Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  “Yes, I saw the poor thing, and I’m sorry that I can’t tell you where Jethro is.”

  Vimes stared at her and thought, she’s probably telling the truth. “He’s not hiding in some part of the mine, is he?”

  “No, I’ve looked. I’ve looked everywhere. No note, nothing. And his parents have no idea either. He’s a bit of a free spirit, but he’s not the sort of person to go away without telling me.” She looked down, clearly embarrassed.

  The silence said a lot. Vimes broke it by saying, “The murder of that poor girl on the hill will not go unpunished while I live. I’m taking it personally, you might say. I think someone was trying to set me up and mud sticks.” He paused. “Tell me—these pots the goblins make. Do they carry them around all the time?”

  “Well, yes, of course, but only the ones they’re filling at the moment, obviously,” said Miss Beedle, with a trace of annoyance. “Is this relevant?”

  “Well, a policeman, you might say, thinks in goblin language: everything is contingent on everything else. Incidentally, how many other people know that you have a tunnel into the hill?”

  “What makes you think I have a tunnel going into the hill?”

  “Let me see now. This place is practically at the foot of the hill, and if I lived here I’d have dug out a decent wine cellar for myself. That’s one reason, and the other is because I saw the flash in your eyes when I asked you the question. Would you like me to ask you the question again?”

  The woman opened her mouth to speak, and Vimes raised a finger. “Not finished yet. What isn’t as simple is the fact that the other day you arrived in the cave without anybody seeing you walk up the hill. Everyone tells me that there are eyes watching you everywhere in the country and, as luck would have it, I had a few working for me yesterday. Please don’t waste my time. You’ve committed no crime that I know of—you understand being kind to goblins is not a crime?” He thought about that and added, “Although perhaps some people round here might think it is. But I don’t and I’m not stupid, Miss Beedle. I saw that goblin head in the pub. It looked as if it’s been there for years. Now, I just want to go back up to the cave without anybody seeing me, if you don’t mind, because I have a few questions to ask.”

  Miss Beedle said, “You want to interrogate the goblins?”

  “No, that word suggests that I mean to bully them. I simply have to obtain the information I need to know before I start to investigate the murder of the girl. If you don’t want to help me, I’m afraid that will be your choice.”

  The next day Sergeant Colon did not turn up for work. Mrs. Colon sent a note around by a boy as soon as she got back from work herself.*

  There was nothing romantic about Fred Colon when she got home, and so after sweeping the floor, doing the washing-up, wiping all the surfaces and spending some time teasing out the lumps of mud that had got caught on the doormat, she made haste to Pseudopolis Yard—after visiting her friend Mildred who had a rather nice porcelain jug and basin set she wanted to sell. When she eventually got to the Watch House she explained that Fred was terribly poorly, and sweating cobs and gabbling about rabbits.

  Sergeant Littlebottom was sent to investigate, and returned looking solemn as she climbed the steps to Vimes’s office, now occupied by Captain Carrot. You could tell he was the occupant now not simply because he was sitting in the chair, which was a persuasive hint, but also because all the paperwork was done and aligned, a trait which always impressed Inspector A. E. Pessimal, a small man who had the heart of a lion and the physical strength of a kitten and the face, disposition and general demeanor that would make even hardened accountants say, “Just look at him. Doesn’t he look like a typical accountant to you?”

  But this didn’t worry the lion heart of A. E. Pessimal. He was the Watch’s secret weapon. There wasn’t a bookkeeper in the city who would like to see a visit from A. E. Pessimal unless, of course, he was perfectly innocent—although generally that could be ruled out, because Mr. and Mrs. Pessimal’s little boy could track an error all the way through the ledger and down into the cellar where the real books had been hidden. And all Inspector A. E. Pessimal wanted for his genius was a meticulously calculated wage and a chance, every now and again, to go out on the streets with a real policeman, swinging his truncheon and glaring at trolls.

  Carrot leaned back. “So how’s Fred getting on, Cheery?”

  “Nothing much that I can see, really, um…”

  “That was a big um, Cheery.”

  The trouble was that Captain Carrot had a friendly, honest and open face, that made you want to tell him things. It didn’t help that Sergeant Littlebottom held a small torch for the captain, even though he was well and truly spoken for—he was also a dwarf, well, technically, and you can’t help how you dream. “Well…” she began reluctantly.

  Carrot leaned forward. “Yes, Cheery?”

  She gave in. “Well, sir, it’s unggue. You come from Copperhead…Did you run into many goblins up there?”

  “No, but I know that unggue is their religion, if you can call it that.”

  Cheery Littlebottom shook her head, trying to get out of her mind some speculation about the part a reasonably high stool might play in a relationship, and telling herself that Sergeant Hammer-of-Gold, over in the Dolly Sisters Watch House, caught her eye every time she was busily catching his eye when they happened to meet on patrol, and was probably a really good catch if she could pluck up the courage to ask him if he was actually male.* She said, “Unggue is not a religion, it’s a superstition. The goblins don’t believe in Tak,* sir, they’re savages, scavengers, but…” She hesitated again. “There’s something I was told once, and it’s unbelievable, but sometimes they eat their babies, sir, or at least, the mother will eat her child, her newborn child, if there’s famine. Can you believe that?”

  Carrot’s mouth dropped open for a moment, and then a small voice said, “Yes, I think I can, sergeant, if you would excuse my saying so.”

  A. E. Pessimal looked defiantly at their expressions and tried to stand a little straighter. “It’s a matter of logic, you see? No food? But the mother may survive by reconsuming the child, as it were, whereas, if all other food has been exhausted, then the child will die. In fact the child is dead as soon as the conundrum is postulated. The mother, on the other hand, might, by so doing, survive for long enough for more food to be found and become available, and in the course of time may bear another child.”

  “You know, that is a very accountancy thing to say!” said Cheery.

  A. E. Pessimal remained calm. “Thank you, Sergeant Littlebottom, I shall take that as a compliment because the logic is impeccable. It’s what is known as the dreadful logic of necessity. I’m well versed in the logistics of survival situations.”

  The chair creaked as Captain Carrot leaned forward. “No offense meant, Inspector Pessimal, but may I enquire as to what kind of issues of survival arise during double-entry bookkeeping?”

  A. E. Pessimal sighed. “It can get pretty hazardous as the end of the fiscal year draws near, captain. However, I take your point and would like you to understand that I believe I have read every single memoir, manual, log, and message in a bottle—by which I mean, of course, message taken from a bottle—that is currently available, and I can assure you that you would be amazed at the terrible decisions that sometimes have to be made by a group of people so that some, if not all, may live. Classically we have the shipwrecked sailors adrift in an open boat far on the ocean with succor extremely unlikely. Generally, the procedure is to eat one another’s legs, although sooner or later the supply of legs is going to run, if I may use the word, out; and then arises the question who will die so that some may live. Dreadful algebra, captain.” Only then did A. E. Pessimal blush. “I’m sorry. I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.”

  “Perhaps you should walk through the Shades, inspector,” said Carrot, “you wouldn’t have to dream. Do carry on, Chee
ry.”

  Cheery Littlebottom shrugged. “But eating your own child, that’s got to be wrong, yes?”

  “Well, sergeant,” said A. E. Pessimal, “I have read about such things and if you think of the outcomes, which are the death of both mother and child or the death of the child but the possible life of the mother, the conclusion must be that her decision is right. In his book A Banquet of Worms Colonel F. J. Massingham does mention this about the goblins and apparently, according to the goblins’ world view, a consumed child, which clearly did emerge from the mother, has been returned whence it came and will, hopefully, be reborn anew at some future date when circumstances are more favorable with, therefore, no actual harm done. You may think that this view does not stand up to scrutiny, but when you’re faced with the dreadful algebra, the world becomes quite a different place.”

  There was silence while they all contemplated this.

  Carrot said, “You know how it is in a street fight, Cheery. Sometimes if things get hot and you know it’s you or them—that’s when you do the algebra.”

  “Fred doesn’t seem to know where he is,” said Cheery. “He wasn’t running a temperature and his bedroom isn’t particularly warm, but he acts as if he’s very hot and he won’t let go of that damn little pot. He shouts if anyone tries even to get near it. Actually, he screamed at me! And that’s another thing, his voice has changed, he sounds like a man who’s gargling rocks. I had a word with Ponder Stibbons at the university, but they don’t appear to have anyone who knows anything much about goblins.”

  Captain Carrot raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure? I know for a fact that they have a Professor of Dust, Miscellaneous Particles and Filaments, and you tell me that there’s no expert on an entire species of talking humanoids?”

  “That’s about right, sir. All we could turn up was stuff about what a bloody nuisance they are—you know the kind of thing.”

  “Nobody knows anything about goblins? I mean, stuff worth knowing?”

  A. E. Pessimal actually saluted. “Harry King does, captain. There’s quite a few of them downriver. They don’t come into town much, though. You may remember that Lord Vetinari was gracious enough to ask for me to be seconded to the revenue in order that I might go through Mr. King’s returns, given that all the other tax officers were frightened to set foot on his property. I myself, sir, was not frightened,” said A. E. Pessimal proudly, “because I am protected by my badge and the majesty of the law. Harry King might throw a taxman out of the building, but he’s clever enough not to try that with one of Commander Vimes’s men, no indeed!” You could have lit the city with the proud glow from A. E. Pessimal’s face as he tried to puff out a chest that mostly went in.

  It became a little more swollen when Carrot said, “Very well done, inspector. You’re a mean man with a smoking abacus indeed. I think I shall pay a visit to our old friend Harry first thing in the morning.”

  Vimes did some thinking about the problem of taking Young Sam to a crime scene, but frankly, the lad was showing himself to be up to just about any encounter. Besides, any lad wants to go and see where his dad works. He looked down at his son. “Would you be scared of a long walk in the dark, lad? With me and these ladies?”

  Young Sam looked solemn for a moment and then said, “I think I’ll let Mr. Whistle do the being scared and then it won’t bother me.”

  The door to the secret tunnel, if indeed it was secret, was in Miss Beedle’s cellar, which had quite a well-appointed wine rack and a general, not unpleasant smell of, well, a cellar. But once through the door there was a smell of distant goblins.

  It was a long walk in the dark, especially when you were obliged to walk up quite a steep slope very nearly on hands and knees.

  The smell of goblins grew stronger after a while, but during that while, you tended to get used to it. Here and there light shone into the gloom from holes to the outside world, which Vimes thought was sensible engineering until he realized that rabbits used this tunnel too, and had left plenty of droppings as evidence. He wondered whether he should pocket a few samples for Young Sam’s collection and suggested this to Young Sam, toiling manfully behind him, who said, “No, Dad, got rabbits. Want elephant if we find one.”

  Rabbit poo, Vimes noticed, was about the size of a chocolate raisin, a thought which instantly dragged him back to his youth, when if by some means, never entirely legal, he had acquired some cash, he would spend it on a ticket to the fleapit music hall and buy a packet of chocolate raisins with the change. Nobody knew, or cared to guess, what the things were that scuttled and scratched down below the seats, but you soon learned a very important rule: if you dropped your chocolate raisins, it was vitally important not to pick them up!

  Vimes stopped, causing Miss Beedle to walk into the sack of apples that she had asked him to carry, and got a grip on himself sufficiently to say, “I’d like a moment or two to catch my breath, Miss Beedle. Sorry, not as young as I was and all that. I’ll catch you up. What are we carrying these bags for anyway?”

  “Fruit and vegetables, commander.”

  “What? To goblins? I’d have thought they found their own food.”

  Miss Beedle inched her way around him and climbed on into the dark, saying, over her shoulder, “Yes, they do.”

  Vimes sat with Young Sam for a moment until he felt better and said, “How are you doing, lad?”

  In the dark a small voice said, “I told Mr. Whistle not to worry, Dad, because he’s a bit silly.”

  So is your father, thought Vimes, and is probably going to continue to be so. But he was on the chase. One way or another he was on the chase. Who you were chasing could wait. The chasing was the thing.

  Anger helped Vimes up the last leg of the climb. Anger at himself and whoever it was who had punctured his holiday. But it was worrying: he had wanted something to happen and now it had. Somebody was dead. Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.

  He found Miss Beedle and Tears of the Mushroom waiting with a dozen or so other…ladies. It was a calculated guess, given that he had yet to find any reliable way of telling one goblin from another—except, of course, that Tears of the Mushroom was wearing her apron with pockets, which he hadn’t seen before, and apparently neither had the other ladies, since Tears of the Mushroom was now the hit of the season as far as her sisters were concerned, given that they currently wore daring little outfits of old sacking, plaited grasses and rabbit skin. They gathered around her chorusing, presumably, the goblin equivalent of “Oh my dear, you look fabulous.”*

  Miss Beedle sidled up to Vimes and said, “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s a start. Carrying things, useful things, without having to use your hands—well, that’s a step in the right direction.” She pulled Vimes a little way from the newly formed goblin branch of the Women’s Institute, who had by now attracted the attention of Young Sam, whose cheerful reluctance to be overawed by anything had clearly won over the girls, resulting in his being where he always felt he should be, the center of attention. It was a knack.

  Miss Beedle went on, “If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children. I suppose you’re wondering why we were trekking up here with all the sacks?”

  Behind them, the apron was being tried on by one girl after another: this year’s must-have item. Vimes turned back to the woman and said, “Well, this is just a guess, but I see a lot of rabbit bones around the place, and I have heard that you can die if you live only on rabbit, only I don’t know why this is.”

  Miss Beedle lit up. “Well, Commander Vimes, you’ve certainly gone up in my estimation! Yes, rabbit has been the scourge of the goblin nation! I understand it depletes the body of some vital nutrient if you don’t eat other things as well. Just about any green stuff will do, but the male goblins think a proper meal is a rabbit on a stick.” She sighed. “Dwarfs know about this, and they’re absolutely fanatical about goo
d food, as you should be if you spend much of your time underground, but nobody cared to tell the goblins, as if they would listen anyway, and so bad health and premature death is their lot. Some survive, of course, mostly those who prefer rat or eat the whole rabbit, not just the more apparently edible bits, or they simply eat their vegetables.”

  She began to unfasten a sack of cabbages and continued, “I was well in with the wife of the head man here, because he got sick and I made certain he got a few good meals. Of course he swears it was because he did the magic, but his wife was remarkably sensible, and the other males don’t worry about what the girls get up to, so they slip fruit and veg into their stews, saying they’re magical, and so they have children who survive and thus we change the world one meal at a time. That is if the goblins get a chance to live at all.” She looked sadly at the gossiping girls and said, “What they really need is a first-class theologian, because, you see, they agree with the rest of the world: they think they’re rubbish! They think they did something very bad, a long time ago, and because of it they’ve lived like they do. They think they have it coming to them, as you might say.”

  Vimes frowned. He couldn’t remember ever going into a church or temple or one of the numerous other places of more or less spirituality for any other reason than the occasional requirements of the job. These days he tended to go in for reasons of Sybil, i.e., his wife dragging him along so that he could be seen, and, if possible, seen remaining awake.

  No, the world of next worlds, afterlives and purgatorial destinations simply did not fit into his head. Whether you wanted it or not, you were born, you did the best you could, and then, whether you really wanted to or not, you died. They were the only certainties, and so the best thing for a copper to do was to get on with the job. And it was about time that Sam Vimes got back to doing his.