The Fifth Elephant

by Terry Pratchett

  He scuffed the sand with his boot.

  “They were looking hard at every cart that went in or out this morning. But that was because the Scone had been stolen. It’s at times like this you get very official, very efficient and very pointless activity. Don’t try to tell me that last week they opened every barrel and prodded every load of hay. Even the stuff coming in? Can you see Dee? Is he looking at me?”

  Cheery peered around Vimes.

  “No, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Vimes walked over to the tunnel, pressed his back against a wall, took a deep breath, and walked his legs up the opposite wall. Then he eased his way out over the plates of the weigh-bridge, inched along with feet and shoulder blades and, wincing at every protest from his knees, eventually dropped down. He strolled over to Dee, who was talking to the guards.

  “How did—”

  “Never mind,” said Vimes. “Let’s just say I’m longer than a dwarf, shall we?”

  “Have you solved it?”

  “No. But I have an idea.”

  “Really? Already?” said Dee. “And what is that?”

  “I’m still working it out,” said Vimes. “But it’s lucky the king told you to ask me, Dee. One thing I have found out is that no dwarf will give you the right answer.”

  The opera was just ending as Vimes slipped into the seat beside Sybil.

  “Have I missed anything?” he said.

  “It’s very good. Where have you been?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  He stared, unseeing, at the stage. A couple of dwarfs were engaged in a very careful mock battle.

  All right, then. If it was politics it was…well, politics. There was nothing he could do about politics. So…think about it as a crime…

  What was the simple solution? Best to start with the first rule of policing: Suspect the victim. Vimes wasn’t quite sure who the victim was here, though. So…suspect the witness. That was another good rule. That meant the late Dozy. He could have walked out with the Scone days before he “discovered” the loss. He could have done just about anything. The way the thing was guarded was a joke. Nobby and Colon could have done it better. Much better, he corrected himself, because they had devious little minds and that was what made them coppers…the guards on the Scone were honorable dwarfs, the last people you wanted to entrust with anything. You wanted sneaky people for a job like this.

  But…it made no sense. He’d be the prime suspect. Vimes wasn’t well up on dwarf law, but he suspected that there was not a huge friendly future in store for a prime suspect, especially if no other solution was forthcoming.

  Maybe he’d snapped after sixty years of changing candles? That didn’t sound right. Anyone who could put up with a job like that for ten years would probably run in their groove for the rest of eternity. Anyway, Dozy had now gone to the great big gold mine in the sky or deep underground or whatever it was dwarfs believed in. He wasn’t going to be answering any questions.

  He could solve this, Vimes told himself. Everything he needed was there, if only he asked the right questions and thought the right way.

  But his Vimesish instincts were trying to tell him something else.

  This was a crime—if holding a piece of property to ransom was technically a crime—but it wasn’t the crime.

  There was another crime here. He knew it in the same way that a fisherman spots the shoal by the ripple on the water.

  The fight on stage continued. It was slowed by the need to stop after every gingerly exchanged ax blow for a song, probably about gold.

  “Er…what’s this all about?” he said.

  “It’s nearly over,” whispered Sybil. “They’ve only performed the bit concerning the baking of the Scone, really, but at least they’ve included the Ransom Aria. Ironhammer escapes from prison with the help of Skalt, steals the Truth that Agi has hidden, conceals it by baking it into the Scone, and persuades the guards around Bloodaxe’s camp to let him pass. The dwarfs believe that Truth was once a, a thing…a sort of ultimate rare metal, really…and the last bit of it is inside the Scone. And the guards can’t resist, because of the sheer power of it. The song is about how love, like truth, will always reveal itself, just as the grain of Truth inside the Scone makes the whole thing true. It is actually one of the finest pieces of music in the world. Gold is hardly mentioned at all.”

  Vimes stared. He got lost in any song more complex than the sort with titles like “Where Has All the Custard Gone (Jelly’s Just Not the Same).”

  “Bloodaxe and Ironhammer,” he muttered, aware that dwarfs around them were giving him annoyed looks, “which one was—”

  “Cheery told you. They were both dwarfs,” said Sybil, sharply.

  “Ah,” said Vimes glumly.

  He was always a little out of his depth in these matters. There were men, and there were women. He was clear on that. Sam Vimes was an uncomplicated man when it came to what poets called “the lists of love.”* In some parts of the Shades, he knew, people adopted a more pick-and-mix approach. Vimes looked upon this as he looked upon a distant country; he’d never been there, and it wasn’t his problem. It just amazed him what people got up to when they had time on their hands.

  He just found it hard to imagine a world without a map. It wasn’t that the dwarfs ignored sex, it really didn’t seem important to them. If humans thought the same way, his job would be a lot simpler.

  There seemed to be a deathbed scene now. It was a little hard for Vimes, with his shaky command of Ankh-Morpork street Dwarfish, to follow what was going on. Someone was dying, and someone else was very sorry about it. Both the main singers had beards you could hide a chicken in. They weren’t bothering to act, apart from infrequently waving an arm in the direction of the other singer.

  But there were sobs all around him, and occasionally the trumpeting of a blown nose. Even Sybil’s lower lip was trembling.

  It’s just a song, he wanted to say. It’s not real. Crime and streets and chases…they’re real. A song won’t get you out of a tight corner. Try waving a large bun at an armed guard in Ankh-Morpork and see how far it gets you…

  He shouldered his way through the throng after the performance, which from the humans present had received the usual warm reception that such things always got from people who hadn’t really understood what was going on but rather felt that they should have.

  Dee was talking to a black-clad, heavily built young man who looked vaguely familiar to Vimes. Vimes must have looked familiar to him as well, because he gave him a nod just short of offensiveness.

  “Ah, Your Grace Vimes,” he said. “And did you enjoy the opera?”

  “Especially the bit about the gold,” said Vimes. “And you are—?”

  The man clicked his heels. “Wolf von Uberwald!”

  Something went bing in Vimes’s head. And his eyes picked up details—the slight lengthening of the incisors, the way the blond hair was so thick around the collar—

  “Angua’s brother?” he said.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Wolf the wolf, eh?”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” said Wolf solemnly, “That is very funny. Indeed, yes! It is quite some time since I heard that one! Your Ankh-Morpork sense of humor!”

  “But you’re wearing silver on your…uniform. Those…insignias. Wolf heads biting the lightning…”

  Wolf shrugged. “Ah, the kind of thing a policeman would notice. But they are nickel!”

  “I don’t recognize the regiment.”

  “We are more of a…movement,” said Wolf.

  The stance was Angua’s, too. It was the poised, fight-or-flight look, as if the whole body was a spring eager to unwind and “flight” wasn’t an option. People in the presence of Angua when she was in a bad mood tended to turn up their collars without quite knowing why. But the eyes were different. They weren’t like Angua’s. They weren’t even like the eyes of a wolf.

  No animal had eyes like that, but Vimes saw them
occasionally in some of Ankh-Morpork’s less salubrious drinking establishments, where if you were lucky you’d get out the door before the drink turned you blind.

  Colon called that sort of person a “bottle covey,” Nobby preferred “soddin’ nutter” but whatever the name Vimes recognized a head-butting, eye-gouging, down-and-dirty bastard when he saw one. In a fight you’d have no alternative but to lay him out or cut him down, because otherwise he’d do his very best to kill you. Most bar fighters wouldn’t usually go that far, because killing a copper was known to be bad news for the murderer and anyone else who knew him, but your true nutter wouldn’t worry about that because, while he was fighting, his brain was somewhere else.

  Wolf smiled.

  “There is a problem, Your Grace?”

  “What? No. Just…thinking. I feel I’ve met you before…?”

  “You called on my father this morning.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “We don’t always Change for…visitors, Your Grace,” said Wolf. There was an orange light in his eyes now. Up until then, Vimes had thought that “glowing eyes” was just a figure of speech.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I do need to talk to the Ideas-taster for a moment,” said Vimes. “Politics.”

  Dee followed him into a quiet spot.

  “Yes?”

  “Did Dozy go to the Scone Cave at the same time every day?”

  “I believe so. It depended on his other duties.”

  “So he didn’t go in at the same time every day. Right. When does the guard change?”

  “At each three o’clock.”

  “Did he go in before the guard change or afterward?”

  “That would depend on—”

  “Oh dear. Don’t the guards write anything down?”

  Dee stared at Vimes.

  “Are you saying he could have gone in twice in one day?”

  “Very good. But I’m saying someone might have. A dwarf comes up in a boat alone, carrying a couple of candles…would the guards take that much interest? And if another dwarf carrying a couple of candles came up an hour or so later, when the new guards were there…well, is there any real risk? Even if our faker was noticed, he’d just have to mutter something about…oh, bad candles or something. Damp wicks. Anything.”

  Dee looked distant.

  “It is still a great risk,” he said at last.

  “If our thief was keeping an eye on the guard changes, and knew where the real Dozy was, it’d be worth it, wouldn’t it? For the Scone?”

  Dee shuddered, and then nodded. “In the morning the guards will be closely questioned,” he said.

  “By me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know what kind of questions get answers. We’ll set up an office here. We’ll find out the movements of everyone and talk to all the guards, okay? Even the ones on the gates. We’ll find out who went in and out.”

  “You already think you know something…”

  “Let’s say some ideas are forming, shall we?”

  “I will…see to matters.”

  Vimes straightened up and walked back to Lady Sybil, who stood like an island in a sea of dwarfs. She was talking animatedly to several of them who Vimes vaguely recognized as performers in the opera.

  “What have you been up to, Sam?” she said.

  “Politics, I’m afraid,” said Vimes. “And…trusting my instincts. Can you tell me who’s watching us?”

  “Oh, it’s that game, is it?” said Sybil. She smiled happily, and in the tones of someone chatting about inconsequential things, said, “Practically everyone. But if I was handing out prizes, I’d choose the rather sad lady in the little group just off to your left. She’s got fangs, Sam. And pearls, too. They don’t exactly accessorize.”

  “Can you see Wolfgang?”

  “Er…no, not now you come to mention it. That’s odd. He was around a moment ago. Have you been upsetting people?”

  “I think I may let people upset themselves,” said Vimes.

  “Good for you. You do that so well.”

  Vimes half turned, like someone just taking in the view. In among the human guests, the dwarfs moved and clustered. Five or six would come together, and talk animatedly. Then one would drift away and join another group. He might be replaced. And sometimes an entire group would spread out like the debris of an explosion, each member heading toward another group.

  Vimes got the impression that there was kind of structure behind all this, some slow, purposeful dance of information. Mineshaft meetings, he thought. Small groups, because there wouldn’t be room for more. And you don’t talk too loudly. And then when the group decides, every member is an ambassador for that decision. The word spreads out in circles. It’s like running a society on formal gossip.

  It occurred to him that it was also a way in which two plus two could be debated and weighed and considered and discussed until it became four-and-a-bit, or possibly an egg.*

  Occasionally a dwarf would stop and stare at him before hurrying away.

  “We’re supposed to go in for supper, dear,” said Sybil, indicating the general drift toward a brightly lit cave.

  “Oh dear. Quaffing, do you think? Rats on sticks? Where’s Detritus?”

  “Over there, talking to the cultural attaché from Genua. That’s the man with the glazed expression.”

  As they got closer Vimes heard Detritus’s voice in full expansive explanation: “—and den dere’s dis big room wid all seats in it, wid red walls and dem big gold babies climbin’ up der pillar only, don’t worry, ’cos dey’re not real gold babies, dey’re only made of plaster or somethin’…” There was a pause as Detritus considered matters. “An’ also I don’t reckon it’s real gold, neither, ’cos some bugger’d have pinched it if it was…And in front of der stage dere’s dis big pit where all der musicians sits. And dat’s about it for dat room. In der next room der’s all dese marble pillars, an’ on der floor dey got red carpetting—”

  “Detritus?” said Lady Sybil. “I do hope you’re not monopolizing this gentleman.”

  “No, I bin tellin’ him all about der culture we got in Ankh-Morpork,” said Detritus airily. “I know just about every inch of der op’ra house.”

  “Yes,” said the cultural attaché, in a stunned voice. “And I must say I’m particularly interested in visiting the art gallery and seeing…” he shuddered “‘…der picture of dis woman, I don’t reckon der artist knew how to do a smile prop’ly, but the frame’s got to be worth a bob or two.’ It sounds like the experience of a lifetime. Good evening to you.”

  “You know, I don’t fink he knows a lot of culture,” said Detritus, as the man strode away.

  “Do you think people will miss us if we slip away?” said Vimes, looking around. “It’s been a long day and I want to think about things—”

  “Sam, you are the ambassador, and Ankh-Morpork is a world power,” said Sybil. “We can’t just sneak off! People will comment.”

  Vimes groaned. So Inigo was right: When Vimes sneezes, Ankh-Morpork blows its nose.

  “Your Excellency?”

  He looked down at two dwarfs.

  “The Low King will see you now,” said one of them.

  “Er…”

  “We will have to be officially presented,” Lady Sybil hissed.

  “What, even Detritus?”

  “Yes!”

  “But he’s a troll!” It had seemed amusing at the time.

  Vimes was aware of a drift in the crowds across the floor of the huge cave. There was a certain movement to them, a flow in the current of people toward one end of the cave. There was really no option but to join it.

  The Low King was on a small throne under one of the chandeliers. There was a metal canopy over it, already encrusted with marvelous stalactites of wax.

  Around him, watching the crowd, were four dwarfs, tall for dwarfs, and looking rather menacing in their dark glasses. Each one was holding an ax. They spent all their time staring very hard at peo
ple.

  The king was talking to the Genuan ambassador. Vimes looked sideways at Cheery and Detritus. Suddenly, bringing them here wasn’t such a good idea. In his official robes, the king looked a lot more…distant, and a lot harder to please.

  Hang on, he told himself. They are Ankh-Morpork citizens. They’re not doing anything wrong.

  And then he argued: They’re not doing anything wrong in Ankh-Morpork.

  The line moved along. Their party was almost in the presence. The armed dwarfs were all watching Detritus now, and holding their axes in a slightly less relaxed way.

  Detritus appeared not to notice.

  “Dis place is even more cult’ral than the op’ra house,” he said, gazing around respectfully. “Dem chandeliers must weigh a ton.”

  He reached up and rubbed his head, and then inspected his fingers.

  Vimes glanced up. Something warm, like a buttered raindrop, hit his cheek.

  As he brushed it away, he saw the shadows move…

  Things happened with treacle slowness. He saw it as if he were watching himself from a little way away.

  He saw himself push Cheery and Sybil roughly, heard himself shout something, and watched himself dive toward the king, snatching the dwarf up as an ax clanged into his backplate.

  Then he was rolling, with the angry dwarf in his arms, and the chandelier was halfway through its fall, candle flames streaming, and there was Detritus, raising his hands with a calculating look on his face…

  There was a moment of stillness and silence as the troll caught the descending mountain of light. And then physics returned, in an exploding cloud of dwarfs, debris, molten wax and tumbling, flaring candles.

  Vimes woke up in utter darkness. He blinked and touched his eyes to make sure that they were open.

  Then he sat up and his head thumped against stone, and then there was light, vicious yellow and purple lights, filling his life very suddenly. He lay back until they went away.

  He took a personal itinerary. His cloak, helmet, sword and armor had all gone. He was left in his shirt and breeches, and while this place was not freezing, it had a clamminess that was already working its way through to his bones.