‘Come on!’ Pin yelled.
‘These –ing sacks are heavyV
There were whistles blowing off to one side now, too. Mr Pin wasn’t used to this. Watchmen shouldn’t be enthusiastic, or organized. He’d been chased by watchmen before, when plans hadn’t quite worked out. Their job was to give up at the second corner, out of breath. He felt quite angry about that. The watchmen here were doing it wrong.
He was aware of an open space to one side of him, full of damp swirling flakes. Below him there was a sluggish sucking noise, like a very bad digestion.
This is a bridge! Chuck ’em in the river!’ he commanded.
‘I fort we wanted to find–‘
‘Doesn’t matter! Get rid of all of ’em! Right now! End of problem!’
Sister Tulip grunted a reply and skidded to a halt at the parapet. The two whining, yapping sacks went straight on over.
‘Did that sound like a –ing splash to you?’ said Sister Tulip, peering through the sleet.
‘Who cares? Now runV
Mr Pin shivered as he sped on. He didn’t know what had been done to him back there, but he’d felt like he’d walked over his own grave.
He felt he had more than just watchmen after him. He speeded up.
In reluctant but marvellous harmony, because no one could sing like a group of dwarfs, even if the song was ‘May I Suck Of Water Pure’,* the dwarfs seemed to be calming Otto down.
Besides, the horrible black emergency blutwurst had finally been
* In other circumstances it would have been as likely as cows singing ‘Let Me Be Covered In Rapturous Gravy’.
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produced. For a vampire this was the equivalent of a cardboard cigarette to a terminal nicotine addict, but it was at least something he could get his teeth into. When William finally tore his gaze away from the horror of the shadows, Sacharissa was mopping Otto’s brow.
‘Oh, vunce again I am so ashamed, vhere can I put my head, it’s so–‘
William held up the picture. ‘Otto, what’s this?’
In the shadows were mouths, screaming. In the shadows were eyes, wide. They didn’t move while you watched them, but if you looked at the picture a second time you got a feeling that they weren’t quite in the same place.
Otto shuddered. ‘Oh, I used all zer eels I had,’ he said.
‘And–?’
‘Oh, they’re awful,’ breathed Sacharissa, looking away from the tortured shadows.
‘I feel so wretched,’ said Otto. ‘Obviously they vere too stronk–‘
‘Tell us, Otto!’
‘Veil. . . the iconograph does not lie, you have heard zis?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes? Veil . . . under stronk dark light, the picture really does not lie. Dark light reveals zer truth to the dark eyes of zer mind . . .’ He paused and sighed. ‘Ah, vunce again no ominous roll of thunder, vot a vaste. But at least you could look apprehensively at the shadows.’
All heads turned towards the shadows, in the corner of the room and under the roof. They were simply shadows, haunted by nothing more than dust and spiders.
‘But there’s just dust and–‘ Sacharissa began.
Otto held up a hand. ‘Dear lady . . . I have just told you. Philosophically, the truth can be vot is metaphorically there
William stared at the picture again.
‘I had hoped that I could use filters and so on to cut down zer, er, unvanted effects,’ said Otto behind him. ‘But alas–‘
‘This gets worse and worse,’ said Sacharissa. ‘It gives me the humorous vegetables.’
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Goodmountain shook his head. ‘This is unholy stuff,’ he said. ‘No more meddling with it, understand?’
‘I didn’t think dwarfs were religious,’ said William.
‘We’re not,’ said Goodmountain. ‘But we know unholy when we see it, and I’m looking at it right now, I’m telling you. I don’t want any more of these, these . . . prints of darkness!’
William grimaced. It shows the truth, he thought. But how do we know the truth when we see it? The Ephebian philosophers think that a hare can never outrun a tortoise, and they can prove it. Is that the truth? I heard a wizard say that everything is made of little numbers, whizzing around so fast that they become stuff. Is that true? I think a lot of things that have been happening over the last few days are not what they seem, and I don’t know why I think that, but I think it’s not the truth . . .
‘Yes, no more of this stuff, Otto,’ he said.
‘Damn right,’ said Goodmountain.
‘Let’s just try to get back to normal and get a paper out, shall we?’
‘You mean normal where mad priests start to collect dogs, or normal where vampires mess around with evil shadows?’ said Gowdie.
‘I mean like normal before that,’ said William.
‘Oh, I see. You mean like back in the old days,’ said Gowdie.
After a while, though, silence settled on the press room, although there was an occasional sniff from the desk opposite.
William wrote a story about the fire. That was easy. Then he tried to write a coherent account of the recent events, but found he couldn’t get beyond the first word. He’d written The’. It was a reliable word, the definite article. The trouble was, all the things he was definite about were bad.
He’d expected to . . . what? Inform people? Yes. Annoy people? Well, some people, at least. What he hadn’t expected was that it wouldn ‘t make any difference. The paper came out, and it didn ‘t matter.
People just seemed to accept things. What was the point of writing another story on the Vetinari business? Well, of course, it had a lot of dogs in it, and there was always a lot of human interest in a story about animals.
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‘What did you expect?’ said Sacharissa, as if she was reading his thoughts. ‘Did you think people would be marching in the streets? Vetinari isn’t a very nice man, from what I hear. People say he probably deserves to be locked up.’
‘Are you saying people aren’t interested in the truth?’
‘Listen, what’s true to a lot of people is that they need the money for the rent by the end of the week. Look at Mr Ron and his friends. What’s the truth mean to them? They live under a bridge!’
She held up a piece of lined paper, crammed edge to edge with the careful looped handwriting of someone for whom holding a pen was not a familiar activity.
This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society,’ she said. They’re just ordinary people who breed canaries and things as a hobby. Their chairman lives next door to me, which is why he gave me this. This stuff is important to him! My goodness, but it’s dull. It’s all about Best of Breed and some changes in the show rules about parrots which they argued about for two hours. But the people who were arguing were people who mostly spend their day mincing meat or sawing wood and basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They’ve got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren’t lumped in with parrots. It’s not their fault. It’s just how things are. Why are you sitting there with your mouth open like that?’
William closed his mouth. ‘All right, I understand–‘
‘No, I don’t think you do,’ she snapped. ‘I looked you up in Twurp’s Peerage. Your family have never had to worry about the small stuff, have they? They’ve been some of the people who really run things. This . . . paper is a kind of hobby for you, isn’t it? Oh, you believe in it, I’m sure you do, but if it all goes wahoonie-shaped you’ll still have money. I won’t. So if the way it can be kept going is by filling it with what you sneer at as olds, then that’s what I’ll do.’
‘I don’t have money! I make my own living!’
‘Yes, but you were able to choose! Anyway, aristocrats don’t like to see other toffs starving. They find them silly jobs to do for serious wages–‘
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She stopped, panting, and pushed some hair out of her eyes. Then she looked at him like someone who has lit the fuse and is now wondering if the barrel at the other end is bigger than they thought.
William opened his mouth, went to shape a word, and stopped. He did it again. Finally, a little hoarsely, he said: ‘You’re more or less right–‘
The next word’s going to be “but”, I just know it,’ said Sacharissa.
William was aware that the printers were all watching. ‘Yes, it is–‘
‘Aha!’
‘But it’s a big but. Do you mind? It’s important! Someone has to care about the . . . the big truth. What Vetinari mostly does not do is a lot of harm. We’ve had rulers who were completely crazy and very, very nasty. And it wasn’t that long ago, either. Vetinari might not be “a very nice man”, but I had breakfast today with someone who’d be a lot worse if he ran the city, and there are lots more like him. And what’s happening now is wrong. And as for your damn parrot fanciers, if they don’t care about anything much beyond things that go squawk in cages then one day there’ll be someone in charge of this place who’ll make them choke on their own budgies. You want that to happen? If we don’t make an effort all they’ll get is silly . . . stories about talking dogs and Elves Ate My Gerbil, so don’t give me lectures on what’s important and what’s not, understand?’