Strandpiel 7: Apartheid (Separation)
How dual nationality works out for one proud user.
Currently embuggered by loads of ideas and very little time to commit to record because of the demands of a new job. LOTS of ideas for continuing old stories ("Many worlds", et c) and barely enough time to sketch them out for retrieval later. Building skeletons, basically.
A series of episodes and glimpses into the later life of a new character. Readers do appear to want to find out more about her. I'll try to put them into some sort of order. As time allows.
We closed the last chapter on Bekki Smith-Rhodes Stibbons about to realise she would not be able to attend the Assassins' Guild School alongside her friends. This was due to an inconvenient attack of magical ability which triggered one of the Exemption Clauses insisted upon by Lord Vetinari. (1)
Spa Lane, Ankh-Morpork.
Godsmother Irena smiled down tolerantly and understandingly at Bekki, who was stretched out face-down on her bed. Pyn the cat was curled up next to her and was contentedly asleep. Every so often Bekki reached out to give him a reassuring stroke.(2) Pyn purred like a steam train crossed with a bandsaw.
"Aren't you going to say it?" Irena asked.
"Do you think it would do any good?" Bekki replied, her face partly muffled by the pillow.
Irena considered this for a second.
"No." she admitted.
Bekki twanged slightly. It was there, certainly. The desire to throw back her head and howl at the world and scream "It's just not fair!" But she sensed it would get her precisely nowhere and just make her look like a silly whingeing little kid. So she wasn't going to say it. Even if it wasn't fair.
"You can't go to the Assassins' School." Irena said. Bekki winced. She was going to be separated from Davvie. Davvie Bellamy had been there. Since always. They'd played together. They'd been to First School with Miss Susan as their teacher. They'd moved on to the Convent School together. They'd sorted out Parsifal Venturi together. Several times. And now at age eleven when they had to move on to Big School, they weren't going together. Davvie Bellamy was going to the Assassins' School. And she wasn't. It made her want to scream.
"Look at it this way." Godsmother Irena said, kindly. "Say you had got into the Assassins' School. Do you think you'd be happy there, devyushka? Something tells me you're not cut out to be an Assassin. And that's kind of the entire purpose of it. You're not a good fit for it. If your mother's honest, she knows that too."
Bekki grunted. Her Godsmother smiled slightly.
"And has it occurred to you Manni and Davvie have missed something, which is quite a great big important something? They're so happy to have been accepted, that it's not occurred to either of them that they're going to the School where their mothers are teachers. And half the adults they've met while they're growing up are teachers there. Like your mum, for instance."
Irena looked reflective for a moment.
"Slava bogu, I wouldn't like to be in that position. They're going to be watched all the time, and everyone's going to expect gold stars for good behaviour and that they Set An Example. All the time. And the other kids are going to be suspicious and think they're getting an easier ride because they're related to teachers. You're better off out of it, devyushka!"
Bekki rolled onto her side and looked up at her godsmother. She hadn't considered that. She really hadn't.
"Good. I'm getting your attention." Irena said. Her wide friendly face smiled down at her. Bekki thought, as she always did, that her godsmother was pretty, but strangely pretty. Her face was different. It wasn't an Ankh-Morporkian face. It looked flatter. Her eyes were slightly slanted. Not in an Agatean way. But it suggested something Agatean, way back in her ancestry. (Irena had offhandedly said "Far Überwald. Zlobenia. Mouldavia. Where I'm from. It's a typical kulak face. I'm a kulak. I get the face. Nice of you to think it's pretty, though. Most people just say "handsome". " (3))
"Okay!" Irena said. "We've established that you can't be an Assassin. Nichevo. Can't be helped. The reason for your not being able to go to the Assassins' School is that you've got magic. You can't be an Assassin with magic. Not allowed. And take it from me. Unless you find a way to do something useful with that magic, it isn't just going to sit there and be patient. It's going to find its way out regardless."
Irena ticked the points off on her fingers.
"Despite your father being who is. And despite your adoptive grandfather being who he is. You can't go to the University and learn how to be a wizard, for the fundamental reason that you don't have a willy. It's that basic. I'm sure Mustrum Ridcully's been looking for loopholes to allow him to enrol a girl, but right now the other old men in the Faculty are all ganging up on him and saying things like "Remember what happened last time? And we don't have the right plumbing for girl students!"
Irena smiled.
"So that only leaves one possibility, don't you think?"
Bekki sighed.
"I know. Witchcraft." she said, reluctantly. It didn't sound as exciting, cool or stylish as being an Assassin. Nowhere near.
Irena stood up. She had a look of deep satisfied contentment to her.
"Get some boots on." she said. "No time like the present to make a start."
"At least I get to learn to fly." Bekki said, looking for a silver lining. She hunted for matching footwear. Irena smiled, seemingly pleasantly.
"Flying? All in good time, devyushka. But right now, you are going to begin learning practical witchcraft. From the ground up."
They left the house together.
"Just taking her out for a couple of hours, Johanna. As agreed." Irena called to Bekki's mother. Johanna acknowledged her. They walked on in silence. Bekki felt slightly cheated. Surely she'd at least get to ride pillion on a broomstick or something? Not walking?
Irena broke the silence.
"By the way, I'm so glad you didn't do the "It's not fair!" business in any way." she said, amiably. "Consider Julian and Ruth, for instance. Who right now have every reason to scream "It's not fair!" at the world. But they aren't. They're getting on with it. Which makes your little business trivial by comparison."
"It's really sad." Bekki said.
"Maybe." her godsmother agreed. "But they had over ten years together. A lot of man-woman things never get to last that long. At least they had those ten years. Did I tell you I was there right at the start, when they first met? Your mother has a big streak of mischief in her, by the way. I suspect she did a bit of nudging to see what happened." (4)
Bekki heard the story of the Battle Of The Tobacco Farm, that had happened a year or two before she'd been born.
"My father decided that if he was going to get killed somewhere alongside my mother, he should at least actually be married to her when he died." she said, slowly. "Kind of romantic, I suppose. And Julian met Ruth. Although it didn't, you know, get anywhere till they met again in Ankh-Morpork. And now they're separating."
"Or being separated." Irena said. "Big difference. Now let me talk to you about a steading and what one is…"
Irena's steading began in a cellar room in Pseudopolis Yard, on the Isle of Gods. Bekki thought it seemed to be a really odd place to be a Witch. Then a second voice in her head said That's the point. Witches and odd places go together. Where there's an odd place, you find a witch.
There also seemed to be an Understanding between Irena and some very senior policemen. Bekki realised she was going into the sort of parts of Pseudopolis Yard where only policemen went, and civilians didn't normally get access. But being seen with Irena made it all alright, somehow. People understood. What exactly they were understanding, Bekki wasn't sure about. But Captain Carrot had been really pleasant and had said something like "I see you've got your pupil, Sergeant Politek." Irena had said "It happens to all witches, Captain Carrot. Sooner or later."
"I hope you grow up into a very good witch, miss." Carrot had said to Bekki. Bekki realised this was somebody who really respected witches. Getting the respect of people like Captain Carrot… maybe this being-a-witch did actually have a good side to it.
And then there was…
"Hey, babiushka!"
Hey, Igor!"
Irena explained that the Watch Igor did his sort of thing. She and the other Watch Witches did their sort of thing too. And that there was a lot of overlap in the middle. They worked with Igor a lot.
"This is our steading." she said. "All around you. Watchmen. Their families. Their kids. The big happy City Watch family. Which witch you get all depends who's not out on Pegasus flights or on Watch duty. But usually there's one of us on call. Me, Olga, Nottie. If we're all on duty, Mrs Proust helps out. It all seems to work."
"Your steading is the whole city?" Bekki asked.
Irena grinned. "No. Just the bits of it that have a connection with the City Watch. We're Watch Witches. And we go where we're needed and do what we have to. That's important."
There was a knock on the door that, if a knock could sound shifty and sidle, was a shifty sidle.
Irena sighed.
"You're helping with this one. There's nothing like jumping in at the deep end."
Then she called
"Come in, Nobby!"
Bekki watched as Nobby Nobbs came into the witches' consulting room. She tried not to let her mouth drop open in horror.
Irena gave him a slight smile.
"The usual problem, Nobby?"
"Yes, miss. Thanking you kindly, miss."
His eyes flickered over to Bekki.
"Errr…"
"My apprentice, Nobby. Trainee witch. Under instruction."
Nobby's eyes flickered with recognition.
"I got you now, miss! You're miss Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons, aren't you? Your mum's Doctor Smith-Rhodes, the assassin, and your dad's Professor Stibbons…"
"Almost right, Nobby. Except that here, she's just Miss Smith-Rhodes."
Bekki must have looked questioning. Irena smiled.
"Not being disrespectful to your father, Bekki. He will understand. A witch always takes her mother's name. It's traditional."
Irena nodded. She contemplated the sight which was Nobby Wormsborough Nobbs, City Watch corporal. It was not a comforting sight. Irena patted her shoulder.
"And now, Miss Rebecka Smith-Rhodes, witch in training. This is where you learn some fundamental and vital witch skills. Like how to lance boils. Get your shirt off, Nobby."
It had been a courtesy detail that when she got home later in the day, dessert had been boiled jam pudding with custard.
Bekki ate it anyway, but deliberately closed her eyes. The taste was still yummy. She tried to shut out what it might look like.
She thought back to her afternoon and early evening. You just had to be, you know, objective. People got boils. They were painful and unsightly. You had to bring relief and healing and do it safely. That was witchcraft. You had to take a sterilised sharp edge and a cloth pad and… Bekki shuddered again. And then clean the area with surgical alcohol and apply a dressing.
After that, things hadn't been nearly so unspeakably bad. Captain Angua had asked about her hardpad. Feet, yes, but nice feet, well looked after. And the wife of Constable Hardiman had a teething baby. Bekki had seen here where she really could make a difference and had cuddled and rocked the little boy while Irena checked inside his mouth, showed Bekki what to look for, and had applied a soothing clove-based salve. Bekki suspected something more magical had applied, as the baby was quiet and sleeping at the end.
"Can't stop the teeth growing in." Irena had said, offhandedly, "But I could move the pain and the discomfort somewhere else. You'll learn how to do that, too."
And in between patients, Irena had had Bekki mixing and preparing salves and ointments. Bekki's shoulder still twinged. It was worse than swinging a sword. Some of those ointments had been resistant to being blended and stirred. She had learnt a new word in all its horribleness. Viscous. That which is a thick oily paste that resists being stirred and mixed.
And this would be her life from now on, weekends and a couple of evenings a week. Learning how to be a witch. Bekki sighed.
"Mum?" she asked. She was trying to get out of calling her Mummy. She was eleven now. Mummy was so little baby-girl.
Johanna tried not to be upset about the Mum thing. She accepted her oldest daughter was, well, getting older. But still… it would have been nice if she could still be Mummy. At least for a little longer.
"Bekki?" she asked.
"Auntie Emmie was saying. Years ago, when you did a march in the wilderness. You treated the blisters on her feet. And that it felt so much better afterwards. Would you show me how you do blisters?"
Johanna smiled.
"Of course, Bekki. But – not a thing to talk about over dinner, hmm? Come and see me afterwards. I'm thinking this is something you'll need to know about for your… well, for the work Irena's teaching you."
"Thanks, mummy…mum."
Bekki got her lessons in foot care from her mother. Johanna explained, at length, that for people who have to move and be on their feet and cover up to forty miles a day on foot, often in the wilds a long way away from towns, care of the feet is essential. Lose your feet and you are dead. And these are all the things that can go wrong…
She applied herself diligently, and practiced the lessons her mother was teaching her on the feet of Watchmen. Whose job kept them on their feet for long hours of every day. She reasoned that this was a very useful transferable skill she could apply, as student witch in the Watch steading. The other three witches quietly approved of this. Bekki was dealing with a watchman with blisters one evening, and had got to the point where she was immersing his feet in the ice-cold footbath, with lots of ice, to get the swelling down. It was one of her mother's seemingly brutal remedies for blistered feet. Auntie Emmie had been heartfelt in describing it and had shuddered at a bad memory.
The voice behind her had a harsh gravelly tone. It was accompanied by cigar smoke.
"When you're done here with Constable Flitley, young lady. I was wondering if you might take a look at my feet? No rush. When you're done with Flitley."
"Okay." Bekki said, without looking up. "Just sit down and put that cigarette out, would you, this is a no-smoking area!"
She wondered why Olga Romanoff gasped and looked alarmed for a second. Then she heard the new Watchman laugh appreciatively.
"Alright. Sorry. This is your place. Your rules apply." She heard a cigar being stubbed out. The smell faded, even if it lingered. At least it wasn't being added to. Then a little later, she treated the feet of Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch. It was, as Sam Vimes said later, an interesting experience for both of them. For instance, being told off by a girl of nearly twelve, who was making it clear she was the one in charge. He didn't get that sort of thing very often. And anyway, he'd heard on the Watch grapevine that the student witch who was being trained up down in the infirmary was an absolute magician with feet. People were talking about her.
"They're not wrong, too." Vimes remarked. "Besides, your mother was one of my Specials for a long time. Did well, too. Sorry to lose her when she started a family. Then, in a roundabout way, I get one of the family she started as part of the Watch. Sort of. You were worth meeting."
Vimes had grinned, thanked her for the attention to his feet, remarked that feet were the bane of a Watchman's life, or one of them, had said that the incidence of sick leave due to foot problems had dropped quite a bit in the last couple of months, and patted her shoulder.
"Well done, miss." he had said, and moved on. Bekki noted that he very carefully did not light a cigar till he was out of the treatment room.
Julian Smith-Rhodes was usually a pleasant, optimistic, and generally happy man. It was nice to be around him. Ruth N'Kweze was a pleasant and well disposed woman with a wicked sense of humour.
But not tonight. Both seemed unhappy, even miserable and sad. Bekki longed to hug them both and tell them how much she loved them.
Mummy was quiet and thoughtful. Her father looked uncertain as if he didn't quite know what to do. Uncle Danie had patted Julian on the shoulder and said, in three words that expressed the depth of his feelings, "Bad break, bro." Auntie Heidi was standing with Ruth. Two women who'd started together at the age of eleven at the Assassins' Guild School and whose lives in possibly twenty years since had brought them closer together. Old friends who had, in defiance of national and racial reality, bonded.
"I have to tell myself it's not that bad." Ruth said. "I've had the summons. Father wants me Home. He thinks it's high time the Paramount Crown Princess accepts the burden of duty, and returns to the Empire to assume her ceremonial duties."
"And you do not refuse your father." Julian said. "He wants you Home. You go."
"And mine's only the Paramount King of the Zulu Empire." Ruth said. "Tyrant and ruler. Although not a despot. Just a man who rules by the divine authority of the Gods. Your father, however, is Charles Smith-Rhodes."
Julian winced.
"Who wants me home to assume more of the duties of Family." Julian said. "And we both know what that means." He sounded sorrowful. Claude the butler stepped forward to refill his glass. "Father isn't unreasonable. He accepts it's got to be somebody I actually like and can stay married to. He's offered me a choice of Chloe de Beers, Geneveive Rothschild, or Berenice Beit. He's frankly said the choice is mine, as marriage into any one of these families will have advantages. But in his opinion, it's high time I stopped dithering and contracted a suitable marriage. Nice girls. Met them all. They're okay. But…"
Ruth took his hand. There was a kind of longingness about it.
"Father's setting up introductions to people. Indunas in his circle. Who have their own impis and are loyal to the Paramount Throne. As far as he's concerned, getting a few spare daughters married off to the right men will strengthen the Throne. The husbands will know who's given them the social advancement, and they'll be more inclined to be loyal."
Ruth sighed.
"I've met some of them. They aren't bad guys. And at least one of them I could… well, you know, shape him up. It's not as if I'm not being offered a choice, either."
"Don't you think it's odd that we both get the ultimatum in the same few days?" Julian mused. It almost feels co-ordinated, somehow."
Ruth snorted slightly.
"That presumes your father and mine have somehow spoken to each other as responsible adults who hold each other in mutual esteem, agreed it's time to put a stop to it, and get their respective wayward children called Home to be married to somebody more suitable." She said. "I mean. Closed border. State of continual near-war. No diplomatic channels. BOSS on one side and the College of Witchfinders on the other, charged with ensuring there are no points of contact between our countries and to root out espionage…no, can't see how your father or mine pulled that one."
Julian regarded her.
"You're being ironic again, aren't you?"
"What do you think? Hellfire. I'm thirty-one years old. I've spent twenty of those years in Ankh-Morpork. I love it here. Now I've got to go Home and learn how to be a Zulu again. Without you."
It was a painful evening. Bekki felt agonies inside for two people she loved. They were hurting, and she couldn't do anything about the hurt.
And then Ruth and Julian were gone. There had been farewell parties for both as they left the Central Continent to return to Howondaland. Ruth's teaching position at the Guild School was taken over by a new teaching assistant. Julian accepted that he was being rotated back to the Bureau of Foreign Affairs in the national capital. Right in the heart of things, and able to attend a lot of Society dinners and dances, where eligible women could be courted.
Johanna, after a while, got a letter from Howondaland to say the Paramount Crown Princess was formally married to a prominent General of the impis, a man high in the trust of the Paramount King and a rising star. A little later, the engagement of Mr Julian Smith-Rhodes to Miss Chloe de Beers was announced. The DeBeers were a prominent and very rich family with serious interests in gold and diamond mining.
"Met one of them once. He was a complete idiot."(5) Johanna said, over breakfast. "Unpleasant, arrogant and stupid. Hope his sister is nicer, and has a working brain in her head."
The question of where Rebecka would now continue her formal education after the age of eleven was also being discussed. Her sister Famke was being annoying, in a seven-year-old sort of way, loudly proclaiming that she couldn't wait to get away from all those soppy nuns at Seven-Handed-Sek's and move up to the Assassins' School, where she could start learning proper things. Bekki gritted her teeth, and very pointedly spent time with her baby sister Ruth, a girl who was quiet and timid where Famke was brash and outgoing.
Bekki also realised that, as a "non-domiciled citizen" of Rimwards Howondaland, there were extra courses she'd have to do. Mum had said "Just put up with it and give them the answers they want to hear. Please."
It was held that just because people were being brought up overseas, they were not exempt from certain things. In fact, it made it more vital they were taught Civics and Citizenship, so they knew what it was to be a Citizen. What it meant.
Students of Rimwards Howondalandian nationality were brought together from all the schools in the general Ankh-Morporkian area for teaching convenience, and taught the Civics course together, through the Embassy. Bekki accepted that her mother felt obliged to put up two girls, students at the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies, for the week. The QAYL girls talked about their school in tones ranging from world-weary condescension, through frustration with the restrictions imposed on them, to finally admitting that they quite liked the place somehow. Don't ask us why.
After a while, Bekki suspected a sales pitch was going on.
Diana, the older QA girl, shuffled her feet embarrassedly.
"Well. Err. Your mother asked us to talk about the School with you. So that you have an idea. She said not to tell you. But, err, they're thinking of sending you there. They wanted you to meet girls who are there. To help you make a decision. Err…"
Bekki felt annoyed.
She threw herself, with tooth-gritting determination, into the Civics course. People didn't normally do it at eleven. But her mother and father accepted that Bekki was bright, intellectually capable, was way ahead of her peers in most subjects at school, probably something she got from Ponder, and most crucially, the sooner she got this nonsense out of the way, the better. It was mandatory.
Bekki therefore spent a week listening to what she suspected was a one-sided view of Howondalandian history and culture, how her great nation had come to be, how its legal systems were adapted from the best features of Sto Kerrigian and Ankh-Morporkian jurisprudence, why the white race was superior and how the Gods had called white people to be stewards and guardians of Howondaland, and therefore why apartheid was a right and proper thing for our nation in this stage of its development. That it was right and proper there should be a White Howondaland and how the blood of the Volk should not be diluted by mingling it with the blood of lesser peoples. She compared this, inside, to what she'd seen of people like Ruth N'Kweze, Claude, Eve, Blessing and Dorothea, and concluded that anyone calling those black people inferior and lesser was an idiot.
She observed that the person giving this lecture on the vital need for a White Howondaland was Liutnant Verkramp of BOSS. An idiot. And creepy. And obnoxious. She also noted that Auntie Heidi, who she knew here she had to address respectfully as Mevrou Smith-Rhodes, was sitting a little way apart from Verkramp, her legs crossed and her arms folded, looking distant and unreadable. Auntie Heidi had lectured them in Culture and Literature and had made the dull, dry, syllabus almost interesting. But the apartheid stuff she was leaving to Verkramp, Bekki noticed.
"So what did you learn today?" her mother asked, when Bekki returned home. It sounded carefully neutral. Bekki considered and thought before answering.
"That one day, an educated black middle class may arise and take its rightful place in the government of our society." she said. "But that day is not today and may not be even tomorrow. Until the day comes, white people should uncomplainingly take up the burden of leadership and decide for all, treating the blacks with the appropriate degree of firm kindly respect, recognising they are incapable of governing themselves. Hence apartheid. Separation."
Bekki was aware of everyone around the table watching her. They included Diana and Lydia, the two guest students from the QACL. She was also aware that Claude, Eve and Blessing were looking at her. With silent, closed in faces.
Bekki knew she had a good memory. She'd quoted Verkramp pretty much verbatim. The grey grim horror of hearing a justification for apartheid had stuck in her head. She couldn't shift it.
"Mum. Just this once, would you allow me to swear? I think it's all total kak. Dreckscheiss!"
Her mother looked astonished for a moment, then burst out laughing. Diana and Lydia, who had both been unflattering about Verkramp on the way out, looked shocked for an instant. Then they too laughed.
" Wellnow." Johanna Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons remarked. "It appears we have somebody else here who is politically incorrect. And I'm proud of you."
Johanna scrutinised her daughter for a long moment.
"Just remember to tell them what they want to hear and read in the written tests."
She turned to Lydia and Diana.
"Which goes for you two also."
"Ja, mevrou Doktor!" the two guests chorused.
Liutnant Verkramp staked restlessly around the upper floors of the Embassy. There was something wrong here, he could feel it. He prided himself on knowing how to read an atmosphere. Something subversive was happening. Something inimical to the interests of White Howondaland. A threat. As an officer of BOSS, he was trained to recognise threats. He knew he must be eternally vigilant for threats to White Howondaland. He was trained for it. It was his vocation. A sacred duty to the Staadt.
But what was it? He walked on, feeling agitated and not knowing why. A sense of low-level paranoia was his default state. Not physically prepossessing, small thin and weedy, with a receding chin and a hairline receding almost as fast, with a bulging prominent Adam's apple and a thin reedy voice, Verkramp was a poor advertisement for the superiority of the white race in Howondaland. Possibly because of this, he pursued perceived sedition with the tenacity of a terrier after rats. He was renowned for it.
He had done his job so well that despite nearly twenty-five years of devoted selfless service to his nation, he was still only a Liutnant. This rankled. (6)
But here he was in a key posting and represented his nation's spying and intelligence services. That was compensation…
Verkramp, deeply troubled, stalked on. And then he heard it, distantly. A bleck voice. Singing that dangerous revolutionary anthem that kept surfacing among the blecks, despite the heaviest possible sanctions. He raced towards the sound, unhityching his sjaemboek whip, hoping to make an arrest and give the insolent bleck something to think about.
Nkosi sikelel' iWondala, Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo…
It was a bleck voice. It had to be. No white person would sing that dangerous revolutionary nonsense. This had to be stopped, and stopped now…
But he found no blecks. That puzzled him. The only person in sight was the red-haired child, a relative of the Ambassador, who had the privilege of using the Embassy library to study for her Civics exam. She was diligently and conscientiously bent over a book, occasionally pausing to take notes. Verkramp smiled. The girl looked up and greeted him, sounding pleased to see him.
"Mister Lieutenant Verkramp?" she asked. "I wonder if you could help me. These law books are hard reading. I'm trying to get it into my head as to the difference between grand apartheid and petty apartheid, as they're defined in law. Can you help?"
Flattered, Verkramp forgot about seditious blacks and helped the girl with her homework. Such a clever girl, he thought. And loyal. It would serve Doctor Smith-Rhodes right if her daughter turns out to be a good citizen who believes in the rightness of what we do…
Bekki thanked him and went back to her books. She mentioned she'd heard a native song some minutes ago, Mister Lieutenant, but to be honest she hadn't paid much attention. She thought it was nice, the way the servants sing as they work. It shows how happy they are, don't you agree?
"Some songs are dangerous, meisie Smith-Rhodes." he said, politely. "Tell me if you see or hear a servant singing that same song. I would wish to know."
Verkramp resumed his patrol, feeling a warmer glow and an almost avuncular liking for Bekki. A clever, conscientious, young girl.
And then he heard it again. A woman's voice.
Yizwa imithandazo yethu, Nkosi sikelela, thina lusapho lwayo!
He dashed back, sjaemboek in hand. But there was nothing there except the red-haired girl bent over her books. This time Bekki confirmed she'd heard the song again, yes, and it sounded like it was coming from over there somewhere.. is it serious, mister Lieutenant? Does this mean they are likely to rise and slaughter us all in our beds?
Verkramp felt oddly protective to the girl, who looked innocently concerned. He drew himself up to his full height and his adam's apple puffed out in a self-important way. You had to protect the precious women and children of the Volk, didn't you? It was a sacred duty.
"Not if I can help it." he said. The girl thanked him fulsomely. Then she asked him about the categories the Bureau of State Security used to classify people by race. Could he clarify them for her?
Flattered, Verkramp said there was no need to go into things in that much detail for her citizenship exam. But since she'd asked…
She may even consider joining BOSS, if handled correctly. That would truly delight her subversive mother. And her family. Imagine! A Smith-Rhodes in the BOSS!
Verkramp was impressed by her intelligence and her quick grasp of things. He resumed his patrol. He still wanted to get that bloody bleck…
This time he ran into the Ambassador, who was touring his building. He quickly reported a Situation. Mr van der Graaf heard him out, looking sceptical as the damned man always did when listening to a report from his BOSS chief.
Then both of them heard the black woman's voice…
Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso, O fedise dintwa le matshwenyeho,
O se boloke, O se boloke setjhaba sa heso.
Setjhaba sa Howondaland!
They investigated together this time. But still all that was there was the diligent and conscientious red-haired girl bent over her books. She warmly greeted her Uncle Pieter.
"Leave me alone with my niece, Liutnant Verkramp? Dankie. And don't let this get out of proportion. Be subtle. Allow the blacks a small triumph and a feeling they've got one over on the baases. That should be enough and prevent them looking for big triumphs. Which may not be so relatively harmless. You understand me? Oh – and put that damn whip away. You know my opinions on that sort of thing. Dankie."
The Ambassador greeted his niece. Really his great-niece, but the distinctions got blurred in everyday use.
"It's good to see you working so hard and diligently, Rebecka!" he said, loudly. He waited for Verkramp to slink away, then came to stand behind her.
"Oh, yes. The Racial Separation Acts and Classifications." he remarked. "Strict. But necessary."
Then he leant down and spoke softly in her ear.
"Rebecka. Please try and refrain from tormenting Liutnant Verkramp." he advised her. "I find the man a trial at the best of times. I do not need a niece, who shares her mother's peculiar sense of humour, who drives him completely demented. Please refrain. Thank you. I am retiring from this position soon and I do not want my successor to inherit a BOSS officer who is completely insane. Part—way and predictably mad I can cope with. You have a good singing voice, by the way. Impressive."
"Thank you, Uncle Pieter." Bekki said, politely.
To be continued…
(1) The Assassins' Guild School, in the opinion of Lord Vetinari, should be as inclusive an educational establishment as possible. It should reach out to sections of the community who it had never previously considered as potential Assassins. Vetinari had pointed out that he had got some superb and sterling Dark Clerks that way. All that mattered – most of the time – was that the pupil had an aptitude for what the school could teach, had clearly demonstrated skills and potential, and was not likely to pose preventable problems later in life. Preventable problems, in Vetinari's mind, encompassed things like psychopathic or sociopathic disorders. It also encompassed Undead. Imagine, for instance, a demonstrably unkillable Zombie Assassin? Or a vampire like de Magpyr, whose intrinsic unpleasantness was compounded by a Guild training? It covered werecreatures. The name of Wolfgang von Überwald was mentioned at this point. Lord Downey accepted this. And the last exemption clause was magic users. Vetinari felt strongly that a dual-qualified Witch or Wizard Assassin would present problems. He invited Lord Downey to consider, for instance, the nature of an Assassin whose throwing knives and arrows would hit every time, unerringly guided by magic. Potential students were now routinely screened for magic and any Undead traits before final acceptance. There'd been the embarrassing business with Angela Carter of Scorpion House, a girl who had developed late-onset lycanthropy. Vetinari had noted that there was now one werewolf out there who'd received a few years of Assassin training. He trusted there would never be a second. Professor Ponder Stibbons, a Wizard married to an Assassin, and who therefore had an understanding of what was needed, had devised the necessary screening tests. It made him feel both professionally vindicated, and a complete shit, in that one of the potential Assassin students thus screened out was his own oldest daughter.
(2) Pyn didn't need any reassurance. Bekki, on the other hand, did.
(3) Irena and Olga are witches from an exotic faraway place which has a Russian/Slavonic vibe about it. Funny, I'd never thought much about how two "Russian" girls in Ankh-Morpork might look and how they might physically stand out. Even if they lose a lot of their accent when they speak Morporkian and only give it away when they are moved to swear and cuss in "Russian". Or call Bekki "devyushka". They'd still look Slavonic. Trying to describe a Russian sort of face here.
(4) go to my story Bungle In The Jungle, in which Ruth and Julian embark on a most unwise romance. With a little help from others.
(5) See my tale Murder Most 'Orrible.
(6) There were plans to accelerate him to Major in the last six months or so of his service, as a face-saving thing. The BOSS hierarchy was capable of some human touches. Admittedly he'd also be shunted to some distant backwater to tally forms or something, somewhere where Major Verkramp would be hard-put to do any damage as he – and his superiors - counted down the days till retirement.
Notes Dump:
Somewhere in a sea roughly halfway between two continents, the one of the tale being currently written and the semi-glimpsed one of future tales yet to be committed to paper, where isolated ideas are given lifebelts and a signal rocket against being rescued in future.