Sektober The Eleventh :
The Day The Disc Stood Still
Author's Note : As we all know, Discworld and all related characters are the copyrighted property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. I'm just borrowing them for a story. On a separate note, the timing of this is set somewhere in between Jingo and The Fifth Elephant.
The suffocating heat of Ankh-Morpork's summer had passed its zenith, giving way to the pleasant early autumn warmth of Sektober. The streets bustled with activity as the city's denizens went about their occasionally lawful business.
Since the institution of Prince Khufurah as patriarch of the Klatchian Empire, international trade had increased dramatically as a tenuous peace had been established between the desert and the city state. The discovery of massive oil reserves deep under the Klatchian desert had helped this peace along considerably. As Leonard Da Quirm would have told anyone, it was simple when you thought about it.
All it had taken was one clever alchemist with a bit of luck, and plastic was discovered. Combine that clever but naive alchemist with a shrewd businessman who might not know much about triple bonds and organic acids but who did know a business opportunity when he saw it, and the result was a very effervescent reaction which, monitored carefully, could produce a ridiculously successful plastic manufacturing company. Then, catalysed by morphic resonance, several more appeared soon after, creating an entire industry.
It was the shrewd businessman who had first realised that the best way to make money was not by manufacturing lots of goods and trying to sell them. Instead, he arranged for the alchemist to travel to Ankh-Morpork and teach a few lads how to mix the chemicals correctly, and then set up a crude oil export business. Let the sausage-eating savages make whatever they want, he told the alchemist. This way, they couldn't complain if they made a pig's ear of the job. Besides, whatever they were selling to the Morporkians would have to be shipped there anyway, and the sale value per net weight of crude oil was quite pleasingly above that of even the most expensive plastic goods they had produced so far.
After a few confused and eventful days, the Watch intervened and established shipping lanes, along which dozens of huge heavily-loaded flying carpets would travel every day, carrying their precious cargo to the many warehouses in the Shades where the owners would insist that dreams were made, at least if you breathed deeply at the right moment.
It was no surprise to anyone, then, when on Sektober the eleventh a lone carpet, evidently even more heavily loaded than usual, flew past the Watch checkpoint at the Deosil Gate and headed at dizzying speed over the city. It was noted in the checkpoint logbook as a late delivery consignment.
At least, it was no surprise to anyone until the moment it crashed into the side of the Tower of Art, about half way up.
Rubble and fire rained into the street as the oil set alight. Tourists who had been quite unnecessarily charged five dollars for the privilege of climbing the Tower [and, in all probability, being relieved of the burden of their wallets] screamed when they realised what was happening. The oil burned with an intense heat which began to crack and then melt the paving stones that made up the building's infrastructure. In the streets below, an expectant crowd gathered, watching in silence, apart from those who owned shops nearby, who were busy attempting to extinguish the various fires of spilt oil.
When Captain Carrot arrived perhaps two minutes later, more rubble was strewn in the streets, and an entire loop of the staircase was precariously exposed. Gouts of flame could be seen and huge plumes of thick, choking smoke billowed from the opening. Carrot looked at the smoke for a few seconds and turned to one of the constables nearby, intent on starting a bucket chain, when he noticed several golems nearby. They were busy clearing up the fallen rubble, and not one of them was trying to combat the fire in the tower.
Carrot was well aware that the golems were the city's fire brigade, and he surmised that if they weren't fighting the fire then it would be a useless endeavour for him to undertake. He looked up again at the burning carpet and its cargo of flame, and saw as more masonry fell from the tower. When it crashed into the street, he noticed the bubbling puddles of flame where burning oil had hit the cobbles.
Something clicked in his mind and he cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Alright, this is the Watch! I want everyone to clear the area at once! I want the streets empty for at least a hundred yards in each direction! Now!"
More rubble fell from the tower, wounding those haplessly fighting the small fires in the street, and then a figure appeared, dimly visible through the smoke, on the roof of the Tower.
"We can't get out! The inside of the tower's an inferno - the heat's unbearable! We're trapped!" The man's voice, thin and reedy with fear, carried in the silence that surrounded the tower.
The crowd looked up at the man, and then began to disperse again, as Carrot reiterated his order. He looked around him and saw Constable Visit.
"Visit, do you know if anyone in the warehouses will still have any of the convoy pilots there?"
"I am not sure, sir."
"Well, go and find out, would you? If you find any of them, get as many carpets as possible out here, fast as you can. If they start complaining, tell them I sent you. Go!"
Visit scuttled off and Carrot looked up again at the figure, now less visible through the thickening smoke.
"Don't worry! We've sent for help and they'll be here soon! In a few minutes we'll have you safe and sound!"
The man waved in reply, and then seemed to wobble. He appeared to have lost his balance, and then he was plummeting toward the streets, a terrified scream torn from his lips by the rushing wind.
There was a noise like a wet blanket being thrown against a wall and the crowd moved faster. Screams filled the air, and Carrot looked up to see the tower's upper segment sagging, and then falling towards the street. He turned and ran, and then the world turned black, as thick dust filled the air. All the while, a sound like the end of the universe rumbled in his ears, and then there was nothing.
* * *
Vimes sat in his office, smoking one of his cigars, and stared across his desk. Captain Carrot returned the gaze steadily, but Corporal Littlebottom shifted nervously and sorted through the papers she had with her.
"So what have we got so far?"
"Well, sir, we're almost certain that we've rescued everyone who survived, and we're now faced with the somewhat more daunting task of trying to find out what happened, which is where we need Cheery's expertise," replied Carrot.
"How can you be so sure you've got all the survivors?" asked Vimes, a frown resting on his features like cobwebs upon an old armchair.
"We asked the wizards up at the university if they could help, and they cast some sort of spell that detected morphic signatures. Excluding a couple of rats or so, we've got everyone out," replied Carrot.
"Okay. Fair enough. Now, onto you, Cheery. How long do you reckon it'll take you to find out whatever that rubble can tell you?" said Vimes turning to look at what was still the entirety of the Watch's forensic science division.
"Hard to say, sir. If I can count on a few golems to move rubble and stuff for me....well, between four and six days. We'll have to go through everything to make sure we don't miss anything... But I can't promise you anything definite to go on," replied Cheery, thoughtfully. A thought struck her, and she rummaged in her notes.
"What's that you've got there?" enquired Vimes.
"While the wizards were helping the rescue expedition, I went to find out the names of all the people who have businesses which involve Klatchian oil imports. Almost all of them are plastic manufacturers. I thought it might be worthwhile to check who was receiving deliveries yesterday, sir."
"Hah! Yes, I see where you're going with that. Somehow I think you're going to find that a lot of them will have 'forgotten'," Vimes's tone made clear what sort of amnesia he was expecting, "about any deliveries that they received yesterday...I know I wouldn't want to be have my name on the list of people involved in flattening a famous Morporkian monument. Not saying I wouldn't do it, mind, I'm just saying I wouldn't get caught. Anyway, get someone else to check up on it. See if Angua's free, she'd be good at that sort of thing," said Vimes, glancing over the list.
"Yes, sir," she replied, and left the office to find Angua. Vimes drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking. At some length, Carrot spoke.
"You're thinking it wasn't an accident, aren't you, sir?"
Vimes looked up sharply. "I didn't say that, now, did I? But.....well, let's not assume anything until Cheery looks at that rubble, eh? For a start the Tower of Art is, or rather was, specificallly outside the shipping lanes because we thought it'd cause trouble. I suppose if someone was making a late delivery they might think 'Bugger the shipping lanes' and take a shortcut," mused Vimes.
"What makes you think it wasn't an accident, Carrot?"
"Sir?"
"I know what you're like, Carrot. You wouldn't have asked the question if it hadn't crossed your mind as well. What made your palms itch?"
"Put like that..well, it's still only a few weeks since the, er, not-war with Klatch. I know that trade is helping with the diplomatic side, but I can't help think that if I wanted to show Ankh-Morpork that it hadn't quite gotten rid of me, flattening the Tower of Art would be a good way to do it."
Vimes stared at him for a second, a suspicious look on his face.
"You're getting better at being a cynic, at least. As for this mess..well, let's not get ahead of ourselves too much, eh?"
He drew on his cigar, and then seemed to reach a decision.
"Go and find Cheery. Tell her she's got two days. And Carrot?"
"Yes, sir?"
Vimes fixed him with a solid stare. "Keep your ears to the ground. There's more to this than we think. I can feel it."
* * *
Cheery arrived at the site of the tower's collapse, which some of the city's more brutal inhabitants were referring to as the Ground Floor. It was amazing to think that a mere two days ago the tower had been standing. She looked around her in dismay at the size of the task ahead of her.
Carrot's estimate had been around right. The streets had been filled with rubble and, well, the Tower, for a circular region with a radius of around a hundred yards, from where the remains of the Tower poked up through the rubble. Not to mention the countless people who hadn't fled in time, she thought.
She shook her head and scuttled over to where several golems had grouped together. Constable Dorfl had arranged for them to help her in her search.
"Er. Right. Well, I think that, um, the best thing is if we try to find where the carpet is first and look around there a bit, and then we can move to the base of the tower and work outwards from there. So, if we all start looking for the carpet, we should be able to make a start."
In fact, it was Cheery that found the carpet. As she clambered over a particularly large piece of masonry, she slipped, and as she did so she caught a glimpse of red that made her glance down again. When she did so, she realised it was the remains of the carpet.
"Over here! I've found it!"
The golems moved easily to where Cheery was, and awaited her next order.
"Ok, I think we're going to need to shift that big piece there, before we can figure out which way the rest of it is pointing..." she said, and the golems picked up the block of masonry with ease. They clambered over the rubble with no apparent effort and dumped the block up the street where it wouldn't disturb the search further.
Meanwhile, Cheery was examining what she could see of the carpet. By luck most of it had been hidden under that block, but it wasn't too much help. Most of it had burned when the oil caught fire, and only the square foot or so of red that had caught her eye remained intact. She picked up the unburned section and carefully placed it in her knapsack.
As the golems shifted more rubble according to her directions, Cheery saw that she had been right to start searching here first. Under another large segment of masonry, this time belonging to the staircase, she could just about make out the crushed remains of one of the barrels that the oil was usually transported in. After instructing the golems to free it completely, she climbed down to where it lay and moved it slowly, trying to find any useful evidence from it.
She saw that its contents hadn't entirely burned away when some of them spilled onto her hands. After wiping her hands dry, she reached for a sample tube, filled it with the liquid, and then put it into her knapsack.
Turning over the barrel, she found something of extreme interest. Since the emergence of the various oil exporting groups, each group had taken to marking its consignments with a particular logo. Each one was distinctive when seen in comparison to another one, but to a non-Klatchian instant identification would be impossible. She copied the looping pattern carefully into her notebook.
She climbed back up to her previous vantage point and looked around again to see if anything had missed her previous search. Just as she was about to start looking elsewhere, something caught her eye again.
She climbed back down to where she had examined the barrel, and turned it over again. At its end she saw what had caught her eye - a small box with a segment of wire connected to it was attached to the base of the barrel. Wondering what it was, Cheery attempted to dislodge it, but was unable to. She had to hack at it several times with a small knife before she could loosen it, but after a few minutes it joined the other pieces of evidence in her backpack.
Working on a vague feeling, she rummaged in the rubble, and then instructed the golems to help her find another barrel, preferably complete, from the carpet's load. It was another three quarters of an hour before they found one, but when they did, Cheery only gave it the most cursory examination before confirming her suspicions.
She placed the box into another sample tube and collected up her knapsack. She turned to the golems.
"Right. Er. I have to go back to the Yard now, to do some tests. Once you've cleared round the carpet, move over to the base of the Tower and start clearing from there, a ten yard radius circle to begin with and then increase the radius, five yards at a time. Put any...any bodies you find over there, and particularly large bits of rubble over there. Anything else that seems, well, odd, or out of place, put it to one side and tell me when I get back. That includes the rest of the barrels and any other bits of the carpet you find." With that, she turned and ran towards the Yards, thoughts rushing through her head.
* * *
Fumes drifted from the tiny room that Cheery was still forced to use as a lab, as she carried out various tests. One particularly effervescent one almost exploded, forcing her to jump backwards. She stumbled, and almost knocked Angua over, who had been about to interrupt her.
"Glad to catch you at a free moment," she murmured as she helped the dwarf to her feet.
"Oh, good. I was hoping you'd be around. I have to do some tests, but your nose might save me some time," replied Cheery, turning back into her lab and rummaging in her knapsack. When she found what she was looking for, she turned back to Angua and handed her a sample tube.
"Have a smell of that, please, and tell me what you think," Cheery said.
Angua opened the sample tube and examined its contents. A small box, not much thicker than a matchbox, with some small amount of wire protruding at one end. Much more apparent to her, however, was the scent. The smell was a stench to her, a mixture of the horrible smell of burning fabric and the smell of burnt Number One powder. She sniffed, gently, and detected a smell she wasn't familiar with.
"There's the smell of Number One powder, which is what I imagine you wanted confirmed, mixed with the smell of burned hair. There's also much fainter traces of something else that I don't know. I take it this came from the Tower?"
"Yep. It was attached to one of the barrels, by the little wire bit there," Cheery said, indicating the part of the box where the wires protruded.
"The barrel I got this from was broken so I couldn't guess too much from it. It took us ages to find another barrel, but the next one was slightly more intact. It had three of these attached." She looked pointedly at Angua.
"Detonators," she murmured.
"Perhaps. But, as Mr Vimes would have us believe he says all the time, let's not jump to conclusions. One of the many questions we'll need to be asking the manufacturers will be whether there's any conceivable reason to have these things attached to a barrel of what should have been crude oil."
"Why should have been?"
"Well, I don't know yet, but I had a hunch the oil might have been at least partially processed before shipping. Just a feeling, really..I don't think crude oil would have burned all that easily. Coupled with these," she tossed the little box up and caught it, a thoughtful expression on her face, "it makes the idea a little more plausible."
A thought seemed to strike her. She rummaged again in her knapsack.
"Have you been round to ask the manufacturers about deliveries and so on yet?"
"No, not yet. I came by to ask if you wanted to come along."
"Oh, good. I managed to find the logo of the exporter, although it's not one I recognize. We'll have to check it in the logbook, but it'll make our enquiries a bit easier."
Twenty minutes later they were at the Deosil gate, checking through the logbook of recognized Klatchian oil exporters.
"Are you sure this is the only logbook? There's not another one?" Cheery asked the guard on duty. He shook his head, a nervous look on his face. It was a very common look on people who were being Looked at by Angua.
"W-we only use the one, miss. Avoids confusion."
"Well, that's odd," Cheery remarked under her breath to Angua. "The entry was made in the logbook quite happily, but there's no other records of any exporter using this logo making any deliveries. Plus it's not listed as having permission to enter city airspace."
"This just gets better and better. Check the roster and find out who was on duty when it was checked in."
Author's Note : As we all know, Discworld and all related characters are the copyrighted property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. I'm just borrowing them for a story. On a separate note, the timing of this is set somewhere in between Jingo and The Fifth Elephant.
The suffocating heat of Ankh-Morpork's summer had passed its zenith, giving way to the pleasant early autumn warmth of Sektober. The streets bustled with activity as the city's denizens went about their occasionally lawful business.
Since the institution of Prince Khufurah as patriarch of the Klatchian Empire, international trade had increased dramatically as a tenuous peace had been established between the desert and the city state. The discovery of massive oil reserves deep under the Klatchian desert had helped this peace along considerably. As Leonard Da Quirm would have told anyone, it was simple when you thought about it.
All it had taken was one clever alchemist with a bit of luck, and plastic was discovered. Combine that clever but naive alchemist with a shrewd businessman who might not know much about triple bonds and organic acids but who did know a business opportunity when he saw it, and the result was a very effervescent reaction which, monitored carefully, could produce a ridiculously successful plastic manufacturing company. Then, catalysed by morphic resonance, several more appeared soon after, creating an entire industry.
It was the shrewd businessman who had first realised that the best way to make money was not by manufacturing lots of goods and trying to sell them. Instead, he arranged for the alchemist to travel to Ankh-Morpork and teach a few lads how to mix the chemicals correctly, and then set up a crude oil export business. Let the sausage-eating savages make whatever they want, he told the alchemist. This way, they couldn't complain if they made a pig's ear of the job. Besides, whatever they were selling to the Morporkians would have to be shipped there anyway, and the sale value per net weight of crude oil was quite pleasingly above that of even the most expensive plastic goods they had produced so far.
After a few confused and eventful days, the Watch intervened and established shipping lanes, along which dozens of huge heavily-loaded flying carpets would travel every day, carrying their precious cargo to the many warehouses in the Shades where the owners would insist that dreams were made, at least if you breathed deeply at the right moment.
It was no surprise to anyone, then, when on Sektober the eleventh a lone carpet, evidently even more heavily loaded than usual, flew past the Watch checkpoint at the Deosil Gate and headed at dizzying speed over the city. It was noted in the checkpoint logbook as a late delivery consignment.
At least, it was no surprise to anyone until the moment it crashed into the side of the Tower of Art, about half way up.
Rubble and fire rained into the street as the oil set alight. Tourists who had been quite unnecessarily charged five dollars for the privilege of climbing the Tower [and, in all probability, being relieved of the burden of their wallets] screamed when they realised what was happening. The oil burned with an intense heat which began to crack and then melt the paving stones that made up the building's infrastructure. In the streets below, an expectant crowd gathered, watching in silence, apart from those who owned shops nearby, who were busy attempting to extinguish the various fires of spilt oil.
When Captain Carrot arrived perhaps two minutes later, more rubble was strewn in the streets, and an entire loop of the staircase was precariously exposed. Gouts of flame could be seen and huge plumes of thick, choking smoke billowed from the opening. Carrot looked at the smoke for a few seconds and turned to one of the constables nearby, intent on starting a bucket chain, when he noticed several golems nearby. They were busy clearing up the fallen rubble, and not one of them was trying to combat the fire in the tower.
Carrot was well aware that the golems were the city's fire brigade, and he surmised that if they weren't fighting the fire then it would be a useless endeavour for him to undertake. He looked up again at the burning carpet and its cargo of flame, and saw as more masonry fell from the tower. When it crashed into the street, he noticed the bubbling puddles of flame where burning oil had hit the cobbles.
Something clicked in his mind and he cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Alright, this is the Watch! I want everyone to clear the area at once! I want the streets empty for at least a hundred yards in each direction! Now!"
More rubble fell from the tower, wounding those haplessly fighting the small fires in the street, and then a figure appeared, dimly visible through the smoke, on the roof of the Tower.
"We can't get out! The inside of the tower's an inferno - the heat's unbearable! We're trapped!" The man's voice, thin and reedy with fear, carried in the silence that surrounded the tower.
The crowd looked up at the man, and then began to disperse again, as Carrot reiterated his order. He looked around him and saw Constable Visit.
"Visit, do you know if anyone in the warehouses will still have any of the convoy pilots there?"
"I am not sure, sir."
"Well, go and find out, would you? If you find any of them, get as many carpets as possible out here, fast as you can. If they start complaining, tell them I sent you. Go!"
Visit scuttled off and Carrot looked up again at the figure, now less visible through the thickening smoke.
"Don't worry! We've sent for help and they'll be here soon! In a few minutes we'll have you safe and sound!"
The man waved in reply, and then seemed to wobble. He appeared to have lost his balance, and then he was plummeting toward the streets, a terrified scream torn from his lips by the rushing wind.
There was a noise like a wet blanket being thrown against a wall and the crowd moved faster. Screams filled the air, and Carrot looked up to see the tower's upper segment sagging, and then falling towards the street. He turned and ran, and then the world turned black, as thick dust filled the air. All the while, a sound like the end of the universe rumbled in his ears, and then there was nothing.
* * *
Vimes sat in his office, smoking one of his cigars, and stared across his desk. Captain Carrot returned the gaze steadily, but Corporal Littlebottom shifted nervously and sorted through the papers she had with her.
"So what have we got so far?"
"Well, sir, we're almost certain that we've rescued everyone who survived, and we're now faced with the somewhat more daunting task of trying to find out what happened, which is where we need Cheery's expertise," replied Carrot.
"How can you be so sure you've got all the survivors?" asked Vimes, a frown resting on his features like cobwebs upon an old armchair.
"We asked the wizards up at the university if they could help, and they cast some sort of spell that detected morphic signatures. Excluding a couple of rats or so, we've got everyone out," replied Carrot.
"Okay. Fair enough. Now, onto you, Cheery. How long do you reckon it'll take you to find out whatever that rubble can tell you?" said Vimes turning to look at what was still the entirety of the Watch's forensic science division.
"Hard to say, sir. If I can count on a few golems to move rubble and stuff for me....well, between four and six days. We'll have to go through everything to make sure we don't miss anything... But I can't promise you anything definite to go on," replied Cheery, thoughtfully. A thought struck her, and she rummaged in her notes.
"What's that you've got there?" enquired Vimes.
"While the wizards were helping the rescue expedition, I went to find out the names of all the people who have businesses which involve Klatchian oil imports. Almost all of them are plastic manufacturers. I thought it might be worthwhile to check who was receiving deliveries yesterday, sir."
"Hah! Yes, I see where you're going with that. Somehow I think you're going to find that a lot of them will have 'forgotten'," Vimes's tone made clear what sort of amnesia he was expecting, "about any deliveries that they received yesterday...I know I wouldn't want to be have my name on the list of people involved in flattening a famous Morporkian monument. Not saying I wouldn't do it, mind, I'm just saying I wouldn't get caught. Anyway, get someone else to check up on it. See if Angua's free, she'd be good at that sort of thing," said Vimes, glancing over the list.
"Yes, sir," she replied, and left the office to find Angua. Vimes drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking. At some length, Carrot spoke.
"You're thinking it wasn't an accident, aren't you, sir?"
Vimes looked up sharply. "I didn't say that, now, did I? But.....well, let's not assume anything until Cheery looks at that rubble, eh? For a start the Tower of Art is, or rather was, specificallly outside the shipping lanes because we thought it'd cause trouble. I suppose if someone was making a late delivery they might think 'Bugger the shipping lanes' and take a shortcut," mused Vimes.
"What makes you think it wasn't an accident, Carrot?"
"Sir?"
"I know what you're like, Carrot. You wouldn't have asked the question if it hadn't crossed your mind as well. What made your palms itch?"
"Put like that..well, it's still only a few weeks since the, er, not-war with Klatch. I know that trade is helping with the diplomatic side, but I can't help think that if I wanted to show Ankh-Morpork that it hadn't quite gotten rid of me, flattening the Tower of Art would be a good way to do it."
Vimes stared at him for a second, a suspicious look on his face.
"You're getting better at being a cynic, at least. As for this mess..well, let's not get ahead of ourselves too much, eh?"
He drew on his cigar, and then seemed to reach a decision.
"Go and find Cheery. Tell her she's got two days. And Carrot?"
"Yes, sir?"
Vimes fixed him with a solid stare. "Keep your ears to the ground. There's more to this than we think. I can feel it."
* * *
Cheery arrived at the site of the tower's collapse, which some of the city's more brutal inhabitants were referring to as the Ground Floor. It was amazing to think that a mere two days ago the tower had been standing. She looked around her in dismay at the size of the task ahead of her.
Carrot's estimate had been around right. The streets had been filled with rubble and, well, the Tower, for a circular region with a radius of around a hundred yards, from where the remains of the Tower poked up through the rubble. Not to mention the countless people who hadn't fled in time, she thought.
She shook her head and scuttled over to where several golems had grouped together. Constable Dorfl had arranged for them to help her in her search.
"Er. Right. Well, I think that, um, the best thing is if we try to find where the carpet is first and look around there a bit, and then we can move to the base of the tower and work outwards from there. So, if we all start looking for the carpet, we should be able to make a start."
In fact, it was Cheery that found the carpet. As she clambered over a particularly large piece of masonry, she slipped, and as she did so she caught a glimpse of red that made her glance down again. When she did so, she realised it was the remains of the carpet.
"Over here! I've found it!"
The golems moved easily to where Cheery was, and awaited her next order.
"Ok, I think we're going to need to shift that big piece there, before we can figure out which way the rest of it is pointing..." she said, and the golems picked up the block of masonry with ease. They clambered over the rubble with no apparent effort and dumped the block up the street where it wouldn't disturb the search further.
Meanwhile, Cheery was examining what she could see of the carpet. By luck most of it had been hidden under that block, but it wasn't too much help. Most of it had burned when the oil caught fire, and only the square foot or so of red that had caught her eye remained intact. She picked up the unburned section and carefully placed it in her knapsack.
As the golems shifted more rubble according to her directions, Cheery saw that she had been right to start searching here first. Under another large segment of masonry, this time belonging to the staircase, she could just about make out the crushed remains of one of the barrels that the oil was usually transported in. After instructing the golems to free it completely, she climbed down to where it lay and moved it slowly, trying to find any useful evidence from it.
She saw that its contents hadn't entirely burned away when some of them spilled onto her hands. After wiping her hands dry, she reached for a sample tube, filled it with the liquid, and then put it into her knapsack.
Turning over the barrel, she found something of extreme interest. Since the emergence of the various oil exporting groups, each group had taken to marking its consignments with a particular logo. Each one was distinctive when seen in comparison to another one, but to a non-Klatchian instant identification would be impossible. She copied the looping pattern carefully into her notebook.
She climbed back up to her previous vantage point and looked around again to see if anything had missed her previous search. Just as she was about to start looking elsewhere, something caught her eye again.
She climbed back down to where she had examined the barrel, and turned it over again. At its end she saw what had caught her eye - a small box with a segment of wire connected to it was attached to the base of the barrel. Wondering what it was, Cheery attempted to dislodge it, but was unable to. She had to hack at it several times with a small knife before she could loosen it, but after a few minutes it joined the other pieces of evidence in her backpack.
Working on a vague feeling, she rummaged in the rubble, and then instructed the golems to help her find another barrel, preferably complete, from the carpet's load. It was another three quarters of an hour before they found one, but when they did, Cheery only gave it the most cursory examination before confirming her suspicions.
She placed the box into another sample tube and collected up her knapsack. She turned to the golems.
"Right. Er. I have to go back to the Yard now, to do some tests. Once you've cleared round the carpet, move over to the base of the Tower and start clearing from there, a ten yard radius circle to begin with and then increase the radius, five yards at a time. Put any...any bodies you find over there, and particularly large bits of rubble over there. Anything else that seems, well, odd, or out of place, put it to one side and tell me when I get back. That includes the rest of the barrels and any other bits of the carpet you find." With that, she turned and ran towards the Yards, thoughts rushing through her head.
* * *
Fumes drifted from the tiny room that Cheery was still forced to use as a lab, as she carried out various tests. One particularly effervescent one almost exploded, forcing her to jump backwards. She stumbled, and almost knocked Angua over, who had been about to interrupt her.
"Glad to catch you at a free moment," she murmured as she helped the dwarf to her feet.
"Oh, good. I was hoping you'd be around. I have to do some tests, but your nose might save me some time," replied Cheery, turning back into her lab and rummaging in her knapsack. When she found what she was looking for, she turned back to Angua and handed her a sample tube.
"Have a smell of that, please, and tell me what you think," Cheery said.
Angua opened the sample tube and examined its contents. A small box, not much thicker than a matchbox, with some small amount of wire protruding at one end. Much more apparent to her, however, was the scent. The smell was a stench to her, a mixture of the horrible smell of burning fabric and the smell of burnt Number One powder. She sniffed, gently, and detected a smell she wasn't familiar with.
"There's the smell of Number One powder, which is what I imagine you wanted confirmed, mixed with the smell of burned hair. There's also much fainter traces of something else that I don't know. I take it this came from the Tower?"
"Yep. It was attached to one of the barrels, by the little wire bit there," Cheery said, indicating the part of the box where the wires protruded.
"The barrel I got this from was broken so I couldn't guess too much from it. It took us ages to find another barrel, but the next one was slightly more intact. It had three of these attached." She looked pointedly at Angua.
"Detonators," she murmured.
"Perhaps. But, as Mr Vimes would have us believe he says all the time, let's not jump to conclusions. One of the many questions we'll need to be asking the manufacturers will be whether there's any conceivable reason to have these things attached to a barrel of what should have been crude oil."
"Why should have been?"
"Well, I don't know yet, but I had a hunch the oil might have been at least partially processed before shipping. Just a feeling, really..I don't think crude oil would have burned all that easily. Coupled with these," she tossed the little box up and caught it, a thoughtful expression on her face, "it makes the idea a little more plausible."
A thought seemed to strike her. She rummaged again in her knapsack.
"Have you been round to ask the manufacturers about deliveries and so on yet?"
"No, not yet. I came by to ask if you wanted to come along."
"Oh, good. I managed to find the logo of the exporter, although it's not one I recognize. We'll have to check it in the logbook, but it'll make our enquiries a bit easier."
Twenty minutes later they were at the Deosil gate, checking through the logbook of recognized Klatchian oil exporters.
"Are you sure this is the only logbook? There's not another one?" Cheery asked the guard on duty. He shook his head, a nervous look on his face. It was a very common look on people who were being Looked at by Angua.
"W-we only use the one, miss. Avoids confusion."
"Well, that's odd," Cheery remarked under her breath to Angua. "The entry was made in the logbook quite happily, but there's no other records of any exporter using this logo making any deliveries. Plus it's not listed as having permission to enter city airspace."
"This just gets better and better. Check the roster and find out who was on duty when it was checked in."