Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  The Street was always with you, just as Willikins had said. And Vimes remembered the ladies who scrubbed. Cockbill Street got scrubbed so often that it was surprising it wasn’t now at a lower level than the ground around it. The doorstep was scrubbed, and then whitened; the red tiles on the floor inside were scrubbed and then polished with red lead; and the black cooking stove was blackened even further by being rubbed ferociously with black lead. Women in those days had elbows that moved like pistons. And it was all about survival, and survival was all about pride. You didn’t have much control over your life but by Jimmy you could keep it clean and show the world you were poor but respectable. That was the dread: the dread of falling back, losing standards, becoming no better than those people who bred and fought and stole in that ferocious turmoil of a rookery known as the Shades.

  The goblins had succumbed, had they? Going through the motions now, while the world gently expelled them, they were giving up, letting go…but murder was murder in any jurisdiction or none at all. He tied his thoughts in a knot under his chin, snatched a couple of smouldering torches and said, “Come on, chief constable, let’s go and fight crime.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Feeney, “but can I ask you another question?”

  “Of course,” said Vimes, heading toward a tunnel that was perceptibly sloping downward.

  “What’s going on here, sir, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, I know that there’s been a murder and maybe some bugger wanted me to think it was you as done it, but how come, sir, that you understand that heathen lingo of theirs? I mean, I hear you talking to them, and they must understand you, ’cos they talk back, sir, but they talk like somebody cracking walnuts under their foot, sir, and I can’t understand a damn word of it, sir, if you’ll excuse my Klatchian, not a damn word. I want an answer, sir, because I feel enough of a bloody fool as it is; I don’t want to be even more foolish than I feel now.”

  Vimes, in the privacy of his own head, tried out the statement, “Well, since you ask, I have a deadly demon sharing my mind, which seems to be helping me for reasons of its own. It lets me see in this gloom and somehow allows me and goblins to communicate. It’s called the Summoning Dark. I don’t know what its interest in goblins is but the dwarfs think it brings down wrath on the unrighteous. If there has been a murder I’ll use any help I can get.” He did not in fact articulate this, on the basis that most people would have left very quickly by the time he had finished, so he settled for saying, “I have the support of a higher power, chief constable. Now, let’s check out this place.” This didn’t satisfy Feeney, but he appeared to understand that this was all he was going to get.

  It was an eerie journey. The hill was honeycombed with passages natural and, occasionally, by the look of it, artificial. It was a small city. There were middens, crude cages now empty of whatever had been in them, and here and there quite large beds of fungus, in some cases being harvested very, very slowly, by goblins who barely glanced at the policemen. At one point they passed an opening which appeared to lead to a crèche, by the sound of it, in which case baby goblins twittered like birds. Vimes couldn’t bring himself to look further inside.

  As they went lower down they came across a very small rivulet that trickled out of one wall. The goblins in a rough and ready way had made a culvert, so that their journey onward was to the sound of running water. And everywhere there were goblins, and the goblins were making pots. Vimes was prepared for this, but badly prepared. He had expected something like the dwarf workshops he had seen in Uberwald—noisy, busy and full of purposeful activity. But that wasn’t the goblin way. It appeared that if a goblin wanted to start on a pot, all it needed to do was find a place to hunker down, rummage through whatever it was it had in its pockets and get to work, so slowly that it was hard to tell that anything was going on. Several times Vimes thought he heard the chip of stone on stone, or the sound of scratching, or what might be sawing, but whenever he came close to a squatting goblin it politely edged around and leaned over the work like a child trying to keep a secret. How much snot, he thought, how many fingernail clippings, how much earwax did a goblin accumulate in one year? Would an annual pot of snot be something like a lady’s delicate snuffbox, or would it be a sloshing great bucketful?

  And why not, yes, why not teeth? Even humans were careful when it came to the escaped teeth, and, come to that, there were people, especially wizards, who made a point of ensuring that their toenails were put beyond use. He smiled to himself. Maybe the goblins weren’t all that stupid, only more stupid than humans were, which, when you came to think about it, took some effort.

  And then, as they crept past a cross-legged goblin, it sat back on its haunches and held up…light. Vimes had seen plenty of jewels: generations of rings, brooches, necklaces and tiaras had funneled down the centuries and into Lady Sybil’s lap, although these days most of them were kept in a vault. That always amused him.

  Sparkle though Sybil’s jewels might, he would have sworn that none of them could have filled the air with light as much as the little pot did when its creator held it up for a critical appraisal. The goblin turned it this way and that, inspecting it like a man thinking of buying a horse from somebody called Honest Harry. White and yellow beams of light shimmered as it moved, filling the drab cave with what Vimes could only think of as echoes of light. Feeney was staring as a child might stare at his first party. The goblin, however, appeared to sneer at its creation and tossed it dismissively behind him, where it smashed on the wall.

  “Why did you do that?” Vimes shouted, so loudly that the goblin he was addressing cowered and looked as if it expected to be struck. It managed to say, “Bad pot! Bad work! For to be ashamed! Make much better one time more! Will start now!” It took another terrified look at Vimes and hurried into the darkness of the cave.

  “He smashed it! He actually smashed it!” Feeney stared at Vimes. “He took one look at it and smashed it! And it was wonderful! That was criminal! You can’t just destroy something as wonderful as that, can you?”

  Vimes put a hand on Feeney’s shoulder. “I think you can if you’ve just made it and think you could have done it better. After all, even the best craftsmen sometimes make mistakes, yes?”

  “You think that was a mistake?” Feeney rushed over to where the debris of the late pot had hit the floor, and picked up a handful of glittering remains. “Sir, he did throw these away, sir?”

  Vimes opened his mouth to reply, but there was a faint noise from Feeney’s hand: dust was falling between his fingers like the sands of time. Feeney grinned nervously at Vimes and said, “Maybe it was a bit shoddy after all, sir!”

  Vimes squatted down and ran his fingers through the pile of dust. And it was just dust, stone dust, no more color or sparkle to it than you would find in a pebble by the road. There was no trace of the scintillating rainbow that they had just seen. But on the other side of this cave another goblin was trying to look inconspicuous as it worked on what was probably another pot. Vimes stepped over to it with care, because it was holding its pot as if prepared to use it to defend itself.

  Casually, to show that he meant no harm, Vimes put his arms behind his back and said in tones learned from his wife, “My word! That looks like a very good pot. Tell me, how do you make a pot, sir? Can you tell me?”

  The potter looked down at the thing in its hands, or the thing in its claws if you wanted to be nasty, and perhaps slightly more accurate, and said, “I make the pot.” It raised the work in progress.

  Vimes wasn’t that good at stone which wasn’t part of masonry, but this one was slightly yellow and shiny. He said, “Yes, I can see that, but how do you actually make the pot?” Once again, the potter sought enlightenment from the universe, looking up and down and everywhere that Vimes wasn’t. At last inspiration dawned. “I make pot.”

  Vimes nodded gravely. “Thank you for sharing the secrets of your success,” he said and turned to Feeney. “Come on, let’s keep going.”

  It seemed that
a goblin cave—or lair or burrow, depending on what effect you wanted to give—was not quite the hellhole that you might have thought. Instead it was just, well, a hole, stuffy with the smoke of the innumerable small fires goblins appeared to need, along with the associated small pile of rotted kindling, and not forgetting the personal midden.

  Goblins old and young watched them carefully as they passed, as if expecting them to put on a program of entertainment. There were certainly juvenile goblins. Vimes had to admit that alone among the talking species, goblin babies were plug ugly, merely small versions of their parents who themselves were no oil paintings, and not even a watercolor. Vimes told himself that they could not help it, that some incompetent god had found a lot of bits left over, and decided that the world needed a creature that looked like a cross between a wolf and an ape, and gave them what was surely one of the most unhelpful pieces of religious dogma, even by the standards of celestial idiocy. They looked like the bad guys and, without the intervention of the Summoning Dark, they sounded like them, too. If walnuts could shriek when they were being cracked, then people would say, “Doesn’t that remind you of a goblin?” And it appeared that, not content with all this, the laughing god had apparently given them that worst of gifts, self-knowledge, leaving them so certain that they were irrevocably walking rubbish that metaphorically they couldn’t even find the energy to clean the step.

  “Oh, blast! I’m treading on something…in something,” said Feeney. “You seem to be able to see much better than me down here, sir.”

  “Good clean living, lad, carrots and whatnot.”

  “Jefferson could be in here somewhere. I’m sure there are caves that we’re missing.”

  “I know he’s not in here, lad, only don’t ask me how I know because I would have to lie to you. I’m going through the motions to help myself think. It’s an old copper trick.”

  “Yes, sir, treading in every motion, I should think!”

  Vimes smiled in the gloom. “Well done, lad. A sense of humor is the copper’s friend. I always say the day isn’t complete without a little chuckle—” He paused because something had clanged against his helmet. “We’ve reached Jefferson’s iron workings, my lad. I just found an oil lamp; I certainly haven’t seen those higher up.” He felt in his pocket and soon a match flame bloomed.

  Well, Vimes thought, it’s not that much of a mine, but I bet it works out better than paying dwarf prices.

  “I can’t see any way out,” Feeney volunteered. “I suppose he drags the ore out through the main entrance.”

  “I don’t think that the goblins are stupid enough to live in a set of caves that have just one entrance. There’s probably one that doesn’t even show up on the outside. Look, you can see where somebody’s been lugging heavy weights across the stone—” Vimes stopped. There was another human in the cave. Well, thank you, darkness, he thought. I suppose asking who it is might be in order?

  “Sir, I don’t think it’s just mining that goes on here. Take a look at these,” said Feeney, behind Vimes.

  Feeney held out some books, children’s books, by the look of it. They were grubby—this was, after all, the home of goblins—but Vimes turned to the first page of the first book and was not surprised to see an unfeasibly large red apple, currently somewhat soiled by the pressure of many dirty hands.

  A voice in the gloom, a female voice, said, “Not all questions are answered, commander, but fortunately some answers are questioned. I’m attempting to teach the goblin children. Of course, I had to bring in an apple for the young ones to see,” the woman in the shadows added. “Not many knew what one was, and certainly not what they were called. Troll language is unbelievably complex compared with what these poor devils have got. “Good day to you too, Mr. Upshot. Not cowering away from the truth in your lockup?”

  Vimes had spun round when he first heard that voice, and was now staring with his mouth open. “You? Aren’t you the, er…”

  “The poo lady, yes, Commander Vimes. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how people remember?”

  “Well, you must admit that it does—how can I put it?—stick in the mind, Miss Felicity Beedle.”

  “Very well done, commander, considering that we’ve met only once!”

  And now Vimes noticed that with her there was a goblin, a young one by the size of it, but more noticeable because it was staring directly at him with a keen and interested gaze, quite uncharacteristic of the goblins that he had seen so far, apart from the wretched Stinky. Feeney, on the other hand, was taking great care not to catch the lady’s eye, Vimes noticed.

  Vimes smiled at Miss Beedle. “Madam, I reckon I see your name at least once every day. When I was putting my lad to bed yesterday, do you know what he said? He said ‘Dad, do you know why cows do big wet sloppy poos and horses do them all nice and soft and smelling of grass? Because it’s weird, isn’t it? That you get two different kinds of poo when they’re both about the same size and it’s the same grass, isn’t it, Dad? Well, the poo lady says it’s because cows have room in ants, and the ants help them get, sort of, more food out of their food, but because horses don’t have room in ants, they don’t sort of chew all that much, so that their poo is still very much like grass and doesn’t smell too bad.’ ”

  Vimes saw that the woman was grinning, and went on, “I believe that tomorrow he is going to ask his mother if he may chew his dinner very hard one day, and the next day not do it very much, and see if he gets different smells. What do you think of that, madam?”

  Miss Beedle laughed. It was a very enjoyable laugh. “Well, commander, it would seem that your son combines your analytical thinking with the inherited Ramkin talent for experimentation. You must be very proud? I certainly hope you are.”

  “You can bet on that, madam.” The child standing in Miss Beedle’s shadow was smiling too, the first smile he’d seen on a goblin. But before he could say anything, Miss Beedle directed a disapproving look at Feeney and went on, “I only wish I could find you in better company, commander. I wonder if you know where my friend Jethro is, officer?”

  Even in the lamplight, Feeney looked furious, but if you read people, and Vimes was a ferocious reader, it was clear the fury was spiced with shame and dread. Then Vimes looked down at the little bench, where there were a few tools and some more brightly covered books. It was the streets that had taught Vimes that there were times when you would find it best to let a nervous person get really nervous, and so he picked up a book as if the previous dreadful exchange had not taken place, and said, “Oh, here’s Where’s My Cow?! Young Sam loves it. Are you teaching it to the goblins, Miss?”

  With her eyes still on the agitated Feeney, Miss Beedle said, “Yes, for what it’s worth. It’s hard work. Incidentally, technically I’m Mrs. Beedle. My husband was killed in the Klatchian war. I went back to ‘Miss’ because, well, it’s more authory, and besides, it wasn’t as though I’d had much time to get accustomed to ‘Mrs.’ ”

  “I’m sorry about that, madam, Had I known I’d have been a lot less flippant,” said Vimes.

  Miss Beedle gave him a wan smile. “Don’t worry, flippant sometimes does the trick.” Beside the teacher the little goblin said, “Flip-ant? The ant is turned over?”

  “Tears of the Mushroom is my star pupil. You’re wonderful, aren’t you, Tears of the Mushroom?”

  “Wonderful is good,” said the goblin girl, as though tasting every word. “Gentle is good, the mushroom is good. Tears are soft. I am Tears of the Mushroom, this much is now said.”

  It was a strange little speech: the girl spoke as if she were pulling words out of a rack and then tidily putting them back in their places as soon as they had been said. It sounded very solemn and it came from an odd, flat, pale face. In a way, Tears of the Mushroom looked handsome, if not exactly pretty, in what looked like a wraparound apron, and Vimes wondered how old she was. Thirteen? Fourteen, maybe? And he wondered if they would all look as smart as this if they got their hands on some decent clothing and did som
ething about their godawful hair. The girl’s hair was long and braided and pure white. Amazingly, in this place, she looked like a piece of fragile porcelain.

  Not knowing what to say, he said it anyway: “Pleased to meet you, Tears of the Mushroom.” Vimes held out his hand. The goblin girl looked at it, then looked at him, and then turned to Miss Beedle, who said, “They don’t shake hands, commander. For people who seem so simple they’re astoundingly complicated.”

  She turned to Vimes. “It would seem, commander, that providence has brought you here in time to solve the murder of the goblin girl, who was an excellent pupil. I came up here as soon as I heard, but the goblins are used to undeserved and casual death. I’ll walk with you to the entrance, and then I’ve got a class to teach.”

  Vimes tugged at Feeney to make him keep up as they followed Miss Beedle and her charge toward the surface and blessed fresh air. He wondered what had become of the corpse. What did they do with their dead? Bury them, eat them, throw them on the midden? Or was he just not thinking right, a thought which itself had been knocking at his brain for some time. Without thinking, he said, “What else do you teach them, Miss Beedle? To be better citizens?”

  The slap caught him on the chin, probably because even in her anger Miss Beedle realized that he still had his steel helmet on. It was a corker, nonetheless, and out of the corner of his stinging gaze he saw Feeney take a step back. At least the boy had some sense.

  “You are the gods’ own fool, Commander Vimes! No, I’m not teaching them to be fake humans, I’m teaching them how to be goblins, clever goblins! Do you know that they have only five names for colors? Even trolls have around sixty, and a lot more than that if they find a paint salesman! Does this mean goblins are stupid? No, they have a vast number of names for things that even poets haven’t come up with, for things like the way colors shift and change, the melting of one hue into another. They have single words for the most complicated of feelings; I know about two hundred of them, I think, and I’m sure there are a lot more! What you may think are grunts and growls and snarls are in fact carrying vast amounts of information! They’re like an iceberg, commander: most of them is where you can’t see or understand, and I’m teaching Tears of the Mushroom and some of her friends so that they may be able to speak to people like you, who think they are dumb. And do you know what, commander? There isn’t much time! They’re being slaughtered! It’s not called that, of course, but slaughter is how it ends, because they’re just dumb nuisances, you see. Why don’t you ask Mr. Upshot what happened to the rest of the goblins three years ago, Commander Vimes?”