The Fifth Elephant

by Terry Pratchett

  The notes in front of him were a little more believable, talking about some unknown catastrophe that had killed millions of the mammoths, bison and giant shrews and then covered them over, pretty much like the fifth elephant in the story. There were notes about old troll sagas and legends of the dwarfs. Possibly ice had been involved. Or a flood. In the case of the trolls, who were believed to be the first species in the world, maybe they’d been there and seen the elephant trumpeting across the sky.

  The result, anyway, was the same. Everyone—well, everyone except Vimes—knew the best fat came from the Shmaltzberg wells and mines. It made the whitest, brightest candles, the creamiest soap, the hottest, cleanest lamp oil. The yellow tallow from Ankh-Morpork’s boilers didn’t come close.

  Vimes didn’t see the point. Gold…now that was important. People died for it. And iron—Ankh-Morpork needed iron. Timber, too. Stone, even. Silver, now, was very…

  He flocked back to a page headed NATURAL RESOURCES, and under SILVER read: “No silver has been mined in Uberwald since the Diet of Bugs in AM1880, and the possession of the metal is technically illegal.”

  There was no explanation. He made a note to ask Inigo. After all, where you got werewolves, didn’t you need silver? And things must have been pretty bad if everyone had to eat insects.

  Anyway…silver was useful, too, but fat was just…fat. It was like biscuits, or tea, or sugar. It was just something that turned up in the cupboard. There was no style to it, no romance. It was stuff in tubs.

  A note was clipped to the next page. He read: “The Fifth Elephant as a metaphor also appears in the Uberwald languages. Depending on context it can mean ‘a thing which does not exist’ (as we would say ‘Klatchian mist’) ‘a thing which is other than it seems’ and ‘a thing which, while unseen, controls events’ (in the same way that we would use the term eminence gris).”

  I wouldn’t, thought Vimes. I don’t use words like that.

  “Constable Shoe,” said Constable Shoe, when the door of the bootmaker’s factory was opened, “Homicide.”

  “You come ’bout Mister Sonky?” said the troll who’d opened the door. Warm damp air blew out into the street, smelling of incontinent cats and sulfur.

  “I meant I’m a zombie,” said Reg Shoe. “I find that telling people right away saves embarrassing misunderstandings later on. But coincidentally, yes, we’ve come about the alleged deceased.”

  “We?” said the troll, making no comment about Reg’s gray skin and stitch marks.

  “Doon here, bigjobs!”

  The troll looked down, not a usual direction in Ankh-Morpork, where people preferred not to see what they were standing in.

  “Oh,” he said, and took a few steps backward.

  Some people said that gnomes were no more belligerent than any other race, and this was true. However, the belligerence was compressed down into a body six inches high and, like many things when they are compressed, had an inclination to explode. Constable Swires had been on the force only for a few months, but news had gone around and already he inspired respect, or at least the bladder-trembling terror that can pass for respect on these occasions.

  “Don’t ye just stand there gawpin’, where’s yon stiff?” said Swire, striding into the factory.

  “We put him in der cellar,” said the troll. “And now we got half a ton of liquid rubber running to waste. He’d be livid ’bout that…if he was alive, o’course.”

  “Why’s it wasted?” said Reg.

  “Gone all thick and manky, hasn’t it. I’m gonna have to dump it later on, and dat’s not easy. We was supposed to be dipping a load of Ribbed Magical Delights today, too, but all der ladies felt faint when I hauls him outa der vat and dey went off home.”

  Reg Shoe looked shocked. He was not, for various reasons, a patron of Mr. Sonky’s wares, romance not being a regular feature of the life of the dead, but surely the world of the living had some standards, didn’t it?

  “You employ ladies here?” he said.

  The troll looked surprised.

  “Yeah. Sure. It’s good steady work. Dey’re good workers, too. Always laughing and tellin’ jokes while dey’re doin’ the dippin’ and packin’, ’specially when we’re doin’ der Big Boys.” The troll sniffed. “Pers’nally, I don’t unnerstan der jokes.”

  “Dem Big Boys are bludy good value for a penny,” said Buggy Swires.

  Reg Shoe stared at his tiny partner. There was just no way that he was going to ask the question. But Swires must have seen his expression.

  “After a bit of work wi’ yon scissors, ye won’t find a better mackintosh in the whole city,” said the gnome, and laughed nastily.

  Constable Shoe sighed. He knew that Mr. Vimes had an unofficial policy of getting ethnic minorities into the Watch,* but he wasn’t sure this was wise in the case of gnomes, even though there was, admittedly, no ethnic group that was more minor. They had a built-in resistance to rules. This didn’t just apply to the law, but to all the invisible rules that most people obeyed unthinkingly, like “Do not attempt to eat this giraffe” or “Do not head-butt people in the ankle just because they won’t give you a chip.” It was best to think of Constable Swires simply as a small independent weapon.

  “You’d better show us the d—the person who is currently vitally challenged,” he said.

  They were led downstairs. What was hanging from a beam in the cellar would have frightened the life out of anyone who wasn’t already a zombie.

  “Sorry ’bout dat,” said the troll, pulling it down and tossing it into a corner, where it coiled into a rubbery heap.

  “What d’heel wazzit?” said Constable Swires.

  “We had to pull der rubber off’f him,” said the dwarf. “Sets quick, see? Once you get it out in der air.”

  “Hey, dat’s a’ biggest Sonky I ever saw,” chuckled Buggy. “A whole-body Sonky! Reckon that’s the way he wanted to go?”

  Reg looked at the corpse. He didn’t mind being sent out on murders, even messy ones. The way he saw it, dying was really just a career change. Been there, done that, worn the shroud…And then you got over it and got on with your life. Of course, he knew that many people didn’t, for some reason, but he thought of them as not prepared to make the effort.

  There was a ragged wound in the neck.

  “Any next of kin?” he said.

  “He got a brother in Uberwald. We’ve sent word,” the troll added. “On der clacks. It cost twenty dollars! Dat’s murder!”

  “Can you think of any reason why someone would kill him?”

  The troll scratched his head.

  “Well, ’cos dey wanted him dead, I reckon. Dat’s a good reason.”

  “And why would anyone want him dead, do you think?” Reg Shoe could be very, very patient. “Has there been any trouble?”

  “Business ain’t been so good, I know dat.”

  “Really? I’d have thought you’d be coining money here.”

  “Oh yeah, dat’s what you’d fink, but not everyfing people calls a Sonky is made by us, see? It’s to do wid us becomin’—” the troll’s face screwed up with cerebral effort, “jer-nair-rick. Lots of other buggers are jumping up and down on the bandwagon, and dey got better plant and new ideas like makin’ ’em in cheese-and-onion flavor an’ wid bells on an’ stuff like dat. Mister Sonky won’t have nothin’ to do wid dat kind of fing and dat’s been costin’ us sales.”

  “I can see this would worry him,” said Reg, in a keep-on-talking tone of voice.

  “He’s been locking himself in his office a lot.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?” said Reg.

  “He’s der boss. You don’t ask der boss. But he did say dat dere was a special job comin’ up and dat’d put us back on our feets.”

  “Really?” said Reg, making a mental note. “What kind of job?”

  “Dunno. You don’t—”

  “—ask the boss,” said Reg. “Right. I suppose no one saw the murder, did they?”

  Once again the t
roll screwed up its enormous face in thought.

  “Der murderer, yeah, an’ prob’ly Mister Sonky.”

  “Was there a third party?”

  “I dunno, I never get invited to dem things.”

  “Apart from Mister Sonky and the murderer,” said Shoe, still as patient as the grave, “was there anyone else here last night?”

  “Dunno,” said the troll.

  “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” said Shoe. “We’ll have a look around, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.”

  The troll went back to his vat.

  Reg Shoe hadn’t expected to find anything and was not disappointed. But he was thorough. Zombies usually are. Mr. Vimes had told him never to get too excited about clues, because clues could lead you on a dismal dance. They could become a habit. You ended up finding a wooden leg, a silk slipper and a feather at the scene of a crime and constructing an elegant theory involving a one-legged ballet dancer and a production of Chicken Lake.

  The door to the office was open. It was hard to tell if things had been disturbed; Shoe got the impression that the mess was normal. A desk was awash with paperwork, Mr. Sonky having followed the usual “put it down somewhere” method of filing. A bench was covered with samples of rubber, bits of sacking, large bottles of chemicals and some wooden molds that Reg refrained from looking at too closely.

  “Did you hear Corporal Littlebottom talking about that museum theft when we came on duty today, Buggy?” he said, opening a jar of yellow powder and sniffing it.

  “No.”

  “I did,” said Reg.

  He put the lid on the sulfur again and sniffed the air of the factory. It smelled of liquid rubber, which is very much like the smell of incontinent cats.

  “And some things stick in the mind,” he said. “Special job, eh?”

  It was Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets’s week as Communications Officer, which largely meant looking after the pigeons and keeping an eye on the clacks, with of course the assistance of Constable Downspout. Constable Downspout was a gargoyle. When it came to staring fixedly at one thing, you couldn’t beat a gargoyle. The gargoyles were getting a lot of employment in the clacks industry.

  Constable Visit quite enjoyed the pigeons. He sang them hymns.

  They listened to short homilies, cocking their heads from side to side. After all, he reasoned, had not Bishop Horn preached to the mollusks of the sea? And there was no record of them actually listening, whereas he was certain that the pigeons were taking it in. And they seemed to be interested in his pamphlets on the virtues of Omnianism, admittedly as nesting material at the moment, but this was certainly a good start.

  A pigeon fluttered in as he was scraping the perches.

  “Ah, Zebedinah,” he said, lifting her up and removing the message capsule from her leg. “Well done. This is from Constable Shoe. And you shall have some corn, provided locally by Josiah Frument and Sons, Seed Merchants, but ultimately by the grace of Om.”

  There was a whir of wings and another pigeon settled on the perch. Constable Visit recognized it as Wilhelmina, one of Sergeant Angua’s pigeons.

  He removed the message capsule. The thin paper inside was tightly folded and on it someone had written CPT. CARROT, PERSONAL.

  He hesitated, then put the message from Reg Shoe into the pneumatic tube and heard the whoosh of the suction as it headed off to the main office. The other one, he decided, required a more careful delivery.

  Carrot was working in Vimes’s office but, Visit noticed, not at the Commander’s desk. Instead, he’d set up a folding table in the corner. The tottering piles of paperwork on the desk were slightly less alpine than yesterday. There were even occasional patches of desktop.

  “Personal message for you, Captain.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And Constable Shoe wants a sergeant down at Sonky’s boot factory.”

  “Did you send the message down to the office?”

  “Yes, sir. The pneumatic tube is very useful,” Visit added dutifully.

  “Commander Vimes isn’t very keen on it, but I’m sure it will eventually save us time,” said Carrot. He unfolded the note.

  Visit watched him. Carrot’s lips moved slightly as he read.

  “Where did the pigeon come from?” he said at last, screwing up the note.

  “It looks pretty worn out, sir. Not from inside the city, I’m sure.”

  “Ah. Right. Thank you.”

  “Bad news, sir?” Visit angled.

  “Just news, Constable. Don’t let me detain you.”

  “Right, sir.”

  When the disappointed Visit had gone, Carrot went and looked out of the window.

  There was a typical Ankh-Morpork street scene outside, although people were trying to separate them.

  After a few minutes he went back to his table, wrote a short note, put in into one of the little carriers and sent it away with a hiss of air.

  A few minutes later, Sergeant Colon came panting along the corridor. Carrot was very keen on modernizing the Watch, and in some strange way sending a message via the tube was so much more modern than simply opening the door and shouting, which is what Mr. Vimes did.

  Carrot gave Fred Colon a bright smile.

  “Ah, Fred. Everything going well?”

  “Yessir?” said Fred Colon, uncertainly.

  “Good. I am off to see the Patrician, Fred. As senior sergeant you are in charge of the Watch until Mister Vimes gets back.”

  “Yessir. Er…until you get back, you mean…”

  “I shall not be coming back, Fred. I am resigning.”

  The Patrician looked at the badge on the desk.

  “…and well-trained men,” Carrot was saying, somewhere in front of him. “After all, a few years ago there were only four of us in the Watch. Now it’s functioning just like a machine.”

  “Yes, although bits of it do go boing occasionally,” said Lord Vetinari, still staring at the badge. “Could I invite you to reconsider, Captain?”

  “I’ve reconsidered several times, sir. And it’s not Captain, sir.”

  “The Watch needs you, Mister Ironfoundersson.”

  “The Watch is bigger than one man, sir,” said Carrot, still looking straight ahead.

  “I’m not sure if it’s bigger than Sergeant Colon, though.”

  “People get mistaken about old Fred, sir. He’s a man with a solid bottom to his character.”

  “He’s got a solid bottom to his bottom, Ca—Mister Ironfoundersson.”

  “I mean he doesn’t flap in an emergency, sir.”

  “He doesn’t do anything in an emergency,” said the Patrician. “Except possibly hide. I might go so far as to say that the man appears to consist of an emergency in his own right.”

  “My mind is made up, sir.”

  Lord Vetinari sighed, sat back, and stared up the ceiling for a moment.

  “Then all I can do is thank you for your services, Captain, and wish you good luck in your future endeavor. Do you have enough money?”

  “I’ve saved quite a lot, sir.”

  “Nevertheless, it is a long way to Uberwald.”

  There was silence.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Oh, people measured it years ago. Surveyors and so forth.”

  “Sir!”

  Vetinari sighed. “I think the term is…deduction. Be that as it may…Captain, I am choosing to believe that you are merely taking an extended leave of absence. I understand that you’ve never taken a holiday while you have been here. I am sure you are owed a few weeks.”

  Carrot said nothing.

  “And if I were you, I’d begin my search for Sergeant Angua at the Shambling Gate,” Vetinari added.

  After a while, Carrot said quietly: “Is that as a result of information received, my lord?”

  Vetinari smiled a thin little smile. “No. But Uberwald is going through some troublin
g times, and of course she is from one of the aristocratic families. I surmise that she has been called away. Beyond that, I cannot be of much help. You will have to follow, as they say, your nose.”

  “No, I think I can find a much more reliable nose than mine,” said Carrot.

  “Good.” Lord Vetinari went back to his desk and sat down. “I wish you well in your…search. Nevertheless, I’m sure we will be seeing you again. A lot of people here…depend on you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good day to you.”

  When Carrot had gone Lord Vetinari got up and walked across to the other side of the room, where a map of Uberwald was unrolled on a table. It was quite old, but in recent years any mapmakers who had wandered off the beaten track in that country had spent all their time trying to find it again. There were a few rivers, their courses mostly guesswork, and the occasional town or at least the name of a town, probably put in to save the cartographer the embarrassment of filling his chart with, as they said in the trade, MMBU.*

  The door opened and Vetinari’s head clerk, Drumknott, eased his way in with the silence of a feather falling in a cathedral.

  “A somewhat unexpected development, my lord,” he said quietly.

  “An uncharacteristic one, certainly,” said Vetinari.

  “Do you wish me to send a clacks to Vimes, sir? He could be back in a day or so.”

  Vetinari was looking intently at the blind, blank map. It was, he felt, very much like the future; a few things were outlined, there were some rough guesses, but everything else was waiting to be created…

  “Hmm?” he said.

  “Do you wish me to recall Vimes, sir?”

  “Good heavens, no. Vimes in Uberwald will be more amusing than an amorous armadillo in a bowling alley. And who else could I send? Only Vimes could go to Uberwald.”

  “But surely this is an emergency, sir?”