Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  Vimes sighed. “I think it’s quite likely that I might, ” he said gloomily. He looked around to find himself pinned in the gazes of Young Sam, Nobby Nobbs and the goblin girl who had been looking at Nobby as if the little corporal was an Adonis. Embarrassed, he shrugged and said, “Just a passing thought.”

  However you put it, Fred Colon was one of Vimes’s oldest friends—and it was sobering to think that so was Nobby Nobbs. Vimes found the sergeant halfway down the goblin cave looking strangely pink, bemused, but nevertheless quite cheerful, possibly because he was eating a roasted rabbit like there was no tomorrow—which clearly had been the case for the rabbit. Cheery was watching him with some care from a distance, and when she saw Vimes gave him a smile and a thumbs-up sign, which was reassuring.

  Fred Colon tried to salute, but had to think about it for a moment. “Sorry about this, Mr. Vimes, had some kind of nasty turn. All a bit vague, really, and suddenly here I am among these people.”

  Vimes held his breath and Colon continued, “Very nice, very helpful, very generous, too. They’ve been giving me all kinds of mushrooms, extremely tasty. Not very well versed in the trouser department, but I speak as I find. Makes a man think; I ain’t sure what, but it does.” He looked around with a strange fluorescence in his eyes. “Nice in here, isn’t it? Nice and calm away from the maddening crowd. Wouldn’t mind staying here for a bit…Nice.”

  Sergeant Colon stopped, flung the rabbit bones over his shoulder and reached down quickly into the mess of stones beside him. He picked one up. Was it Vimes’s imagination or did it twinkle for a moment as it once again turned into just a stone.

  “Stay as long as you like, Fred,” said Vimes. “I’ve got to go, but Nobby’ll be around, and just about everybody else from the Watch or so it seems. Stay as long as you like”—he glanced at Cheery Littlebottom—“but perhaps not too long.”

  More thoughts passed as Young Sam’s daily stroll progressed back down the hill and through the village, and when Jiminy appeared at the doorway of the pub and gave Vimes a little nod that spoke volumes, Vimes’s passing thought was that an astute publican knows which way the wind is blowing and adjusts his sails accordingly. No one knew better than he that no one knows where rumors come from and how they are spread, but the little convoy, even though it included Nobby Nobbs and the goblin girl, got smiles and nods where a week ago there would have been blank stares. Because the dreadful truth is that nobody wants to support the losing side.

  When they reached Ramkin Hall again Vimes found Sybil in the rose garden, apparently deadheading, something that had to be done because it was on the list of things you had to do in the country whether you liked to do it or not. She glanced up at her husband and then got on with what she was doing, and said quietly, “You’ve been worrying people, haven’t you, Sam? Lady Rust popped in unexpectedly for a social visit, right after you left.” Snip! Snip! went the pruning shears, furiously.

  “Did you let her in?”

  Snip! Snip! “Of course! Of course!”

  There was another Snip! Snip! “And I gave her tea and chocolate macaroons, too. She may be an ignorant whey-faced bitch who gives herself a title that is not rightfully hers, but there is such a thing as manners, when all is said and done.” Snip! Snip! Snap! “I only did that because that one rather spoils the symmetry, honestly. Anyway, I had a lecture about maintaining standards, and banding together in defense of our culture, you know the sort of thing, it’s always just a code.”

  Lady Sybil leaned back with her shears poised, and regarded the rosebushes like a bloody-handed revolutionary looking for his next aristocrat. “Do you know what the bitch said? She said, ‘My dear, who cares what happens to a few trolls! Let them take drugs if they want to, that’s what I say.’ ” Eyes ablaze, Sybil continued, “And so I thought about Sergeant Detritus and how often he’s saved your life, and then there was young Brick, that troll lad he adopted. And it made me so angry that I nearly said something unrepeatable! They think that I’m like them! I hate that! They just don’t get it! They’ve got on well for years without ever having to think differently, and now they don’t know how!” Snip! Snip! Crack!

  “You’ve just killed a rosebush, dear,” said Vimes, impressed. It took a pretty good grip to push those blades through an inch of what looked like a small tree.

  “It was a brier, Sam, wouldn’t ever do any good.”

  “You could have given it a chance, perhaps?”

  “Sam Vimes, you treasure your ignorance of gardening, so don’t start weaving a social hypothesis in front of an angry woman holding a blade! There is a difference between plants and people!”

  “Do you think her husband sent her?” Vimes said, standing back a little. “He is in the frame, you know, and I expect by the end of the day to be able to link him to smuggling, trafficking in goblins and certainly in attempting to send Jethro Jefferson abroad to get him out of the way. I know what happens to the goblins taken to Howondaland and it’s not good for their health. Jefferson told me that Rust was behind the eviction of the local goblins three years ago. I’m hoping to get confirmation of this very shortly. All in all, it’ll wipe the smile off his aristocratic face, at least.”

  The birds were singing and roses were pumping perfume into the air and Lady Sybil dropped the shears into her apron pocket.

  “It will shame old Lord Rust, you know.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know that,” said Vimes. “The old boy tried to warn me off when we first got here, which just about shows his talent as a tactician. But I’ll say this for the old bastard: he is honorable, honest and straightforward. It’s a shame that he is also pigheaded, stupid, and incompetent. But you’re right, it’ll hurt him, although he must have killed so many soldiers by his own incompetence that shame should by now be second nature to him, an old friend as it were.” He sighed. “Sybil, every time I have to arrest some twit who thought he could get away with swindling or extortion or blackmail, well, I know that there is probably going to be a family in difficulties, you understand? I think about it. It preys on my mind. The trouble is, the idiots commit the crimes! As it is, I’m trying to spare some of the hangers-on in this case, provided their gratitude results in testimony. I can stretch the law for the greater good, but that’s the end of it.”

  Sybil nodded sadly, and then sniffed and said, “Can you smell smoke?”

  Willikins, who had been standing patiently, said, “Corporal Nobbs and his, ahem, young…lady wandered off into the shrubbery with Young Sam, your ladyship. Sergeant Detritus accompanied them with what I now believe to be called…” Willikins savored the word like a toffee, “surreptition.”

  This last fact was testified to by the shrubbery itself, because no shrubbery, however large, could hide the fact that a troll had just walked through it.

  There was a small, neat fire burning in the shrubbery, watched passively by Detritus and Young Sam, and nervously by Corporal Nobbs, who was watching his new young lady cooking something on a spit.

  “Oh, she’s cooking snails,” said Sybil, with every sign of approval. “What a provident young lady.”

  “Snails?” said Vimes, shocked.

  “Quite traditional in these parts, as a matter of fact,” said Sybil. “My father and his chums used to cook them up sometimes after a drinking session. Very wholesome, and full of vitamins and minerals, or so I understand. Apparently if you feed them on garlic they taste of garlic.”

  Vimes shrugged. “I suppose that has to be better than them tasting of snails.”

  Sybil pulled Sam off to one side and said quietly, “I think the goblin girl is the one that they call Shine of the Rainbow. Felicity says she’s very smart.”

  “Well, I don’t think she’ll get anywhere with Nobby,” said Vimes. “He’s carrying a torch for Verity Pushpram. You know, the fishmonger?”

  Sybil whispered, “She got engaged last month, Sam. To a lad who’s building up his own fishing fleet.” They stared through the leaves and tiptoed away.
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  “But she’s a goblin!” said Vimes, out of his depth.

  “And he is Nobby Nobbs, Sam. And she is quite attractive in a goblin sort of way, don’t you think? And to be honest, I’m not sure that even Nobby’s old mother knows what species her son is. Frankly, Sam, it’s not our business.”

  “But what if Young Sam eats snails?”

  “Sam, given what he’s already eaten in his short life I wouldn’t worry, if I was you. I expect the girl knows what she’s doing, they generally do, Sam, believe me. Besides, this is limestone country and there’s nothing poisonous for the snails to eat. Don’t worry, Sam!”

  “Yes, but how will—”

  “Don’t worry, Sam!”

  “Yes, but I mean—”

  “Don’t worry, Sam! There’s a troll and a dwarf in Lobbin Clout that have set up home together, so I’ve heard. Good for them, I say, it’s their business and definitely not ours.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sam!”

  During the afternoon Sam Vimes worried. He wrote dispatches and walked up to the new tower to send them. Goblins were sitting around the tower now, staring at it. He tapped one of them on the shoulder, handed it the messages and watched it climb the tower as if it were horizontal. A couple of minutes later it came down with a smudged confirmation-of-sending slip, which it handed to him along with several other messages before sitting down to stare at the tower again.

  He thought: you have lived your life in and around a cave in a hill and now here is this magical thing that sends words, right on your doorstep. That’s got to command respect! Then he opened the two messages that had arrived for him, carefully folded up the paper and walked back down the hill, breathing carefully and taking care not to punch the air and whoop.

  When Vimes reached the cottage of the woman who, to Young Sam, would forever be the poo lady, he stopped to hear the music. It came and went, there were false starts, and then the world revolved as liquid sound called out of the window. Only then did he dare to knock at the door.

  Half an hour later, walking with the measured gait of the career copper, he proceeded to the lockup. Jethro Jefferson was sitting on a stool outside. He was wearing a badge. Feeney was learning fast. The constabulary of the Waterside owned precisely one badge, made of pot metal, and so, pinned to the shirt of the blacksmith was a carefully cut-out cardboard circle with, inscribed in painstaking handwriting, the words “Constable Jefferson works for me. Be told! Signed: Chief Constable Upshot.”

  There was a second, empty stool by the blacksmith, reflecting the doubling of the staff. Vimes sat down with a grunt. “How do you like being a copper, Mr. Jefferson?”

  “If you’re looking for Feeney, commander, he’s on his lunch break. And since you ask, I can’t say coppering sits very well with me, but maybe it’s the kind of thing that grows on you. Besides, the smithy is a bit quiet right now, and so’s the crime.” The blacksmith grinned. “No one wants me chasing them. I hear things are happening, right?”

  Vimes nodded. “When you see Feeney, tell him that the Quirm constabulary has picked up two men who apparently volunteered the information that they had shanghaied you, amongst other misdemeanors, and it seems they have a whole lot of other information that they are desperate to tell us in exchange for a certain amount of clemency.”

  Jefferson growled. “Give me five minutes with ’em and I’ll show ’em what clemency is.”

  “You’re a copper now, Jethro, so you don’t have to think like that,” said Vimes cheerfully. “Besides, the balls are all lining up.”

  Jefferson gave a hollow laugh, laden with malice, “I’d line their balls up for them…and just you see how far apart. I was a kid when the first lot were taken and that bloody Rust kid was there all right, yes indeed, urging everybody on and laughing at them poor goblins. And when I ran out into the road to try and stop it, some of his chums gave me a right seeing to. That was just after my dad died. I was a bit innocent in those days, thought that some people were better than me, tipped me hat to gentry and so on, and then I took over the forge and if that don’t kill you it makes you strong.”

  And he winked, and Vimes thought, you’ll do. You’ll probably do. You’ve got the fire.

  Vimes patted his shirt pocket and heard the reassuring rustle of paper. He was rather proud of the note at the end of the clacks message, which was a personal one from the Commandant in Quirm. It read, “When they heard that you were on the case, Sam, they were so chatty that we used up two pencils!”

  And then Sam Vimes went to the pub just as the men were coming in and sat in the corner nursing a pint of the beetroot juice with a touch of chilli, to help down a snack consisting of one pickled egg and one pickled onion nestling in a packet of crisps. Vimes did not know very much about gastronomy, but he knew what he liked. And, as he sat there, he saw people talking to one another and looking at him, and then one of them walked slowly over, holding his hat in front of him in both hands as if in penitence. “Name of Hasty, sir, William Hasty. Thatcher by trade, sir.”

  Vimes moved his legs to make room and said, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hasty. What can I do for you?”

  Mr. Hasty looked around at his fellows, and got that mixed assortment of waves and hoarse whispers that adds up to “Get on with it!” Reluctantly he turned back to Vimes, cleared his throat, and said, “Well, sir, yes, of course we knew about the goblins and no one liked it much. I mean they’re a bloody nuisance if you forget to lock your chicken coop and suchlike, but we didn’t like what was done, because it wasn’t…I mean, wasn’t right, not done like that, and some of us said we would suffer for it, come the finish, because if they could do that to goblins then what might they think they could do to real people, and some said real or not, it wasn’t right! We’re just ordinary people, sir, tenants and similar, not big, not strong, not important, so who would listen to the likes of us? I mean, what could we have done?”

  Heads leaned a little forward, breaths were held, and Vimes chewed the very last vinegary piece of crisp. Then he said, directing his gaze to the ceiling, “You’ve all got weapons. Every man jack of you. Huge, dangerous, deadly weapons. You could have done something. You could have done anything. You could have done everything. But you didn’t, and I’m not sure but that in your shoes I might not have done anything, either. Yes?”

  Hasty had held up a hand. “I’m sure we’re sorry, sir, but we don’t have weapons.”

  “Oh, dear me. Look around. One of the things that you could have done was think. It’s been a long day, gentlemen, it’s been a long week. Just remember, that’s all. Remember for next time.”

  In silence, Vimes walked across to Jiminy at the bar, noticing above the man a patch on the wall showing gleaming paint on the plaster. For a moment Vimes’s memory filled that space with a goblin’s head. Another little triumph.

  “Jiminy, these gentlemen are drinking at my expense for the rest of the evening. See they get home okay even if wheelbarrows have to be deployed. I’ll send Willikins down to settle with you in the morning.”

  Only the sound of his boots broke the silence as he walked to the pub door and closed it gently behind him. Fifty yards up the road he smiled when he heard the cheering start.

  The Roberta E. Biscuit was, unlike the Wonderful Fanny, a boat that strutted its stuff. It looked like a Hogswatch decoration, and on one deck a small band was trying to play as hard as a large band. Waiting on the quayside, though, was a man wearing a hat that the captain of any fleet would desire. “Welcome aboard, your grace, and of course your ladyship. I’m Captain O’Farrell, master of the Roberta.” Then he looked down at Young Sam and said, “Want to take a turn at the wheel, young shaver? That shall be arranged! And I bet your daddy would like a turn, too.” The captain shook Vimes’s hand industriously, saying, “Captain Sillitoe had nothing but good things to say about you, sir, nothing but good things indeed! And he hopes to see you again some day. But in the meantime, it’s my duty, sir, to make you King
!”

  The thoughts of Sam Vimes collided in their rush to get through first. Something about the word “king” was getting in the way.

  Still smiling, the captain said, “That is to say King of the River, sir, a little honor that we bestow on those heroes who have taken on Old Treachery and bested him! Allow me to present you with this gold-ish medal, sir. It’s a small token, but show it to any captain on the river and you’ll be carried for free, sir, from the mountains to the sea if you so desire!”

  Whipped to a frenzy by the oration, the crowd burst into loud applause and the band struck up with the old classic “Surprised, Aren’t You?” and bouquets of flowers were hurled into the air, and then picked up again carefully, because waste not, want not. And the band played and the wheels turned and the water was whisked into a foam as the Vimes family went down the river for a wonderful holiday.

  Young Sam was allowed to stay up to see the dancing girls, although he didn’t see the point. Vimes, however, did. And there was a conjuror and all the other entertainment people subject themselves to in the name of fun, although he did laugh a bit when the conjuror picked his pocket in order to put in the ace of spades and found himself holding the knife that Sam had brought along just in case. When you aren’t expecting it, that’s when you should expect it!

  And the conjuror had not expected it and looked goggle-eyed at Vimes until he said, “Oh my, you’re him, aren’t you? Commander Vimes himself!” And to Vimes’s horror, he turned to the crowd with, “A big hand, please, ladies and gentlemen, for the hero of the Wonderful Fanny!”

  In the end Vimes had to take a bow, which meant obviously that Young Sam took a bow next to him, causing much moistening of female eyes throughout the restaurant. And then the barman, who apparently didn’t know the score, created on the spot the “Sam Vimes,” which Sam later pretended to be embarrassed about when it became part of the repertoire in every drinking establishment on the Plains, apart from, of course, those where the clientele tended to open their bottles with their teeth.* In fact, he was so overcome by the honor that he actually drank one of the cocktails and another afterward as well, on the basis that Sybil couldn’t really object in the circumstances. Then he sat signing beer mats and pieces of paper and chatting to people rather more loudly than he normally chatted until even the barman decided to call it a day and Sybil towed her tipsy husband to bed.