Patterns shifting, magic flowing, dances starting over . . . .

[* * * *]

"What the devil?" Vimes muttered, holding himself over Young Sam and Sybil to shield them as a brilliant light and fireworks filled the sky. They weren't close enough to the Alchemists' Guild Hall1 that this should be happening. But the flash didn't seem confined to any particular quadrant of the city – it lit up the atmosflat for as far as eyes could see before they started seeing spots. Underneath their feet, the ground quaked with intensity, gave a sudden lurch and then halted, settling into an unmoving state once more. The glare and sparkling pyrotechnics faded, to be replaced only by clear blue sky, which was also disturbing. One didn't usually see clear skies over Ankh-Morpork. Frequently one couldn't see the sky at all. It was an improvement over the rat rain though.

"Is it over?" Sybil asked as they slowly disentwined and felt the solidity of the ground.

"I . . . think so?" Vimes stared up and felt a tingling sensation course through him and then a relaxation in his limbs. It wasn't like the usual post-adrenaline unknotting he'd experienced countless times before. It felt good though, comforting, even warm. From the surprised expressions on their faces, Sybil and Young Sam were feeling it too. It was the sensation that something, somewhere had just gone Right.

[* * * *]

"Ook!" the Librarian hooted and took off, leaving his colleagues in the midst of their batch of newly made frogs.

"Now what do you suppose has gotten into him?" Professor Hicks snarled, kicking aside a few of the frogs.2

None of the wizards, with the exception of Rincewind, had paid much attention to the celestial light show. Such things were par for the course in their experience, or even hole-in-one. But Archchancellor Ridcully wasn't at all disconcerted by the Librarian's desertion. He was much too full of the unaccustomed warm, satisfying feeling of a job well done with minimal destructive force.

"Library matters, I expect." The Archchancellor smiled. It might still take a great deal of time to repair the world's patterns and magical fields, but he sensed it was a possibility. Possibilities were so much easier to work with than probabilities, and if the Disc found itself with fewer industrialists for a time, at least its citizens could be assured that those who remained were a bit wiser.

[* * * *]

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Landing hard.

Where?

The little rat sat up, shook itself and tried to get its bearings. Where was it? A strange, gigantic alleyway of some sort, strewn with rubbish, odds and ends. How had the rat gotten here? It shook itself again, trying to recall. The last thing it could remember . . . wasn't much, but all of that was terrible. Chased – it was being chased by a skeletal version of itself wearing a black robe, holding up a scythe and riding on the back of a terrifying, vicious furry monster. The little rat had sensed that to be caught by them meant the end of itself, and it very much wanted to live.

Live! Live! Hope! Hope! Live! the little rat had kept shouting to itself as it scurried to escape. It had run as hard as it could, until breath was a struggle and its ears pounded with the sound of its own heartbeat, and still it kept on running - running across stones that were slick with the blood of other rats. Then it found itself trapped in a corner as the skeleton thing and its beast closed in. The skeleton thing had raised its scythe to strike. There should have been no escape, and yet the little rat had flung up its paws and hoped . . . .

That was when the now happened. The little rat remembered the skeleton thing pausing, scythe raised. The skeleton thing had no eyes, yet it seemed to stare right through the little rat to the center of its being.

SQUEAK. the skeleton thing had said. Then, instead of a fatal, severing blow from the scythe, the little rat had received a hard kick from the skeleton instead. And the rat found itself falling . . . .

The fall had become the now, and other than that last terrible memory the little rat could recall nothing of before. Before must not have been important.

"Hello," a voice called out, causing the little rat nearly to jump out of its skin. It looked around and saw another rat, a very strange one, also small, with bright white fur and eyes the color of blood.

"Hel . . . lo," the little rat said to the newcomer. It did not sense a threat from the strange white rat, only greeting. But speaking even that much took effort, as if it couldn't quite remember how to talk. The white rat held out a paw in what might be a friendly gesture or curiosity and twitched its ice-white whiskers.

"I am Dangerous Beans," the white rat introduced itself. "I don't believe we've met?"

The little rat knew for a fact that they hadn't and that it ought to introduce itself as well. But who was it, exactly? It tried to remember a name and could not. It would have to come up with something.

"I think . . . ." the little rat said, still struggling with the effort of speech, "I think . . . I am . . . confused."

"Well, Confused, I am very pleased to meet you," the white rat chirped. "Can I show you around? We've got quite a nice place here. Good folks to know too."

The little rat considered. That offer certainly sounded better than running in terror or falling. It must be better than whatever had come before.

"I would . . . like that."

The little rat went off toward the future with its new friend, and hope.

[* * * *]

"I spy with my own eye something br-"

"Boot."

What little was left of Melborn Snike harrumphed in a peeved fashion and glared at what little was left of Threepshaw.

"I hadn't finished giving you the clue yet," Snike complained.

The remains of the remains of Threepshaw shrugged, or tried to.

"Yair, but it was gonner be the boot, wasn't it?"

"Maybe," Snike sniffed. "You can't know since you didn't let me finish the clue, now can you?"

"Well your last three picks have been the boot, so I'm guessing I can."

So far it hadn't been much of a game. Snike had chosen the boot as his object over and over again, and Threepshaw, just to be different, had chosen the candlestick. In truth, the boot might not be a boot, although it was boot shaped, and the candlestick might not be a candlestick either, but their general outlines were distinct. There were plenty of other items scattered about, but it was difficult to make out what they were in the darkness and the muck, especially when one did not, technically, have eyes any longer.

AHEM.

This was hardly a proper place for them to be stuck in, though Snike and Threepshaw didn't seem to be able to go anyplace else. Threepshaw longed to kick away the boot with the foot he did not have, but he couldn't accomplish that. What a load of rubbish. But wait – there was a new item to be made sport of . . . .

"I spy with my own eye something glowing."

"The sword-stick," Snike answered.

"That isn't a sword-stick," Threepshaw objected.

"Sword-stick. Blade thingy, whatever," Snike drawled. "It's the only glowing thing here."

IT IS CALLED A SCYTHE.

"Whatever. At least it's something different than the candlestick. You know, you'd think that there would be a little more cleaning up done around here."

OH, THERE WILL BE.

[* * * *]

He'd been expecting something more, somehow. Not necessarily an explosion or a cataclysm or inanimate objects singing and dancing – he'd never gone in for that cheeky sort of thing. But . . . something. Something other than sitting around still in the HOUSE of Death staring at an hourglass' still-frozen dual streams of sand.

Vetinari sighed and considered his position.

Was he still mostly dead? Could he become mostly alive?

Did he have any say in the matter now that his task was done?

Or . . . was it?

Death had told him that he had to create the circumstances whereby he might have a chance of returning to life.

Had he not done that yet?

Perhaps . . . .

Death was certainly preoccupied, as was his granddaughter Susan. The circumstances created by the Auditors of Reality had left them both with a vital task that needed catching up. Likewise the Death of Rats and Death's fellow Horsemen, though Vetinari preferred not to think of them in that way. The other members of what he had come to think of as 'Team Death' seemed content to bide their time in this timeless place – those others being his only company now – Greebo, Albert, and the Sweeper. Well, Albert belonged in this place anyway if Lu-Tze could not or would not stretch out his final seconds to the breaking point. But Greebo? Vetinari?

The sometime-Patrician supposed that Susan could return the unnatural cat to his witch when she got a chance. As for himself . . . .

What had he left undone, besides a crossword puzzle?

Well, many things he'd intended to take care of, naturally, and hadn't gotten around to yet. Wasn't that the case with everybody?

More, now that he knew the mistakes he'd made while under the influence of the Auditors. Mistakes he would never get the chance to correct?

There are always chances. Death himself had told Vetinari that. And Death was the one person, if he could be called that, who would never, ever lie.

Yet Vetinari got the nagging feeling that there was one more crucial – dare he say vital in this place? – deed that he had neglected. Something more still to do, even if the Auditors were defeated in their current grand scheme. He supposed he could allow himself some pride in his part of that, along with the shame that he bore also. He couldn't rightly even wish that this fate had never happened.

Havelock Vetinari, he said to himself, staring at his frozen lifetimer, you had to be here.

Yes.

And suddenly he knew what it was that he had to do – which he could not do without help.

Vetinari went in search of Lu-Tze and was not surprised to find him waiting for Vetinari. It had to come down to this after all . . . .

Later, as Vetinari, in another place, watched himself retreat in silence even as he watched himself work on the crossword puzzle and reach a hand to his mug of coffee, he couldn't help but wonder.

"I won't remember this, will I?"

"You won't and you will," Lu-Tze answered inscrutably. "Time is not as most men think."

Fortunately.

Well, no one could say Havelock Vetinari wasn't a man who took chances. Gamblonium wasn't one he had ever anticipated though. Relying on something so unreliable wasn't his usual way of doing things. But it was necessary, and it wasn't as if he could assign the task to anyone who might not carry it out as well as he could . . . .

[* * * *]

"Ook!"

The Librarian drew to a halt as he came to what he had expected to find here in L-space. It was there on a shelf, shiny and new and dangerous. All of the Books of Power merited caution, but the newly born and newly reborn especially so. When dealing with a situation like this, the Librarian's arms, long as they were, didn't seem nearly long enough. Cautiously, ooking soothingly, the guardian of the Library of Unseen University made his approach. There would be time to deal with the stack of newly existent playscripts later. For now, he took this book in his orangutan hands and cradled it as a loving parent holds a new baby, giving it the reassurance it needed . . . .

That, after all, was his most important job.

[* * * *]

Mrs. Marietta Cosmopolite looked at the clock and saw that it was five minutes past seven in the morning. She went out to the front stoop to pick up the bottles of milk and cream where she knew she would find them already waiting for her. Those broom-waving, gown-wearing, bothersome buggers she mostly found herself renting to these days would refuse to touch a drop of it of course, but she always fancied a bit of lightening in her tea. She'd be making a nice distressed pudding too, for Mrs. Grubner, since the poor woman had suffered an awful shock the other night that she simply couldn't wait to tell Mrs. Cosmopolite all about. The Landlady shook her head as she saw one of her saffron-robed lodgers looking at her expectantly with what appeared to be a notebook instead of a broom in his hands. Too bad – she'd like to take a broom to him, see if she didn't!

"It's just one blasted thing after another, all right," she sighed. "If it's not this, then it's the next . . . ."

[* * * *]

Nanny Ogg had hardly slept a wink all night! Of course, that had often been the case in her younger days, but she was annoyed at herself for being so worried. Witches, as Esme had so often reminded her, were supposed to be the worry. But if she had to come downstairs to an empty cat basket and a full cat food dish and full cream saucer one more time, why, she'd be almost as beside herself as Miss Level. The first thing she noticed upon entering her kitchen, however, was the smell. It wasn't just a Greebo smell, it was practically a Greebo fug! With a touch of wolf blood and rat blood added too, if her keen nose didn't deceive her. Could it be? Could her precious little kitty-witty have returned? She almost didn't dare to look at the basket, dish and saucer, but . . . . Yes!

"Greebo, you naughty puss-puss! Where have you been? Mummy has been so worried!"

[* * * *]

"Well, Sarge, accordin' to the Captain, it's all over for that lot and there's just the cleaning up to do. Maybe we didn't have to leave Quirm after all."

"Nah, nah, Nobby," Colon shook his head. "I reckon them hearing we was on our way back is why most of those blighters gave up and made a run for it. That's what I reckon. What would this city be doing without us, eh?"

"So you figger the resort only asked us to leave on account of they knew how badly we was needed back here?"

"Just so, Nobby, just so. They should probably award us both medals for returning."

"I reckon you're right, Fred."

[* * * *]

IT IS YOUR CHOICE, YOU KNOW. THE CONDITIONS ARE NOW RIGHT TO GO EITHER WAY.

"Yes, I rather thought it would come down to that," Vetinari said, looking at his body lying on a slab in Unseen University. It was just as he remembered it, if looking, perhaps, just the smallest bit older. There was his game leg, a little bit thinner and crookeder than the healthy one. He'd missed a lot of things during his strange adventure, but the dull ache in one limb had never been one of them. That leg would be even stiffer now for not moving in a while – if it moved again, that is.

ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS? IT WILL NOT BE EASY.

"It never was. None of it ever is. That's the thing about life – it's complicated." His would be even more so, for all the mistakes he had to make up for. Making amends with Dame Weatherwax might be the harshest challenge he had ever faced, but he would rather face that responsibility than shirk it. That was his way. "Yes, my mind is made up."

It's not as if it was a permanent condition after all . . . .

IN THAT CASE, Death said, waving a skeletal hand toward the body as the blue and black sands in an hourglass began to flow once more, DON'T LET ME DETAIN YOU.

[* * * *]

"It is a good vun, yes?"

"Some of your best work, Otto," William de Worde laughed, looking at the image running underneath the day's headline: Lord Vetinari Returns! No caption or article could say as much as the calm, smiling visage of Vetinari in the iconograph, seated in front of a row of High Council members who for the most part couldn't hide their misery. Of course, there were one or two other genuinely smiling faces in the background, and the stern frown on Dr. Whiteface that signaled his deep contentment. With their familiar Patrician back in place at the Palace and Lord Snike sleeping with, well . . . not fishes exactly, according to the Watch, life in Ankh-Morpork was starting to resume its usual pattern. There would be some reckonings for the events of the past few weeks, to be sure, and that meant plenty of news stories for the Times. He and his staff would have no trouble satisfying the appetite of their printing press – or the reading public – for a long while to come. More important as far as William and Sacharissa were concerned was the day's as yet unpublished headline: Rocky Returns!

There were still strands of paper streamer and bits of confetti on the news desks from the party they'd held to welcome back their beloved troll sportswriter after his harrowing stay at the Syb. Even the fastidious dwarves didn't mind. Otto had gained a few more inches in height over the past few days as well. At this rate, he'd be back to his old self in no time.

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret, William thought, looking at the stiff, unhappy grins of certain Council members in the iconograph. But not today . . . .

[* * * *]

"You Wanted To See Me, Commander?"

"Yes," Sam Vimes said as Pump 19 entered the Cemetary of Small Gods, so reluctant at what he found himself doing that even that simple word took some effort. Vimes didn't want to be here even when the lilacs weren't blooming. It tore him up inside every time he had to look at that one particular set of tombstones he stood in front of now. But there could be no more appropriate place than where he and the golem were standing to take on his current mission. The grave did not seem a fine place to the Commander of the Watch, but he and the others who wore a sprig of lilac on a certain day in May sure had kept it private – too private.

They, the survivors, of the so-called Glorious Day thirty-eight years earlier, had wanted to keep their shared experiences and pain to themselves. They had felt it was their right, their proper way of honoring their dead. Vimes had heard about Sergeant Colon snapping at Corporal Ping for wanting to know what those floral adornments represented and for offering to wear the lilac himself. Ping could be an idiot sometimes, but he had meant well. He had wanted to understand, to learn, to show his respect, and they had slapped him down for it. What a mistake.

But you didn't know that then, Sammy Boy, did you?

"Mr. Pump," Vimes asked, "that thing you did with the commands Lord Vetinari gave you, the ones you can recite exactly in his voice – you can do that with other people too, can't you?"

"Yes, Commander. It Is Very Easy For Me."

Because people had to know what had happened thirty-eight years ago in Ankh-Morpork. Oh, they didn't need to know about the time travel stuff and Vimes' dual role in the city's history. But they did have to know what the city had been like back then, back when it didn't all work, back when citizens could be rounded up like cattle and taken in carts to Cable Street to suffer fates that still gave him and Dr. Lawn nightmares. Too much of the city's history had been forgotten already, or never learned in the first place. As he closed his eyes, Vimes could summon up the shocked faces of Moist and Adora Belle at Scoone Avenue Number One as it had all been explained to them for the very first time. They really hadn't had a clue, because those who could remember it kept the past to themselves, thinking it would never happen again. No need for a warning. But the past had tried to reach out and grab them all and crush them in its iron fist. Lord Winder's colors had unfurled in Sator Square, not just decades ago – recently. Unmentionables had terrorized the innocent - recently. A new tyrant had nearly arisen - recently. It wasn't over yet, either. Snike and most of his plans might be gone, but there were still culprits to be found, loose ends to be tied up.

"And other golems can do this too? If I tell you a story, you can repeat it exactly as I tell it to other golems, and they can repeat it and tell it to others the same way?"

"Yes, Commander. If That Is What You Would Like."

Like didn't come into it. This wasn't about Like at all. It was about Necessary. Vimes hoped Fred and Nobby and the others who wore the lilac could understand. Most of them weren't parents like Vimes, but they shouldn't have to be. He hoped the men in these graves would also understand what he was about to do. What he'd be asking of other survivors from that long ago May the 25th.

Dai, Ned, Snouty – all of you – I'm sorry, but it can't be just about us any longer. It has to be about them – all the ones who weren't born yet. All the ones who still aren't born. They have to know the truth, because someday someone will try again and we can't make that easy to do . . . .

The past had to be remembered, like it or not.

"Mr. Pump, I am going to tell you a story and it is a true story. I want you to repeat it exactly as I tell it, to other golems and to other people at least once a year, and to anyone who asks as well, whenever they ask. Can you do that?"

"Yes, Commander."

"Can you ask other golems to do the same?"

"Yes, Commander."

Well, then.

"It all began on a day in May when the lilacs were in bloom . . . ."

[* * * *]

Another workday finally over and Moist von Lipwig could look forward to a well-deserved rest back at home on Scoone Avenue. Moist wouldn't mind working for a living if it weren't for the actual labor part. Fixing the whole A.M. Railroad mess was taking an awful lot of that. The one consolation to the business was that Moist and the rest of the city no longer had to wonder about who was in charge of the government. Lord Vetinari had been making certain of that from the moment he had suddenly inhaled and sat up at Unseen University.

Of course, Lord Vetinari was also the man who had Moist by the short hairs, but being held by the short hairs was preferable to being at the end of a rope.

Moist saw another consolation waiting for him in the doorway as he walked up to the front of the house. Spike must have gotten the evening off too – an increasing rarity in their busy lives. He didn't need any goblin potion to feel a complete burst of energy at the sight of her. But she hadn't come out to wait for him, evidently. A delivery man in the blue uniform of Moist's own Postal Service was beating a path back to the street and gave his boss a smart salute as they met and continued in opposite directions. Adora was holding something in size and shape which resembled a small jewelry box. Aside from the stamp and a very small label, it was black on more black, which would indicate that it came from Vetinari himself.3

"A fine thing!" Moist cried, sweeping Adora into his arms. "Our lech of a Patrician trying to seduce my wife with baubles when that's my job!"

They embraced for several minutes before Adora commented that Moist had more than enough jobs already and peered at the tiny label.

"This isn't for me, Moist. It's for you."

"Eh?" Even his agile mind didn't want to think of the possibility of Vetinari attempting to seduce him, and Moist was used to conversing with Igors. Post Office regulations strictly forbid the posting of hazardous objects4, so Moist didn't have a remote clue what the box could actually contain, but he made Adora stand well back as he opened the unexpected package. He sucked his breath in with shock and disbelief as he saw the contents.

"What is it?" she asked, curiosity too piqued not to come forward.

There, on a small patch of cushioning cloth, lay a shiny new Ankh-Morpork Hygeinic Railway commemorative medal.

[* * * *]

GRANDPOPPY, GRAMPS, GRAMPAW – REALLY?

[* * * *]

"That should be the last of them for this morning, Sir," Rufus Drumknott speculated, taking the stack of papers from Lord Vetinari and placing them in one of his customary, carefully coded manila envelopes. Of course, there would still be the afternoon paperwork, the early evening paperwork, and quite possibly late evening paperwork which required the Patrician's urgent attention, to say nothing of a 10-letter word meaning allusion or suspicion. Vetinari already had the intimation he might require some additional thought on that last item.

He had risen bright and early each day and worked almost without cease to make up for the time had been 'lazing around' as one brave, unwise critic now working in the cellars had put it. Truly, a tyrant's work is never done.

"Or a Chairman of the Bank's, Mr. Fusspot?" the Patrician murmured as the little dog at the side of his desk happily chewed his way through another sticky toffee pudding. Vetinari had discovered through the work of one of his resources that the Royal Bank's Glooper machine was once again functioning smoothly, but that the Bank had also suffered a robbery attempt and several pronouncements of the word 'garlic' during his absence. Not that he would accuse Mr. Lipwig of any negligence in the matter since those same sources had indicated that the Vice Chairman had been kept more than sufficiently busy at the time. But Vetinari could not in good conscience leave the Chairman in such a hazardous environment.

Vetinari waited until Drumknott had cleared out of the Oblong Office before he allowed himself to yawn and stretch and stand up stiffly from his desk chair. Odd and unpleasant how the physical body had its needs as the spectral self apparently did not. His lame leg ached ferociously, as he had known it would, but that did not keep him from rising or walking to the window that overlooked Sator Square.5 There, spread out below and around and beyond, he could see before him that city unlike any other on the Disc, the city that he would gladly give his life for and possibly in some senses already had. Ankh-Morpork, the mass of population and pollution with a river so fouled that lead weights would float on its surface, the untrustworthy harlot that took more than it liked to give but gave anyway, the riotous, occasionally explosive and always flammable stack of buildings on top of heaps on top of ruins on top of more heaps, with its noise, its troubles, its smells, its schemes, its inequalities, its pompous fools and treacherous traders, madmen, beggars and brawlers and yes, even sausage inna bun vendors.

How he loved it!

He knew now more than ever that he was not as indispensable as he had occasionally allowed himself to think. The city had suffered a great and terrible crisis in his absence, yes, but it had come through that crisis just fine, and evidently without him. If he were gone tomorrow, the city would still live, it would survive. Other proud men might be depressed by such a thought, but he could not be happier or more buoyed by it. His position had never been about him, after all. And where there is Death, there is also Life . . . .

And the world turned toward more mornings.

1 Or what usually remained of it in between rebuildings.

2 Not enough to kill any of them, mind. Frogs make notoriously poor post-mortem communicators and Professor Hix is not fond of animal abuse, but wearing the skull ring gives one a reputation to maintain.

3 Lord Vetinari is known to have singular taste in both his heraldic crest and color schemes, which, it should be noted, can be not only handy in determining the discretion of the viewer but is the exact opposite of the color most often worn by mimes.

4 Which might harm the snails, after all, snail mail not being a purely metaphorical expression in some postal areas.

5 A magical window, of course. It simply would not do to have one that was located on the same place outside the building as on the inside of the building.