All right, fangirls (and maybe fanboys, who knows?), the next instalment of Greebo goodness has arrived!  Sorry it's taken so long. Thanks for the reviews – Random shout outs to Eileen, Ysabet, Delirium, Fireblade and all my dear true blue readers.  The last chapter (4) won't take so long to post. And after that…Another Hanna-Havvie epic.

3.

            The mail coach rattled through the countryside. It had just left the boundary of Lancre and was heading rimwards at a leisurely pace toward Ankh-Morpork. The witches would've liked to travel faster but there weren't any more options.

            "I told you," said Granny for the hundredth time since they'd boarded the coach in Lancre city. "I told you to change the bristles on yer broom yerself."

            "I told our Tommy's wife Molly to do it but she's a lazy gel."

            Nanny Ogg stretched her legs out on the seat opposite. They were alone in the coach because once she was in her seat, Nanny had removed her shoes. Within seconds, the other passengers said they'd take the next one.

            "You got to do it yerself," grumbled Granny.

            "Your broom don't work either."

            "That's different. It fell out of the thatch on its own. And I dint know Shirley was nibbling on the bristles. She's a smart goat but she won't be doing that again."

            The origin of Shirley's recent stomach troubles was revealed when Granny and Nanny went in search of the broomstick and found it half eaten behind a mulberry bush.

            "I still think we could've used Agnes-Perdita's broom," complained Nanny. "She offered it."

            Granny folded her arms. "It was filthy. I ain't against using a broom to sweep up but I ain't climbing on anything with that many dust devils. No telling where that thing's been." Her jaw was set. "We'll get there by and by, Gytha."

            "Poor Greebo," Nanny sighed.

            Before leaving Lancre, they'd taken a look in the tea cup to see if they could find the dear little cat. In the murky waters of the tea leaves, they'd seen what seemed to them to be a sea of hysterical women, some in stages of undress. Then the scene settled on Greebo in human form – dressed in a fashion Granny found completely unacceptable. He was taking a massive swing at someone before scampering away.

            There were no overt clues as to where this was taking place, but before the tea was cold, Granny was up and packing.

            "Ankh-Morpork," she said.

            "How do you know?"             

            "A place with a pack of screaming half-dressed women that'd let Greebo prance around in public like that must be a sink of immorality and c'ruption."

            "Could be lots of places."

            "Ankh-Morpork," said Granny firmly.

            And since Granny had the best instincts in these things, they'd hitched a ride on the mail coach. They weren't paying. Witches never paid.

--

            Days and nights came and went in that sink of immorality and c'ruption, Ankh-Morpork.

            At the Palace, the morning Watch meeting wasn't running as smoothly as it normally did. They'd stumbled through the wage issue and the thing about the watch house tea ration. Somewhere in the middle of a discussion about hiring practices, Lord Vetinari looked up from the paper he'd been consulting. He was frowning.

            "What was I just talking about?"

            Captain Carrot, who'd spent the meeting clutching a paper in his hand and looking distressed, shrugged his large shoulders.

            "I wasn't really listening, sir. Sorry."

            Vetinari and Carrot looked at Commander Sam Vimes. Who didn't want to be looked at. He was wearing black leather. The breastplate covered the leather vest but there was no disguising the trousers. Or the boots. He squeaked when he walked.

            He wasn't listening to Vetinari either because he'd begun to notice little details around the Oblong Office. Things that seemed different or out of place. The ink stain on the floor next to the desk. A patch of carpet that appeared to be burned. One of the conference table chairs was missing. And he could have sworn there'd always been a waste paper basket in there somewhere.

            "Mind wandering a bit, there, sir," he said. "Mine, not yours."

            "I gathered that, Vimes."

            "Sorry, sir."

            None of them looked like they'd got much sleep that week. Even Carrot, a youngster compared to the others and an adopted dwarf big as a hill, looked like he could use a bit of shut eye. Vimes, Carrot and Vetinari had not told the others in detail what they'd been up to, or rather, what their wife, girlfriend and mistress respectively had "influenced" them to be up to after their girls nights. Every night that week.

            Vetinari folded his hands on his desk. "Is there something more pressing to discuss than the hiring practices of the Watch?"

            Carrot unfolded his paper. "Well, I did want to bring up--"

            "Carrot, not again," said Vimes. "We don't care…"

            "I think it's important, sir." Carrot smoothed the paper in his palm. "Every violation of the city ordinances should be reported. It's my duty to report that a violation of Paragraph 17, Section 2 stroke ii Activities Banned at Public Crossroads was committed by myself and Sergeant Angua last night at 1:03 a.m. on the corner of--"

            "I don't want to hear it, Carrot!" cried Vimes. "Do you think that's important? Do you think you have problems? Try wearing trousers that are so tight a pair of clamps would be an improvement! I don't think I can get the bloody things off now! I'm going to be buried in them. They're going to be around long after I'm gone. How's that for problems? Eh?"

            "This is important too, sir," said Carrot. There was an edge of sulk to his voice.

            "Gentlemen, please." Lord Vetinari got up from his seat. He needed his walking stick to do it and he was…wincing. He suppressed it but Vimes and Carrot noticed. They noticed how stiffly he moved when he came out from behind his desk, and it was only then that they realized they'd only seen him sitting down the whole week.

            There was a listless knock at the side door and Rufus Drumknott dragged himself in, his head down, every step seeming to weigh a mountain. He dropped a file on the Patrician's desk and turned to leave.

            "Ah, Drumknott," said the Patrician. "You may want to join us."

            The clerk turned around. The young man didn't look tired. He looked like he'd spent the last week running a marathon without a single moment of rest. He looked like he couldn't remember what sleep was. He had the blood shot eyes, the dark circles, the dull expression.

            Vimes and Carrot suddenly didn't feel like they had it so bad.

            "Gentlemen, I believe we should face facts," said the Patrician. "The nightly jaunts of Lady Sybil, Miss Stein, Sergeant Angua and Corporal Littlebottom are having a distressing effect on us."

            "Not totally, milord," said Drumknott. "Cheery's much more open to the--"

            "Distressing effects," repeated Vetinari, "which include a negative impact on our work." He nodded to the conference table. "Please have a seat. It is the operative moment to form a plan of action."

            Carrot sat down with relief, Drumknott slumped into his chair and Vimes appeared to have trouble bending his legs. A good deal of squeeching occurred before he got it sorted out.

            After Lord Vetinari eased himself into a seat, he set his walking stick on the table and fixed his companions with a steady gaze.

            "Something must be done, gentlemen," he said. "I'm afraid my knees can't take much more of this."

--

            New from Tiger Beet!

            Greebo!

            "He's sooooo cute!"

                        -- Derka von Fern, Grand Duchess of Chirm, 12 years old.

            The iconograph on the front of the magazine Tiger Beet, which purported to introduce Ankh-Morpork's young ladies age 10 to 17 to the hottest music and theater artists on the Disc, was the reason Greebo normally had to move through the city incognito. The iconograph was all hips. And it looked like the printer had somehow managed to tweeze additional chest hair into the picture, eliminate one or two scars from Greebo's face that were considered unsightly, and develop, using a refined technique of light and shadow, a bulge in the leather trousers to a size larger than it really was. Not that it was needed.

            Greebo liked the magazine, and not just because of the name. The paper smelled good. When he wanted a nap, he scattered a hundred copies of Tiger Beet on the floor in the hotel room his manager C.M.O.T. Dibbler had got him. It was like sleeping on Nanny Ogg's lap, but not so muffy.

            At the moment, he had a copy of the magazine tucked under his arm while enjoying a patrol of his territory. Since arriving in Ankh-Morpork, he'd easily defeated in single combat all of the male stray cats within 10 city blocks of Bongo's Song Pit. He flung his vanquished foe into the river with satisfaction, then returned to his newly won territory for the crowning moment. The Marking. Two middle age ladies with fruit salads on their hats caught him marking his territory against a brick wall on the corner of Cable and Easy Streets. The lady with the umbrella shook it at him.

            "Here! Young man! You--"

            Greebo turned around.

            The umbrella slipped onto the street. The ladies stared.

            "Er…You…"

            Greebo hadn't purposefully forgotten to button up his trousers, but since it was done, it was fine to enjoy the response it was getting.

            "Helloooo, ladies," he cooed. When he smiled, his fangs dented his lower lip.

            The ladies were both 50 years old. They were both widows. They were twin sisters with plump middles and yellow ringlets and a tad too much hair on the upper lips. Above all, they were respectable. No man in black with an eye patch and his manhood hanging out had ever been encountered by the sisters in their eventful lives. If such a thing was to happen, they knew what they were supposed to do. One of them had an umbrella and she intended to use it violently in the name of propriety and public decency. She stooped to pick it up from the cobbles. Greebo bent to help her and that's when it came.

            The scent…

            The lady breathed in a cloud of Greebo, not a scent that could be bottled (though Dibbler was working on it), but one that seemed to reach up under her dress and drill through her petticoats and tickle her in the one location respectable ladies were not to be tickled in. This was the real genius of Nanny Ogg's potion. The eyes could be closed to masculine wiles and the ears could be stopped up against their sweet words. But that scent cut through even the worst sinus trouble. The ladies didn't plug their noses fast enough.

            Greebo stepped gracefully toward an alley, paused to look back, and curled a finger at them. They followed.

            Greebo's goal, of course, was to sample every female who crossed into his territory, but even he had to admit after a week that this was far too much work for one cat. He'd barely got through a third of the women available, and not for lack of trying. He had to sleep. And there were the shows to do. He calculated he'd have to stay in Ankh-Morpork another couple of weeks to reach his goal of one hundred percent saturation. It had all been so much easier in Bad Ass.

            That's where he met the Tomcats. Their music was all right but they couldn't sing and Greebo was clearly the perfect front man if he was given enough fish and a warm place to nap. At first, it was all for fun. It was for the ladies. Going on tour had shown Greebo that even fun got to be work if there was enough of it.

            He emerged from the alley with a grin on his face, a man who still did love his work. On East Street, he was spotted by a clutch of school girls with Tiger Beets in their hands. They screamed. He ran. Not because of the girls but because of the noise. It was an automatic feline response he'd only managed to suppress inside the controlled environment of Bongo's Song Pit.

            The respectable twin sisters stepped out of the alley with their hats straightened and their faces arranged in a manner that made it clear that they had not been up to mischief of any kind. They blended into the foot traffic. The lady with the umbrella wasn't aware that the back of her dress was stuck in her petticoat.

--

            The four men stared at the poster laid out flat on the conference table in the Oblong Office. None of them spent much time examining the physical characteristics of other men, but the detailed colored woodcut of Greebo forced them to draw conclusions on the subject. It was a pose of Greebo with his tambourine smiling devilishly out of the page, but it might as well have been Greebo stretched out on some sort of comfortable couch with a sign saying "First come, first serve" in his hand.

            "Angua's too self-confident for that to impress her," said Carrot.

            "Cheery's too sensitive," said Drumknott.

            "Sybil's too sensible," said Vimes.

            Lord Vetinari tossed a magazine – Tiger Beet -- on top of the poster. On the cover, Greebo was doing one of his hip-wagging moves. Drumknott coloured.

            "He does that in public?"

            "That's a definite violation of the ordinances," said Carrot. "Paragraph 8, Section 2 Lewd Public Behaviour as revised by--"

            "Gentlemen, denial will not help us," interrupted the Patrician. "This young man, for reasons that must seem obvious, appeals to our ladies. I am alarmed to report that numerous articles with Mr. Greebo's image on them are now gracing Miss Stein's rooms. Posters, iconographs, mugs and so on. Have you noticed something similar?"

            "Angua has a Greebo picture in her locker at Pseudopolis Yard," said Carrot. "I saw it. Cheery has one too."

            "She does?" Drumknott looked crestfallen.

            "Sybil's been trying to cook again," said Vimes, "out of the Greebo Cookbook. She couldn't cook to begin with, and then these recipes. It's all fish. And she has a Greebo dragon apron. Where in Hades did she get a Greebo dragon apron?"

            "Yes, yes," said Lord Vetinari. "This man obviously has a certain attraction. And aside from Sir Samuel, who cuts a striking figure in those trousers, none of us can truly compete with him."

            "Sounds like somebody's been trying," said Vimes nastily. "Miss Stein putting you through your paces, sir?"

            "Actually, yes. And I am operating under the assumption that the same is true for all of you."

            There was a round of pointed silence.

            "If we are to extricate ourselves from the excessive enthusiasm of our ladies, we must confront the root of the problem," said Lord Vetinari. "Mr. Greebo, or I should say, his manager Mr. Dibbler, has dodged my invitations to the Palace the last several days."

            "Dibbler," said Vimes, a hand over his eyes.

            "His involvement alone is proof that this problem may not be easily solved by traditional means."

            "We could try asking them again not to go to the show anymore," said Carrot.

            "Cheery said I was getting too controlling."

            "Ask nicely."

            "I did! I danced for her for twenty minutes before I…" At the stares from the others, Drumknott fell silent.

            "What did Angua say when you asked her to stop going?" asked Vimes.

            Carrot shrugged. "She said she'll do whatever she wants."

            "Which I believe is the general consensus among the ladies," said Lord Vetinari. "It is possible for Sergeant Angua and Corporal Littlebottom to be put on the night shift again to curb their visits to Mr. Greebo's show, but that would not solve the problem for us, Vimes."

            "Why can't we just lock our women up in the Tanty for a few days?" he grumbled. "They'll get over it."

            "Jailing someone without cause is a violation of Paragraph 1 stroke--"

            "Pardon me, captain," said Drumknott, rubbing his eyes, "but could you please shut up about the ordinances?"

            "Drumknott!" scolded Vetinari.

            "It's Paragraph 4 anyway," said the clerk.

            "No, it isn't," said Carrot.

            "Yes, it is."

            "No, it isn't!"

            "Yes, it is!"

            Vimes grabbed Drumknott by the collar. "Did you just tell a captain of the Watch to shut up, lad?"

             "It's all right, sir. He's tired. We're all a little--"

            "You stay out of this, Carrot."

            "Commander, release my clerk."

            Vimes shook Drumknott. "You got some nerve…"

            Carrot put his arm out. "Sir, let go of him."

            "Shut up, Carrot!"

            Drumknott tried to slither out of Vimes' grasp, but he flailed by accident into Carrot, who pushed back. This began the minor altercation. It lasted about two minutes, during which Lord Vetinari seated himself back at the table, picked up his copy of Tiger Beet and passed the time by taking another look at the gentleman who was causing so much discord. There was a centerfold. Lord Vetinari tipped his head to look at it just as an inkwell arched over him and crashed against the wall. He moved onto the next page, grateful that at least the first centerfold he'd ever looked at in his life was not of Hanna. He'd been worried about that.

            Vimes, Carrot and Drumknott finally straightened up, panting. They fixed their clothing and dusted themselves off.

            "Feeling better, gentlemen?" asked the Patrician.

            They nodded.

            "Good. It is obviously time for us to pay a personal visit to Greebo and the Tomcats. I trust you will restrain yourselves better tonight. Gods forbid your pent-up frustration should explode upon the object of our ladies' affections."

            He smiled at the cover iconograph of Greebo. It wasn't a nice smile at all.