Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  “The what, sir?”

  Vimes blinked. “Is it possible, Mr. Feeney, that you don’t know what paperwork is?”

  Feeney was perplexed. “Well, yes, sir, of course, but generally I just jot down the name in my notebook, sir. I mean, I know who he is, and I know where he is and what he’s done. Oh, yes, and since the trouble we had with old Mr. Parsley, after he had a skinful, I also make certain to check if the prisoner is allergic to anything in Bhangbhangduc cuisine. It took me all day to clean out the place, on account of there’d been a tiny bit of winky.” Seeing Vimes’s expression, he went on, “Very popular herb, sir.”

  “Habeas corpus, lad! You want to be the copper here, right? Then Mr. Flutter is your prisoner! You are responsible for him. If he gets ill, then he is your problem, if he dies then he is your corpse, and if he gets out and away then you would find yourself in a situation so problematical that the word ‘problem’ just would not fit the situation. I’m trying to be helpful, honestly, but I could just as easily take him up to the Hall. We’ve got loads of cellars and we could easily bed him down in one of them, no problem. But then if I have to do that, what good are you?”

  Feeney looked shocked. He pulled himself upright. “I wouldn’t hear of that, sir, and neither would my ancestors, sir. After all, we’ve never had anyone who has even been near a murder.”

  “Very well, then, give me a receipt for the prisoner, which is a very important thing, and I’ll go back to the Hall to have a nap.”

  Vimes stepped back as a riverboat came into view and a very small tidal wave of muddy water splashed gently on the little quayside. The boat was another one with paddle wheels; Sybil had explained all about them. An ox patiently trod its way around a treadmill in the bilges and wonderful gearing caused the paddle wheels to turn.

  The pilot of this one waved at him. As it went past he saw a woman in the stern, hanging out clothing, watched by a cat. A good life, at the speed of an ox, he thought, where probably no one is ever going to try to kill you. And, just for a moment, he felt jealous, while a line of barges followed the boat past a flotilla of ducklings. Vimes sighed, got back in the coach, was driven to the Hall by Willikins and, after a very brief shower, sank into the pillows and descended into darkness.

  People said that these days Ankh-Morpork was moving. Others said that while this might be true, so was a sufficiently aged cheese. And, like the hypothetical cheese, it was bursting out of its mold, in this case the outermost walls, which were, in the words of Lord Vetinari, “a corset that should be unlaced.” One of the first to let themselves spread had been Harry King, now, of course, known as Sir Harold King. He was a scallywag, a chancer, a ruthless fighter and a dangerous driver of bargains over the speed limit. Since all this was a bit of a mouthful, he was referred to as a successful businessman, since that more or less amounted to the same thing. And he had the knack of turning rubbish into money. As Captains Carrot and Angua walked along the tow path toward the reedy swamps downriver, Harry King’s flame burned ahead of them. All was grist to the mills of the King of Muck. His armies of workers swept the streets, emptied the cesspits, cleaned the chimneys, scoured the middens of the slaughterhouse district and carried away from those selfsame houses all those bits of previously living matter that could not, for the love of decency, be put in a sausage. They said that Harry King would suck the smoke out of the air if he thought he could get a good price for it. And if you wanted a job, Harry King would give you one, at a wage not very much less than you might get elsewhere in the city, and if you stole from Harry King you would get what you deserved. The mills of Harry King stank, of course, but now the city itself did not, at least not as badly as it used to, and some people were complaining about the loss of the famous Ankh-Morpork smell, rumored to be so strong that it kept away illnesses and ailments of all sorts and, moreover, put hairs on your chest and did you good.

  Ankh-Morpork being what it was, there was already a Smell Preservation Society.

  The two watchmen began to breathe less deeply as they approached the smoke and fumes. A small city surrounded the workings, a shanty town knocked together with Harry’s blessing by the workers themselves because, after all, that meant they wouldn’t be late for work.

  The security officer at the gate opened it instantly as they approached. Harry was probably not honest, but if there was dishonesty it happened at times and places that did not concern the Watch, and faded from the memory of all concerned just as soon as the ripples of the splash had died away and the tide had gone out.

  Also going out as Carrot and Angua climbed the outside steps to the large office where Harry presided over his kingdom was a man, moving horizontally at speed, with Harry King’s big hands grasping him by his collar and the seat of his pants and finally throwing him down the steps, accompanied by a shout, “You’re fired!” The watchmen stood aside as the man rolled down from step to step. “And if I see you again, the dogs is always hungry! Oh, hello, Captain Carrot,” said Harry, his voice suddenly all matey, “and the charming Miss Angua too. My word, what a lovely surprise, do come in, always a pleasure to be of assistance to the Watch!”

  “Sir Harry, you really shouldn’t throw people down the steps like that,” said Carrot.

  Harry King looked innocent and spread his huge hands widely, and said, “What? Are those bloody steps still there? I gave orders to have them taken away! Thank you for the advice, captain, but the way I see it is that I caught him trying to steal my money and so if he’s still alive then on the whole I reckon we’re square. Coffee? Tea? Something stronger? No, I thought not, but take a seat, no harm in that, at least.”

  They sat down and Carrot said, “We need to talk about goblins.”

  Harry King looked blank, but said, “Got a few of them working for me, if that’s any help. Decent workers, you might be surprised to know. A bit weird in their ways, not the fastest, but once they’ve got the hang of what you want them to do you can just leave them to it until you tell them to stop. I pay them half what I pay humans and I reckon they do twice as much work, and do it better. Be happy to hire another hundred if they turned up.”

  “But you pay them far less than humans?” said Angua.

  Harry gave her a pitying look. “And who else would pay them anything at all, love? Well, business is business. It’s not like I chain them down. Okay, not many people would want to employ goblins on account of the stink, but I know by the wrinkling of your pretty nose, captain, that I stink too. It goes with the job. Besides, I let them stay on my land and they make those weird little pots in their spare time, and I see to it they don’t have much of that, and when they have enough money for whatever they want, they bugger off back to where they came from. Young Slick and his granny are the only ones that’s ever stayed. Gonna make a name for himself, that one.”

  “We’d like to talk to some of the goblins about the pots you mentioned, if that’s okay by you, Harry?” said Carrot.

  Harry King smiled and waggled a finger at him. “Now, I’ll take that from you two, because we’ve all seen a bit of the world and know what’s what, but outside this office it’s Sir Harry, okay? Personally, I ain’t all that bothered, but her ladyship is a stickler, oh my word, yes! Nose so high in the air it brings down sparrows, I’m telling you! Still, I can’t say it does any harm.” Harry King, or possibly Sir Harold King, thought for a moment. “Out of interest, why do you want to talk about goblin pots?”

  Angua hesitated, but Carrot said, “We are both very interested in goblin folklore, Sir Harry.”

  Harry King chuckled. “You know, I never could read your face, Captain Carrot. I’d hate to play poker with you! Okay, it’s not my business, I’ll take you at your word. Just you go down the steps and make your way to the sorting belts and find Billy Slick, and tell him that Harry King would deem it a favor if he would be so good as to take you to see his old granny, okay? No need to thank me, I suspec
t old Vimes put in a good word about me to Vetinari when the medals was being given out, if you know what I mean. They say one hand washes the other, but I bet that when it came to old Harry King it had to scrub.”

  They found Billy Slick stacking old copies of the Ankh-Morpork Times onto a truck. You could always recognize a goblin, although this one, in his grubby overall, looked like any other working man in the place. The only difference was that he was a goblin working man.

  Carrot tapped him gently on the shoulder and Billy looked round. “Oh, coppers.”

  “We’ve come from Harry King, Billy,” said Carrot, adding quickly, “You’ve done nothing wrong. We just want to learn about unggue pots.”

  “You want to learn about unggue?” Billy stared at Carrot. “I know I ain’t done nothing wrong, guv, and I don’t need you to do the telling of me and I wouldn’t touch any of those bloody pots to save my life. I’m working my way up, I am. Can’t be bothered with fairy stories.”

  Angua stepped forward and said, “Mr. Slick, this is quite important. We need to find someone who can tell us about unggue pots. Do you know anyone who can help?”

  Billy looked her up and down superciliously. “You’re a werewolf, ain’t ya? Can smell you a mile off. And what would you do if I said I didn’t know anybody?”

  “Then,” said Carrot, “we would regrettably have to go about our business.”

  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.”