Down below, as the sunken mountain of Leshp settled further onto the sea bed, the Curious Squid jetted back along its curious streets. They had no idea why, at enormous intervals, their city disappeared up into the sky, but it never went away for very long. It was just one of those things. Things happened, or sometimes they didn't. The Curious Squid just assumed that it all worked out, sooner or later.
A shark swam by. If anyone had risked placing an ear to its side, they would have heard: “Bingeley-bingeley beep! Three pee em… Eat, Hunger, Swim. Things To Do Today: Swim, Hunger, Eat. Three oh five pee em: Feeding Frenzy…”
It wasn't the most interesting of schedules, but it was very easy to organize.
Unusually, Sergeant Colon had put himself on the patrol roster. It was good to get out in the cool air. And also, for some reason, the news had got around that the Watch were somehow bound up with what seemed, in some indefinable way, to have been a victory, which meant that a Watch uniform was probably good for the odd free pint at the back door of the occasional pub.
He patrolled with Corporal Nobbs. They walked with the confident tread of men who had been places and seen things.
With a true copper's instinct, the tread took them past Mundane Meals. Mr Goriff was cleaning the windows. He stopped when he saw them and darted inside.
“Call that gratitude?” sniffed Colon.
The man reappeared carrying two large packages.
“My wife made this specially for you,” he said. He added, “She said she knew you'd be along.”
Colon pulled aside the waxed paper.
“My word,” he said.
“Special Ankh-Morpork curry,” said Mr Goriff. “Containing yellow curry powder, big lumps of swede, green peas and soggy sultanas the—”
“—size of eggs!” said Nobby.
“Thank you very much,” said Colon. “How's your lad, then, Mr Goriff?”
“He says you have set him an example and now he will be a watchman when he grows up.”
“Ah, right,” said Colon happily. “That'll please Mr Vimes. You just tell him—”
“In Al-Khali,” said Goriff. “He is staying with my brother.”
“Oh. Well… fair enough, then. Er… thanks for the curry, anyway.”
“What sort of example do you think he meant?” said Nobby, as they strolled away.
“The good sort, obviously,” said Colon, through a mouthful of mildly spiced swede.
“Yeah, right.”
Chewing slowly and walking even slower, they headed towards the docks.
“I was gonna write Bana a letter,” said Nobby, after a while.
“Yeah, but… she thought you was a woman, Nobby.”
“Right. So she saw, like, my inner self, shorn of…” Nobby's lips moved as he concentrated, “shorn of surface thingy. That's what Angua said. Anyway, then I thought, well, her boyfriend'll be coming back, so I thought I'd be noble about it and give her up.”
“'cos he might be a big stroppy bloke, too,” said Sergeant Colon.
“I never thought about that, sarge.”
They paced for a while.
“It's a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,”{95} said Nobby.
“Right,” said Sergeant Colon. They walked on in silence for a while and he added: “O'course, that's not difficult.”
“I still got the hanky she gave me, look.”
“Very nice, Nobby.”
“That's genuine Klatchian silk, that is.”
“Yeah, it looks very nice.”
“I'm never going to wash it, sarge,”
“You soppy old thing, Nobby,” said Fred Colon.
He watched Corporal Nobbs blow his nose.
“So… you're going to stop using it, are you?” he said, doubtfully.
“It still bends, sarge. See?” Nobby demonstrated.
“Yeah, right. Silly of me to ask, really.”
Overhead, the weathervanes started to creak round.
“Made me a lot more understanding about women, that experience,” said Nobby.
Colon, a much-married man, said nothing.
“I met Verity Pushpram this afternoon,” Nobby went on, “and I said how about coming out with me tonight and I don't mind about the squint at all and I've got this expensive exotic perfume which'll totally disguise your smell, and she said bugger off and threw an eel at me.”
“Not good, then,” said Colon.
“Oh, yeah, sarge, 'cos she used to just cuss when she saw me. And I've still got the eel, and there's a good feed off it, so I look upon it as a very positive step.”
“Could be. Could be. Just so long as you give someone that scent soon, eh? Only even the people across the street are starting to complain.”
Their feet, moving like bees towards a flower, had found their way to the waterfront. They looked up at the Klatchian's Head, on its spike.
“It's only wooden,” said Colon.
Nobby said nothing.
“And it's, like, part of our traditional heritage an' that,” Colon went on, but hesitantly, as if he didn't believe his own voice.
Nobby blew his nose again, an exercise which, with all its little arpeggios and flourishes, went on for some time.
The sergeant gave in. Some things didn't seem quite the same any more, he had to admit. “I've never really liked the place. Let's go to the Bunch of Grapes then, all right?”
Nobby nodded.
“Anyway, the beer here is frankly piss,” said Colon.
Lady Sybil held her handkerchief in front of her husband.
“Spit!” she commanded.
Then she carefully cleaned a smut off his cheek.
“There. Now you look very—”
“—ducal,” said Vimes gloomily. “I thought I'd done this once already…”
“They never actually had the Convivium after all that fuss,” said Lady Sybil, picking some microscopic lint off his doublet. “It's got to be held.”
“You'd think if I'm a duke I wouldn't have to wear all this damn silly outfit, wouldn't you?”
“Well, I did point out that you could wear the official ducal regalia, dear.”
“Yes, I've seen it. White silk stockings are not me.”
“Well, you've got the calves for them—”
“I think I'll stick with the commander's costume,” said Vimes quickly.
Archchancellor Ridcully hurried up. “Ah, we're ready for you now, Lord Vi—”
“Call me Sir Samuel,” said Vimes. “I can just about live with that.”
“Well, we've found the Bursar in one of the attics, so I think we can make a start. If you'd take your place…”
Vimes walked to the head of the procession, feeling every gaze on him, hearing the whispers. Maybe you could get chucked out of the peerage? He'd have to look that up. Although, considering what lords had got up to in the past, it would have to be for something really, really awful.
Still, the drawings of the statue looked good. And he'd seen what was going to go in the history books. Making history, it turned out, was quite easy. It was what got written down. It was as simple as that.
“Jolly good,” Ridcully bellowed, above the buzz. “Now, if we all step smartly and follow Lor— Com— Sir Samuel we ought to be back here for lunch no later than half past one. Is the choir ready? No one is treading on anyone else's robes? Then orf we go!”
Vimes set out at the mandatory slow walking pace. He heard the procession start up behind him. There were no doubt problems, as there always are on civic occasions which have to involve the old and deaf and the young and stupid. Several people were probably already walking in the wrong direction.
As he stepped out into Sator Square there were the jeers and various flatulent noises and murmurs of “Oozee then, oozee finkee izz?” that are the traditional crowd responses on these occasions. But there were one or two cheers, too.
He tried to look straight ahead.
Silk stockings. With garters. Well, they we
re out. There were a lot of things he'd do for Sybil, but if garters figured anywhere in the relationship they weren't going to be on him. And everyone said he had to wear a purple robe fined with vermine. They could forget that, too.
He'd spent a desperate hour in the library, and all that stuff about the gold knobs and silk stockings was so much marsh gas. Tradition? He'd show them tradition. What the original dukes wore, as far as he could see, was good sensible chain mall with blood on it, preferably other people's—
There was a scream from the crowd. His head jerked round and he saw a stout woman sitting on the ground, waving her arms.
“'e stole my bag! And 'e never showed me 'is Thieves' Guild badge!”
The procession shunted to a halt as Vimes stared at the figure legging it across Sator Square.
“You stop right there, Sidney Pickens!” he yelled, and leapt forward.
And, of course, very few people do know how Tradition is supposed to go. There's a certain mysterious ridiculousness about it by its very nature — once there was a reason why you had to carry a posy of primroses on Soul Cake Tuesday, but now you did it because… that's what was Done. Besides, the intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.
Vimes was running, so the University choir hurried after him. And the people behind the choir saw the gap opening up and responded to the urge to fill it. And then everyone was just running, because everyone else was running.
There were occasional whimpers from those whose heart, lungs or legs weren't up to this kind of thing, and a bellow from the Archchancellor who had tried to stand firm in the face of the frantic stampede and was now having his head repeatedly trodden into the cobbles.
And apprentice thief Sidney Pickens ran because he'd taken one look over his shoulder and seen the whole of Ankh-Morpork society bearing down on him, and that sort of thing has a terrible effect on a growing lad.
And Sam Vimes ran. He tore off his cloak and whirled away his plumed hat, and he ran and ran.
There would be trouble later on. People would ask questions. But that was later on — for now, gloriously uncomplicated and wonderfully clean, and hopefully with never an end, under a clear sky, in a world untarnished… there was only the chase.
THE END
Notes
1
The palms are held at right angles to one another and flapped together rather than clapped, while the flapper stares intently at the audience as if to say “We're going to have some applause here or else the whole school is in detention.”
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2
Women always do this.
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3
The possibility that they were not guilty of anything was one that he didn't even think worthy of consideration.
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4
A term invented by the wizard Denephew Boot*, who had found that by a system of rewards and punishments he could train a dog, at the ringing of a bell, to immediately eat a strawberry meringue.
*His parents, who were uncomplicated country people, had wanted a girl. They were expecting to call her Denise.
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5
Plain clothes was the problem. Both the men had been used to uniforms all their lives. Sergeant Colon's only suit had been bought by a man two stone lighter and ten years younger, so the buttons creaked under tension, and Nobby's idea of plain clothes was the ribbon-and-bell-bedecked costume he wore as a leading member of the Ankh-Morpork Folk Dance and Song Society. Small children had followed them in the street to see where the show was going to be.
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6
Constable Visit-The-Ungodly-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets was a good copper, Vimes always said, and that was his highest term of praise. He was an Omnian with his countrymen's almost pathological interest in evangelical religion and spent all his wages on pamphlets; he even had his own printing press. The results were handed out to anyone interested and everyone who wasn't interested as well. Even Detritus couldn't clear a crowd faster than Visit, Vimes said. And on his days off he could be seen tramping the streets with his colleague, Smite-The-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments. So far they hadn't made a single convert. Vimes thought that Visit was probably a really nice man underneath it all, but somehow he could never face the task of finding out.
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7
And would not, therefore, be officially burgled. Ankh-Morpork had a very direct approach to the idea of insurance. When the middle-man was cut out, that wasn't a figure of speech.
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8
It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.
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9
One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
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10
Thinking up good names was, oddly enough, one area where Leonard Quirm's genius tended to give up.
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11
Except in the particular case of Sidney Lopsides, who was paid two dollars a day from City funds to wear a sack over his head. It wasn't that he was spectacularly deformed, as such, it was merely that anyone who saw him spent the rest of the day with an unnerving feeling that they were upside down.
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12
Sidney Lopsides again.
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13
Jugglers will tell you that juggling with items that are identical is always easier than a mixture of all shapes and sizes. This is even the case with chainsaws, although of course when the juggler misses the first chainsaw it is only the start of his problems. Some more will be along very shortly.
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14
Corporal Nobbs's appearance could best be summarized this way.
One of the minor laws of the narrative universe is that any homely featured man who has, for some reason, to disguise himself as a woman will apparently become attractive to some otherwise perfectly sane men with, as the ancient scrolls say, hilarious results.
In this case the laws were fighting against the fact of Corporal Nobby Nobbs, and gave up.
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15
And Mr Harris of the Blue Cat Club. His admission caused a lot of argument in the Guild, who knew competition when they saw it, but Mrs Palm overruled opposition on the basis, she said, that unnatural acts were only natural.
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16
Usually because they suspect the joke's on them.
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17
Although of course wizards aren't allowed to, because they're not supposed to have grandchildren.
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Comments
1
“By jingo!” is an archaic, jocular oath, of obscure origin, used in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word — with derived forms such as ‘jingoism’ and ‘jingoistic’ — became associated with aggressive, militaristic nationalism as a result of a popular song dating from the Turko-Russian war of 1877-78, which began:
We don't want to have to fight,
but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men,
we've got the money too.
Interestingly (in the light of the circumstances of this particular war), it is also the name of a warlike Japanese empress of the 2nd/3rd centuries, credited by legend with the power of controlling the tides.
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2
Fishing rights have been a frequent cause of dispute between the UK and neighbours, most dramatically in the ‘Cod Wars’ between the UK and Iceland (1958, 1973, 1975), in which ships from the two countries sabotaged each other's nets.
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3
In the 1963 comedy Mouse on the Moon, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick com
petes with the USA and USSR to put the first human on the moon. The Fenwick rocket gets there first, but someone points out that this doesn't matter — the glory will go to whoever gets home first. The Americans and Russians quickly make their excuses and leave, pausing only to enter the wrong capsules before sorting themselves out.
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4
London's Hyde Park Corner has a very similar tradition.
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5
One of Christopher Columbus’ ships was named the Pinta. A UK milk-marketing slogan from the 1980s exhorted people to ‘Drinka pinta milka day’.
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