**
10. Discard the Past
The servant chosen by Lady Sybil to carry Isabella's gown to Unseen University was an old Ramkin family retainer unlikely to make off with the most gorgeous gown Sybil had ever seen. Isabella had mentioned the errand in passing before she left; she'd been vague about why it needed to be done. Sybil drew the obvious conclusions; the Lady Vetinari issue had something to do with magic. Though Sybil was sorry to see the silk and gold folded into a box and wrapped in parcel paper, it was Isabella's gown and Isabella could do with it as she wanted. At least Sybil got to help, to feel the cool water of the fabric once more before the lid was placed securely on the box and the straps were buckled.
His name was George and he'd been around when Sybil was born, when she had her moderately disappointing "coming out" party, when she cared for her aged father, when she married Sam Vimes. He didn't do much around the house anymore because of the rheumatism and that nasty lung thing that wouldn't go away but Sybil trusted him absolutely. After a nap, a healthy supper and another nap, he limped and coughed his way to the carriage, the package under his arm.
In Sator Square, George limped and coughed his way to the gates of Unseen University, coughed to the night porter about his errand and made a grand show of rubbing his back in hopes that if he looked miserable enough, somebody inside would give him a nip of whiskey to ease the pain.
Then he stepped through the gates.
Mustrum Ridcully dropped the fish hook he'd been stringing with a new and colorful lure.
The quill Ponder Stibbons was writing with in his office froze, then fell softly from his fingers.
The Librarian, an orang-utan enjoying a post-supper banana in a quiet corner of the library, said "Ook" as the peel slipped from his hand.
There should have been a rumble of thunder. There should have been silence across the city, the sound of a million people taking a deep breath.
Instead, experienced wizards in all corners of the university stopped what they were doing, their spines tingling, the hairs on their arms and the back of their necks painfully erect, like radar. The Librarian looked like he'd blow dried his fur at too high a setting.
By the time George had limped to the doors to the Great Hall, the senior faculty with the exception of Ridcully gathered in a nervous line inside. The other wizards who felt the tingling thought it best to stay away. The Librarian was there. He was wearing an oversized yellow rain poncho and a hat to disguise the frizz.
At a nod from the Dean, the porters opened the doors.
George coughed.
"Package for…uh…(cough)…Professor uh…(hack)…Stibbons."
George stepped over the threshold.
The senior faculty, including Ponder, took one step backward.
"Lady Sybil sent me," George said. "For that other woman. Tall, dark, nose like a cucumber." He added a cough because it looked like he'd forgot it and he was still hoping for that whiskey.
The wizards went into a huddle.
"You ordered something, Stibbons?" said the Dean.
"The gown, sir."
"What, your wizardly robes aren't good enough for you anymore?"
"I don't want to wear it."
"Where's the Archchancellor?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
"Haven't seen him, sir."
"I thought he was going fishing."
"Next month up in Lancre," said the Dean. "You can't fish in the Ankh, man."
"I thought he was planning a Circle Sea expedition," said the Senior Wrangler. "He planned to get himself another trophy. The old one was starting to smell. You noticed it, didn't you?"
A few wizards nodded.
"Woe's me back," said George to get their attention again.
**
This was the life.
Candles behind red, gold and yellow cloth, casting flickering light over the dance floor. Mirrored ball spinning overhead. Well-stocked bar. Music with a throbbing beat – the drummer looked to be an overenthusiastic accountant but his fellow musicians were really with it – the guitarist, violinist, trumpeter and pianist wore matching flared red riding pants. And what looked like Watch helmets.
And the people!
They had no self control whatsoever. They swayed, bobbed, bounced, spun or generally waved their hands in the air. The singer – a woman with more cleavage than hair – told them to.
"Put your hands in the air and shake it like you just don't care!"
People waved. People shook.
Klieg downed her second vodka lemon and pocketed her "Vampire's Guide to Ankh-Morpork." The guide had said The Swinging Monkey was the hottest dance club in town. Well. She couldn't argue with that. The hottest dance club in Uberwald was run by a family of accordian-playing Igors. It didn't take much to beat that.
And the best part was…the really best part was, the other vampires in the place couldn't smell her. She knew it. Lack of blood stunted their sense of smell. Better yet, they were too drunk to sort her out. After cigarettes and coffee, alcohol was the next favorite bad habit picked up by Black Ribboners, despite the censure of purists like Lady Margolotta. Klieg wasn't a Black Ribboner anymore but she still appreciated a good vodka.
"Put your hands in the air!"
Klieg went out on the dance floor and put her hands in the air.
"And shake it like you just don't care!"
Klieg didn't quite know what the "it" was that she was supposed to shake, but after observation of the crowd, she concluded it was optional. She started at the shoulders and worked her way down.
The not caring part was easy. She really didn't care who saw her, what they thought of her or her diet or her political views. For once, for a few blessed minutes, she didn't have a care in the world.
**
"Gentlemen! Step aside!"
The Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully paused dramatically in the center of Unseen University's Great Hall. He was wearing his Wow-Wow Sauce gear.
The instability of the Ridcully family's special sauce made it necessary to produce it only in a remote corner of a building that no one would miss if it happened to explode, leaving behind a week's worth of vaguely mushroomy fumes. It goes without saying that the brave soul who handled Wow-Wow Sauce had to wear protection.
Ridcully wore a striped mattress strapped to the front of his spangled wizard's robe with a couple of thick ropes. The knightly neck plate over his shoulders gleamed dully in the light of the hall's chandeliers, which also illuminated the delicate embossing on the gauntlets he wore. An iron welder's mask sat snuggly on his face, under his pointy hat.
He brandished a massive pair of iron tongs that he'd hurriedly magicked on the way over.
"I will be taking the package, my man," he said.
George knew wizards were daft but he hadn't expected this. He held the package straight out, both arms extended as far as the rheumy would allow.
The wizards took another collective step back.
Ridcully eased forward tongs first, step by excruciating step, like he was moving through gelatin.
Ponder Stibbons held his breath.
The Librarian covered his eyes with two leathery hands.
The tongs were slowly opened, a great iron jaw at the ready.
To pass the time, George took the opportunity to cough. More like a hack, really.
And of course…
…the box slipped from his hands. It didn't tumble but it did seem to fall at the rate of a slow motion action sequence.
The wizards froze in petrified horror.
Ridcully leapt, did a rolling somersault on the floor and emerged at just the right level to catch the package with his tongs.
"Sorry about that," said George.
"Oooook."
The Dean wiped his brow with a handkerchief.
"You can say that again, Librarian."
**
A half hour after the agent Goldwall left the Oblong Office, the Patrician was sitting in a room high up in the Palace on a stained arm chair with something Leonard of Quirm called a Whirled Fruit Drink in his hand. The room was massive and contained everything Leonard needed to create, draw, drill, hammer, paint and manage any other general tinkering. At the moment the white-bearded genius with the souffle-like dome of a head was enthusing over his new Fruit Whirl Machine. It crushed fruit into a thick and barely drinkable mass. The sour smell of old fruit peels had accosted Lord Vetinari the moment he stepped into the workshop.
"…so what you have there, milord, is the orange, melon, lemon variety." Leonard flapped his hands eagerly at the Patrician. "Go on, try it."
Out of politeness, the Patrician took a drink. The inside of his cheeks shrunk.
"A bit heavy on the lemon," he said through slightly pursed lips. He carefully set the glass aside.
Leonard looked concerned. "I only put three in. A sweetener, then. Perhaps a ripe pear would do the trick?" He wandered over to a crate of mixed fruit.
"Leonard, do you remember Isabella Capelli?"
The honey dew melons in Leonard's hands dropped back into the box.
"I certainly do, milord. Lovely child. When I was helping her father with that new ship…shame about the rutter, in the end…yes, she didn't mind at all when I corrected her sketches. Her human forms were unremarkable but her structures were excellent for such a young girl. She had a gift for perspective." Leonard brightened. "Her skills must be even more impressive now. She should be, oh, quite a bit older."
"Thirty-nine."
Leonard gave a pear in his fruit box a thoughtful squeeze.
"Time flies, doesn't it, milord?"
In Vetinari's experience, time was more like those weak practical jokers who stood behind you, tapped you on the shoulder and fled so you wouldn't know who did it. It didn't surprise him that Leonard didn't know Isabella was supposed to be dead. Leonard tended to miss a lot of things, which was just fine by the Patrician. It was part of the reason Leonard was kept locked in the attic of the Palace.
Leonard abandoned the pear and opted to dump sugar in the fruit drink Lord Vetinari had set aside.
"I didn't know you knew her, milord," he said as he stirred the fruit mass. "You never mentioned her before."
When the Patrician didn't answer, Leonard glanced up from his work. The look on Lord Vetinari's face made him slowly set aside the glass.
"Maybe you can tell me about it, milord."
**
Klieg was in such a good mood when she left the Swinging Monkey that she decided to only feed on three children. She'd decided on children for their outrage value. The Morporkians were already on edge. Tomorrow they'd go over the top.
**
Lord Vetinari talked for an hour without interruption.
He spoke in measured tones, telling everything in chronological order beginning with the Merchants Guild reception, where he and Isabella had danced a single gavotte, not out of any interest in her on his part but because he had danced with the daughters of all of the officers of the guild. It showed willing. If Vetinari could have got away with dancing with the guild president's son, he would have done it.
The note she sent him afterward seemed to him like a presumption but he didn't ignore it because he was interested in what she had seen at the bridge. He sent a written request for a drawing. She sent him several, all of different city bridges.
One look at these and he invited her to his home in Ankh for a discussion. She explained the difference between an arch and beam bridge and outlined their strengths and weaknesses. Then she introduced the idea of a completely new type of bridge, one without piles or supports of any kind in the water itself. It would be a bridge that hung over the water, suspended on cables of metal that was both flexible and nearly unbreakable. She hadn't found a metal yet that could do that but she knew some dwarves who were experimenting with certain alloys.
The conversation was so interesting that he invited her again. This time she spoke of buildings around the city that needed structural improvements, including the Palace. Just like when she talked of bridges, the longer the conversation went, the more it moved into the realm of fantasy. There was a lack of office space in the city, she said, so why not redevelop a section of town for office towers built of glass and stone? Cloud needles, she called them. As tall as the Palace, the Tower of Art, even. The problem was with the supports. Stone walls had to be extremely thick the higher a building was, but if supporting steel beams were laced like a skeleton, maybe that would suffice to hold everything up in a stiff wind. Most of the rest of the building, she assured him, could be glass.
As she talked, she sketched with such precision that Lord Vetinari began to have an inkling of the type of mind she had.
Talent should be recognized, encouraged and used. It was a philosophy he'd acquired early on from his aunt, who had practiced it on him.
Encouragement was what Isabella needed. At the time, the Guild of Architects refused to allow female members. She spent her days drawing the city and learning what she could from books. Lord Vetinari became her patron. He bought books and measuring instruments that she couldn't afford. He supplied her with all of the drafting paper she could want and paid someone else to do the tedious work of drawing on the grids. It was all done quietly so as not to upset Isabella's parents. Or the Architects. They weren't an important guild in Vetinari's plans to take over the city, but there was no reason to make another enemy.
Charity was not an option. Isabella expected to pay and so she willingly fulfilled the little requests Lord Vetinari made now and then. Drawings of certain bridges, gates, streets, buildings. He never told her why he wanted them.
After a couple of months, his interests shifted to mapping and he imposed on Isabella's "debt" to help him. They did surveys in the city together in the winter twilight and Isabella did the drawing.
Leonard listened. He didn't fidget and he didn't tinker. He was listening so intently that it wasn't difficult to notice Lord Vetinari gloss over most of the rest of the period up to Isabella's funeral. The carriage accident was news to Leonard but he let Lord Vetinari keep talking and eventually learned, of course, that Isabella seemed to be alive and well and getting herself drunk on cognac in a local bar.
"Of course!" said Leonard. "The Helmet-headed Shipworm. The tunnel under the Ankh is a fascinating idea, milord. Perhaps I could design an iron shield for the workers if I adjust the…" He fell into mumbling as he slipped behind his work table and located a pencil.
The Patrician left him because he'd done what he'd come to do, which was talk. He was back in his office when Mr. Goldwall knocked on the door and asked where his lordship wanted Miss Capelli.
She was slumped in one of the waiting room chairs. She looked like hell.
Lord Vetinari dismissed his agents and sat beside her.
"I've been told such things are easier for the Undead," he said. "They cease to have certain glands. It doesn't upset them so much."
"Thank you," she struggled to order the words properly in her head, "for the money."
She stood up, swayed a little, and took a few steps forward. The Patrician helped her up the stairs to the room he'd chosen for her on the same floor as his own. Isabella spilled into bed, shoes and all, and tucked her iconograph under her cheek.
"We have to discard the past," she mumbled.
The Patrician pulled off her shoes. The past should stay in the past, he believed that. It just wasn't cooperating at the moment. It was about to confront him with poetry, for one thing.
"…and, as one builds / floor by floor, window by window, / and the building rises / so do we go on throwing down / first, broken tiles / then pompous doors, / until out of the past / dust rises…"
Lord Vetinari sat beside her.
"Miss Capelli, how long is the Cut?"
"…It is difficult/ to teach bones to disappear / to teach eyes / to close / but / we do it / unrealizing…"
Isabella buried her face in her arm. The Patrician put a hand on her back.
"What is the area of the Rimward Tower in Ephebian heckels?"
"…It was all alive / alive, alive, alive…"
"Which is less brittle: wrought iron or cast iron?"
"…like a scarlet fish / but time / passed over its dark cloth / and the flash of the fish / drowned and disappeared."
The Patrician decided on a new course of action.
"This won't do," he said sternly. "Tomorrow morning you will be awakened at 6 a.m. You will be thoroughly cleaned and all evidence of the distillery you drank tonight will be scrubbed away. At 7 you will have a breakfast of black coffee while we discuss a task I have for you."
Isabella rolled over and tried to focus on him. He was looking a bit watery and everything around him had a golden haze that was fading into something that was going to be very, very unpleasant for her in the morning.
"1,876 feet," she said wearily. "13,981 square heckels. Wrought iron."
The Patrician nodded and tucked her in.
"Sleep," he ordered.
