Chapter Nine: Physics? What Physics? (We Could All Do With A Drink)

In which the Piecemaker leaves buildings standing and Marvel Maiden arrives in blimp-popping style

"Shit!" Angua shouted over the noise, and then ran for the podium.

Pandemonium reigned in Sator Square. Clouds of smoke and other assorted vapors, few of them healthsome, rolled out from the site of the explosion, filling the air and obscuring vision. There was a stink of burning ozone: vivid copper and black in pretty fern patterns overlaying the mere sighted view of the world, which had in the intensification of her other senses faded to a grey outline. Her hands were trying to be paws. Her thumbs, at least, were succeeding. And who could blame her? It was a mess. Half the cobblestones had been blackened by a sooty chrysanthemum of burn marks; a metal grille near the epicenter of the bang was glowing cherry-red, and making sad little clink clink ptoo! noises as it cooled and popped its hinges one by one (not necessarily in that order). The remaining cobblestones were being blackened by the shadows of the crowd, which was stampeding for the alleys in the hopes of escaping whatever had very effectively blown its fuse in the intervening minutes.

But the figure standing at the soapbox was quite still. She elbowed her way through the clamor and swung herself up beside him. He turned to glare at her when she gripped his shoulder; said, unwisely, "How dare you?" She obligingly answered by punching him a good one across the kisser(1).

He hit the floor and came up rolling, which was just as well, because otherwise he would have been trampled and that would have been a waste of a damn fine scapegoat. Before he could recover himself fully, though, to be sure, Angua hauled him up by the front of his shiny black armor or whatever it was and whistled.

Carrot hurried over - he'd been attempting some semblance of crowd control, but rightly recognized it as a hopeless cause at best. He handcuffed the miscreant in question for her, and she in turn let go of the bastard's collar.

"Now," she said - bellowed, really, the crowd had a fine set of lungs and the scene was not that of true terror, wherein people save their breath for the business of escaping; no, this havoc was the sort wrought by men, women, dwarfs, trolls, undead, and assorted others were quite secure in their general safety and therefore felt the burning need to complain about it. She pinched the bridge of her nose as she spoke, smudging her face further in a futile attempt to wipe some of the grime of combustion off it. "You're under arrest. Will you come quietly?"

"What am I under arrest for?" he hissed, voice quite strange from this distance, all strangled and nasty. That might have been because he appeared to be wearing a grill over his mouth. Behind the bars, pointy canines shone with inappropriate glee and twinkliness.

Her mind went back to the word 'twinkliness', circled it, held it up to the light, and shrugged. It had better things to do than question vocabulary under stress. "You're under arrest for -" she tried to concentrate over the noise and the onrush of odors "- Disturbing the Peace, Obstructing Duty, and -"

"Petty charges? A mere excuse for your corruption? The hell with that," he snapped in one long stream of stupidity, and kicked Carrot in the stomach, who stumbled backwards.

"I'll take that as a no," Angua said, and leapt on him.

It should have been a matter of moments to wrestle him to the ground; vampire though he might have been, Carrot was there to assist her before you(2) could say "police brutality". But...

But...

Every move he made seem to twist reality a little. His blows were ridiculous, straight-armed, impractical flailing things, like a child's drawing of a kick or an elbowing; yet every one landed home, and soon she was achingly aware that she was going to have to ask Detritus to darn her chain mail again, and probably Igor to darn some of her ribs. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, more reinforcements lumbering in. This was getting silly; it shouldn't take more than two experienced Watch officers to bring down some arrogant pipsqueak of a vampire.

What should have been didn't seem to have much effect here. His thrashing was kicking up sparks! And - was it just her, or did every hit he landed come with a little sound effect passing straight into her brain without bothering to enter by the ears? It was like there was an imp standing by to yell 'Pow!' 'Bang!' 'Punch!' with each gesture.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to resist the urge to bite him. As it were.

Then he suddenly slipped her grip in one balletic turn and launched himself into the sky.

"Damn," Commander Angua said. The vampire spread bat wings. The handcuffs split with an inappropriately jolly noise like bells and flutes and things. "Damn. Detritus?"

"Yes, sir?" Detritus rumbled. He had been cocking his crossbow. She glanced around. The square was more or less emptied except for the gathered watchmen, who all knew enough to stay behind Detritus, and the vampire was hovering still, smirking at them, floating just barely out of reach...

"Fire," she said, and dived to the ground as the troll swung up and moved his massive stone arms so and so -

The sound it should have made was boom. The noise it did make was 'fffft', as there was a very soft, sudden change in pressure and a fireball bloomed from out the quarrel. He'd been aiming almost vertically, and the surround property was, amazingly, more or less unscathed; a rain of feathers was pattering down on them, but that was no great problem, for anyone but the gargoyles who might go hungry for a few hours thanks to this particular sharp decrease in the seagull and pigeon population.

She looked, and saw, to her horror, that the buildings weren't the only things that had gone unscathed. The vampire was reclining in mid-air, wings spread out like a cushion or the low, curving back of a sofa; he grinned down at them, and said, "I'm afraid it would take more than such little toys to disable... the Batty-Man."

She stared at him.

The Piecemaker, as Detritus called it, had never failed to totally devastate anything in its path. It was the lone triumph of physics over narrative convention that had ever even shown its face on the surface of the Disc.

"You must be crazy," she informed him, "if you think that name is helping you any. Look, Mr. Batty-Man, what are you trying to achieve? Who are you?" How can you survive a bundle of flaming sticks at a very acceptable fraction of the speed of light to the head? she added to herself. How can you subdue Ankh-Morpork citizens into near complacent silence?

"Negotiating now, eh?" he said.

"Yes," she said frankly. "We apparently can't reach you by force, after all. Are you going to talk to us?"

"No," he said. "I've seen what you're like, now. You rejected the signalling device, didn't you?"

"I was going to have Ch-Sergeant Littlebottom analyze it for dangerous chemicals, I admit," Angua said. "Is that what you were annoyed about? Is that why you went postal all over the soapbox?"

"Someone has to speak out against you people," he said, eyes glowing. "Against Authority. Against the Old Regime. Against Wrong. Against Conservativism. Against Oppression and Stagnance. Against... Right-Wing Small-Closed-Mindedness."

"What?" said Angua, momentarily caught off guard by the last item on the list.

"Er," said the vampire, and then recovered himself. "Never mind that! I came to fight everything you represent. I thought you might be converted to the path of righteousness, but it appears that was wishful thinking. And so I bid you adieu - for now."

"That's a contradiction in Quirmian," Angua pointed out, testily, but he was gone. She sniffed, and memorized the signature of his scent; electric blue, shading to purple at the edges, with liberally applied metaphorical glitter in the bargain.

"Hi," said someone who had just tripped up to her shoulder, breathlessly. "Did we miss anything?"

"Kid," she said, turning around to look her former employer's son in the eye, "you have no idea."

(1) His chin left a bruise on her knuckles. If it weren't for werewolf physiology, she probably would have broken a finger. "That'll teach me not to visit Mrs. Goodbody regularly," as she put it. And, indeed, it did. Were there ever a shop that did not suffer for business even during the worst of the Watch Commander's moods, it was that one. There's nothing like a blackjack and a peaceful proceeding in the Shades for spreading a little judicious misery through the world.

(2) Assuming 'you' were Detritus, who had trouble with all those consecutive vowels and always ended up resorting to the good old stand-by, "us hittin' dem."

*

It was sort of orb-like. And, then again, not. Like a big glowing sphere in the wet green undersea maze of hallways and crumbling architecture, it was suspended from the top spire, all golden and rounded and translucent. It could also, not unreasonably, have been compared to a massive, really amazingly huge sort of bubble.

Vimes considered it. He was glued to one side, so there wasn't much else to consider. 'Glued' was definitely the word. It was sticky. At least, to his ghostly substance it was sticky. From what had happened to some passing seaweed, he suspected that to Real People it was not so much 'adhesive' as 'electrocuting and fatal'.

But that was okay, because he was intrigued by what was happening inside, which was, he presumed, the reason that his ephemeral goldfish pals had led him here in the first place and were now paddling worriedly around his head. The Ankhman was talking to someone, who had arrived by boat - specifically, by the pointy end of the boat(1) crashing through the lower side of the bubble and almost imploding it, although that particular crisis had been averted, to Vimes' mild spectator's disappointment.

The someone was now clambering out of the boat. The someone, it appeared, was female. Very. Very, female. Female, very. She wore a pink, white and blue - well, it wasn't so much a suit as a layer of paint, but anyway it was pink. And white. And blue. There were spangled stars on it, too. As a result of this, in combination with all the... bouncing... that was to say, female-ness... she resembled a collection of brightly-colored balloons constantly on the verge of loud popping. The only crack in that particular image was that she was dark-skinned under the paint, and had a great deal of shiny black hair, which rippled weirdly like a flag without accompanying breeze(2).

Just glancing at her made Vimes want to wretch.

"Why was I summoned?" she said haughtily, her rich, honey-like voice as intensely annoying as could be expected.

"We are gathering," the Ankhman gurgled.

"Who arrrre we?" she said, tossing her fine if proportionally rather small head and rolling her 'r's like a hot bit of Distressed Pudding on her tongue.

"We are... the Justice League of Ankh-Morpork!"

"Is this Ankh-Morrrrporrrrk?" said the woman.

"No. no. Ankh-Morpork is near here. This is our headquarters, but Ankh-Morpork is a far grand -" he hesitated "- a far nobl -" he paused a second time "- a far more impress -" he came to a reluctant halt "- a far larger place than my humble abode."

"I see," she said flatly. "Four of us?"

"Indeed," he glooped, sounding relieved.

"Which am I?"

"You are... Marvel Maid..."

"Hmm," she said. "Who is the ghost watching us from the skylights?"

Vimes cursed. He'd thought himself mostly concealed in the shadow of a curving, impossible bookshelf - the interior of the 'headquarters' was lined with some sort of distorted study that had been stretched around the contours of the globe - but no such luck, it seemed. Of course.

The Ankhman swiveled around in his puddle to look at where his companion was pointing. "I don't see anything," he squelched.

"Of courrrrse you don't, you fool, you have eyes on eitherrr side of your head," said Marvel Maid. "There is one, neverrrrtheless."

"I'm sort of... stuck..." the Ankhman said, gesturing pathetically to the stretch of flesh which in lieu of concealing a spleen had turned soggy and was sucking at the carpet.

"Hmph," said Marvel Maid, and launched herself at Vimes.

The supernatural, however, won out where natural physics never good, and she propelled herself in a beautiful somersault through his outthrust arm, which fortunately also dislodged him from the staticky golden bubble.

"Can we talk about this?" he said, as she tried to slap him and found her hand coming through his nose. It was a peculiarly unpleasant experience, having his ectoplasm permeated so abruptly.

She removed something from her belt. It was a silver staff(4), diamond-studded, and lightning danced along the sides.

"Oh, hell," said Vimes, ducking as she took another swing at him and almost cut away a chunk of his shoulder plate. He felt the buzz where the staff brushed his shade of armor.

She was morphing even as she whirled and thrust. "A ghost, huh?" she murmured. "We know how to deal with spirrrrits. With souls. Oh, yesss..."

Tentacles, he thought, and indeed there were an excess of suction-cupped feelers in his face as soon as he thought it. Her paint-suit was splitting as thick limbs sprouted forth, coiling sinuously through the water, trailing bubbles, and so forth. Also, there were suddenly more heads than there had been.

There was a name for where she had come from, he knew.

The Dungeon Dimensions.

He backed away as best he could through the thick water. She advanced.

Vimes imagined, for one instant, that the jewelled octopussies inset in the tiles framing her were also moving. And in that instant, before it could get worse, he vaulted backwards, and hoped beyond hope that what he had concluded from the evidence about postvital travel was true. The goldfish pinwheeled along. The last thing he saw as something in his essence tugged and shifted was the largest of the tentacles bubbling forth reach and twist around the liquid where his ankle had been, and the maw began to open.

Then he was spluttering onto the banks of the Ankh.

Right. That was that answered. Now all he had to do was find those bloody wizards.

(1) Vimes had survived seven sea voyages by the time he finally kicked it, maintaining his stubborn refusal to learn the nautical terms for things throughout. He wasn't about to start now just because he was dead and had a sense of perspective. There was such a thing as principle.

(2) In exactly the same way as the flag whips about in those videos of the first flight to the moon. Which, there being no wind on the moon to whip drapery with, proves that Roundworld space travel was all a FRAUD(3), a GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY orchestrated toarghargh no not the straight jackets again. In any case! Her hair. Flag. Conspiracy. It's all connected. Like a string of sausages! Or, you know, a string of strings.

(3) Unlike on the Discworld, where it is merely an unfortunate fact resulting from Leonard da Quirm's obsession and many, many swamp dragons.

(4) Shut up. Yes, you. In the back. You were sniggering. Don't think I didn't see you there.

A/N: I apologize for any detriment in quality my writing this with my ears full of snot may have made. Especially on the bit about Vimes and his bubbles, poor man. Update schedule seems to be shifting. Regularity? Hah! It's down there with physics, all sad and alone.