes.”

“I pay for them, you know.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“And it’s not as though it’s every night.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. Look, do you know there are people out there who will
volunteer
to be a vampire’s…dinner companion? Providing it’s all done with style? And
we
are considered weird?” She sniffed. “By the way, what did you wash your hair in?”

“Willard Brothers ‘Good Girl!’ Flea Shampoo,” said Angua. “It brings out the gloss,” she added defensively. “Look, I want to get this clear, right? Just because we spent hours wading around under the city, and, okay, maybe saved each other’s lives once or twice, it does not mean we’re friends, okay? We just happened to…be there at the same time!”

“You
do
need some time off,” said Sally. “I was going to buy a drink for Tawneee anyway, to say thanks, and Cheery wants to tag along. How about it? We’ve been stood down for now. Time out for a little fun?”

Angua struggled with a seething snake’s nest of emotions. Tawneee
had
been very kind, and far more helpful than you might expect from someone wearing six inches of heel and four square inches of clothing.

“Come
on
,” said Sally encouragingly. “I don’t know about you, but it’s going to take a bit of effort to get the taste of that mud out of my mouth.”

“Oh, all
right
! But this
doesn’t
mean we’re bonding!”

“Fine. Fine.”

“I’m not a bondage kind of person,” Angua added.

“Yes, yes,” said Sally. “I can see that.”

V
imes sat and stared
at his notebook. He’d got “talking
cube” written down and circled.

Out of the corner of his ear, he could hear the sounds of the City Watch rising from below: the bustle in the yard of the Old Lemonade Factory, where the Specials were assembling again, just in case; the rattle of the hurry-up wagon; the general murmur of voices coming up through the floor…

After some thinking, he wrote “old well” and circled that, too.

He’d scrumped plums in the gardens of Empirical Crescent with all the other kids. Half the houses were empty, and no one cared much. Yes, there had been a well, but it had long been full up to the top with garbage, even then. Grass was growing on the top. They only found the bricks because they looked for them.

So, let’s say that anything buried right at the bottom, where the dwarfs had headed, had been dumped, oh, more than fifty, sixty years ago…

You seldom saw a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork even forty years ago, and they weren’t anything like rich or powerful enough to own a cube. They were hard workers, seeking—just possibly—a better life. So, what
human
would throw away a talking box worth a mountain of gold? He’d have to be bloody mad—

Vimes sat rigidly, staring at the scrawls on the page. In the distance, Detritus was barking a command at someone.

He felt like a man crossing a river on stepping-stones. He was nearly halfway across, but the next stone was just a bit too far and could only be reached with serious groinal stress. Nevertheless, his foot was waving in the air, and it was that or a soaking…

He wrote: “Rascal.” Then he circled the word several times, the pencil biting into the cheap paper.