Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  Billy looked sideways at him. “Would that be the business of giving me a good kicking?”

  The morning sun shone on Carrot’s enthusiastically polished breastplate. “No, Mr. Slick, it would not.”

  Billy looked him up and down. “Well, there’s my granny. Maybe she’ll talk to you, maybe she won’t. I’m only telling you that much because of Mr. King. She’s right careful about who she talks to, you may bet your helmet on that. What do you want to talk about pots for, anyway? She hardly gets out of bed these days. Can’t see her doing a robbery!”

  “Nor do we, Billy, we just want some information about the pots.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right lady, she’s an expert, so I reckon, always fussing about the bloody things. Got a bottle of brandy on you? She’s not one for strangers, my granny, but I reckon that anyone with a bottle of brandy is no stranger to Granny as long as the drink holds out.”

  Angua whispered to Carrot, “Harry’s got a huge drinks cabinet in his office, and it’s not like this is bribery. Worth a try?”

  She waited with Billy Slick while Carrot went on the errand, and for something to say, she said, “Billy Slick doesn’t sound much like a goblin name?”

  Billy made a face. “Too right! Granny calls me Of the Wind Regretfully Blown. What kind of name is that, I ask you? Who’s going to take you seriously with a name like that? This is modern times, right?” He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human—human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls…the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress. Aloud, she said, “Aren’t you proud of your goblin name?”

  He looked at her with his mouth open, showing his pointy teeth. “What? Proud? Why the fruckle should anyone be proud of being a goblin? Except my granny, of course. Come along inside, and I surely hope that the brandy arrives quickly. She can be fretful without the brandy.”

  Billy Slick and his granny lived in a building of sorts in the shanty town. Willow and other saplings had been liberated from the damp swamps and used to make a reasonably large hemisphere, the size of a small cottage. It seemed to Angua that some skill and thought had gone into the construction: smaller twigs and branches had been interwoven with the structure and some had, as is the way with willow, rooted themselves and sprouted, and then somebody, presumably Billy Slick, had further interwoven the new growth so that, in the summertime at least, it was a pretty good gaff, especially since somebody had meticulously filled most of the gaps with smaller weaves. Inside, it was a smoky cave, but the dark-accustomed eye of the werewolf saw that the inner walls had been lined very carefully with old tarpaulin and any other rubbish that could be persuaded to bend, to keep away drafts. Okay, it had probably taken less than two days to build and cost nothing, but the city was full of people who would have been overjoyed to live there.

  “Sorry about this,” said Billy. “I can’t say that Harry is a big payer, but he turns a blind eye to us snaffling the occasional bits and pieces if we don’t get cheeky about it.”

  “But you’ve even got a stove pipe!” said Angua, astonished.

  Billy looked down. “Leaks a bit; waiting for me to solder a few patches on, that’s all. Wait here, I’ll just make sure she’s ready for you. I know she’ll be ready for the brandy.”

  There was a polite knock on the door which turned out to be courtesy of Captain Carrot who was on his way back with the brandy. He carefully opened the battered and many-times-painted outside door and let in some light. Then he looked around and said, “Very cozy!”

  Angua tapped her foot. “Look, he’s even jigsawed broken bits of roof tile together to make a decent floor cover. There’s some thoughtful construction going on here.” She lowered her voice and whispered, “And he’s a goblin. It’s not what I’d expected—”

  “Got bloody good hearing as well, miss,” said Billy, re-entering the room. “Amazing, innit, what tricks us goblins can learn. Cor, you’d almost think we were people!” He pointed toward a hanging of some sort of felt that obscured the other end of the room. “Got the brandy wine? Off we go, then. Hold the bottle out in front of you, that usually does the trick. Officers, the lady ain’t my granny as such, she’s my great-granny, but that was too much of a mouthful for me when I was a little kid, so Granny she became. Let me do the talking, ’cos unless you are a bloody genius, you won’t understand a blind word she says! Come on in, quickly, I’ve got to go and make her lunch in half an hour, and, like I said, you’ve probably got until the drink runs out.”

  “I can’t see a thing,” said Carrot, as the felt somberly swung back behind them, and Angua said, carefully, “I can. Would you be so good as to introduce us to your great-grandmother, Billy?”

  Carrot still fought for any kind of vision but heard what he thought was the goblin boy speaking, although it sounded as if he was chewing gravel at the same time. Then, after a sense of movement in the darkness, another voice, cracking like ice, answered him. Then Billy quite clearly said, “Regret of the Falling Leaf welcomes you, watchmen, and bids you give her the bloody brandy right now.”

  Carrot held the bottle out in the direction of Billy’s voice, and it was swiftly passed on to the shape beginning to form in front of him as sight trickled back. The shape apparently said, according to Billy, “Why you come to me, po-leess-man? Why you need help from dying lady? What is unggue to you, Mr. Po-leess-man? Unggue is ours, ours! No good for you here, big Mr. po-leess-man!”

  “What is unggue, madam?” said Carrot.

  “No religion, no ringing bellsey, no knees all bendey, no chorus, no hallelujah, no by your leave, just unggue, pure unggue! Just unggue, who come when need. Little unggue! When gods wash hands and turn away there is unggue who roll up the sleeves! Unggue strikes in the dark. If unggue don’t come himself, he send. Unggue is everywhere!”

  Carrot cleared his throat. “Regret of the Falling Leaf, we have a man, a policeman, a good man, who is dying of unggue. We don’t understand; please help us understand. In his hand he is holding an unggue pot.”

  The screech must have echoed around the works; it certainly made the little shack rock. “Unggue thief! Pot stealer! Not fit to live!” Billy translated with every sign of embarrassment. The old goblin woman tried to stand up and sank back into her cushions, muttering.

  Angua tried: “You are wrong, old lady. This pot came to him by chance. He found it, it is the pot called soul of tears.”

  Regret of the Falling Leaf had filled the world with noise. Now she appeared to empty it with silence. She said, bitterly and come to that, curiously, considering the fact that her great grandson said she didn’t know much Ankh-Morporkian, “Found in goblin cave, oh yes! Found on end of shovel, oh yes! Bad cess to him!”

  “No!” Suddenly Carrot was face to face with the goblin woman. “It came to him by accident, like a curse. He never wanted it and he didn’t know what it was. He found it in a cigar.”

  There was a pause in which, presumably, the old woman was doing some complex thinking, because she said, “Would you pay me my price, Mr. Po-leess-man?”

  “We gave you the brandy,” said Angua.

  “Indeedy, wolf whelp, but that was for consultation only. Now it’s price for diagnosis and cure, which will be from the snuff mill, two pounds of sweet raspberry, one pound of angler’s chum, and one pound of Dr. Varies’ medicated upright mixture, just the job on a winter’s day.” Something like a laugh escaped from the old goblin woman’s mouth. “Glad of the fresh air,” she added. “My lad he gets around and about and says you are trustworthy, but goblins have learned not to rely on word, so we will seal the bargain the old way, which we have all understood since time was time.”

  The bewildered Billy stood back as a long hand with longer fingernails extended toward Carrot, who spat on his own hand and slapped it, with no thought of health and safety, on to the palm of Regret of the Fallen Leaf who cackled again. “That can’t be broke, that, it can’t be broke. Never.” After a moment’s
hesitation she said in an offhand voice, “Wash hand after using.”

  There was a glug from the brandy bottle, and Billy Slick’s old granny went on, “A pot of tears, you say?” Angua nodded. “If so, only one meaning. A poor goblin woman, a starving woman, had to eat her newborn baby, because she could not feed it. I hear you stop breathing for a moment. That such things happen? Is awful truth, oh yes. Is often awful truth in bad country when times are hard and food is nothing. And so, weeping, she carved a little unggue pot for soul of her baby and cried life into it and sent it away until better times when baby will come back.”

  Quietly, Carrot said, “Could you tell us anything more, madam?”

  The old goblin was silent for a moment and then said, “Inside cigar, wrapped in tobacco? Ask the man who sell tobacco!”

  Billy turned his granny’s brandy bottle upside down and not a drop came out.

  “One last thing, please, madam: how can we help our friend? By the sound of it he’s dreaming that he’s a goblin!”

  Little black eyes shone as the goblin said, “I trusting you for tobacco. Now trusting you for another bottle of brandy. Find goblin cave! Find goblin maiden! Only such a one will be able to grasp the pot, in hope one day of having child! So it goes, no other way. And big problem for you, Mr. Po-leess-man, is that goblin girl these days are hard to find. None here. Maybe none anywhere. We shrivel and shrink like old leaves. Goodbye until more brandy. No! Make that Cognac from Quirm. Special reserve. Sixty dollars if bought from Horrids on Broadway or two for one deal at Twister Boote’s bottle shop in the Shades. Slight taste of anchovy, but no questions asked and none answered.”

  The old voice went silent, and gently the watchmen came back to the stuff of reality around them, troubling images fading into recent memory.

  Carrot managed to say, “I’m so sorry to have to ask, but will this harm my sergeant? He seems to be having continuous nightmares and we can’t get the pot out of his hand!”

  “Three bottle of brandy, Mr. Po-leess-man?” translated Billy.

  Carrot nodded. “Okay.”

  “How long pot had him?”

  Carrot looked at Angua. “About two days, madam.”

  “Then get your man to a goblin cave as quick as you can, Mr. Po-leess-man. He may live. He may die. Either way, three bottle of brandy, Mr. Po-leess-man.” Small black eyes twinkled at Carrot. “So nice to meet a real gentleman. Hurry up, Mr. Po-leess-man.”

  The old lady slumped back into her mound of pillows and rugs. The audience was over, just like the brandy.

  “Granny likes you,” said Billy, his voice full of awe as he ushered them out. “I can tell. She never threw anything at you. Better get her the snuff and the brandy pretty soon, however, otherwise she might get a bit stroppy in an occult sort of way, if you hear what I’m saying, or rather, of course, what I ain’t saying. Nice to meet you folks, but old man King doesn’t like to see people not working.”

  “Excuse me, Billy,” said Carrot, grabbing him by his skinny arm. “Are there any goblin caves anywhere around here?”

  “You got what you wanted, officer. There ain’t none, as far as I know. I don’t care. You could try up-country, that’s my advice, but I really don’t care. If you find a goblin cave on a map you can bet your teeth there won’t be any goblins there anymore, not live ones, at least.”

  “Thank you very much for your assistance, Mr. Slick, and may I congratulate you on having a grandmother with such good grasp of contemporary vocabulary?” said Carrot.

  There was a delighted shriek from the direction of the dome, the walls of which were very thin.

  “Damn right! Granny Slick ain’t so thick!”

  “Well, perhaps we have a result,” said Carrot as they headed back into the city, “but, well, I know Ankh-Morpork is a melting pot of a city, but don’t you think it’s rather sad when people come here and forget their ancestry?”

  “Yes,” said Angua, not looking at him. “It is.”

  When they were back in Pseudopolis Yard, Carrot filled in Cheery with as much information as he could. “I’d like you to go and see the tobacconist. Ask him where his tobacco comes from. We know there’s lots of smuggling going on anyway, so he’ll be worried. It might be a nice idea to take along an officer whose mere presence will worry him a little more. Wee Mad Arthur is back from leave.”

  Cheery grinned. “In that case, I’ll take him. He worries everybody.”

  Mr. Bewilderforce Gumption was having a good day so far. He had been to the bank to deposit the takings and had bought two tickets to the opera. Mrs. Gumption would be very pleased about that and certainly more pleased than she was to be called a Gumption. She was always urging him into high society or, at least, higher society, but in some ways the name Gumption always held you back. And now he held open the door to his emporium and saw the policeman sitting patiently in the chair.

  Cheery Littlebottom stood up. “Mr. Bewilderforce Gumption?”

  He tried to smile. “I generally see Fred Colon, officer.”

  “Yes. And it’s Sergeant Littlebottom. But strangely enough it’s about Sergeant Colon that I’m visiting you today. Do you remember giving him a cigar?”

  Mr. Gumption was suffering from the illusion that many people have that policemen don’t see people lying all the time, so he said, “Not as I recall,” to which Cheery replied, “Mr. Gumption, it is a well-known fact that Sergeant Colon buys or otherwise procures his tobacco requirements from your noble establishment.”

  Once again Bewilderforce led off on the wrong note. “I want to see my lawyer!”

  “I’d like to see your lawyer as well, Mr. Gumption. Perhaps you’d send someone to collect him while I and my colleague wait here?”

  Bewilderforce looked around bewildered. “What colleague?”

  “Oh, aye, that’ll be me well enough,” said the constable known, sometimes briefly, as Wee Mad Arthur, who had been lurking behind a packet of cigarettes.

  Two police officers are far more than doubly worse than one, and Cheery Littlebottom took advantage of the sudden panic to say, carefully, “It’s a very simple question, Mr. Gumption. Where did that cigar come from?”

  Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn’t like the phrase “The innocent have nothing to fear,” believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like “The innocent have nothing to fear”; but Bewilderforce was fearful—she could see him sweating.

  “We know you’re a smuggler, Mr. Gumption, or perhaps I should say that you take advantage of very good deals when they are, ahem, presented to you. Right now, however, all I need from you is to tell me where that cigar came from. Once you’ve been so kind as to tell me that, we’ll walk out of this building in a happy and cooperative frame of mind.”

  Bewilderforce brightened up. Cheery continued, “Of course, other departments of the Watch might wish to visit you in due course. At the moment, sir, you just have to deal with me. Do you know where that batch of cigars came from?”

  Valiantly Bewilderforce tried it on. “I buy from dealers all the time,” he said. “It’d take me ages to go through the records!”

  Cheery kept smiling. “No problem there, Mr. Gumption, I’ll call for my expert colleague Mr. A. E. Pessimal, right now. I don’t know if you know of him? It’s amazing how quickly he can work through paperwork and I’m sure he’ll find time in his busy schedule to help you out at no cost whatsoever.”

  Five minutes later a gray-faced and breathless Bewilderforce handed Cheery a small scrap of paper.

  Cheery looked up at him. “Howondaland? I thought that tobacco mostly came from Klatch?”

  Bewilderforce shrugged. “Well, they’ve been starting up plantations in Howondaland now. Good stuff, too.” Feeling a little bit bolder, Bewilderforce went on. “All properly paid for, I can tell you. Yes, I know there’s smuggling going on, but we don’t have any truck with that. No need to when you can get a pretty good dea
l by buying in bulk. It’s all in my ledgers. Every invoice. Every payment. All set down properly.”

  Cheery relented. A. E. Pessimal could probably find something to excite him somewhere in the Gumption ledgers. After all, business was business. But there was business and there was bad business. It didn’t do to get complicated. She stood up. “Thank you very much for your assistance, Mr. Gumption. We’ll trouble you no further.”

  Bewilderforce hesitated and said, “What’s up with Fred Colon? He’s a bit of a scrounger, I don’t mind saying, but I would hate anything to have happened to him. It wasn’t…poison or anything, was it?”

  “No, Mr. Gumption. His cigar started singing to him.”

  “They don’t usually do that,” said Bewilderforce nervously. “I’ll have to check my stock.”

  “Please do that, sir. And while you’re doing so perhaps you’ll look out for this little list of snuff products?”

  The tobacconist took it from her carefully. His lips moved and he said, “That’s quite a lot of snuff, you know.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Cheery. “I’m authorized to pay cash down.”

  Bewilderforce looked extremely bewildered. “What? Policemen pay?”

  Walking the streets in the company of Wee Mad Arthur presented a difficulty even for a dwarf like Cheery Littlebottom. He was around six inches high, so if you spoke to him while you walked you sounded like a madman. On the other hand, he heartily disliked being picked up. You just had to put up with it. Most people made a slight detour if they saw Wee Mad Arthur in any case.

  They arrived back at the Watch House and reported to Carrot and the first thing he said to Cheery was, “Do you know where there are any goblin caves, Cheery?”

  “No, sir. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ll explain later,” said Carrot. “It’s fairly unbelievable. Did you find out anything from old Gumption?”

  Cheery nodded. “Yes, sir. Sergeant Colon’s haunted cigar came from Howondaland, no doubt about it.”