-1 -
Sam Vimes sat in his office, and stared at the walls. It was quiet today out on the streets of Ankh-Morpork - well, as quiet as Ankh-Morpork got, which was albeit noisier than most towns - and his eyes shifted towards the mountains of paper amassing on his desk. He supposed he should get some paperwork done today: he hated seeing the worried expression on Carrot's face whenever he came in. He took a sheet off the top of one of the many piles (being careful not to unbalance them, of course) and his eyes flickered as he looked at it for a moment.
Vimes, on the rare occasions he did his paperwork, had developed a technique of looking at the name of the person who had sent it, looking for a dotted line, and looking for figures. It had come to his attention that most of the paper sitting on his desk could be divided into a few small categories.
There were complaints from the Campaign for Equal Heights and the Silicon Anti-Defamation Group, and his general response to those was to throw them into the fire. The dwarf and troll groups complained about everything, including the fact that there was in fact very little to complain about. Vimes wasn't prejudiced: a lot of his friends and fellow Watchmen were in fact dwarves and trolls. However, he had worked out quite early on in his life that the Equal Heights campaigners were in fact a group of stroppy little buggers who'd been called bzug'da hiara one too many times and had decided to fight back with the most potent weapon known to man - paperwork - and that the Silicon Anti-Defamation Group was just a bunch of business-minded trolls (i.e. Chrysophrase and his followers) who had seen the success that the Equal Heights campaigners had had and had decided to, as most trolls put it, start "jumping up and down on the bandwagon".
Then there were bills from people like Burleigh and Stronginthearm (weapons), Cable Street Haberdashery and Outfitting (uniforms) and the blacksmith on Gleam Street (armour). He found it best to just sign these: in his opinion, bills didn't go away if you ignored them.
A third type of paperwork was official reports that he had to sign. Most of them he signed without question: some, however, he was forced to read. Nobby was prone to much exaggeration, which was often questioned if he let it slip through; Carrot and Fred were both haphazard spellers, and employed what he called the "artillery fire" form of punctuation, meaning that they went everywhere, and if it was in the right place, that counted as an added bonus; Visit, or to give him his full name, Visit-The-Infidels-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets, put so much religious propaganda into his that Vimes spent as much time editing them as he would have taken writing the actual report himself.
Anything else Vimes filed in his mind under "other", as other paperwork so rarely appeared. He started to read a letter - he usually didn't, but this one was from Mr Slant, and lawyers' letters should always be read extremely carefully - but before he could get started, there was a creaking sound outside his door.
"Come in, Detritus," he said, and Detritus opened the door and entered.
"Dere's a letter from der Palace, sir," he said. "Just come in. Washpot said you'd get it soon enuff, but I fort to myself, der Commander might want to see dis right away. So I come up here to give to you pers'nally, sir."
"Thank you, Detritus," Vimes said, taking the envelope from him, peeling the wax seal off, and taking the letter out. After a moment or so, he looked over the letter.
"You may go now, Sergeant Detritus."
"Yessir."
Detritus left, with the walls of Vimes' study warping inwards as his immense weight shook and distorted the corridor outside. He was a good sergeant. As Detritus himself had once said, "dose two short planks, dey's as fick than Detritus", but Vimes didn't like undue intelligence in a copper. He certainly didn't have it. No intelligent man would have taken on Toothless Harry and his five-strong gang single-handed, or chased the Rime Street Stabber through a mile and a half of the Shades before finally concussing him with a brick halfway down Treacle Mine Road. No sane man would have done that. However, no-one but Vimes would have been able to do that. Intelligent men, despite all of their book-reading and such, wouldn't have been able to pull off the Ankh-Morpork Handshake, which was exactly what he had used to get one over on Toothless Harry. He read the letter that had been sent from the Palace. It was reasonably short.
Sir Samuel,
The Patrician requests your audience at two o' clock in the Oblong Office, regarding certain international matters.
Yours sincerely,
Drumknott (Aide to the Patrician)
Vimes put the paper down on his desk. What the hell did Vetinari want this time? Nevertheless, he got up, and went to the door of the Watch House, only to find his wife waiting at the door.
"Sybil?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, just collecting some money. Nobby said he'd rattle a tin around and try to get some money in for the Sunshine Sanctuary."
"Really?" he said brightly, but inside he sighed. Poor gullible Sybil. Getting money out of Nobby was like trying to get blood out of a lawyer. However, just as he thought this, Nobby Nobbs came out of the Watch House with a tin of money.
"How much did you get?" Sybil said.
"About ten dollars, at first, but then I threatened to breathe on them and it was surprising how much more money I got."
Vimes watched as his wife took the tin from Nobby.
"Nobby? Are you wearing a Whinny If You Love Dragons badge?"
"Yessir!" he said. "Honorary member of the club, me!"
Vimes took a while to take this in.
"Nobby, you have unsung facets."
"Yessir! But I've got a special cream for it."
"Anyway," Sybil said. "As you're here, maybe we could go out for a walk or something. The baby's at home with Mrs. Crick, but we could pick him up and then go out for a walk. Get some fresh air."
"Fresh air? In Ankh-Morpork?"
"Well then, maybe we could go outside the city for a change," she said, hopefully.
"Sorry, dear. Wish I could, but I've got business with Vetinari."
"Oh, really? Well, say hello to Havelock from me."
"Yes, dear."
"You're not going to, are you?"
"No, dear."
"Sam!"
"What?"
"I wish you'd listen once in a while!"
"I was listening. But I don't like talking to Vetinari. The man worries me."
"I know you don't. But just try, for once. For me?"
Vimes sensed that the only way out of this conversation was to consent.
"Yes, dear."
"Good. I expect he gets lonely: it suppose it's nice for him to have someone to talk to, even if it is 'official business'."
"Lonely? Vetinari?"
"You don't think so?"
"Not really. The man's…different to all of us. I wouldn't be surprised if he's lived his life alone."
"I'm sure he's human underneath all of the layers, Sam. Just like you. Don't you agree? You don't seem that nice on the surface, but there's a person beneath the surface. Maybe it's the same with Havelock. Try to talk to him."
"Yes, dear."
"And don't cause trouble. You know I hate it when you and Havelock row."
"Yes, dear."
"I have to hear about it for weeks from my friends."
"Yes, dear."
"Off you go, then."
"Yes, dear."