Thud!

by Terry Pratchett

  Vimes stared.

  Ankh-Morpork was built on Ankh-Morpork. Everyone knew that. They had been building with stone here ten thousand years ago. As the annual flooding of the Ankh brought more silt, so the city had risen on its wall until attics had become cellars. Even at basement level today, it was always said, a man with a pickaxe and a good sense of direction could cross the city by knocking his way through underground walls, provided he could also breathe mud.

  What had this place been? A palace? The temple of a god who’d subsequently slipped everyone’s memory? It was a big space, dark as soot, but there was a glow that managed to show beautiful vaulting in the roof above. A strange glow.

  “Vurms,” said Ardent. “From the deep caves in the mountains around Llamedos. We brought them with us, and they breed very fast here. They find your silt quite nourishing. I’m sure they shine more, too.”

  The glow moved. It did not illuminate much, but it showed the shape of things, and it was heading toward the elevator, flowing over the wonderful ceiling.

  “They head for heat and movement, even now,” said the hooded dwarf.

  “Er…why?”

  Ardent gave a little laugh.

  “In case you die, Commander. They think you are some rat or small deer that has tumbled into their cave. Nourishment is rare in the Deeps. Every breath you exhale is food. And when eventually you expire, they will…descend. They are very patient. They will leave nothing but bones.”

  “I was not intending to expire here,” said Vimes.

  “Of course not. Follow me, please,” said Ardent, leading them past a big, round door. There were more doors on the other side of the room, and several gaping tunnel mouths.

  “How far down are we?”

  “Not far. About forty feet. We are good at digging.”

  “In this city?” said Vimes. “Why aren’t we trying to breathe underwater? And calling it water is giving it the best of it.”

  “We are very good at keeping water out, too. Alas, it appears we are less good at keeping out Samuel Vimes.” The dwarf stepped into a smaller room, its ceiling thick with brilliant vurms, and motioned to a couple of dwarf-sized chairs. “Do sit down. Can I offer you refreshment?”

  “No, thank you,” said Vimes. He sat down gingerly on a chair that brought his knees up almost to his chin. Ardent sat down behind a small desk made of stone slabs and, to Vimes’s amazement, took off his headgear. He looked quite young, with a beard that was actually trimmed. Angua watched him, breathing slowly.

  “How far do all these tunnels run?” Vimes said.

  “I don’t propose to tell you,” said Ardent levelly.

  “So you’re undermining my city?”

  “Oh, Commander! You’ve been to the caves in Uberwald. You’ve seen how dwarfs can build? We are craftsmen. Do not think that your house is about to collapse.”

  “But you’re not just building basements! You’re mining!” said Vimes.

  “In a sense. We would say we are mining for holes. Space, Commander, that is what we are digging for. Yes, we are mining for holes. Although our bores have found deep treacle, you will be interested to hear—”

  “You can’t do this!”

  “Can we not? But we are doing it nevertheless,” said Ardent calmly.

  “You are burrowing under other people’s property?”

  “Rabbits burrow, Commander. We dig. And, yes, we are. How far down does ownership go, after all? And how far up?”

  Vimes looked at the dwarf. Calm down, he thought. You can’t deal with this. This is too big. It’s something for Vetinari to decide. Stick to what you know. Stick to what you can deal with.

  “I’m investigating reports of a death,” he said.

  “Yes. Grag Hamcrusher. A terrible misfortune,” said Ardent, with a calmness that was enraging.

  “I’ve heard it was a vicious murder.”

  “That would be a fair description.”

  “You admit it?” said Vimes.

  “I’ll choose to assume that by that you mean ‘do I admit there has been a murder,’ Commander. Yes. There has. And we are dealing with it.”

  “How?”

  “We are discussing the appointment of a zadkrdga,” said

  Ardent, folding his hands. “That is ‘one who smelts.’ One who finds the pure ore of truth in the dross of confusion.”

  “Discussing? Have you sealed off the scene of the crime yet?”

  “The smelter may order that, Commander, but we already know that the crime was committed by a troll.”

  Ardent’s face now bore an expression of amused contempt that Vimes longed to remove.

  He said: “How do you know this? Was it witnessed?”

  “Not as such. But a troll’s club was found beside the body,” said the dwarf.

  “And that’s all you have to go on?” Vimes stood up. “I’ve had enough of this. Sergeant Angua!”

  “Sir?” said Angua, beside him.

  “Let’s go. We’re going to find the murder scene while there’s still any clues left to find!”

  “You have no business in the lower areas!” snapped Ardent, standing up.

  “How are you going to stop me?”

  “How are you going to get past locked doors?”

  “How are you going to find out who murdered Hamcrusher?”

  “I told you, a troll’s club was found!”

  “And that’s it? ‘We found a club, so a troll did it?’ Is anyone going to believe that? You’re prepared to start a war in my city with a piece of flimflam like that? Because, believe me, that’s what’s going to happen when this gets out. Try it and I’ll arrest you!”

  “And start a war in your city?” said Ardent.

  Dwarf and man glared at each other while they caught their breath. On the ceiling above them, vurms congregated, feasting on spittle and rage.

  “Why would anyone but a troll strike down the grag?” said Ardent.

  “Good! You’re asking questions!” Vimes leaned across the desk. “If you really want answers, unlock those doors!”

  “No! You cannot go down there, Blackboard Monitor Vimes!”

  The dwarf could not have put more venom in the words “child murderer.”

  Vimes stared.

  Blackboard monitor. Well, he had been, in that little street school, more than forty-five years ago. Mum had insisted. Gods knew where she’d sprung the penny a day it cost, although most of the time Dame Slightly had been happy to accept payment in old clothes and firewood, or, preferably, gin. Numbers, Letters, Weights, Measures; it was not what you’d call a rich curriculum. Vimes had attended for nine months or so, until the streets demanded he learn much harder and sharper lessons. But, for a while, he’d been trusted to hand out the slates and clean the blackboard. Oh, the heady, strutting power of it, when you’re six years old!

  “Do you deny it?” said Ardent. “You destroy written words? You admitted as much to the Low King in Uberwald.”

  “It was a joke!” said Vimes.

  “Oh? Then you do deny it?”

  “What? No! He was impressed by my titles, and I just threw that one in for…fun.”

  “Then you deny the crime?” Ardent persisted.

  “Crime? I cleaned the blackboard so that new things could be written on it! How is that a crime?”

  “You did not care where those words went?” said Ardent.

  “Care? They were just chalk dust!”

  Ardent sighed and rubbed his eyes.

  “Busy night?” said Vimes.

  “Commander, I understand that you were young and may not have realized what you were doing, but you must understand that to us you appear to be proud of being complicit in the most heinous of crimes: the destruction of words.”

  “Sorry? Rubbing out ‘A is for Apple’ is a capital crime?”

  “One that would be unthinkable for a true dwarf,” said Ardent.

  “Really? But I have the trust of the Low King himself,” said Vimes.

&nbs
p; “So I understand. There are six venerable grags below us, Commander, and in their eyes, the Low King and his kind have strayed from the true seam. He is,” Ardent rattled off a sentence in staccato dwarfish, too fast for Vimes to catch it, and then translated: “Wishy-washy. Dangerously liberal. Shallow. He has seen the light.”

  Ardent was watching him carefully. Think hard. From what Vimes could remember, the Low King and his circle had been pretty crusty types. But these people think they’re soppy liberals.

  “Wishy-washy?” he said.

  “Indeed. I invite you, therefore, to derive from that statement something of the nature of those I serve below.”

  Ah, thought Vimes. There’s something there. Just a hint. Friend Ardent is a thinker.

  “When you say ‘he has seen the light’ you sound as if you mean ‘corrupted,’ ” he said.

  “Something like that, yes. Different worlds, Commander. Down here, it would be unwise to trust your metaphors. To see the light is to be blinded. Do you not know that in the darkness, the eyes open wider?”

  “Take me to see these people down below,” said Vimes.

  “They will not listen to you. They will not even look at you. They have nothing to do with the World Above. They believe it is a kind of bad dream. I have not dared tell them about your ‘newspapers,’ printed every day and discarded like rubbish. The shock would kill them.”

  But dwarfs invented the printing engine, Vimes thought.

  Obviously, they were the wrong kind of dwarf. I’ve seen Cheery throw stuff in the wastepaper basket, too. It seems like nearly all dwarfs are the wrong sort, eh?

  “What exactly is your job, Mr. Ardent?” said Vimes.

  “I am their chief liaison with the World Above. The steward, you could say.”

  “I though that was Helmclever’s job?”

  “Helmclever? He orders the groceries, relays my orders, pays the miners, and so on. The chores, in fact,” said Ardent disdainfully. “He is a novice, and his job is to do what I tell him. It is I who speaks to the grags.”

  “You talk to bad dreams on their behalf?”

  “You could put it that way, I suppose. They would not let a proud word-killer become a smelter. The idea would be abominable.”

  They glared at each other.

  Once again, we end up in Koom Valley, Vimes told himself. They won’t—

  “Permission to make a suggestion?” said Angua quietly.

  Two heads turned. Two mouths said: “Well?”

  “The…smelter. The seeker of the truth. Must they be a dwarf?”

  “Of course!” said Ardent.

  “Then what about Captain Carrot? He’s a dwarf.”

  “We know of him. He is an…anomaly,” said Ardent. “His claim to dwarfishness is debatable.”

  “But most dwarfs in the city accept that he’s a dwarf,” said Angua. “And he’s a copper, too.”

  Ardent flopped back into his seat. “To your dwarfs here, yes, he is a dwarf. He would be unacceptable to the grags.”

  “There’s no dwarf law that says a dwarf can’t be more than six feet tall, sir.”

  “The grags are the law, woman,” Ardent snapped. “They interpret laws that go back for tens of thousands of years.”

  “Well, ours don’t,” said Vimes. “But murder is murder anywhere. The news has got out. You’ve already got the dwarfs and the trolls simmering nicely, and this will bring it all right to the boil. Do you want a war?”

  “With the trolls? That is—”

  “No, with the city. A place inside the walls where the law doesn’t run? His lordship won’t accept that one.”

  “You would not dare!” said the dwarf.

  “Look into my eyes,” said Vimes.

  “There are far more dwarfs than there are watchmen,” said Ardent, but the amused expression had fled.

  “So what you are telling me is that law is just a matter of numbers?” said Vimes, standing up. “I thought you dwarfs practically worshiped the idea of law. Is numbers all it is? I’ll swear in more men, then. Trolls, too. They’re citizens, just like me. Are you sure every dwarf is on your side? I’ll raise the regiments. I’ll have to. I know how things are run in Llamedos and Uberwald, but they are not run like that here. One law, Mr. Ardent. That’s what we’ve got. If I let people slam their front door on it, I might as well shut down the Watch.”

  Vimes walked to the doorway. “That’s my offer. Now I’m going back to the Yard—”

  “Wait!”

  Ardent sat staring at the desktop, drumming his fingers on it.

  “I do not have…seniority here,” he said.

  “Let me talk to your grags. I promise to rub out no words.”

  “No. They will not talk to you. They do not talk to humans. They are waiting below. They had word of your arrival. They are frightened. They do not trust humans.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are not dwarfs,” said Ardent. “Because you are…a sort of bad dream.”

  Vimes put his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder.

  “Then let’s go downstairs, where you can talk to them about nightmares,” he said, “and you can point out which one is me.”

  There was a long silence until Ardent said: “Very well. This is under protest, you understand.”

  “I’ll be happy to make a note of that,” said Vimes. “Thank you for your cooperative attitude,” he added.

  Ardent stood up and produced a ring of complex keys from his robes.

  Vimes tried to keep track of the journey, but it was hard. There were twists and turns, in dim tunnels that seemed all alike. There was not a trace of water anywhere. How far did the tunnels go? How far down? How far out? Dwarfs mined through granite. They could probably stroll through river mud.

  In fact, in most places, the dwarfs hadn’t so much mined as cleaned house, taking away the silt, tunneling from one ancient, dripping room to another. And, somehow, the water went away.

  There were things, glittering, possibly magical, half seen in dark archways as they passed. And odd chanting. He knew dwarfish, in a the-axe-of-my-aunt-is-in-your-head kind of way, and it didn’t sound like that at all. It sounded like short words rattled out at very high speed.

  And with every turn he felt the anger coming back. They were being led in circles, weren’t they? For no reason other than pique. Ardent forged ahead, leaving Vimes to blunder along behind and occasionally bump his head.

  His temper was bubbling. This was nothing more than a bloody runaround! The dwarf didn’t care about the law, about him, about the world above. They undermine our city and they don’t obey our laws! There had been a damn murder. He admits it! Why am I putting up with this…this stupid playacting!

  He was passing yet another tunnel mouth, but this one had a piece of board nailed across it. He pulled out his sword, yelled, “I wonder what’s down here?,” smashed the board, and set off down the tunnel with Angua following.

  “Is this wise, sir?” she whispered, as they plunged along.

  “No. But I’ve had it up to here with Mr. Ardent,” Vimes growled. “I tell you, another twisty tunnel and I’ll be back here with the heavy mob, politics or not.”

  “Calm down, sir!”

  “Well, everything he says and does is an insult! It makes my blood boil!” said Vimes, striding onwards and ignoring the shouts of Ardent behind him.

  “There’s a door ahead, sir!”

  “All right, I’m not blind! Just half-blind!” Vimes snapped.

  He reached out. The big, round door had a wheel in its center, and dwarf runes chalked all over it.

  “Can you read them, Sergeant?”

  “Er…‘Mortal Danger! Flooding! No Entry!’ ” said Angua. “More or less, sir. They’re pressure doors. I’ve seen these used before, in other mines.”

  “Chained shut, too,” said Vimes, reaching out. “Looks like solid iron—ow!”

  “Sir?”

  “Gashed my hand on a nail!” Vimes rammed his hand into a pocket
, where, without fail, Sybil saw to it that a clean handkerchief was lodged on a daily basis.

  “A nail in an iron door, sir?” said Angua, looking closely.

  “A rivet, then. Can’t see a thing in this gloom. Why they—”

  “You must follow me. This is a mine! There are dangers!” said Ardent, catching up with them.

  “You still get flooding?” said Vimes.

  “It is to be expected! We know how to cope! Now, stay close to me!”

  “I’ll be more inclined to do that, sir, if I thought were taking a direct route!” said Vimes. “Otherwise I might look for shortcuts!”

  “We are nearly there, Commander,” said Ardent, walking away. “Nearly there!”

  Aimless and hopeless, the troll wandered…

  His name was Brick, although currently he couldn’t remember this. His head ached. It really ached. It was der Scrape that did it. What did dey always say? When you sinkin’ to where you was cookin’ up Scrape, you was so low even der cockroaches had to bend down to spit on you?

  Last night…what had happenin’? What bits did he see, what bits did he do, what bits in der thumpin,’ scaldin’ cauldron of his brain were real? The bit with der giant wooly elephants, dey prob’ly weren’t real. He was pretty sure there weren’t any giant wooly elephants in dis city, ’cos if der were, he would’ve seen ’em before, and dere’d be big steamin’ turds in der streets an’ similar, you wouldn’t miss ’em…

  He was called Brick because he had been born in the city, and trolls, being made of metamorphorical rock, ofter take on the nature of the local rocks. His hide was a dirty orange, with a network of horizontal and vertical lines; if Brick stood up close to a wall, he was quite hard to see. But most people didn’t see Brick anyway. He was the kind of person whose mere existence is an insult to all decent folk, in their opinion.

  Dat mine wi’ dem dwarfs, was dat real? You go an’ find a place to lie down and watch der pretty pichturs, suddenly you’re in dis dwarf hole? That couldna bin real! Only…word on der street was dat some troll had got into a dwarf hole, yeah, and everyone was lookin’ for dat troll an’ not to shake him by der han’…Der word said der Breccia wanted to find out real hard, and by der sound of it dey were not happy. Not happy that some dwarf who’d been puttin’ der bad word on the clans was off’ed by a troll? Were dey mad? Actually, it didn’t matter if dey was mad or not, ’cos dey had ways of asking questions dat didn’t heal for months, so he better be keepin’ out dere way.