(Three) Preludes In One: A Prologue Cubed
In which His Grace - most ungraciously - gives up the ghost, a vampire suffers indignancies at the hand of the notorious Chriek, and Sam Vimes, Jr., finally gets a job
It was generally agreed, insofar as anything is generally agreed about on the Disc, that Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, while undoubtedly a man of many virtues(1), was not a clever man. He had resigned himself to it. When a troll tells you you're dense, it's a hard thing to deny. Intelligence, he found, by the time he had any reason to, was overrated; obstinacy often did just as well, with the added bonus of a far higher probability of explosions. And shouting. Commander Vimes liked a good shout. It did wonders for his nerves(2).
So yes. He was stupid. He was not the brightest bulb in the bin, not the edgiest blade in the armory, or the twinkliest tooth in Chrysoprase's grin.
But just now he felt like the sharpest bleedin' spoon in the bleedin' crayon box(3).
"What the hell are you staring at?" he snapped at Captain Carrot. "The vampire's running off on foot! You can still - ah."
There was a thoughtful pause.
"That doesn't change anything!" he said, at last, kicking his corpse - which lay sprawled across the cobblestones and looked depressingly wrinkled and shrunken, from the outside - with a ghostly foot.
I BEG TO DIFFER.
Vimes turned around. He was not particularly surprised to see the seven-foot tall skeleton in a cowl behind him. The anthropomorphism's regular visits and politely capitalized 'AHEMS' were familiar, by now. It practically came with the job, anyhow.
Well. In this case, with the early and posthumous retirement stretching before his mind's eye(6).
"Damn," he said.
INDEED. IF YOU WOULD BE SO GOOD AS TO STEP A LITTLE WAYS BACK, COMMANDER?
Vimes gave Death a Look. It was a pretty good look. The phrase 'hairy eyeball' might have been involved in its conception. Death, alas, met it steadily and without apparent uneasiness; the two sapphire flames in the shadowy depths of his hood did not so much as flicker.
"Fine," he said grudgingly, and hurriedly hopped out of the way as Death lifted his scythe - with, perhaps, just the slightest hint of drama - and brought it whistling down in a curved line of brilliant blue, which hung in the air for a moment and left orange afterimages in Vimes' vision when he closed his spectral eyelids.
And the bright cord connecting his ankle to his... ankle snapped, with a sad little 'twang' and a sigh as the shivering tension was released.
Sam Vimes died.
"Erm," he said, after nothing resolutely continued to occur. "Wasn't there... something supposed to come next? A door, or something?" he added, fumbling back to his roots in Cockbill Street, which had been associated with some polite and oft-trodden upon religion with a god who looked a bit of a milksop but was an all right sort.
YES.
"What?"
YOUR MORPHIC RESONANCE SHOULD HAVE DISSOLVED SUFFICIENTLY TO LOOSE YOUR GRIP ON THIS WORLD AND SEND YOU INTO THE AFTERLIFE OF YOUR CHOICE AND BELIEF.
Vimes considered this for a moment.
"...come again?"
Death sighed. INSTEAD, IT WOULD APPEAR YOU HAVE BECOME A GHOST. IT HAPPENS. I MIGHT WISH THAT IT HAD NOT HAPPENED TO SUCH A TROUBLESOME SOUL AS YOURSELF, BUT IT HAPPENS.
"Excuse me? 'Troublesome soul'? What is that, a diagnosis?"
NO, MISTER VIMES. I THINK IT A RATHER ACCURATE DESCRIPTION, GIVEN YOUR HISTORY.
"My hist-oh. Er. This isn't quantum again, is it?" said Vimes, with growing suspicion.
I WOULD NOT KNOW, said Death, an edge of chilliness entering his impossibly leaden tones for the first time. I TRY MY BEST TO AVOID THE STUFF. IN THIS CASE I AM HAPPY TO SAY THAT THE PROBLEM SEEMS A LITTLE MORE ORDINARY. PLEASE ATTEMPT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. He slid the scythe back into his belt, and snapped his phalanxes with a horrible bony little click.
Suddenly, quite a lot of the remaining space in the alleyway was taken up by a horse. Carrot and Ping, bent over their superior's body, did not appear to notice. Vimes blinked.
"Are you going?"
I AM A RATHER BUSY... ANTHROPOMORPHISM, MISTER VIMES. The skeleton relented slightly at his pleading look, and added, IF YOU MUST KNOW, THERE'S BEEN A PLAGUE IN HERSHEBA. I REALLY SHOULD BE OFF.
"Just - hold on one moment, can't you?" Vimes growled, as the Reaper swung onto the stallion's back, and in an act of highly unwise desperation grabbed the reins. The horse looked at him sideways and pawed the pavement irritably. This kicked up sparks. He ignored it. "You haven't explained anything!"
VERY WELL. WHAT EXACTLY IS IT YOU DESIRE TO KNOW?
"You said I was a ghost," said Vimes. "Why? What does that mean?"
YOU WILL REMAIN A SEMI-CORPOREAL PRESENCE HERE UNTIL SUCH A TIME AS WHATEVER... Death waved a bony hand vaguely ...UNRESOLVED MATTER OF YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN, WELL, RESOLVED. BY YOU, OR ONE OF YOUR DESCENDENTS. NOW, MAY I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION TO GO?
This last was almost satirical, although there were a few too many glands still missing for sarcasm to be the word.
"Er, yes," said Vimes, embarrassed. He let go, and tried not to think about the fact that his fingers brushed against the hot velvet of the horse's flank and straight through the tack they had so recently been clinging to - with very little point, it would appear.
"Sorry," he added.
HMPH, said Death. BINKY, UP.
His steed reared, white mane flowing back like a banner unmarred by pigeon crap, and leapt into the air, galloping through the suddenly foreshortened sky in a way not unreminiscent of cheesy sci-fi effects, which was right and proper.
There was a hollow pause. Then:
"Binky?"
(1) Foremost of which, for some of those in agreement over his intelligence, being that he had not yet had them hauled off to Tanty.
(2) And everyone else's in the immediate area of earshot (a half-mile radius), of course. 'Wonders' is a word of many meanings.
(3) The available cutlery being, by analogy, Captain Carrot(4), Sergeant Ping(5), and his dead body - in the crayon box of a gloomy alleyway. As mixed metaphors went, it had a certain something.
(4) A cleaver of a mind if ever there was one, to keep up with the culinary theme.
(5) Who was one of those mysterious spoons with all the holes in.
(6) His body no longer having any eye to speak of, let alone contemplate retirement with.
*
And to the rest of the Disc, His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes was dead. With a few complications.
Many things happened next, some of them quite quickly. The death, as deaths go, was an important one - certainly it overshadowed the many births which took place on the same day, at least to humanity, which says a lot about humanity's mixed priorities and fondness for wearing black and silver at inopportune moments. A catalyst of sorts, shall we say; a beginning. One of many.
There were other beginnings, tied by unseen threads to the death of the late Commander. Countless others: but only two others, as it were, really mattered, by the standards of that same species. Only two others that also made for a nice frame, a shiny bookend. In total three: the death, and...
But the story is getting ahead of itself.
The second beginning spun itself into tenuous being several months before the first, on a dark and stormy night at the Black Ribboners' official headquarters, deep in the bowels of Morpork, around whose cheerily painted picketed fence even the most hardened criminals did not dare to creep, for fear of being offered the thin and insipid cocoa favored by its inhabitants.
In one of the curtained back rooms, where discreet and considerably less than reformed vampires of good standing came to inquire after being staked one too many times and losing just a little too much in repair expenses after the mob was through with their castle, a spiky figure was speaking in hoarse, hushed tones appropriate to the occasion. 'Spiky' was the word, yes; a profile, silhouetted against the candle light, all elbows and pointy beard and a folded suggestion of bat wings, angles and leather and anatomically implausible claws.
Across the plastic table covered with frisking pink gnomes painted by someone who had never been, ah, fortunate enough to encounter a living, breathing specimen, Otto Chriek adjusted his bow tie and looked rather strained.
"There are precedents," the figure said.
"Yes and no," said Otto. "Not alvays are zer obsessions... tangible. But never has such an inspecific goal been attempted -"
"Hah! Look at you, Otto! Light and color!"
"I vas a special case, La-"
"Don't call me that."
"Aha. No, you are beink very secretive about zis business, are you not? No names, no nothink."
"I do not want -"
"Your new friends back home to talk? Zen perhaps you should not have come. Transference is... for life, you understand?"
"Of course I do. But I must. For them."
"Oh very well," said Otto, somewhat testily. "But vhy do you insist on zis ridiculous object of transference?"
"Never mind that. It can be done, can it not?"
"Vell, ve can try," said Otto. "You vill be ze first. Are you sure I cannot persuade you -"
"What about Margolotta?"
"Vhat about her?" said Otto, dismissively. "She vanted control. Control, it is easy. She vas one of ze pioneers of ze technology, anyvay, she did not use... the advanced methods we have available to us. But this..."
"You cannot stop me. You claimed it would happen naturally, whatever the... transferer's intent was, and I am very strong in my resolution."
"Yes, I know," said Otto, giving him a searching look from over his sunglasses. "It makes me vonder. Vhy are you so sure of yourself?"
The vampire across the table from him looked to his left, and to his right.
"Mister I-do-not-vant-to-be-named, ve are in a building full to zer brim vith superhuman ex-monsters," said Otto. "Everyone can hear you. Ve are beink polite. Please, do not bother vith zer niceties."
The vampire open his mouth to protest, revealing two glinting canines. Otto raised his impeccable black eyebrows(1). The vampire sagged.
"All right, all right, I know," he muttered, "but it's for the look of the thing."
"Zer look of the thing?"
"You'll see," said the vampire. "It's important. It has to... be perfect, what I am doing for them."
"And so you cannot tell me anything and must sneak around and vear that ridiculous goatee?" Otto demanded.
"Yes," said the vampire. "But do not worry about me. It will work. It has been done before."
"Vhat? By whom? Vhen? How do you know this? You must -"
"Begin the 'cold bat' phase immediately," the vampire cut in. "Please, Otto."
They stared at each other.
"Aftervards you vill tell me everything?" said Otto, softly.
"Of course."
"You vill not reconsider?"
"Never. Don't worry, Otto. I will be fine. I will be better than I have been since I was bitten."
"Oh, all right," Otto said at last, and pulled a lever conveniently placed under the table. A trapdoor opened. There was a little moment as gravity remembered itself, pulled down its shirt, pulled up its skirt, and tried to wipe the lipstick marks of Cartoonish Humor off its face before hurrying off to work.
Then there was a scream and a hilarious 'thud', as the anonymous vampire was dumped into Confinement (Period One), a padded room involving more lace than was healthy, and the hole in the ceiling closed up with an ominous clunking.
Otto smiled despite himself as the indignant shrieks began, barely muffled by the floorboards in between them. Even the best of reformed vampires can be - well - suckers for tradition.
(1) A trick he had picked up from examining some of the few iconographs of the Patrician he had obtained using dark light. Several moved, and he was a good mimic of the little gestures that went into that perfect skeptical arc of brow.
*
And now for the third and most distantly related beginning, prologue, opening act: chronologically and otherwise.
Samuel Vimes, Jr. was a fine sober(1) young gentleman of nineteen years, handsome, charming, and decent, for given values of beauty, charm, and decency, anyway; an Assassin's guild graduate of good standing, a terrible dancer but an excellent conversationalist, known to have inherited at least a small portion his mother's social graces, tact, and both of her pretty blue eyes(2), although the more honest among his peers would grant that it was disconcerting to see the eyes that looked so pleasant and cheerful in Lady Sybil's round old face in a countenance that was every bit of it Vimes(3). Nevertheless, a credit to his family - at least until he went and applied for a job at the Times.
William de Worde hired him without a blink in front of the open, listening ears of at least twenty-three dwarves and then hauled him into his office to interrogate him.
"The fact that I'm one of your journalists means you're going to refrain from writing down my explanation and publishing it, right?" said Sam.
"Wrong," said William promptly. "Well. I am going to refrain, but only until tonight, when your father comes and has your skin for his trophy shelf."
"He doesn't actually have a trophy shelf," Sam pointed out.
"You're his son, I'm sure he can come up with something on short notice. Why are you doing this? Is this your expression of rebellious feelings? Because honestly I would have thought attending the Assassin's Guild and graduating with full honors would have satisfied that particular urge -"
"His expression was pretty good when I told him," Sam admitted. "But no, that's not it. I really do want to be a news reporter, Mr. de Worde. And I'm an adult. He can't stop me."
"Famous last words."
"This way at least the people writing my obituary will know me, right?" Sam tried a smile. His new editor winced.
"That's not the blessing you think it is," he murmured, and then started to grin.
"I, on the other hand, could stop you, legally as well as practically. But I'm not going to," he said at last. "You might even be good at it, if you survive the Commander's wrath."
"Really?" said Sam, with apparent shock.
"Really," de Worde affirmed, with a wry look. "You do want to be a journalist, don't you? It's a fine ambition, as I can testify to, wanting to serve the Truth. And it's not as if it's skilled work, as long as you can punctuate. So go forth and gather news, my young suicidal friend."
"Er, yessir," said Sam.
"Did you bring your own notebook?"
Sam colored slightly and with infinite care pulled a cheap one from inside his jacket, where it had obviously been concealed for some time from his father's watchful gaze.
"My word," said William, covering his face delicately with one thin hand when he saw that it was already halfway filled up with copious notes and many names followed by a telltale set of parentheses and numbers. The lad had been practicing. At length, it would appear. "Very good. Run along, then."
"Thank you," said his newest employee, with an expression of fervent relief that made him look his age for the first time, and dashed out into the main press room.
"You're welcome," William shouted, to the closed wooden door, which had slammed shut behind Sam. "I think you'll do very well!"
He sat back down at his desk and added, quietly, to himself, "Though at what I wouldn't care to say."
(1) The combined efforts of a sadistic and manipulative godfather and a bullheaded father had ground out any youthful inclinations towards a taste of vice and a trap for the spirit, as Hughnon Ridcully put it. Oh, and the fact that most of the alcohol he had encountered, before the age seventeen, was sherry; that didn't hurt his apparently permanent sobriety either.
(2) This in spite of Igor's very best efforts.
(3) i.e., scrawny and with ancestral cynicism(4) already etching faint lines around the mouth and between the eyebrows.
(4) Thus disproving once and for all the theories expressed in Leonard da Quirm's On How Various Animals Mutated And Grew Bits And Things - at least those which challenged the feasibility of acquired traits.