This is the Discworld, skidding through the metaphysical gravel on the
outer verge of the probability curve. And everyone knows what happens when
you hit a curve a little too fast . . .
It was a fine autumn day. The Disc's lazy sunlight glowed in a multitude of attractive shades as it hit the morning smog over Ankh-Morpork. Upstairs in a large, squat stone house in Pseudopolis Yard His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of Ankh-Morpork's City Watch, sat in his office gazing out of the window. He was looking with unseeing eyes at the square, where the wind was bullying dead leaves. He had been sitting there for quite some time.
Funny, he noted, how the blues would come in all sorts of shades of red, yellow and brown. Vimes often felt peculiar at this time of the year. "Brung low", as Fred Colon would have put it. But maybe it was unfair to blame the universe for his moodiness.
The fact was that he quite often yearned to be back on the streets, and these days all he seemed to be doing was push paper around - alright, avoiding that very task at all cost, but still - and order other watchmen to do proper watch things, like go on patrols. And even that was taken care of by Carrot most of the time, who did it a lot better than he did, he reluctantly admitted to himself.
So where did that leave him? And what? He was a figurehead now, a puppet brought out for gala dinners and parades, and he didn't like that. Not one bit. He felt boxed in, unable to do anything but comply with the demands of an uncaring society. Muttering to himself, he reluctantly got back to the paperwork at hand. The races were upon them again, with all that that entailed. Now what was this from Lord Vetinari?
-----
A couple of minutes later Sergeant Colon knocked on the open door. Then he stood with a nervous look on his face and waited in the doorway to his commander's office. Fred Colon wasn't one of life's natural born thinkers, but even he could see that there was going to be trouble.
To begin with, his superior officer hadn't even looked up from his paperwork after he had entered the room, and that in itself was a bad sign. Mister Vimes had little time for paperwork, he knew, and if there was something important enough for him to overcome his distaste, then it was sure to be something bad. That, combined with what Colon had to report today, would surely mean trouble, and if there was something the sergeant had learnt through the years, then it was that trouble was - well, trouble. Ok, so it wasn't the most enlightened insight, but it had served him well enough during his time in the Watch.
After what seemed like a small eternity, Vimes looked up from the paper he had in front of him. His was the face of a man who had not only fallen on hard times sometime in the past, but also on an assortment of cobbles, bar room floors, and gutters. He was a hard man who really deserved his inherited nickname "Old Stoneface". On some days it didn't seem to matter that his days as "a collection of bad habits marinated in Bearhugger's Whisky" were over and that he was now one of the richest men in Ankh- Morpork. His flinty-eyed look couldn't be disguised any more than you could the business end of a sword. You could put it in a jewel-encrusted sheath, but it would still be a sword, lethal and distinctly unfriendly. The sergeant tensed. This was obviously one of those days.
"That bastard . . ." Vimes muttered, before seeming to realise that he wasn't alone. His jaw unclamped ever so slightly around the unlit cigar in his mouth when he laid eyes on Colon.
"Fred. What's new on the street then?" he asked, obviously trying hard to sound more light-hearted than he felt.
"Ye Gods, on days such as this I almost wish we were back to the bad old days again."
Years back, the Watch had been small and insignificant, with just him, Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs trying to get through the nights without doing anything stupid, like dying. Then Carrot had come along, and suddenly the Watch was a force to be reckoned with in Ankh-Morpork. Vimes had been created a Duke, had been promoted to Commander of a Watch that now counted over two hundred men and had married the richest woman in the city along the way.
Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs hadn't been promoted as such, but the Patrician had showed them his appreciation for their help during that whole business with the war between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch by suggesting to Vimes that they be given the job of controlling traffic in the city[1]. This meant that they could stay out of trouble and were given a nice extra income, since fines could be paid immediately to the Watchman who charged the culprit, at the crime scene. This had done much for the two coppers' private economy, and had had the added benefit that the merest glimpse of the two of them approaching now was enough to disperse enormous traffic jams in the city.
Lately however, not all had been well. Some of the poshest sports carts in the city had been vandalised under mysterious circumstances. Of course, those vehicles belonged to some of the city's most prosperous citizens, and they now demanded action. All in all, this meant that Fred's and Nobby's cosy existence as the Discworld's only existing traffic cops had vanished as quickly as it had come. All of a sudden they were in the spotlight, and that spotlight was wielded by people who were to people like Colon and Nobbs what mean-spirited kids with magnifying glasses were to ants. Bad news.
Speaking of which, Colon thought, maybe it would be better to just show Mister Vimes instead of telling him. After all, those newspaper people supposedly had a way with words that he had never aspired to[2].
"I think you had better take a look at this, sir," he said, handing over the morning edition of the Ankh-Morpork Inquirer.
"Also, there is a wizard in the reception who insists he wants to talk to you."
"What? What does a wizard want with us? He'll have to wait. Let's see, now. 'Rain of Frog in Klatch'? But you know that's just Dibbler's way of being liberal with the truth. Anyway, just one frog doesn't seem . . ."
Vimes stopped. Looked further down. Looked back up slowly, then down again, re-reading the other headline, and then the entire article.
"Oh, really?" he growled, the iron grip on his cigar suddenly back with a vengeance.
"This stinks to Cori Celesti, if you ask me. Show Sergeant Angua this and then send her over to the newspaper to see what she can sniff out, would you?" He smiled grimly.
"I have to make an appearance at the Palace, it would seem."
-----
The Ankh-Morpork Inquirer was located in cramped quarters in a house on Gleam Street. The gigantic presses where the actual newspapers where made stood in the cellars of the building, but the neural centre of the operation was located upstairs. Some would challenge this view, claiming that it would take a complete lack of brain activity to produce such trash as the Inquirer did. In fact, coming up with the kind of incredible stories that the Inquirer ran took a particular kind of genius, and Dibbler certainly had what it took.
The noise in the room was deafening, not only because it was sitting virtually on top of a huge heap of rumbling machinery, but also mainly because the people in the room were news people. As such they were never anywhere lower than one notch below "hysterical" on the sanity scale. Editors shouted at reporters, who in turn hollered at secretaries, who then just screamed. The cacophony was such that you could have put a howling wolf in the middle of it all and it would have gone unnoticed for quite some time. That was basically what had happened now. Angua cleared her throat.
Dibbler looked up. He immediately noticed the visitor, standing in the door to the reception. This was not surprising. What was surprising was that no one else had spotted the curvaceous blond with the wind-tussled hair before him. Sergeant Angua, dressed in her armour, was a sight that not many men would miss. Watchmen normally had muscle-shaped brass plates protecting their torsos. In Angua's case that had been unthinkable for two obvious reasons[3], and so she had taken hers to the Street of Cunning Artificers, where, after two hours[4] she had re-emerged onto the streets of Ankh- Morpork. Stories abound of magical swords with all sorts of powers, but Angua was the proud owner of the only chest plate known to prevent crimes from happening just by appearing.
"Good morning, good morning", Dibbler said, sliding up to her in his habitual way.
"Constable Angua, isn't it? Always a pleasure meeting a representative of our glorious Watch. Care to comment on the rumours concerning the existence of a werewolf on the force?"
Angua had encountered C.M.O.T. Dibbler's infamous sausages almost immediately upon her arrival in Ankh-Morpork. No one had warned her of them beforehand, and so she had foolishly decided to try a half-eaten one while she was under the influence[5]. She knew that she could only be killed by silver, but now and then she wished that that wasn't so. That had been such an experience. If she hadn't been on all fours already, she would have been in no time. So Angua was not a friend of Dibbler's. Even so, she smiled. No. If she was honest, she smiled just because of that. She saw Dibbler take in what she knew began as an attractive smile, and noted with great satisfaction how he then spotted the slightly too long, slightly too sharp incisors. Before he had regained his mental balance, she had asked her question.
-----
Vimes entered the antechamber in the Patrician's palace with the newspaper in his pocket and his usual reluctance written on his face. He always made a point of not smartening up before coming here, his dusty, worn uniform helping him to remember who and what he was. Today, the autumn winds had helped him achieve that slightly dishevelled look.
The Rats chamber was empty, so he closed the door softly behind him. The doors to the Oblong Office were ever so slightly ajar, and so he peeked in through the gap. He looked around the room, scanning the faces of the assembled group of people, and felt the muscles in his neck tense like piano wires. Well, he thought to himself, that seems about right.
The Patrician was nowhere to be seen, but around the room a number of snobbishly clad young men were looking at one another through their nostrils. This may or may not have explained their voices, which were nasal, but not the fact that they seemed to be speaking at one another rather than with each other.
"I don't think that he has the nerve to show up . . ." spluttered one gangly fellow in the general direction of a terribly spotty youth not a meter away from where Vimes was hiding.
"It's an outrage that he is allowed to continue to run that motley crew of so-called watch men . . ." another young man with outrageous hair seemed to be saying to no one in particular.
"We should demand that he hands in his resignation! Disgraceful is what it is!!", a third one chimed in. This one was dressed in pea coloured tights.
"That imp-like creature and the fat one stopped me for speeding and then they gave me a parking ticket . . .! And me one of the best racers in town, too" the first one offered up again.
"Watch 'Men', hah! They employ trolls! You can't tell me that that's right. Filthy scum! One was "directing" the traffic on Broad Way only yesterday . . ." brayed the one with the hairdo.
Having personally put Detritus in charge of traffic control in that particular hot spot, Vimes was half smiling at the last comment when a subtle change in the air caused him to turn around. Lord Vetinari was standing right behind him, clad in his usual black attire and ditto expressionless face. Gods knew how long he had stood there. The door that Vimes had come through remained closed, but then the Patrician did move in mysterious ways.
"Sir Samuel. How kind of you to come at such short notice." the Patrician said quietly before wrinkling his nose ever so slightly in disapproval of Vimes' dusty clothes and stubbly chin.
"Such very short notice, it would seem. I see you have already noticed that I have taken the liberty of summoning the other interested parties, too. Shall we?"
Vimes, knowing that the Patrician was lethal at any time, and more so the politer he was, didn't say anything. Instead he simply handed over the newspaper, much the same way Colon had twenty minutes earlier.
Vetinari scanned the page, his eyes darting back and forth like .303 bookworms on speed, reaching the bottom in a matter of seconds.
"Aha. Yes. Very interesting. And just the one frog? How fascinating . . ."
He looked up at Vimes with a faint smile on his habitually sombre face. Then he swung open the door and indicated to Vimes that he should go in first. The Oblong Office fell silent.
-----
Mister Vimes hadn't instructed Colon on what Angua should do about things, but that didn't matter to her. A heads on approach seemed to be the best way to tackle prey like Dibbler, she figured. This was unusual enough for her not to know of any other way, anyhow.
"Well?" she insisted, "How did you do it?"
"Er . . ." Dibbler wasn't used to being lost for words, but the unnerving sight of this amazon coupled with the admittedly strange nature of her question had thrown him completely off track. He wouldn't have been Dibbler, though, if he hadn't rallied quickly. He turned to a dwarf that was coming down a narrow staircase.
"Gimletsson, that story on Vimes and the cart thief came in with the first clacks this morning, didn't it?"
"Yes, boss. Straight from the Patrician's palace, together with the usual stuff" The dwarf nodded in confirmation and hurried on downstairs.
Dibbler turned to Angua with a triumphant look on his ratty face.
"This is the Century of the Fruitbat, you know", he said. With an expansive gesture he showed off the walls of the room, where posters of all kinds of events were displayed, as if to indicate that all these chariot races, football matches, markets and wanted-posters[6] were his personal success- stories.
"We stay on top of things here at the Inquirer!"
It was anyone's guess who would usher Dibbler into the next world when that time came, Death or the Death of Rats. What was less uncertain was that he was getting closer and closer to finding out the answer to this question, judging from Angua's expression and the distinctly sharper look of her finely manicured fingernails.
"Mister Dibbler, you're not listening to what I'm saying", she said anew, her patience visibly disappearing as she repeated her question again. "How is it possible that you are running a news story based on the outcome of a meeting before that meeting has even occurred?"
-----
Vimes stepped into the Oblong Office with more confidence than he felt. He wasn't sure if Vetinari would let him take the fall for this or not, but he was damned if he was going to let these . . . these brats feel that they had a case against him.
Vetinari went behind his desk and sat down.
"Gentlemen, I'm sure your time is valuable to you. Shall we begin?"
Vimes gave the three young men a hard stare. Spoilt snobs, he thought. Young colts, strutting their stuff. Never had to work a day in their lives. Spending their days drinking, carousing, gambling and racing. Privileged people with not an ounce of compassion between them[7]. The aristocrats, feeling Vimes's eyes on them, tried to hold their ground and failed.
"It's an outrage", the hairdo spluttered suddenly, "We've all paid our Thieves' Guild fees, and what does the so-called Watch do? Nothing!"
"My thoughts exactly!" the green clad one contributed, "If we must put up with having these people patrolling our streets, then at least they could make themselves useful and catch these vandals!"
"We know our rights!!!", the third man screeched.
"Lord Herrington, Lord Rust, Mr. Dingleberry, if you would be so kind as to state your case a little more coherently, I am sure that the Commander of the Watch would take a keen interest in your difficulties" Vetinari said, softly as a sheet of silk over a samurai blade.
"These people", Vimes noted quietly to himself. In some mouths that particular combination of two innocent words was worse than any insult could ever hope to be. And you could almost hear the triple exclamation marks in the third fellow's voice. No stable person sounded like that.
"We feel sure that it must be a cart jacker!" The third man, whom Vimes now recognised as Hubert Dingleberry Jr., sole heir to the Dingleberry fortune, reminded him of a rabid poodle he remembered seeing a couple of years ago.
"Surely you will agree that such a crime would require you to be in your vehicle when it was stolen? I understand that this was not the case," Vetinari said, his voice a pool of tranquillity.
"If you remember, sir, we did have the case with Rip 'the Jacker' a couple of years ago, although he wasn't a thief" Vimes offered, with a face that could have entered the Disc Championship in Cripple Mr. Onion and won.
"Yes, thank you, Commander."
"Mind you, he and 'Overcoat Bob' got into real trouble with the Baker Street Irregulars a while back. Last I heard he was singing the soprano in the choir in the Temple of Small God-"
"Yes, thank you, Commander" Vetinari interjected with some force.
Someone cleared his throat.
"Now look, the bunburys start this weekend, and there is going to be a public outcry if the three of us cannot compete", said Herrington, who seemed the least upset of the young men.
"Like I said, gentlemen, the Commander of the Watch will personally see to it that your problems are taken care of. Now, do not let me detain you any further."
With an ever so slight gesture the Patrician indicated that the audience was over, and all of his visitors made their way towards the door with feelings of relief and irritation jostling for pole position. Vimes was just about to walk out the familiar doors when a voice came from behind, like an assassin's dagger in the night.
"Sir Samuel, if you could stay another moment?"
----------------------- [1] And suggestions from the Patrician were not to be confused with other people's suggestions, which could be safely ignored. He would use irony on you if you did. [2] Even after a long, and mostly happily, married life in which intra- marital communication was based on little notes, quickly scribbled and left for the other spouse on the kitchen table. [3] Well, they are, ok? Look, I'm not going to spell it out for you, all right? Titillation's the name of the game . . . *groan* [4] Including the substantial amount of time the blacksmith had spent submerging himself in the vat of icy water he normally used for cooling red- hot pieces of iron . . . [5] Not by alcohol, funnily enough. Not at all . . . [6] Wanted-posters were a little different in Ankh-Morpork. They were issued by the Thieves' Guild, and there were two kinds. One was used to advertise the guild in order to attract new recruits. The other one was the more traditional variety, but featured unlicensed thieves only, and didn't offer the traditional choice between dead or alive. The Watch simply didn't have the money to compete with the Guild . . . [7] Think American Psycho goes Ankh-Morpork . . .
It was a fine autumn day. The Disc's lazy sunlight glowed in a multitude of attractive shades as it hit the morning smog over Ankh-Morpork. Upstairs in a large, squat stone house in Pseudopolis Yard His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of Ankh-Morpork's City Watch, sat in his office gazing out of the window. He was looking with unseeing eyes at the square, where the wind was bullying dead leaves. He had been sitting there for quite some time.
Funny, he noted, how the blues would come in all sorts of shades of red, yellow and brown. Vimes often felt peculiar at this time of the year. "Brung low", as Fred Colon would have put it. But maybe it was unfair to blame the universe for his moodiness.
The fact was that he quite often yearned to be back on the streets, and these days all he seemed to be doing was push paper around - alright, avoiding that very task at all cost, but still - and order other watchmen to do proper watch things, like go on patrols. And even that was taken care of by Carrot most of the time, who did it a lot better than he did, he reluctantly admitted to himself.
So where did that leave him? And what? He was a figurehead now, a puppet brought out for gala dinners and parades, and he didn't like that. Not one bit. He felt boxed in, unable to do anything but comply with the demands of an uncaring society. Muttering to himself, he reluctantly got back to the paperwork at hand. The races were upon them again, with all that that entailed. Now what was this from Lord Vetinari?
-----
A couple of minutes later Sergeant Colon knocked on the open door. Then he stood with a nervous look on his face and waited in the doorway to his commander's office. Fred Colon wasn't one of life's natural born thinkers, but even he could see that there was going to be trouble.
To begin with, his superior officer hadn't even looked up from his paperwork after he had entered the room, and that in itself was a bad sign. Mister Vimes had little time for paperwork, he knew, and if there was something important enough for him to overcome his distaste, then it was sure to be something bad. That, combined with what Colon had to report today, would surely mean trouble, and if there was something the sergeant had learnt through the years, then it was that trouble was - well, trouble. Ok, so it wasn't the most enlightened insight, but it had served him well enough during his time in the Watch.
After what seemed like a small eternity, Vimes looked up from the paper he had in front of him. His was the face of a man who had not only fallen on hard times sometime in the past, but also on an assortment of cobbles, bar room floors, and gutters. He was a hard man who really deserved his inherited nickname "Old Stoneface". On some days it didn't seem to matter that his days as "a collection of bad habits marinated in Bearhugger's Whisky" were over and that he was now one of the richest men in Ankh- Morpork. His flinty-eyed look couldn't be disguised any more than you could the business end of a sword. You could put it in a jewel-encrusted sheath, but it would still be a sword, lethal and distinctly unfriendly. The sergeant tensed. This was obviously one of those days.
"That bastard . . ." Vimes muttered, before seeming to realise that he wasn't alone. His jaw unclamped ever so slightly around the unlit cigar in his mouth when he laid eyes on Colon.
"Fred. What's new on the street then?" he asked, obviously trying hard to sound more light-hearted than he felt.
"Ye Gods, on days such as this I almost wish we were back to the bad old days again."
Years back, the Watch had been small and insignificant, with just him, Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs trying to get through the nights without doing anything stupid, like dying. Then Carrot had come along, and suddenly the Watch was a force to be reckoned with in Ankh-Morpork. Vimes had been created a Duke, had been promoted to Commander of a Watch that now counted over two hundred men and had married the richest woman in the city along the way.
Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs hadn't been promoted as such, but the Patrician had showed them his appreciation for their help during that whole business with the war between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch by suggesting to Vimes that they be given the job of controlling traffic in the city[1]. This meant that they could stay out of trouble and were given a nice extra income, since fines could be paid immediately to the Watchman who charged the culprit, at the crime scene. This had done much for the two coppers' private economy, and had had the added benefit that the merest glimpse of the two of them approaching now was enough to disperse enormous traffic jams in the city.
Lately however, not all had been well. Some of the poshest sports carts in the city had been vandalised under mysterious circumstances. Of course, those vehicles belonged to some of the city's most prosperous citizens, and they now demanded action. All in all, this meant that Fred's and Nobby's cosy existence as the Discworld's only existing traffic cops had vanished as quickly as it had come. All of a sudden they were in the spotlight, and that spotlight was wielded by people who were to people like Colon and Nobbs what mean-spirited kids with magnifying glasses were to ants. Bad news.
Speaking of which, Colon thought, maybe it would be better to just show Mister Vimes instead of telling him. After all, those newspaper people supposedly had a way with words that he had never aspired to[2].
"I think you had better take a look at this, sir," he said, handing over the morning edition of the Ankh-Morpork Inquirer.
"Also, there is a wizard in the reception who insists he wants to talk to you."
"What? What does a wizard want with us? He'll have to wait. Let's see, now. 'Rain of Frog in Klatch'? But you know that's just Dibbler's way of being liberal with the truth. Anyway, just one frog doesn't seem . . ."
Vimes stopped. Looked further down. Looked back up slowly, then down again, re-reading the other headline, and then the entire article.
"Oh, really?" he growled, the iron grip on his cigar suddenly back with a vengeance.
"This stinks to Cori Celesti, if you ask me. Show Sergeant Angua this and then send her over to the newspaper to see what she can sniff out, would you?" He smiled grimly.
"I have to make an appearance at the Palace, it would seem."
-----
The Ankh-Morpork Inquirer was located in cramped quarters in a house on Gleam Street. The gigantic presses where the actual newspapers where made stood in the cellars of the building, but the neural centre of the operation was located upstairs. Some would challenge this view, claiming that it would take a complete lack of brain activity to produce such trash as the Inquirer did. In fact, coming up with the kind of incredible stories that the Inquirer ran took a particular kind of genius, and Dibbler certainly had what it took.
The noise in the room was deafening, not only because it was sitting virtually on top of a huge heap of rumbling machinery, but also mainly because the people in the room were news people. As such they were never anywhere lower than one notch below "hysterical" on the sanity scale. Editors shouted at reporters, who in turn hollered at secretaries, who then just screamed. The cacophony was such that you could have put a howling wolf in the middle of it all and it would have gone unnoticed for quite some time. That was basically what had happened now. Angua cleared her throat.
Dibbler looked up. He immediately noticed the visitor, standing in the door to the reception. This was not surprising. What was surprising was that no one else had spotted the curvaceous blond with the wind-tussled hair before him. Sergeant Angua, dressed in her armour, was a sight that not many men would miss. Watchmen normally had muscle-shaped brass plates protecting their torsos. In Angua's case that had been unthinkable for two obvious reasons[3], and so she had taken hers to the Street of Cunning Artificers, where, after two hours[4] she had re-emerged onto the streets of Ankh- Morpork. Stories abound of magical swords with all sorts of powers, but Angua was the proud owner of the only chest plate known to prevent crimes from happening just by appearing.
"Good morning, good morning", Dibbler said, sliding up to her in his habitual way.
"Constable Angua, isn't it? Always a pleasure meeting a representative of our glorious Watch. Care to comment on the rumours concerning the existence of a werewolf on the force?"
Angua had encountered C.M.O.T. Dibbler's infamous sausages almost immediately upon her arrival in Ankh-Morpork. No one had warned her of them beforehand, and so she had foolishly decided to try a half-eaten one while she was under the influence[5]. She knew that she could only be killed by silver, but now and then she wished that that wasn't so. That had been such an experience. If she hadn't been on all fours already, she would have been in no time. So Angua was not a friend of Dibbler's. Even so, she smiled. No. If she was honest, she smiled just because of that. She saw Dibbler take in what she knew began as an attractive smile, and noted with great satisfaction how he then spotted the slightly too long, slightly too sharp incisors. Before he had regained his mental balance, she had asked her question.
-----
Vimes entered the antechamber in the Patrician's palace with the newspaper in his pocket and his usual reluctance written on his face. He always made a point of not smartening up before coming here, his dusty, worn uniform helping him to remember who and what he was. Today, the autumn winds had helped him achieve that slightly dishevelled look.
The Rats chamber was empty, so he closed the door softly behind him. The doors to the Oblong Office were ever so slightly ajar, and so he peeked in through the gap. He looked around the room, scanning the faces of the assembled group of people, and felt the muscles in his neck tense like piano wires. Well, he thought to himself, that seems about right.
The Patrician was nowhere to be seen, but around the room a number of snobbishly clad young men were looking at one another through their nostrils. This may or may not have explained their voices, which were nasal, but not the fact that they seemed to be speaking at one another rather than with each other.
"I don't think that he has the nerve to show up . . ." spluttered one gangly fellow in the general direction of a terribly spotty youth not a meter away from where Vimes was hiding.
"It's an outrage that he is allowed to continue to run that motley crew of so-called watch men . . ." another young man with outrageous hair seemed to be saying to no one in particular.
"We should demand that he hands in his resignation! Disgraceful is what it is!!", a third one chimed in. This one was dressed in pea coloured tights.
"That imp-like creature and the fat one stopped me for speeding and then they gave me a parking ticket . . .! And me one of the best racers in town, too" the first one offered up again.
"Watch 'Men', hah! They employ trolls! You can't tell me that that's right. Filthy scum! One was "directing" the traffic on Broad Way only yesterday . . ." brayed the one with the hairdo.
Having personally put Detritus in charge of traffic control in that particular hot spot, Vimes was half smiling at the last comment when a subtle change in the air caused him to turn around. Lord Vetinari was standing right behind him, clad in his usual black attire and ditto expressionless face. Gods knew how long he had stood there. The door that Vimes had come through remained closed, but then the Patrician did move in mysterious ways.
"Sir Samuel. How kind of you to come at such short notice." the Patrician said quietly before wrinkling his nose ever so slightly in disapproval of Vimes' dusty clothes and stubbly chin.
"Such very short notice, it would seem. I see you have already noticed that I have taken the liberty of summoning the other interested parties, too. Shall we?"
Vimes, knowing that the Patrician was lethal at any time, and more so the politer he was, didn't say anything. Instead he simply handed over the newspaper, much the same way Colon had twenty minutes earlier.
Vetinari scanned the page, his eyes darting back and forth like .303 bookworms on speed, reaching the bottom in a matter of seconds.
"Aha. Yes. Very interesting. And just the one frog? How fascinating . . ."
He looked up at Vimes with a faint smile on his habitually sombre face. Then he swung open the door and indicated to Vimes that he should go in first. The Oblong Office fell silent.
-----
Mister Vimes hadn't instructed Colon on what Angua should do about things, but that didn't matter to her. A heads on approach seemed to be the best way to tackle prey like Dibbler, she figured. This was unusual enough for her not to know of any other way, anyhow.
"Well?" she insisted, "How did you do it?"
"Er . . ." Dibbler wasn't used to being lost for words, but the unnerving sight of this amazon coupled with the admittedly strange nature of her question had thrown him completely off track. He wouldn't have been Dibbler, though, if he hadn't rallied quickly. He turned to a dwarf that was coming down a narrow staircase.
"Gimletsson, that story on Vimes and the cart thief came in with the first clacks this morning, didn't it?"
"Yes, boss. Straight from the Patrician's palace, together with the usual stuff" The dwarf nodded in confirmation and hurried on downstairs.
Dibbler turned to Angua with a triumphant look on his ratty face.
"This is the Century of the Fruitbat, you know", he said. With an expansive gesture he showed off the walls of the room, where posters of all kinds of events were displayed, as if to indicate that all these chariot races, football matches, markets and wanted-posters[6] were his personal success- stories.
"We stay on top of things here at the Inquirer!"
It was anyone's guess who would usher Dibbler into the next world when that time came, Death or the Death of Rats. What was less uncertain was that he was getting closer and closer to finding out the answer to this question, judging from Angua's expression and the distinctly sharper look of her finely manicured fingernails.
"Mister Dibbler, you're not listening to what I'm saying", she said anew, her patience visibly disappearing as she repeated her question again. "How is it possible that you are running a news story based on the outcome of a meeting before that meeting has even occurred?"
-----
Vimes stepped into the Oblong Office with more confidence than he felt. He wasn't sure if Vetinari would let him take the fall for this or not, but he was damned if he was going to let these . . . these brats feel that they had a case against him.
Vetinari went behind his desk and sat down.
"Gentlemen, I'm sure your time is valuable to you. Shall we begin?"
Vimes gave the three young men a hard stare. Spoilt snobs, he thought. Young colts, strutting their stuff. Never had to work a day in their lives. Spending their days drinking, carousing, gambling and racing. Privileged people with not an ounce of compassion between them[7]. The aristocrats, feeling Vimes's eyes on them, tried to hold their ground and failed.
"It's an outrage", the hairdo spluttered suddenly, "We've all paid our Thieves' Guild fees, and what does the so-called Watch do? Nothing!"
"My thoughts exactly!" the green clad one contributed, "If we must put up with having these people patrolling our streets, then at least they could make themselves useful and catch these vandals!"
"We know our rights!!!", the third man screeched.
"Lord Herrington, Lord Rust, Mr. Dingleberry, if you would be so kind as to state your case a little more coherently, I am sure that the Commander of the Watch would take a keen interest in your difficulties" Vetinari said, softly as a sheet of silk over a samurai blade.
"These people", Vimes noted quietly to himself. In some mouths that particular combination of two innocent words was worse than any insult could ever hope to be. And you could almost hear the triple exclamation marks in the third fellow's voice. No stable person sounded like that.
"We feel sure that it must be a cart jacker!" The third man, whom Vimes now recognised as Hubert Dingleberry Jr., sole heir to the Dingleberry fortune, reminded him of a rabid poodle he remembered seeing a couple of years ago.
"Surely you will agree that such a crime would require you to be in your vehicle when it was stolen? I understand that this was not the case," Vetinari said, his voice a pool of tranquillity.
"If you remember, sir, we did have the case with Rip 'the Jacker' a couple of years ago, although he wasn't a thief" Vimes offered, with a face that could have entered the Disc Championship in Cripple Mr. Onion and won.
"Yes, thank you, Commander."
"Mind you, he and 'Overcoat Bob' got into real trouble with the Baker Street Irregulars a while back. Last I heard he was singing the soprano in the choir in the Temple of Small God-"
"Yes, thank you, Commander" Vetinari interjected with some force.
Someone cleared his throat.
"Now look, the bunburys start this weekend, and there is going to be a public outcry if the three of us cannot compete", said Herrington, who seemed the least upset of the young men.
"Like I said, gentlemen, the Commander of the Watch will personally see to it that your problems are taken care of. Now, do not let me detain you any further."
With an ever so slight gesture the Patrician indicated that the audience was over, and all of his visitors made their way towards the door with feelings of relief and irritation jostling for pole position. Vimes was just about to walk out the familiar doors when a voice came from behind, like an assassin's dagger in the night.
"Sir Samuel, if you could stay another moment?"
----------------------- [1] And suggestions from the Patrician were not to be confused with other people's suggestions, which could be safely ignored. He would use irony on you if you did. [2] Even after a long, and mostly happily, married life in which intra- marital communication was based on little notes, quickly scribbled and left for the other spouse on the kitchen table. [3] Well, they are, ok? Look, I'm not going to spell it out for you, all right? Titillation's the name of the game . . . *groan* [4] Including the substantial amount of time the blacksmith had spent submerging himself in the vat of icy water he normally used for cooling red- hot pieces of iron . . . [5] Not by alcohol, funnily enough. Not at all . . . [6] Wanted-posters were a little different in Ankh-Morpork. They were issued by the Thieves' Guild, and there were two kinds. One was used to advertise the guild in order to attract new recruits. The other one was the more traditional variety, but featured unlicensed thieves only, and didn't offer the traditional choice between dead or alive. The Watch simply didn't have the money to compete with the Guild . . . [7] Think American Psycho goes Ankh-Morpork . . .