The Urban Safari c10 - Epilogues
The difference between night and day in Ankh-Morpork is a matter of subjective opinion. The city never stops, for one thing. Sleep is a matter of making time and space, especially in those houses with three times more people than bedspace.
However, all across the Multiverse, some trades preparing for the working day are generally accepted harbingers of morning, dawn and daylight.
The appearance of postmen on the street, for instance, is universally acknowledged as the first herald of the day. Bakers and milkmen are not far behind. Out in the country, farmers also keep early hours. But one occupational group generally beats all these to it, even if only by a few minutes.
One such is beginning its working day on the Downs. These are small men, not much taller than Dwarfs and weighing in much more lightly for professional reasons. A small knot of them are looking, in some consternation, at new arrivals in the stables.
"You are seeing what I'm seeing, aren't you?" Lister Divott asked, nudging a fellow jockey in the ribs. Lister had heard all that alarmist nonsense the medical profession kept putting out, that years of self-induced malnutrition combined with frequent concussion caused by falling off horses at high speed could cause brain damage, hallucinations, and eventual insanity. While temperamentally inclined to dismiss all that nanny state stuff,(1) just occasionally Lister wondered if there might not be a grain of truth in it. (2)
For there were four or five new horses in the stable that hadn't been there yesterday. Three were exotically patterned in vertical black and white stripes and had short-cropped stubbly black manes. Two more just about fitted into their stables. Long orange necks patterned in brown blotches stretched out over the half-doors and somewhere above, heads were contentedly crunching the leaves on the trees.
Lister Divott sighed and said "Go and get Mr Folsom. He'll know what all this is about."
Then he saw the black envelope pinned to the door with a black arrow. It had white writing down the side. He squinted and read it with difficulty.
The Assassins' Guild. Where style matters!
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Emmanuelle-Marie Lapoignard les Deux-Épées returned to her rooms at the Guild, feeling weary, dirty, sweaty and dog tired. She had had to complete a mandatory Form CC12a for Downey, reporting serious injuries received by a School pupil, detailing time, place, circumstances, actions taken, extent of wounds, nature of assailant (if any), and her estimation of the possibility that the pupil might not be fit to return to the School, thus entailing a grievous loss of fees revenue from the parents. (3)
Ah well, I am excused lessons for the morning. Mr Bradlifudd is covering my classes.
She stripped off her boots and top clothes, and fell onto her bed into a deep and instant sleep. Like a cat, she could fall asleep to order and wake up in a second.
She awoke to streaming daylight and a rumbling, knocking, sound at the door, punctuated with muffled swearing.
"Who is there?" she demanded.
"Mr Stippler and Mr Maroon, madam. There's been a delivery for you."
"Et bien" she said, reaching for a dressing-gown. The two Guild porters were there with a large, white-sheet-shrouded something.
"Where do you want it, ma'am?"
Emmanuelle considered.
"Bring it just inside the doorway. Merci bien. That will be all." She reinforced the dismissal with a Teacher's Look, as she suspected Maroon and Stippler weren't above surreptitious ogling of semi-dressed female teachers. Not that she begrudged them, but Standards had to be maintained.
She sent them off with a modest tip – well, noblesse oblige - and considered the gift. What the devilment was it? It stood nearly as tall as she did. She pulled away the white shroud, and screamed.
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"Bur-SAAAAR!" bellowed Ridcully, as he discovered the two large white-shrouded Somethings in his office.
"Any idea what these are and where they came from?"
The Bursar, who was on his median cycle and more-or-less in tune with the mundane world, sighed.
"I believe they were delivered earlier this morning, while you were on your run. They are very definitely for you, sir. The note from the young lady made that very emphatically clear."
The Bursar leant forward until his face was a few inches away from the shroud.
"I wonder what it is?"
Ridcully, suspicious that this was some sort of disguised bid for the Arch-chancellorship, very carefully pulled back the white shroud. And laughed. Meanwhile, the Bursar found himself inches away from a gaping baboon jaw, lips drawn back in permanent rage, teeth and tusks poised to rend and kill.
Then he read the note from Johanna.
I'm sorry you didn't get the chance to kill anything yesterday. I greatly appreciate the help and assistance you offered. I hope, even though these weren't your kills, you accept a little memento of our safari in Hide Park. I'd rather the dead animals live on like this than be buried.
With thanks
Johanna Smith-Rhodes.
"Hmm" said Ridcully, studying the baboons from all angles.
"From Chaim Bechamy's all-night taxidermy, I note. Good choice, that girl. And a thoughtful gift!"
He looked again at a gibbering Bursar. "Dried frog pills in the usual pocket, old chap? Give me a second…"
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Emmanuelle sat back heavily on her bed, pulse racing. It had taken her a couple of seconds to realise the thrice-damned monkey was in fact stone-dead and stuffed.
This was your kill, Emmie, so you get first refusal. Let me know if you don't want it, and I'll find a corner for it in a classroom somewhere.
Love
Johanna.
My friend truly has a wicked mind, she thought, fumbling for her cheroots and a light.
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Ponder Stibbons took a deep breath, and spiralled the broomstick down into the yard of the Assassins' Guild, hoping he was expected. Sure enough, two black-clad Assassins converged on him, right hands raised in the universal "Halt!" signal.
"What's your business here?"
"I'm expected." Ponder said, mildly. "Miss Smith-Rhodes asked me to collect her to help her with a few jobs." Inwardly, he was quaking. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed her running down a flight of steps.
"I em here." she said, running up behind them. "Gentlemen, this is my pilot. I expect him to be treated as a guest and to remain undemeged. Em I understood?"
She hopped on the pillion. "First stop, Ponder, the Golem Trust. Go!"
Ponder fired the fastest possible getaway, as near to vertical as he could manage. Johanna whooped.
"So what are we doing?"
"Getting things moving. I hev to see the Petricien et eleven. I went to hev an idea ready to show him. And to Lord Downey. We hev four hours!"
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"OK" Adorah Belle Dearheart said, from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. "You want fifty golems immediately. To collect building supplies, then to march out to fields a couple of miles outside the city, to commence laying out your… zoological gardens… so that by the end of today, you have basic but secure large enclosures to turn these animals of yours out into."
"They just need to be spacious and secure, to begin with," Johanna said. "This is lend thet Dibbler had earmarked for building his safari park, so he can herdly complain if I use it for the same purpose. Only, I intend to do it properly. "
"I don't doubt you." Adorah Belle said, recognizing an equally firm jaw and determined eye looking back at her from across the desk. "Moist told me you did a hell of a good job clearing out the mailboxes the other week. In fact, I get the impression animals matter as much to you as golems do to me. But let me ask the most basic question, sister. Who's paying? The fact you have spoken the name "Dibbler" does not fill me with confidence, I have to say!"
Johanna reached into her tunic and brought out a bundle of papers. She peeled one off.
"Yesterday, Lord Downey gave me the ebsolute freedom of the Guild's resources to resolve a problem on behelf of the city. I esked Mr Winvoe to edvence me sufficient finance to use as I needed yesterday efternoon to hire carts, drovers, equipment, end so on.
"You must hev heard the expression "blenk cheque? Well, this is one. It's a Guild bond for a thousend dollars. Eny benk will eccept it. Let me know when I've spent a thousend dollars worth of golem!"
Adorah Belle nodded.
"Right now I can spare you thirty-five golems. I'll try to roust out more for you. I'll get Shtetl and Kvitz to put the word out."
The two women shook hands, and Johanna refused the offer of a cigarette.
In the street, Ponder asked "Are you going to get in trouble for this? I mean, spending the Guild's money… are you authorised?"
"I wes yesterday!" she said. "Downey wes keen to see the Guild get one pest Vimes end the Wetch, for us to look good at their expense, so I got everything I esked for. . End es far es the job is concerned, to my mind it is only helf-finished, Ponder. We rescued and receptured those enimels.. But they still need a permenent home. Which is why I went to follow through Dibbler's original idea and create a wildlife perk. This needs money. Fortunetely, I still hev ten thousand dollars worth of Guild bonds in my tunic, end I intend to spend them wisely in completing the job."
She smiled, happily.
" Now, Ponder, fly me to Gregson's builders' supply yard, and then to one of the Dwerf foundries. When my Golems arrive at Dibbler's fields, I went them to hev the tools and equipment they need."
The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Johanna was tireless on the ground, directing her Golem labour force in driving poles into the ground, marking enclosures, and turning the flat empty fields into a series of wired-and-fenced animal runs. Mr Gregson of the Builders' Guild had sent a site manager along and a group of human labourers were hard at work building gates, while relays of carts pulled by golems were bringing fresh materials out all the time.
Ponder could actually see the logic and the scope of her vision as shapes emerged from the ground. Of course a chimpanzee enclosure had to be closed and sealed on all sides, including above, and it had to provide space in three dimensions for a tree-climbing ape. And of course it had to encompass trees. Therefore the chain-link metal fencing had to go above as well as along all sides. And some way down, to prevent them digging a way out.
Similarly, the temperamental and often violent baboons also needed a large secure and completely closed enclosure designed along similar lines, only she was insistent on boulders and other massive rocks being piled up for them to climb on, as something resembling their natural habitat as closely as possible.
"Ten to eleven, Ponder. The Petricien's Pelece, I think!"
Nodding, he waited for her to settle on the pillion. During the short ride, she marshalled her arguments.
There will be more, concerning how Johanna talks the City into setting up its first public zoo. - just timed out tonight. Watch this space for a chapter extention!
(1) The giant green spiders also assured Lister that it was all rubbish.
(2) British jockey Sir Lester Piggott became a millionaire at his trade. While anyone studying his slurred speech, faraway demeanour, and sluggish reactions in later life would not be in any doubt what this had cost him, Piggott steadfastly maintained that his sport was safer than most, falling off a horse didn't hurt that much provided you didn't fall under the hooves of the horses behind it, and that he'd always been careful to maintain a sensible diet. Anyone studying his eighty-pound frame did not doubt this.
(3) The CC12b was the form that had to be filled in by the teacher if a pupil was actually killed during training, and was even longer and more detailed.