‘A dollar? That’s daylight robb’
Angua’s hand shot out and grabbed his neck. She could feel the veins, smell his blood and fear . . . She tried to think of cabbages.
‘It’s night-time,’ she growled.
Like the man in the alley, Sock listened to the call of the wild. ‘A dollar,’ he croaked. ‘Right. A fair price. One dollar.’
Carrot produced one. And waved his notebook.
‘A receipt is very important,’ he said. ‘A proper legal transfer of ownership.’
‘Right. Right. Right. Happy to oblige.’
Sock glanced desperately at Angua. Somehow, her smile didn’t look right. He scribbled a few hasty lines.
Carrot looked over his shoulder.
I Gerhardt Sock give the barer full and totarl ownership of the golem Dorfl in xchange for One Dolar and anythinge it doz now is his responisbility and nuthing to doe with me.
Singed, Gerhardt Sock.
‘Interesting wording, but it does look legal, doesn’t it?’ said Carrot, taking the paper. Thank you very much, Mr Sock. A nappy solution all round, I feel.’
‘Is that it? Can I go now?’
‘Certainly, and’
The door slammed shut.
‘Oh, well done,’ said Angua. ‘So now you own a golem. You do know that anything it does is your responsibility?’
‘If that’s the truth, why are people smashing them?
‘What are you going to use it/or?’
Carrot looked thoughtfully at Dorfl, who was staring at the ground.
‘Dorfl?’
The golem looked up.
‘Here’s your receipt. You don’t have to have a master.’
The golem took the little scrap of paper between two thick fingers.
That means you belong to you,’ said Carrot encouragingly. ‘You own yourself.’
Dorfl shrugged.
‘What did you expect?’ said Angua. ‘Did you think it was going to wave a flag?’
‘I don’t think he understands,’ said Carrot. ‘It’s quite hard to get some ideas into people’s heads . . .’He stopped abruptly.
Carrot took the paper out of Dorfl’s unresisting fingers. ‘I suppose it might work,’ he said. ‘It seems a bit-invasive. But what they understand, after all, is the words . . .’
He reached up, opened Dorfl’s lid, and dropped the paper inside.
The golem blinked. That is to say, its eyes went dark and then brightened again. It raised one hand very slowly and patted the top of its head. Then it held up the other hand and turned it this way and that, as if it had never seen a hand before. It looked down at its feet and around at the fog-shrouded buildings. It looked at Carrot. It looked up at the clouds above the street. It looked at Carrot again.
Then, very slowly, without bending in any way, it fell backwards and hit the cobbles with a thud. The light faded in its eyes.
There,’ said Angua. ‘Now it’s broken. Can we go?’
There’s still a bit of a glow,’ said Carrot. ‘It must have all been too much for him. We can’t leave him here. Maybe if I took the receipt out . . .’
He knelt down by the golem and reached for the trapdoor on its head.
Dorfl’s hand moved so quickly it didn’t even appear to move. It was just there, gripping Carrot’s wrist.
‘Ah,’ said Carrot, gently pulling his arm back. ‘He’s obviously . . . feeling better.’
‘Thsssss,’ said Dorfl. The voice of the golem shivered in the fog.
Golems had a mouth. They were part of the design. But this one was open, revealing a thin line of red light.
‘Oh, ye gods,’ said Angua, backing away. They can’t speak!’
‘Thssss!’ It was less a syllable than the sound of escaping steam.
Ill find your bit of slate’ Carrot began, looking around hurriedly.
‘Thssss!’
Dorfl clambered to its feet, gently pushed him out of the way and strode off.
‘Are you happy now?’ said Angua. Im not following the wretched thing! Maybe it’s going to throw itself in the river!’
Carrot ran a few steps after the figure, and then stopped and came back.
‘Why do you hate them so much?’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t understand. I really think you wouldn’t understand,’ said Angua. ‘It’s an … undead thing. They . . . sort of throw in your face the fact you’re not human.’
‘But you are human!’
‘Three weeks out of four. Can’t you understand that, when you have to be careful all the time, it’s dreadful to see things like that being accepted? They’re not even alive. But they can walk around and they never get people passing remarks about silver or garlic … up until now, anyway. They’re just machines for doing work!’
That’s how they’re treated, certainly,’ said Carrot.
‘You’re being reasonable again!’ snapped Angua. ‘You’re deliberately seeing everyone’s point of view! Can’t you try to be unfair even once?’
Nobby had been left alone for a moment while the party buzzed around him, so he’d elbowed some waiters away from the buffet and was currently scraping out a bowl with his knife.
‘Ah, Lord de Nobbes,’ said a voice behind him.
He turned. ‘Wotcha,’ he said, licking the knife and wiping it on the tablecloth.
‘Are you busy, my lord?’
‘Just making meself this meat-paste sandwich,’ said Nobby.
That’s pate de foie gras, my lord.’
“S that what it’s called? It doesn’t have the kick of Clammer’s Beefymite Spread, I know that. Want a quail’s egg? They’re a bit small.’
‘No, thank you’
There’s loads of them,’ said Nobby generously. They’re free. You don’t have to pay.’
‘Even so’
‘I can get six in my mouth at once. Watch’
‘Amazing, my lord. I was wondering, however, whether you would care to join a few of us in the smoking-room?’
‘Fghmf? Mfgmf fgmf mgghjf?’
‘Indeed.’ A friendly arm was put around Nobby’s shoulders and he was adroitly piloted away from the buffet, but not before he had grabbed a plate of chicken legs. ‘So many people want to talk to you . . .’
‘Mgffmph?’
Sergeant Colon tried to clean himself up, but trying to clean yourself up with water from the Ankh was a difficult manoeuvre. The best you could hope for was an all-over grey.
Fred Colon hadn’t reached Vimes’s level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.
Why had he been tied up with string? There were still loops of it around his arms and legs.
‘You sure you don’t know where I was?’ he said.
‘Yez walked into the place,’ said Wee Mad Arthur, trotting along beside him. ‘How come yez don’t know?’
“Cos it was dark and foggy and I wasn’t paying attention, that’s why. I was just going through the motions.’
‘Aha, good one!’
‘Don’t mess about. Where was I?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘I just hunts under the whole cattle-market area. I don’t bother about what’s up top. Like I said, them runs go everywhere.’
‘Anyone along there make string?’
‘It’s all animal stuff, I tell yez. Sausages and soap and stuff like that. Is this the bit where yez gives me the money?’
Colon patted his pockets. They squelched.
‘You’ll have to come to the Watch House, Wee Mad Arthur.’
‘I got a business to run here!’
‘I’m swearin’ you in as a Special Watchman for the night,’ said Colon.
‘What’s the pay?’
‘Dollar a night.’
Wee Mad Arthur’s tiny eyes gleamed. They gleamed red.
‘Ye gods, you look awful,’ said Colon. ‘What’re you looking at my ear for?’
Wee Mad Arthur said nothing.
Colon turned.
A golem was standing behind him. It was taller than any he’d seen before, and much better proportioned – a human statue rather than the gross shape of the usual golems, and handsome, too, in the cold way of a statue. And its eyes shone like red searchlights.
It raised a fist above its head and opened its mouth. More red light streamed out.
It screamed like a bull.
Wee Mad Arthur kicked Colon on the ankle.
‘Are we running or what?’ he said.
Colon backed away, still staring at the thing.
‘It’s. . . it’s all right, they can’t move fast . . .’he muttered. And then his sensible body gave up on his stupid brain and fired up his legs, spinning him around and shoving him in the opposite direction.
He risked looking over his shoulder. The golem was running after him in long, easy strides.
Wee Mad Arthur caught him up.
Colon was used to proceeding gently. He wasn’t built for high speeds, and said so. ‘And you certainly can’t run faster than that thing!’ he wheezed.
‘Just so long as I can run faster’n yez,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. This way!’
There was a flight of old wooden stairs against the side of a warehouse. The gnome went up them like the rats he hunted. Colon, panting like a steam engine, followed him.