Men at Arms tds-15

by Terry Pratchett

  “You're a man interested in words, captain. I'd just invite you to consider something your predecessor never fully grasped.”

  “Sir?”

  “Have you ever wondered where the word ‘politician’ comes from?” said the Patrician.

  “And then there's the committee of the Sunshine Sanctuary,” said Lady Ramkin, from her side of the dining table. “We must get you on that. And the Country Landowners' Association. And the Friendly Flamethrowers' League. Cheer up. You'll find your time will just fill up like nobody's business.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Vimes. The days stretched ahead of him, just filling up like nobody's business with committees and good works and… nobody's business. It was probably better than walking the streets. Lady Sybil and Mr Vimes.

  He sighed.

  Sybil Vimes, née Ramkin, looked at him with an expression of faint concern. For as long as she'd known him, Sam Vimes had been vibrating with the internal anger of a man who wants to arrest the gods for not doing it right, and then he'd handed in his badge and he was… well, not exactly Sam Vimes any more.

  The clock in the corner chimed eight o'clock. Vimes pulled out his presentation watch and opened it.

  “That clock's five minutes fast,” he said, above the tinkling chimes. He snapped the lid shut, and read again the words on it: “A Watch From, Your Old Freinds In The Watch”.

  Carrot had been behind that, sure enough. Vimes had grown to recognize that blindness to the position of “i”s and “e”s and that wanton cruelty to the common comma.

  They said goodbye to you, they took you out of the measure of your days, and they gave you a watch…

  “Excuse me, m'lady?”

  “Yes, Willikins?”'

  “There is a Watchman at the door, m'lady. The tradesman's entrance.”

  “You sent a Watchman to the tradesman's entrance?” said Lady Sybil.

  “No, m'lady. That's the one he came to. It's Captain Carrot.”

  Vimes put his hand over his eyes. “He's been made captain and he comes to the back door,” he said. “That's Carrot, that is. Bring him on in.”

  It was barely noticeable, except to Vimes but the butler glanced at Lady Ramkin for her approval.

  “Do as your master says,” she said, gallantly.

  “I'm no-one's mas—” Vimes began.

  “Now, Sam,” said Lady Ramkin.

  “Well, I'm not,” said Vimes sullenly.

  Carrot marched in, and stood to attention. As usual, the room subtly became a mere background to him.

  “It's all right, lad,” said Vimes, as nicely as he could manage. “You don't need to salute.”

  “Yes I do, sir,” said Carrot. He handed Vimes an envelope. It had the seal of the Patrician on it.

  Vimes picked up a knife and broke the seal.

  “Probably charging me five dollars for unnecessary wear and tear on my chainmail,” he said.

  His lips moved as he read.

  “Blimey,” he said eventually. “Fifty-six?”

  “Yes, sir. Detritus is looking forward to breaking them in.”

  “Including undead? It says here open to all, regardless of species or mortal status—”

  “Yes, sir,” said Carrot, firmly. “They're all citizens.”

  “You mean you could have vampires in the Watch?”

  “Very good on night duty, sir. And aerial surveillance.”

  “And always useful if you want to stake out somewhere.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Vimes watched the feeble pun go right through Carrot's head without triggering his brain. He turned back to the paper.

  “Hmm. Pensions for widows, I see.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Re-opening the old Watch Houses?”

  “That's what he says, sir.”

  Vimes read on:

  We consider particularly that, this enlarged Watch will need an expereinced man in charge who, is held in Esteem by all parts of soceity and, we are convinced that you should fulfil this Roll. You will therefore take up your Duties immediately as, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. This post traditionally carreis with it the rank of Knight which, we are minded to resurrect on this one occasion.

  Hoping this finds you in good health, Yrs. faithfully

  Havelock Vetinari (Patrician)

  Vimes read it again.

  He drummed his fingers on the table. There was no doubt that the signature was genuine. But…

  “Corp—Captain Carrot?”

  “Sah!” Carrot stared straight ahead of him with the glistening air of one busting with duty and efficiency and an absolute resolve to duck and dodge any direct questions put to him.

  “I—” Vimes picked up the paper again, put it down, picked it up, and then passed it over to Sybil.

  “My word!” she said. “A knighthood? Not a moment too soon, either!”

  “Oh, no! Not me! You know what I think about the so-called aristocrats in this city—apart from you, Sybil, of course.”

  “Perhaps it's about time the general stock was improved, then,” said Lady Ramkin.

  “His lordship did say,” said Carrot, “that no part of the package was negotiable, sir. I mean, it's all or nothing, if you understand me.”

  “All…?”

  “Yessir.”

  “…or nothing.”

  “Yessir.”

  Vimes drummed his fingers on the table.

  “You've won, haven't you?” he said. “You've won.”

  “Sir? Don't understand, sir,” said Carrot, radiating honest ignorance.

  There was another dangerous silence.

  “But, of course,” said Vimes, “there's no possible way I could oversee this sort of thing.”

  “What do you mean, sir?” said Carrot.

  Vimes pulled the candelabra towards him and thumped the paper with a finger.

  “Well, look what it says here. I mean, opening those old Watch Houses? On the gates? What's the point in that? Right out there on the edge?”

  “Oh, I'm sure matters of organization detail can be changed, sir,” said Carrot.

  “Keep a general gate guard, yes, but if you're going to have any kind of finger on the pulse of… look, you'd need one along Elm Street somewhere, close to the Shades and the docks, and another one halfway up Short Street, and maybe a smaller one in Kingsway. Somewhere up there, anyway. You've got to think about population centres. How many men based per Watch House?”

  “I thought ten, sir. Allowing for shifts.”

  “No, can't do that. Use six at most. A corporal, say, and one other per shift. The rest you'll move around on, oh, a monthly rota. You want to keep everyone on their toes, yes? And that way everyone gets to walk every street. That's very important. And… wish I had a map here… oh… thank you, dear. Right. Now, see here. You've got a strength of fixty-six, nominal, OK? But you're taking over day watch too, plus you've got to allow for days off, two grandmother's funerals per year per man—gods know how your undead'll sort out that one, maybe they get time off to go to their own funerals—and then there's sickness and so on. So… we want four shifts, staggered around the city. Got a light? Thanks. We don't want the whole guard changing shift at once. On the other hand, you've got to allow each Watch House officer a certain amount of initiative. But we should maintain a special squad in Pseudopolis Yard for emergencies… look, give me that pencil. Now give me that notebook. Right…”

  Cigar smoke filled the room. The little presentation watch played every quarter of an hour, entirely unheeded.

  Lady Sybil smiled and shut the door behind her, and went to feed the dragons.

  “Dearest Mumm and Dad,

  Well here is Amazing news for, I am now Captain!! It has been a very busy and vareid Week all round as, I shall now recount…”

  And only one thing more…

  There was a large house in one of the nicer areas of Ankh, with a spacious garden with a children's tree-house in it and, quite probably, a warm spot by the fir
e.

  And a window, breaking…

  Gaspode landed on the lawn, and ran like hell towards the fence. Flower-scented bubbles streamed off his coat. He was wearing a ribbon with a bow on it, and carrying in his mouth a bowl labelled MR HUGGY.

  He dug his way frantically under the fence and squirmed into the road.

  A fresh pile of horse droppings took care of the floral smell, and five minutes of scratching removed the bow.

  “Not a bloody flea left,” he moaned, dropping the bowl. “An' I had nearly the complete set. Whee-ooo! I'm well out of that. Huh!”

  Gaspode brightened up. It was Tuesday. That meant steak-and-suspicious-organs pie at the Thieves' Guild, and the head cook there was known to be susceptible to a thumping tail and a penetrating stare. And holding an empty bowl in your mouth and looking pathetic was a sure-fire winner, if Gaspode was any judge. It shouldn't take too long to claw off MR HUGGY.

  Perhaps this wasn't the way it ought to be. But it was the way it was.

  On the whole, he reflected, it could have been a lot worse.

  1: But no gentleman would dream of being trained as a Thief.

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  2: Often with discreet plaques under them modestly recording the name of the person who'd killed them. This was the Assassins' portrait gallery, after all.

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  3: From the point of view of the species as a whole. Not from the point of view of the dragon now landing in small pieces around the landscape.

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  4: Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot.5

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  5: He got really burned on that deal.

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  6: The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

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  7: There's always one.

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  8: This is another survival trait.

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  9: Because he was an early form of free-thinking scientist, and did not believe that human beings had been created by some sort of divine being. Dissecting people when they were still alive tended to be a priestly preoccupation; they thought mankind had been created by some sort of divine being and wanted to have a closer look at His handiwork.

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  10: Suicide, for example. Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying “Got rocks in your head?” to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.

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  11: A survey by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants of tradespeople in the dock areas of Morpork found 987 women who gave their profession as “seamstress”. Oh… and two needles.

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  12: In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three… many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don't realize that many can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS.

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  13: More usually a landlady would ask “Are you decent?”, but Mrs Cake knew her lodgers.

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  14: Brown

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  15: And brown

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  16: It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone's character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps and hollows on their head. Therefore—according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind—it should be possible to mould someone's character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is hit on the head with a selection of different size mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that's the main thing.

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  17: Rat and cream cheese is only one of the famous Discworld dishes available in cosmopolitan Ankh-Morpork. According to the Guild of Merchants' publication Wellcome to Ankh-Morpork, Citie of One Thousand Surprises: “Also to be bought in its well-stuffed emporia are Slumpie, Jammy Devils, Fikkun haddock, Distressed Pudding, Clooty Dumplings18 and, not to be forgotten, the Knuckle Sandwich, made from finest pig knuckles. Not for something is it said, For a True Taste of Ankh-Morpork, Try a Knuckle Sandwich.”

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  18: Not to be confused with the Scottish Clootie Dumpling, which is a kind of suet padding full of fruit. The Ankh-Morpork version sits on the tongue like finest meringue, and on the stomach like a concrete bowling ball.

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  19: Wrong. Vimes didn't travel much except on foot, and knew little of the Lancre Suicide Thrush, for example, or the Shadowing Lemma, which exists in only two dimensions and eats mathematicians, or the quantum weather butterfly. But it is possible that the strangest, and possibly saddest, species on Discworld is the hermit elephant. This creature, lacking the thick hide of its near relatives, lives in huts, moving up and building extensions as its size increases. It's not unknown for a traveller on the plains of Howondaland to wake up in the morning in the middle of a village that wasn't there the night before.

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  20: The axiom “Honest men have nothing to fear from the police” currently under review by the Axioms Appeal Board.

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  21: Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things which only exist in potentia, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-Morpork is a product of the Patrician's rules about baseless metaphors, the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality around Ankh, which is so thin that it's as thin as a very thin thing. The net result is that trading in pork futures—in pork that doesn't exist yet–led to the building of the warehouse to store it in until it does. The extremely low temperatures are caused by the imbalance in the temporal energy flow. At least, that's what the wizards in the High Energy Magic building say. And they've got proper pointy hats and letters after their name, so they know what they're talking about.

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  22: It has probably been gathered that although Leonard da Quirm was absolutely the greatest technological genius of all time, he was a bit of a Detritus when it came to thinking up names.

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  23: It didn't need to. Cuddy, belonging to a race that worked underground for preference, and Detritus, a member of a race notoriously nocturnal, had excellent vision in the dark. But mysterious caves and tunnels always have luminous fungi, strangely bright crystals or at a pinch merely an eldritch glow in the air, just in case a human hero comes in and needs to see in the dark. Strange but true.

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  24: Rather like British Rail.

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  25: Which can mean… well… meanings include: “Pardon me, you're hanging from my rubber ring, thank you so very much”, “It may be just vital biomass oxygenating the planet to you, but it's home to me” and “I'm sure there was a rain forest around here a moment ago”.

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  26: Who stoked the boiler.

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  27: Five more embraced it as a holy weapon and instructed that it be used on all infidels, heretics, gnostics and people who fidgeted during the sermon.

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  28: It runs: “He who chains down a troll, especially taking advantage of the situation to put the boot in a few times, had better not be the one who unchains it again.”

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  29: And was the origin, long after the events chronicled here were over, of an Ankh-Morpork folk song scored for tin whistle and
nasal passage:

  “As I was a-walking along Lower Broadway,

  The recruiting party came picking up people by their ankles and saying they were going to volunteer to join the Watch unless they wanted their goohuloog heads kicked in,

  So I went via Peach Pie Street and Holofernes instead,

  Singing: Too-ra-li, etc.”

  It never really caught on.

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  30: To trolls, heaven is below.

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  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 18262f4dcf8e26cb194284c5e6dcf657

  Document version: 1