Books » Discworld » So You Think You Had A Bad Hair Day?
Author: A.A. Pessimal
Rated: K+ - English - General - Reviews: 11 - Published: 10-24-09 - Updated: 10-24-09
id:5464274
It isn't paranoia - when they really are out to get you. Especially when they're Gods.
Spoiler Alert – this tale takes a throwaway gag from Unseen Academicals and expands on it in the best What Happened Next? Tradition.
If you haven't yet read Unseen Academicals and you'd rather stay blissfully ignorant, skip this one and move to the next Fanfic. Medusalan's is pretty good, and Leia Tortoise is sweet in either language.
Here's the original Pratchett quote that got the braincells fired:-
"Sorry, mate….." said the man who had nothing against dwarfs. "As I was saying, you lot just settle down and get on with it and are no trouble to anybody, but we're getting some weird ones now."
"That woman they put in the Watch last month, for one" said the old lady. "The weird one from out Ephebe way. Gust of wind caught her sunglasses, and three people turned into stone."
"She was a Medusa" said Glenda, who had read about that in the Times. "The Wizards managed to turn them back again, though"
(Unseen Academicals, UK Doubleday edition, page 297)
The four women sat in the gloom of the bar, occasionally sipping one of an assortment of drinks. For the moment they were silent, some reflectively, one morosely. One of them broke the silence with
"It could have been worse, Yuri!"
"How, exactly?" said Yuri, sipping her retsina, and fighting the old, old, urge for a really good scratch under the armpits.
"Well, Igor might not have had any retsina, for one thing! We were lucky there was this really old dusty bottle behind the bar, that must date from the days when this was the Crown and Anchor. It turns out the previous landlord went on a package holiday to Ephebe and brought some back, thinking it would sell. Igor inherited it with the bar."
Yuri shrugged. Her right armpit hissed in protest. She resolutely ignored it. She sipped, and smiled wryly.
"Fifty year retsina, aged in the bottle. There are some compensations!"
Angua von Überwald smiled back. She knew the new Watch probationary lance-constable had had a spectacularly hard day. Which was why she'd decided to introduce her to Biers. The new Lance-Constable was certainly qualified to drink here, after all. And they had retsina. Which right now was a marriage made in the Elysium Fields. Or perhaps Hades.
Yuri sighed.
"Just when I thought I was getting the hang of it and settling in. I lose the sunglasses. And it happens."
"So?" Angua said, encouragingly. "I've been in this city now for getting on for sixteen years. (1). In this body I'm a vegetarian. But in my other body I sometimes relapse and take a few chickens. There's no point in beating yourself up about it, you just leave compensation the next morning and move on."
"And I'm a Black Ribboner" Sally von Humpeding said. "Now and again I think back to the life I led before, and it makes me squirm. I haven't relapsed, although I know, every day of my life, I might. We're all vulnerable, sister!"
"As for me," said the fourth, "I am merely human, but I was byorn into the nyobylity. Which in Zlobenya means seeing yourself as a higher order of creation. Which makes you more vicious and callous and cruel than any vampire or werewolf could ever aspire to be. Lyearning I am no better or wyorse than others was a hard lesson, da? And what better way to learn that lesson – after the education I had in Lancre - than to be humble Watchwoman in Ankh-Morpork?"
Yuri, understanding the point her new friends were making, nodded in appreciation. She thought back to her interview…
Commander Vimes looked over the desk at her and frowned.
"Is there something wrong with your eyes, recruit?"
"No, sir" she had said, promptly. "In one very real sense my eyes work all too well. I have to wear the sunglasses, with the strong tinted lenses, for reasons which are to do with my ethnicity and species."
Vimes grimaced.
"You're not a godsdamn vampire, are you? Another one?"
"No, sir. I can safely assure you that I am not a lamia, that is, in this country, a vampire."
"You're from Ephebe, aren't you, miss…"
"Ophidiotriktomos. First name, Euryate "
Vimes winced, his pen halted.
"The shorter form of my name is Ophinema, if it helps."
"Probationary Lance-Constable Ophinema, E. Now about this species of yours…"
Yuri explained her species, adding "There were never any more than three of us, Commander. As far as I know, we're more-or-less immortal."
"But didn't that Hero…you know, with the mirrored shield?"
"I stay away from mirrors, sir. I certainly don't look into them!"
Why did he have to mention that? Meddie, sister, you might have brought all this on us, all those years ago, but I miss you so much! Yuri pushed the old grief aside, with effort. It never got any easier, even after three thousand years.
"And in any case, it doesn't have to happen. If I take the glasses off and look at somebody and really concentrate…"
"That follows. I don't have to turn wolf. I've got a degree of conscious control over that."
"But, and forgive me here, you people have a fairly conclusive effect on humans. I'm not sure if it works on vampires. I suspect we might be protected, my sort of Undead cancels out your kind of Undead, sort of thing, but all things taken into account, I'd prefer it if the specs stay on, yes? No offence." said Sally, firmly.
"None taken" said Yuri. She felt almost glad to be laying down the ground rules. It helped.
"And there are the times when I must turn wolf and I have no choice in it." Angua added. "A really big full moon in a cloudless sky, for instance."
Yuri nodded.
"IT tends to happen when I'm really angry."
Yuri had drunk a lot of retsina. The story came pouring out.
"Like when I caught up with that bastard Perseus. I tapped him on the shoulder and said "Percy! What a pleasant surprise! Where's the mirrored shield today, big brave boy?" I gave him a second or two to register who I was, then I took my glasses off.
"The last words he heard were "This is for my sister, you bastard!"
"We've been sort of inseparable ever since. I gave Meddie a funeral and an ending, but oh how I wish I could have looked into her face one last time! He kept her in a bag, the bastard, and used her as a weapon. My sister!"
This last was almost a shriek. Other drinkers in Biers turned and looked around. There weren't too many: a group of True Igors were seated together dithcuthing new advantheth in medithine and thurgery. They stopped, hearing the scream of primal loss and grief. Angua recognised the Watch Igor and the Igorina who was Matron at the Assassins' School. She shared a friendly nod with both.
Two Kwa'Zulu Leopard Society members, who were drinking something rich, red, and unspecified, paused and looked. Angua gave them a meaningful stare. One of the new chores that had been dumped on her was keeping tabs on other were-animals active in Ankh-Morpork. And discovering Howondaland had such a thing as were-leopards had come as a nasty shock to her. These two were based at the Kwa'Zulu Embassy, and had come to Watch attention when they had been asked to investigate reports of large feral cats roaming the city by night. Angua had teamed up with Watch Special Constable Smith-Rhodes, who in her day (2) job was an Assassin and the city's acknowledged expert in large – or small - dangerous animals. A Howondalandian herself, Johanna Smith-Rhodes had soon worked it out, and their report had precipitated a minor diplomatic incident. (3)
The other sort of Igor, Biers' veteran bar-monster, turned slowly and gave the Watch girls a look of reproach.
"Sorry, didn't mean to do that!" Yuri mumbled. Angua squeezed her hand.
"Family can get intense." she said. "I have a really good howl and a cry about mine, sometimes. If it helps, my sister was murdered, too."
"I'm so sorry. Did you find out who…?" Yuri's words tailed off. Angua looked away.
"Yes. My brother. He's dead now."
They called for another round of drinks.
"Bit emotional, these Ephebians, aren't they?" Igor said, pointedly, to Angua. "I'm making allowances as she's with you, miss, but any plate-smashing and she's barred, OK?"
Angua took the drinks back to the table, with Igor's final remark of And no bloody bouzouki-playing either, OK? following her.
The Watchwomen resumed drinking. Yuri relaxed, feeling enough at home to even join in with a few jokes. Then she looked over to Olga Romanoff, who was sharing a whooping laugh with Sally over some trivial joke or other. Yuri saw the group of dark-shrouded figures come up behind Olga and surround her. She hadn't seen them enter. She hadn't even seen them move. But they were there, robed, sinister, and evil. Sally and Angua stiffened.
The nearest robe spoke. There was a suspicion of frog-like eyes and a green beard.
"Gospodinya Romanoff. I yam yearing where there is a Grand Duke who yis displeased with you. You have joined the kulaks and you consort vith verevolves. And vyampires. You vent to Lancre and studied vith the Baba Yugas like some kind of peasant. His Excyellency vishes you return home."
Olga sipped her vodka, otherwise unmoving and unmoved.
Yuri knew this scene: she'd been around for three millennia. Sooner or later some fool was going to say
"I like a womyan vith spirit!"
The voice came from just behind Yuri.
Ah. The script never changed, then. The idiot generals camped in front of Tsort had said as much about Helen. The male Gods of Ephebe had said as much about Errata, Goddess of Mischief and Strife.
She heard Olga's voice, loud and clear. "Vodnik. How many times? I will not return home. Home is here."
The thing, the vodnik, then made the mistake of taking Olga by the shoulder. But Olga Romanoff, as part of her Watch training, had been shown a few interesting tricks by Sam Vimes, mainly involving fast and resolute application of fist, elbow and knee. The Vodnik is a malicious creature found among filthy stagnant water in far Zlobenia. It occupies a status partway between that of a gnoll and a bogeyman in local folklore, is deadly on its own ground, and in Ankh-Morpork has every right to drink in Biers as it meets the essential conditions stipulated by the Door Code. But up until tonight, it knew nothing of the Vimes Elbow, nor indeed of the Nobbs Equaliser Kick. ("You want to retire to the farm? Here's a couple of achers to start you off!")
Almost dreamily, Olga pirouetted on her toes, still somehow maintaining a seated position despite there being no seat there, and kicked out again, sending the creature slumping into its fellows. Sally armlocked a second, vampire strength winning out, whilst Angua delivered a long low chilling growl. Werewolves existed in Zlobenia, and out-trumped mere vodniks by several orders of strength. The Zlobenian hit squad retreated to the door in disorder, followed by Igor's yell of "you're all barred!" and Olga's spiky imprecations in Zlobenian.
Yuri turned to her vodnik, and looked into a swamp-smelling grey-green face that might once have been a drowned man.
She reached up to uncover her head and felt Them stirring.
"You know what I am" she said, conversationally. "Do you wish me to uncover my eyes, mister Vodnik?"
The thing turned and ran. Angua managed one good hard kick that pitched it through the door. Yuri re-covered her head and tied her habitual loose scarf at the back.
"That one's on me, Olga. My father sent goons out to drag me back to Überwald. I remember it wasn't pleasant!"
"And I didn't even have to use magic!" Olga said, happily. Then the smile faded.
"My father will send rusalkas next. I know him."
"Tougher, are they, these rusalkas?" asked Sally, fastidiously brushing her blouse.
"Worse. And female."
"Ouch" said Sally.
Yuri had the comforting and welcome sensation that if she was ever in trouble, she could depend on these women. After so long on her own, it felt so good.
"And thyen, there are leshii. You would not want to meet the leshii."
"Ah, they're the ones who are super-were-animals" Igor said, cheerfully.
Angua spun round.
"What?"
"Perfectly true, miss. I mean, there's you, right, and you leopard boys over there. Don't think I haven't noticed you pretending not to notice each other. Because of birth or magic, you can turn into one animal and one only, right? Your leshii, now, can turn into anything he chooses. Apparently. If they're on the way to this city, you're all in trouble!"
"Bring 'em on!" growled Angua, noting that the Howondalandian were-leopards looked just as consternated by this unwelcome news.
Better pick Olga's brains, when I'm sober. Do an intelligence report for Mr Vimes. Ye Gods, I might even have to talk to the pussycats over there. thought Angua, with the usual in-built canine disdain for anything feline.
They delivered Yuri to her lodgings, a suite of rooms in the Kingsway area of the City, and stayed for a last drink...
"This is very nice!" Sally observed. "Spacious."
The question of how somebody on a Watchwoman's salary could afford to live in a fairly upmarket area was left, diplomatically, hanging in the air. Yuri answered it anyway.
"I'm lucky enough to be independently wealthy." she said. Which was true: the curse of immortality had left her in an unprecedented position to clean up on long-term investments, compound interest accounts, and futures securities.
"You must know how it works" she said, nodding to Sally. "The longer a vampire lives, the less you actually have to concern yourself with actually earning any money. Compound interest on a bank account first opened seven hundred years ago can do some amazing things, and the only difficulty you run into is proving that you're the account-holder who's just risen from the grave again, yes? Get a good accountant who can argue that death duties are rebateable in those circumstances, and you're laughing."
Sally nodded: her father had once remarked that the blood out of a stone trick was easy, compared to proving your identity, following your latest resurrection, to the satisfaction of a cautious bank manager. Of course, it also slows up inheritance in the typical vampire family.
"Just hang your coats up on Percy. That's what he's there for."
Yuri indicated a very lifelike marble statue of an Ephebian warrior in plain tunic, who was looking back over his shoulder with an expression of eye-widening horror at something standing just behind him.
"So he could, at least, you know in theory, be…" Angua mused.
"Maybe one day" said Yuri. "To resurrect him and let him go, in a foreign and alien world, three thousand years after his rightful time is over and his friends and family are long since dust, to wander pointlessly, friendless and penniless. That might be the other half of my revenge. But for now, just hang your coats on him".
"Remind me not to get you really angry!" said Olga, smiling.
"You never murdered my sister." Yuri said, shrugging. "And then there were my…older sisters. The Goddess, may she be cursed with many curses, made them sixty years older overnight. She gave them only one tooth and one eye between them which they had to share"
"Yuk!" said Sally.
"Indeed. Yuk. And one day Percy here robbed them of even what little they owned."
"I blame it on the parents" Sally mused.
"What they won't steal from the elderly." agreed Angua.
"And they get called heroes! While we are called monsters!"
"It's always the way, Yuri" Sally said, soothingly. "If this bugger called van Helsing had his way, he'd be the hero and we'd be the slavering bloodthirsty evil predators!"
"I haven't heard anything about Sid van Helsing for ages." Angua mused. "Not since he was up before the Patrician, for making a nuisance of himself outside Black Ribboner meetings with a mallet and a wooden stake."
"He took the Society of Vampire Hunters out to Überwald for some advanced field training" Sally said. "Big mistake."
A look of inscrutable satisfaction passed across her face.
Eventually Yuri was left alone, and she retired to her bed with a warm glow of friendship suffusing her. Enough alcohol, she was relieved to notice as she put her night hairnet on, had certainly gone straight to her head (not to mention to her armpits), and it would assure her of a quiet night's sleep.
She fell asleep, hazy memories of a Bad Hair Day tugging at her hindbrain.
Yuri awoke.
Another day. Another day. Another dollar.
She didn't need a job. She didn't need the Watch starting salary, which was just pocket money. But the Watch, the classic depository for misfits and people who didn't quite fit in, had drawn her into its common brother, sister, litter-mate, and sibling-hood. There was even the possibility she might even do something worthwhile, although Commander Vimes had intimated that was as likely as finding any actual gold in a dollar coin. But one thing the Watch offered was another sort of variety, a concept becoming increasingly rare in her life after three millennia. No day, she had discovered, was quite like any other.
She went about her morning routine, and got as far as the underarm deodorant before there was an angry hiss! followed by the sadly punctured and mis-shapen can being ripped from her hand and flung at the bathroom wall.
She sighed.
Everyone knew a gorgon was a woman-like creature whose hair was composed of restless and angry snakes. Most artistic depictions got this aspect absolutely right, in so far as they went.
But they never stopped to consider armpits had hair too.
Which made morning ablutions and personal cleanliness a problem. Among other things.
Most men tended to be put off by excessive bodily hair on a woman. She shrugged: that was the way things were. But even Ephebian and Überwaldean men were put off by a thick growth of armpit hair that bit back. She hadn't had a proper boyfriend for fifteen hundred years. And even then, he'd been a hydra. She had suspected he was more into a relationship with her snakes than he was with her. This had dispirited her.
Yuri settled for an ice-cold shower – ouch, as at heart she was still an Ephebian, used to warm sun and forgiving sea. The cold jets directed into each underarm stunned her interstitial fauna, which allowed her to spray with antiperspirant and get dressed.
At least that bloody goddess stopped at my head and shoulders, she thought. I can shave my legs without slaughtering ten thousand snakes, and what she might have done to other parts of me, if she'd been feeling really inventive, just doesn't bear thinking about.
She donned her Watch uniform, thinking Somewhere in this town there must be a really good herpetologist, and went to work. At the door she remembered and turned back.
Sunglasses, Euryale!
Pseudopolis Yard operated twenty-four hours a day, every day. Yuri arrived to the usual overload of sights and sounds, and was directed by Sergeant Colon to go and help sort through property recovered from a recent shop raid.
"Musical instruments, apparently." he had said. "The raiders cleared the shop out".
"Luters, sarge!" Corporal Nobbs had corrected him. Colon gave him an exasperated look.
"Whatever, Nobby! You're an educated woman, miss, it needs somebody to identify all the stolen goods and list them. Mr Vimes wants you on nice easy jobs away from the public for a while, after yesterday. Hope you don't mind?"
Yuri had smiled a sweet and reasonable smile.
"Not at all, sergeant. I can see his point."
Assisted, she noted, by a Troll constable, she set about cataloguing the retrieved stolen property.
Guitars. Both six-stringed and Toledan twelve-stringed. A viola.
"Bouzouki, miss?" offered Troll Constable Smoked Obsidian, holding the instrument out in a large paw.
Yuri shook her head.
"Actually, that's a Zlobenian balalaika" she said. "It's an easy mistake to make, as they're quite similar, but the balalaika has a squarer, slightly smaller, sound-box and a slightly less satisfying sound. Now this is a bouzouki! The sound-box is more rounded and smoother. The sound quality is quite different too. Let me demonstrate..."
She took up the balalaika and played a few bars of the Zlobenian ballad "Katyuschya". She paused. In the distance, she heard a Zlobenian voice taking up the song, and grinned. That's either Olga or Irena.
Ah, what the hell, even if it isn't getting the job done…
Yuri launched into a solo rendition of the song, listening to the Zlobenian voices in the next room taking up the verses and chorus.
Пусть он вспомнит девушку простую,
Пусть услышит, как она поет,
Пусть он землю бережет родную,
А любовь Катюша сбережет. (4)
As she finished, she heard Olga calling "Pretty good, Yuri! Can you do Slavnoye Mare? "
"Where are you?"
"We're in the coldstore next door! The Watch retrieved several cartloads of cheeses stolen from Bucket's creamery. We've got to catalogue them. Not a job you want, with a hangover!"(5)
Yuri smiled and picked up the bouzouki. She played "Never on an Octeday" just to get her hand in again, aware there was a growing audience. She heard one or two pairs of hands begin to clap in time to the beat. To a musician, this can produce a certain intoxication. Yuri, however, hoped it would stop short of a rush of blood to the head.
"This one's an old Ephebian piece." she announced.
Vaguely disappointed nobody had countered with Yes, we know you are! Now what about a song? she continued "It's called "Music to enumerate cheese by." (6)
From next door, Yuri heard Olga sigh and say
"Let's get started, then, Inventory of stock stolen from the Ankh-Morpork Cheese Emporium, proprietor Mr Seldom Bucket. (7)Ready, Irina?"
"Ready. The Terpsichorean muse is appreciated, by the way. OK, Red Sto Helit. Twelve boxes, approximately six pounds. Tilsit, slave bogu, he has Tilsit, Irina! From Sovetsk! Three pounds. Llamedosian Pant-Y-Gyrdl, this must be a popular one, approximately twenty-eight pounds. Bel Paese, this must cost to import from Brindisi, twelve pounds. Red Ankhian, the local processed muck they put in the takeaway food, two full pallets, perhaps two hundred pounds."
She moved on, and exclaimed "Slave Bogu, this reeks! Like a kulak's feet at the end of the winter! Lancre Blue. Who in their right minds eats cheese when it's gone all manky and blue like that? Eighty pounds, and can somebody get Cheery to store it in a fume cupboard? Ah, here's a taste of home. Überwaldean Emmenthal. About thirty pounds. Irina, do you think they'd notice if any went missing? OK, just a thought. But I tell you this for nothing, if Fred Colon were down here, there'd be a lot less cheese to give back to Bucket!"
Yuri played on, occasionally identifying a musical instrument for Smokie to note down on the clipboard.
"They really cleaned Bucket out, didn't they?" Irina remarked. "I can see him in there now, among all his empty shelves in his cheese shop, trying to bluff to customers…"
"Gruyère, also from the high mountain country of Überwald. Thirty pounds. Don't forget Bucket diversified and bought the Opera House. You have to admire him, don't you, for doing that season of cheese-based operas. Cross-Marketing, he calls it! Here's a speciality: Nothingfjordian Jarlsberg. You don't see much of that in this city! Twenty pounds, but then I guess you have to import it in bulk. It commands a premium..."
"Olga, will you stop cheese-mongering for a minute, and just read off the amounts?"
Yuri laughed to herself.
"That's a celeste, Smokie. Just stack it over there with the harpsichords? Thank you."
"Liptauer, eight pounds. Lancre White, lovely crumbly texture, makes a nice pie, twenty pounds. White Stilton, bit bland, ten pounds. Hublandish Blue, all those yukky creepy blue fungus veins again, yuk, thirty pounds. Double Pseudopolis, OK if you like that sort of thing, forty pounds. Cheshire, that's another white crumbly, apparently, never seen it before, wonder where it comes from, fifteen pounds."
"Olga, you're getting a bit indistinct. You're not eating the evidence, are you?"
"Shertainly not! Hergenian Blue Vinney, also known as Cashel. Blue veins, take it away! Twenty pounds. And here's a whole rafter of Quirmian cheeses, how come there isn't a decent hard cheese in the whole country. Brie, Roquefort, Pont-l'Évêque, Port Salut, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carre-de-L'Est, Bresse-Bleu, Boursin. Speciality cheeses for the discerning palate. Call it maybe ten pounds of each. Oh, and here's… Quirmian Camembert? Yuk, it's a bit runny!"
Miouw!
"And get that bloody cat out of here! No, the camembert's beyond rescue, I'm afraid… been away from the cold for too long."
"Are you absolutely sure, Olga?"
"About the Camembert? What the **** do you think?"
There was a pause, punctuated by bouzouki music.
"Ah, we move now to the wonderful cheese of Sto Kerrig! Gouda. Twenty pounds. Edam, both from Kerrig, and imported from Howondaland, special mature Edam, from Piemberg in the Transvaal. I hear they've got cold ships now, and if they're exporting cheese and meat I should bloody well hope so! Edam, thirty pounds. Ten of Howondalandian import"
"Caithness, from Hyperllamedos. (8) Twenty pounds. Smoked Überwaldean. A bit artificial, I always think. Thirty pounds. Agatean Sage Derby. Ten pounds. Exotic import, that. And, full marks for gross-out, this has green veins. Wheelbrace's Wensleydale, named in honour of the great rambler, another hard crumbly white. Twenty pounds. Here's one for Yuri: Ephebian Feta. Comes in tiny white cubes, for some reason. Two barrels plain, two barrels mixed with olives and dried peppers. Gorgonzola, again from Brindisi. I don't mind the smell, it's the slimy look and the blue veins that give it the "yuk" factor. Twenty pounds. And here come the rest of the Brindisians: Parmesan, Mozerella, and Pippo Crème. Parmesan ages so far and then never dies, you can keep it for years in a dry cupboard, two whole wheels, thirty pounds. Over-rated, frankly, the Dwarf Bread of cheeses. So hard you need an axe to slice it. If dwarfs did cheese butties, this is the cheese. Mozerella, you have to keep it immersed in water or terrible things happen. Apparently the gift of the God RonRon Shuwadi to pizza-makers. Five full barrels. Two hundred pounds. Lot of pizza shops in this city, I suppose. Hublandish Fynbo, dark brown and chewy, five pounds. Sto Lat Sheep's Milk, you know the stuff, it gets rolled up with herbs into lovely artistic cylinders that taste of gritty bits of herbs... Three full casks. Tezuman Beaver Cheese, I don't believe such a thing exists, but if it's a mammal and you can milk it, I suppose anything is possible. Negligible (9) amount. And here's another one I've never heard of before: Cheddar. Probably not much call for it round here. Negligible amount. Ilchester. At least three hundred pounds. Must be staggeringly popular, although I've never really seen the attraction. Limburger. Also from Howondaland. Stinks. Ten pounds. Right, now let's give this to Commander Vimes so he can hit Bucket with it if he tries to make out we've pinched anything Hi, Angua! "
Sergeant Angua walked in, meaningfully.
"A word from Mr Vimes." she said. "He's getting a headache and he's developing a strange desire to start smashing plates against a wall, although for the life of him he can't work out why. I know when he starts throwing things he throws them surprisingly accurately, so if I were you I'd go along with his request and, in his exact words, SHUT THAT BLOODY BOUZOUKI UP!, OK? Thank you!"
In the afternoon, Yuri found herself paired to Sergeant Colon for the Dimwell beat. Colon was reticent and somewhat uneasy to be in her company – she could hardly blame him after the previous day – and noticed she was drawing unwelcome attention from the crowds. It wasn't fear as such, more anticipation of a repeat performance.
She the one, then?
Cor blimey, you got no idea! You should have seen what she did yesterday!
Three people? You know, turned to stone?
Yeah, but what sort of stone?
How should I bloody know? It's stone, innit? Stone's stone!
Makes a difference! I run a masons' yard, right, and have you seen the cost of marble these days? If she could do marble to order, it'd be a great saving!
What, get her to make people into their own gravestones, you carve an inscription on their bum, park it in Small Gods, everyone benefits?
No need to dig a hole, though. So ol' Leggy First is out of a job.
And anyway, yesterday, the wizards turned them back, eventually. So no harm done.
Well, yeah. But they call Vimes "Old Stoneface". Bet he never realised it could get literal, if this gorgon copper ever eyeballs her boss!
I wondered why they made "eyeballing" an offence in the military… must have had gorgons in the Ephebian Army in the old days.
"Oh, to Hades with it!" Yuri grumbled. "Sergeant Colon, if I'm going to have to take this skata all day from these vlackas malatas, I'd prefer to do it with a full stomach!"
"I won't ask, miss." Colon said, diffidently.
Yuri grabbed his arm and half-dragged him down an alley in Dimwell Steps. She pulled him through a door from which exotic cooking smells filled the air.
The greasy-overalled proprietor normally wore a permanent smile underneath a Circle Sea tan, but both the smile and the tan faded as she walked in.
{Beautiful and Kindly Lady Euryate. What can I do for you?} he asked in Ephebian.
{Knock off the crap, Stavros. You know as well as I do that if any of the Kindly Ones dropped by your shop, they wouldn't be interested in a takeaway, and you'd be in real bother.}
{Only my very best, Lady!}
(Whoa, not from that thing!} she said, indicating the large rotating joint of dubious almost-meat rotating on the vertical spit. {That's good enough for Morporkians, and by all means serve one of those up to Sergeant Colon here, by the look of him, he's worked up a lifelong immunity to food poisoning. I'm Ephebian, Stavros, in case you haven't noticed. I want named meat on my kebab, and preferably not the sort of named meat that would have gone "squeak!" during life. "Baaa!", "Moo!" and "Squawk!", however, are perfectly acceptable.}
{I hear you, my Lady. A Morporkian shishkebab for the fat sergeant, and proper food for you as an Ephebian, and honoured guest in my humble shop!}
"Mr Christianou here has invited us to lunch, sergeant." Yuri said in response to Fred Colon's perplexed look. "As the only Ephebian officer on the Watch, I believe that involves a certain amount of liaison work with the Ephebian community in this city. After all, other ethnic minority officers fill the same roles for their communities. Who reward them with considerate kindlinesses, such as providing lunch"?
"Well, you certainly seem to be getting the hang of policing, miss!" Colon approved, as their kebabs were being prepared.
They sat with complimentary coffees in a table near the window, policing the street in comfort, noting a small knot of determined onlookers waiting outside in the hope of a bit of street theatre. Seeing the gorgon policewoman was only interested in eating – and disappointingly, she only seemed to eat perfectly normal food, albeit foreign muck – they drifted away, one by one.
"I've always wondered what sort of an animal that comes off, miss." Colon said, nodding in the direction of the rotating joint on the spit. It was still fairly new, perhaps only a few weeks old: it stood about thirty inches tall, a foot wide at the top, tapering to three inches or so at the lower, narrow end. It glistened and bubbled brown-grey where its outer surfaces were being continually cooked by the heat source as it rotated on its clockwork mechanism.
Yuri felt a sudden sense of mischief.
"You don't know, sergeant? That is the meat, and indeed most of the body, of the monopedos rabbit of the Anatolian Plain. It is called, in Ephebian, the monopedos because it only has one leg. Its method of motion is to bounce and hop, very very fast and very very unpredictably, on its one leg. Over the course of its life, it builds very impressive leg muscles, as you may see from the skinned and prepared example on the spit there. Is this not so, Stavros?"
"Very indeed, my lady!" Stavros agreed, keeping an absolutely straight face. "In Anatolia, it is the rite of passage for a young boy to go on his first monopedos hunt. Ah, how well do I remember mine!"
Stavros eulogised about the joy of the hunt for a few minutes, regretfully ending on "And today, the creatures are commercially farmed for their meat, and a little of the old way is lost forever. They are farmed in long, narrow enclosures with very tall fences! But at least it brings the cost of their meat down, and I may pass such savings onto my paying customers..."
After lunch, and a few circuits of the Dimwell beat, they returned to the Yard. A commotion was going on: a large troll seemed determined to resist arrest, and in the manner of bottle covies of any species, was fighting with the strength of three as Sergeant Detritus and Constable Bluejohn sought to subdue him. Detritus was hampered by the fact this struggle was happening in public, where any attempt to use his usual notion of minimal force might be interpreted as "Watch Brutality". Therefore he and Bluejohn were seeking to get the troll face-down on the floor, with his arms up behind him, so that they could get the specially reinforced tungsten-titanium-steel handcuffs on. (10) Corporal Flint stood by to sit on his legs and hold him down whilst Detritus fitted the cuffs.
Colon and Yuri tried to edge around the fighting trolls, very, very, carefully. Colon managed to get behind the shelter of the desk: but Fate, or perhaps the malice of the Goddess Patina, had other ideas for Yuri.
As she gingerly edged round the four struggling trolls, who needed a large amount of floor space, with other troll officers looming up to offer support, a flailing leg lashed out and threw her against the front desk. She tried to stand up, feeling woozy, and only distantly heard Captain Carrot shouting
Officer Ophinema! Whatever you do, keep your eyes closed!
She wobbled and her eyes swam back into focus. Immortals are hard to kill, but it doesn't mean they can't be subjected to pain and inconvenience.
"Miss! Miss!" Nobby Nobbs was grovelling on her left, desperately trying to avert her gaze, desperately trying to offer her something…
Her eyes focused.
On Detritus.
Then she realised that Nobbs was attempting to give her the sunglasses. Which had been knocked off her face with the violence of the kick… her sunglasses.
Everyone who saw it agreed that what happened next was truly awesome and in some respects horrible.
It is well known that the unwavering gaze of a gorgon, applied even without malice aforethought, will turn a being of flesh and blood into stone. (11).
But nobody has ever stopped to think on what might happen, if the creature upon which the gorgon focuses her rather concussed and unsteady gaze is already made out of rock.
This proposition is just about to be tested.
Changes began to happen to Detritus. The grey of his silicon skin took on a rosy pink hue, at first imperceptibly and then rapidly. The proportions of his troll body changed and shifted. His face remained craggy, but took on softer and more blurred lines. His teeth lost a diamond lustre and became an opaque pearly white. Fine tendrils of hair began to sprout from a formerly bare skull, thickening as they grew... Finger and toenails popped out. The sergeant's stripes that a proud troll had had etched into his arms with acid blurred and reformed, and became ink tattoos on a pink-brown skin.
A pink-brown human skin.
Yuri had to agree it was logical. She turned living flesh into stone, right? So why not, in this crazy town, turn living stone into flesh?
But she'd never forget the dawning realisation on the part of Detritus, nor the scream of horror that burst from his lips.
Captain Carrot acted first. He leapt forward, took Detritus by the unresisting arm, and said
"Come on, old friend, let's get you somewhere private!"
Then hustled the former troll upstairs.
Bluejohn took the opportunity to punch the troll prisoner and growl "You saw that, did you? I'll get her to look at you next, turn you human!"
Yuri had enough sense to take her sunglasses, untwist one arm back into approximate shape, and put them on.
Flint and Bluejohn were hauling the suddenly unyielding prisoner down towards the cells. Yuri looked at what she felt were a ring of silent, accusing, faces. And fled.
"I don't blame you." said the newly human Sergeant Detritus. "You just did what you were made to. But how do I go back to Ruby looking like this?"
Detritus buried his head in his hands. Carrot put a comforting arm around him. Commander Vimes just looked more tired and pained than usual.
"Have we put the word out to get the wizards?" he asked.
"Professor Stibbons and Arch-chancellor Ridcully are on the way over, sir. I've also put the word out in the usual places that as Mr Shine, you know, the Diamond King, is rumoured to be in town, could he spare us five minutes to help with an emergency?"
"Good thinking, Carrot. But what do we do about the other thing?"
Yuri had unthinkingly run up behind Carrot and the screaming frightened Detritus, trying to get away from what she felt were the hostile accusing stares of the rest of the Watch. A second calamity had befallen as Constable Pediment, alerted by the screaming, had climbed down the building and put his head inside the window to see what the noise was.
Just as the bent and damaged sunglasses slipped down Yuri's nose.
A small, slight, human with slightly prominent pointy ears now sat, traumatised and wrapped in a modesty blanket, in the corner of the room nearest the window. His gargoyle days now but a fond memory.
Without being asked, Yuri fled this room too.
She ran into Angua and Sally, who gently restrained her.
"We're your friends, Yuri!" Sally repeated. "Friends!"
They ended up sitting in a spare office with a pot of strong coffee.
"They'll turn him back, Yuri. They managed it with the three yesterday. Mr Stibbons is bloody bright. I don't pretend to have understood half of what he was on about, but he seemed to think shape and form are a function of memory and if you give the memory a big enough jolt, it'll remember what shape you're meant to be and take you back there. Whatever he did, it worked!"
Sally smiled, slowly and reflectively.
"And, oh, did you see him, Angua? Smokey and Jade both say Detritus is one damn fine looking troll. So it follows on, right, that if he's a looker among trolls, turn him human and he'll be…oooohhh!"
She left the sentence unfinished, but clasped her arms around herself and made an unambiguous all-body shudder. Angua, who'd smelled the male pheromones that Detritus was unwittingly giving off even in his distress, just wanted to throw back her head and howl.
Those muscles… that face… that body! In any species, Detritus was all male!
"OK, he started out as a troll, which means he'll still only have the intelligence of a PE Teacher or a Hero, if he's lucky, but who cares?" Sally said.
"We can't think that way, Sally" objected Angua. "We owe it to Ruby to get her troll back in the shape she expects him to be in. Besides, he's hung up on her. She's all and everything to him, and you can't expect him to be attracted to human women!"
Yuri stood up to go to the bathroom. Something had shaken her up when she'd been kicked by a troll and landed awkwardly.
She sensed rather than felt the first drop.
Nosebleed. Skata.
"Uh-oh. You were hurt too, Yuri." she heard Sally say. "Angua, she's bleeding. You know I can't…"
Then the other thing happened, the one bloody thrice-damned Patina had added to her curse as a courtesy detail.
She heard the rhythmic flap of strong wings. And the whinny.
This just about topped it.
"Oh, for Fuck's sake!" Yuri swore.
"Prophet Brutha on a turtle!" she heard Sally blaspheme as she leapt backwards.
Angua took a deep, deep, breath.
"Does this kind of thing happen often when you get a nosebleed?" she inquired.
"I haven't had one for a thousand years. But yes. It does." (12)
Yuri, Sally and Angua contemplated the wingèd horse, which somehow was growing faster than the average newborn foal. It stood about a third of full size and was trying to manage standing on its four wobbly legs, for now. Angua reflected the next thing it would attempt to try out would be its wings.
"Just tilt your head back and pinch the bridge of your nose. Oh shit, here comes another one!" said Sally.
Angua went to the door and summoned a couple of Watchmen.
"You. To the Assassins' Guild, present my compliments to Miss Smith-Rhodes, and explain to her we've got a really interesting animal handling case we'd quite like her to look at for us. If she's not available, get to the Hippo and drag Doughnut Jimmy here. Move!"
I'll have to add a sequel reassuring everyone that Detritus got changed back to Troll and denying the story line was influenced by the episode of Red Dwarf where Kryten the robot is given the chance to become human for a day. But this is enough for one day, I think! Reviews, and bricks-inna-sock, to the usual places?
(1) Really true. It's 2009 now, right? Angua first appears in Men at Arms, published in 1993. So in a very real sense she's been in Ankh-Morpork for sixteen years. Well, "true" for a given value of "true", anyway.
(2) And, when called for, also her night job. Well, more of a vocation, really.
(3) A synopsis. One day I might flesh this one out: werewolf versus were-leopards. With Assassin in attendance. A recipe for some good ol' Ankh-Morporkian mayhem if ever there was one. See my story Nature Studies for how an Assassin got to be an occasional Special, despite Vimes' deeper instincts.
(4)Pust on vspomnit devushku prostuiu,/Pust uslyshit, kak ona poet, /Pust on zemliu berezhet rodnuiu,/ A liubov Katyusha sberezhet. (Let him remember an ordinary girl, /and hear how she sings, /Let him preserve the Motherland, / Same as Katyusha preserves their love.) You'd know the theme instantly – it's a well-known Russian song on Roundworld.
(5) Bouzoukis. Cheese. I can't see where this is going to go at all, can you?
(6) The philosopher Epicurious, at the cheeseboard end of a really good dinner, had a "Eureka!" moment when he reasoned that if he could just enumerate every different kind of cheese that existed on the Disc, he'd potentially have the secret of the cosmos. The bouzouki piece was written in his honour by the Philosophers' Taverna's house musician, Denis Troussous.
(7) In order of appearance, the cheeses are Red Leicester, Tilsit, Caerphilly, Bel Paese, Red Windsor, Stilton, Emmenthal, Gruyère, Norwegian Jarlsberg, Liptauer, Lancashire, White Stilton, Danish Blue, Double Gloucester, Cheshire' Dorset Blue Vinney, Brie, Roquefort, Pont-l'Évêque, Port Salut, Savoyard, Saint-Paulin, Carre-de-L'Est, Bresse-Bleu, Boursin, (rather runny) Camembert, Gouda, Edam, Caithness, Smoked Austrian, Japanese Sage Derby, Wensleydale, Greek Feta, Gorgonzola, Parmesan, Mozerella, Pippo Crème, Danish Fimboe, Czech sheep's milk, Venezuelan Beaver Cheese, Cheddar (not much call for it really), Ilchester, Limburger and SHUT THAT BLOODY BOUZOUKI UP!
(8) Hyperllamedos: Beyond Llamedos, or Alban, a small but fiercely belligerent country whose people are related to, but distinct from, Llamedosians and Hergenians. Exports: whiskey, strong beer, people who as often as not end up staggering in the street, calling you Jimmy, and alternately asking for the cost of a cup of tea and threatening to stick one right on ye, pal. Have been likened to human-sized Feegles. The Highlands are these days peaceable, and cheeseries have been established.
(9) I've simplified Olga's Zlobenian accent for convenience here. Take it from me, she has got one, and connoisseurs of such things would pay good money to hear her pronunciation of the word "negligible".
(10) Especially designed by the redoubtable Arthur Clarke, for Watch use in the restraint of arrested trolls. For more of Arthur, and his Leonard of Quirm-like genius, see short story …but not forgotten.
(11) The actual type tends to vary according to witness and incident, but is generally believed to default to marble. Controlled experiments are being carried out by the Stonemasons' Guild, however. These involve Yuri's sister Sthanno, who appears to have a useful affinity to granites and basaltic rocks of all kinds
(12) For the blood of the gorgon, when spilt, becomes a Pegasus, a wingèd horse. Note the mandatory wingèd, by the way, not any old "winged".