The Truth (Discworld #25)

The Truth (Discworld #25) Page 15

The sack came out of the muck with a sucking sound, and Arnold pulled himself aboard as it was dragged back to the bank.

'Oh, very well done, Arnold,' said the Duck Man, helping him off the sodden sack and back on to his trolley. 'I really doubted if the surface would support you at this stage of the tide!'

'Bit of luck for me, eh, when that cart ran over my legs all them years ago!' said Arnold Sideways. 'I'd have drowned, else!'

Coffin Henry slit the sacking with his knife and tipped the second lot of little terriers on to the ground, where they coughed and sneezed.

'One or two of the little buggers look done for,' he said. I'll give 'em mouth to mouth respiritoriation, shall I?'

'Certainly not, Henry,' said the Duck Man. 'Have you no idea of hygiene?'

'Jean who?'

'You can't kiss dogs!' said the Duck Man. They could catch something dreadful.'

The crew looked at the dogs that were clustering round their fire. How the dogs had landed in the river was something they didn't bother to wonder about. All sorts of things landed in the river. It was the kind of thing that happened all the time. The crew took a keen interest in floating things. But it was unusual to get this many all at once.

'Maybe it's been raining dogs?' said Altogether Andrews, who was being steered by the mind known as Curly. The crew liked Curly. He was easy to get along with. 'I heard the other day that's been happening lately.'

'You know what?' said Arnold Sideways. 'What we ort to do, right, is get some stuff, like... wood and stuff, and make a boat. We could get a lot more stuff if we had a boat.'

'Ah, yes,' said the Duck Man. 'I used to mess about in boats when I was a boy.'

'We could boat about in mess,' said Arnold. 'Same thing.'

'Not... exactly,' said the Duck Man. He looked at the circle of steaming, retching dogs.

'I wish Gaspode was here,' he said. 'He knows how to think about this sort of thing.'

'Ajar,' said the apothecary carefully.

'Sealed with wax,' William repeated.

'And you want an ounce each of...'

'Oil of aniseed, oil of rampion and oil of scallatine,' said William.

'I can do the first two,' said the apothecary, looking at the little list he'd been given. 'But there is no such thing as a whole ounce of oil of scallatine in the city, you realize? It's fifteen dollars for enough to go on a pinhead. We've got about enough to fill a mustard spoon and we have to keep that in a soldered lead box under water.'

'I'll take a pinhead's worth, then,'

'You'll never get it off your hands, you know. It isn't really for the average--'

'In a bottle,' said William patiently. 'Sealed with wax,'

'You won't even smell the other oils! What do you want them for?'

'Insurance,' said William. 'Oh, and after you've sealed it, wash off the bottle with ether, and then wash the ether off.'

'Is this going to be used for some illegal purpose?' said the apothecary. He caught William's expression. 'Just interesteti,' he added quickly.

When he'd gone to make up the order William called in at a couple of other shops and bought a pair of thick gloves. ,

When he returned, the apothecary was just bringing the oils to the counter. He held a small glass flask, filled with liquid. Inside floated a much smaller phial.

'The outer liquid's water,' he said, pulling some plugs out of his nose. 'Take it carefully, if you don't mind. Drop it and we can kiss our sinuses goodbye.'

'What does it smell of?' said William.

'Well, if I said "cabbage",' said the apothecary, 'I wouldn't be saying the half of it.'

Next, William went to his lodgings. Mrs Arcanum was averse to boarders coming back to their rooms during the day, but at the moment William appeared to be outside her frame of reference and she merely gave him a nod as he went upstairs.

The keys were in the old trunk at the end of his bed. It was the one he'd taken to Hugglestones; he'd kept it ever since, so that he could kick it occasionally.

His cheque book was also in there. He took that, too.

His sword rattled as his hand brushed against it.

He'd enjoyed swordsmanship at Hugglestones. It was in the dry, you were allowed to wear protective clothing and no one attempted to stamp your face into the mud. He'd actually been the champion of the school. But this wasn't because he was much good. It was simply that most of the other boys were so bad. They approached the sport as they approached all others, in a great big keen screaming rush, using the sword as a sort of club. That meant that if William could avoid the first wild stroke, then he was going to win.

He left the sword in the trunk.

After some reflection he pulled out one of his old socks and pulled it over the apothecary's bottle. Hurting people with broken glass wasn't part of the plan, either.

Peppermint! Not a bad choice, but they hadn't known what else was available, had they... ?

Mrs Arcanum was a great believer in net curtains, so that she could see out while outsiders couldn't see in. William lurked behind the ones in his room until he was certain that an indistinct shape among the rooftops opposite was a gargoyle.

This wasn't natural gargoyle territory, any more than Gleam Street.

The thing about gargoyles, he reflected as he stepped back and headed down the stairs, was that they didn't get bored. They were happy to stay and watch anything for days. But, while they moved faster than people thought, they didn't move faster than people.

He ran through the kitchen so quickly that he only heard Mrs Arcanum gasp, and then he was through the back door and over the wall into the alley beyond.

Someone was sweeping it. For a moment William wondered if it was a watchman in disguise, or even Sister Jennifer in disguise, but probably there was no one who'd disguise themselves as a gnoll. You'd have to strap a compost heap to your back, to begin with. Gnolls ate almost everything. What they didn't eat they collected obsessively. No one had ever studied them to find out why. Perhaps a carefully sorted collection of rotted cabbage stalks was a sign of big status in gnoll society.

"ar'tn'n, M'r W'rd,' croaked the creature, leaning on its shovel.

'Er... hello... er...'

'Sn'g'k.'

'Ah? Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.'

He hurried down another alley, crossed the street and found yet another alley. He wasn't sure how many gargoyles were watching him, but it took them some time to cross streets...

How was it that the gnoll had known his name? It wasn't as though they'd met at a party or something. Besides, the gnolls all worked for... Harry King...

Well, they did say that the King of the Golden River never forgot a debtor...

William ducked and dodged across several blocks, making as much use as he could of the alleys and walkthroughs and noisome courts. He was sure a normal person wouldn't be able to keep track of him. But then, he'd be amazed if a normal person was following him. Mister Vimes liked to refer to himself as a simple coppter, just as Harry King thought of himself as a rough diamond. William suspected that the world was littered with the remains of those people who had taken them at their word.

He slowed down and climbed some outside stairs. And then he waited.

You're a fool, said the internal editor. Some people have tried to kill you. You're concealing information from the Watch. You're mixing with strange people. You're about to do something that's going to get so far up Mister Vimes's nose it will raise his hat. And why?

Because it makes my blood tingle, he thought. And because I'm not going to be used. By anyone.

There was a faint sound at the end of the alley, which might not have been heard by anyone who wasn't expecting it. It was the sound of something sniffing.

William looked down and saw, in the gloom, a four-legged shape break into a trot while keeping its muzzle close to the ground.

William measured the distance carefully. Declaring independence was one thing. Assaulting a member of the Watch was a very different thing.

He lobbed the fragile bottle so that it would land twenty feet ahead of the werewolf. Then he dropped from the stairs on to the top of a wall and jumped down on to a privy roof just as the glass broke with a 'pof!' inside the sock.

There was a yelp, and the sound of scrabbling claws.

William jumped from the roof on to another wall, inched along the top of it and climbed down into another alley. Then he ran.

It took five minutes, dodging into convenient cover and cutting through buildings, to arrive at the livery stables. In the general bustle no one took any notice of him. He was just another man coming to fetch his horse.

The stall that might or might not have contained Deep Bone was occupied by a horse now. It looked down its nose at him.

'Don't turn round, Mister Paper Man,' said a voice behind him.

William tried to remember what had been behind him. Oh, yes... the hay lift. And huge bags of straw. Plenty of room for someone to hide.

'All right,' he said.

'Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,' said Deep Bone. 'You must be ment'l.'

'But I'm on the right track,' said William. 'I think I've--'

"ere, you sure you weren't followed?'

'Corporal Nobbs was on my trail,' said William. 'But I shook him off.'

'Hah! Walkin' round the corner'd shake off Nobby Nobbs!'

'Oh, no, he kept right up. I knew Vimes would have me tracked,' said William proudly.

'By Nobbs?'

'Yes. Obviously... in his werewolf shape...' There. He'd said it. But today was a day for shadows and secrets.

'A werewolf shape,' said Deep Bone flatly.

'Yes. I'd be grateful if you didn't tell anyone else.'

'Corporal Nobbs,' said Deep Bone, still in the same dull monotone.

'Yes. Look, Vimes told me not to--'

'Vimes told you Nobby Nobbs was a werewolf?'

'Well... no, not exactly. I worked that out for myself, and Vimes told me not to tell anyone else

'About Corporal Nobbs bein' a werewolf...'

'Yes.'

'Corporal Nobbs is not a werewolf, mister. In any way, shape or form. Whether he's human is another matter, but he ain't a lycr-- a lynco-- a lycantro-- a bloody werewolf, that's for sure!'

Then whose nose did I just drop a scent bomb in front of?' said William triumphantly.

There was silence. And then there was the sound of a thin trickle of water.

'Mr Bone?' said William.

'What kind of a scent bomb?' said the voice. It sounded rather strained.

'I think oil of scallatine was probably the most active ingredient.'

'Right in front of a werewolf's nose?'

'More or less, yes.'

'Mister Vimes is going to go round the twist,' said the' voice of Deep Bone. 'He's going to go totally Librarian-poo. He's going to invent new ways of being angry just so's he can try them out on you--'

Then I'd better get hold of Lord Vetinari's ,dog as soon as possible,' said William. He produced his chequebook. 'I can give you a cheque for fifty dollars, and that's all I can afford.'

'What's one of them, then?'

'It's like a legal IOU.'

'Oh, great,' said Deep Bone. 'Not much good to me when you're locked up, though.'

'Right now, Mr Bone, there's a couple of very nasty men hunting down every terrier in the city, by the sound of it--'

Terriers?' said Deep Bone. 'All terriers?'

'Yes, and while I don't expect you to--'

'Like... pedigree terriers, or just people who might happen to look a bit terrier-like?'

They didn't look like they were inspecting any paperwork. Anyway, what do you mean, "people who look like terriers"?'

Deep Bone went silent again.

William said, 'Fifty dollars, Mr Bone.'

At length the sacks of straw said, 'All right. Tonight. On the Misbegot Bridge. Just you. Er... I won't be there but there will be... a messenger.'

'Who shall I make the cheque to?' said William.

There was no answer. He waited a while and then eased himself into a position where he could peer around the sacks. There was a rustling from them. Probably rats, he thought, because certainly none of them could hold a man.

Deep Bone was a very tricky customer.

Some time after William had gone, looking surreptitiously into the shadows, one of the grooms turned up with a trolley and began to load up the sacks.

One of them said: Tut me down, mister.'

The man dropped the sack and then opened it cautiously.

A small terrier-like dog struggled out, shaking itself free of clinging wisps.

Mr Hobson did not encourage independence of thought and an enquiring mind, and at 50 pence a day plus all the oats you could steal he didn't get them. The groom looked owlishly at the dog.

'Did you just say that?' he said.

"course not,' said the dog. 'Dogs can't talk. Are you stupid or somethin'? Someone's playin' a trick on you. Gottle o' geer, gottle o' geer, vig viano.'

'You mean, like, throwing their voice? I saw a man do that down at the music hall.'

That's the ticket. Hold on to that thought.'

The groom looked around. 'Is that you playin' a trick, Tom?' he said.

That's right, it's me, Tom,' said the dog. 'I got the trick out of a book. Throwin' my voice into this harmless little dog what cannot talk at all.'

'What? You never told me you were learnin' to read!'

'There were pictures,' said the dog hurriedly. Tongues an' teeth an' that. Dead easy to understand. Oh, now the little doggie's wanderin' off...'

The dog edged its way to the door.

'Sheesh,' it appeared to say. 'A couple of thumbs and they're lords of bloody creation

Then it ran for it.

'How will this work?' said Sacharissa, trying to look intelligent. It was much better to concentrate on something like this than think about strange men getting ready to invade again.

'Slowly,' mumbled Goodmountain, fiddling with the press. 'You realize that this means it'll take us much longer to print each paper?'

'You vanted colour, I gif you colour,' said Otto sulkily. 'You never said qvick.'

Sacharissa looked at the experimental iconograph. Most pictures were painted in colour these days. Only really cheap imps painted in black and white, even though Otto insisted that monochrome 'vas an art form in itself. But printing colour... '

Four imps were sitting on the edge of it, passing a very small cigarette from hand to hand and watching with interest the work on the press. Three of them wore goggles of coloured glass - red, blue and yellow.

'But not green...' she said. 'So... if something's green - have I got this right? - Guthrie there sees the... blue in the green and paints that on the plate in blue' - one of the imps gave her a wave - 'and Anton sees the yellow and paints that, and when you run it through the press--'

'... very, very slowly,' muttered Goodmountain. 'It'd be quicker to go round to everyone's house and tell 'em the news.'

Sacharissa looked at the test sheets that had been done of the recent fire. It was definitely a fire, with red, yellow and orange flames, and there was some, yes, blue sky, and the golems were a pretty good reddish-brown, but the flesh tones... well, 'flesh-coloured' was a bit of a tricky one in Ankh-Morpork, where if you picked your subject it could be any colour except maybe light blue, but the faces of many of the bystanders did suggest that a particularly virulent plague had passed through the city. Possibly the Multi-coloured Death, she decided.

'Zis is only the beginning,' said Otto. 'Ve vill get better.'

'Better maybe, but we're as fast as we can go,' said Good-mountain. 'We can do maybe two hundred an hour. Maybe two hundred and fifty, but someone's going to be looking for their fingers before this day's out. Sorry, but we're doing the best we can. If we had a day to redesign and rebuild properly--'

'Print a few hundred and do the rest in black and white, then,' said Sacharissa, and sighed. 'At least it'll catch people's attention.'

'Vunce zey see it, the Inqvirer vill vork out how it vas done,' said Otto.

'Then at least we'll go down with our colours flying,' said Sacharissa. She shook her head as a little dust floated down from the ceiling.

'Hark at that,' said Boddony. 'Can you feel the floor shake? That's their big presses again.'

They're undermining us everywhere,' said Sacharissa. 'And we've all worked so hard. It's so unfair.'

I'm surprised the floor takes it,' said Goodmountain. 'It's not as though anything's on solid ground round here.'

'Undermining us, eh?' said Boddony.

One or two of the dwarfs looked up when he said this. Boddony said something in dwarfish. Goodmountain snapped something in reply. A couple of other dwarfs joined in.

'Excuse me,' said Sacharissa tartly.

The lads were... wondering about going in and having a look,' said Goodmountain.

'I tried going in the other day,' said Sacharissa. 'But the troll on the door was most impolite.'

'Dwarfs... approach matters differently,' said Goodmountain.

Sacharissa saw a movement. Boddony had pulled his axe out from under the bench. It was a traditional dwarf axe. One side was a pickaxe, for the extraction of interesting minerals, and the other side was a war axe, because the people who own the land with the valuable minerals in it can be so unreasonable sometimes.

'You're not going to attack anyone, are you?' she said, shocked.

'Well, someone did say that if you want a good story you have to dig and dig,' said Boddony. 'We're just going to go for a walk.'

'In the cellar?' said Sacharissa, as they headed for the steps.

'Yeah, a walk in the dark,' said Boddony.

Goodmountain sighed. The rest of us will get on with the paper, shall we?' he said.

After a minute or two there was the sound of a few axe blows, below them, and then someone swore in dwarfish, very loudly.

'I'm going to see what they're doing,' said Sacharissa, unable to resist any more, and hurried away.

The bricks that once had filled the old doorway were already down when she got there. Since the stones of Ankh-Morpork were recycled over the generations no one had ever seen the point of making strong mortar, and especially not for blocking up an old doorway. Sand, dirt, water and phlegm would do the trick, they felt. They always had done up to now, after all. '

The dwarfs were peering into the darkness beyond. Each one had stuck a candle on his helmet.

'I thought your man said they filled up the old street,' said Boddony.

'He's not my man,' said Sacharissa evenly. 'What's in there?'

One of the dwarfs had stepped through with a lantern.

There's like... tunnels,' he said.

The old pavements,' said Sacharissa. 'It's like this all round this area, I think. After the big floods they built up the sides of the road with timber and filled it in, but they left the pavements on either side because not all the properties had built up yet and people objected.'

'What?' said Boddony. 'You mean the roads were higher than the pavements?'

'Oh, yes,' said Sacharissa, following him into the gap.

'What happened if a horse pi-- if a horse made water on the street?'

'I'm sure I don't know,' sniffed Sacharissa.

'How did people cross the street?'

'Ladders.'

'Oh, come on, miss!'

'No, they used ladders. And a few tunnels. It wasn't going to be for very long. And then it was simpler just to put heavy slabs over the old pavements. And so there's these - well, forgotten spaces.'

There's rats up here,' said Dozy, who was wandering into the distance.

'Hot damn!' said Boddony. 'Anyone brought the cutlery? Only joking, miss. Hey, what do we have here... ?'

He hacked at some planks, which crumbled away under the blows.

'Someone didn't want to use a ladder,' he said, peering into another hole.

'It goes right under the street?' said Sacharissa.

'Looks like it. Must have been allergic to horses.'

'And... er... you can find your way?'

'I'm a dwarf. We are underground. Dwarf. Underground. What was your question again?'

'You're not proposing to hack through to the cellars of the Inquirer, are you?' said Sacharissa.

'Who, us?'

'You are, aren't you.'

'We wouldn't do anything like that.'

'Yes, but you are, aren't you.'

That'd be tantamount to breaking in, wouldn't it?'

'Yes, and that's what you're planning to do, isn't it?'

Boddony grinned. 'Well... a little bit. Just to have a look round. You know.'

'Good.'

'What? You don't mind?'

'You're not going to kill anyone, are you?'

'Miss, we don't do that sort of thing!'

Sacharissa looked a little disappointed. She'd been a respectable young woman for some time. In certain people, that means there's a lot of dammed-up disreputability just waiting to burst out.

'Well... perhaps just make them a bit sorry, then?'

'Yes, we can probably do that.'

The dwarfs were already creeping along the tunnel at the other side of the buried street. By the light of their torches she saw old frontages, bricked-up doors, windows filled with rubble.

This should be about the right place,' said Boddony, pointing to a faint rectangle filled with more low-grade brick.

'You're just going to break in?' said Sacharissa.

'We'll say we were lost,' said Boddony.

'Lost underground? Dwarfs?'

'All right, we'll say we're drunk. People'll believe that. Okay, lads...'

The rotten bricks fell away. Light streamed out. In the cellar beyond a man looked up from his desk, mouth open.

Sacharissa squinted through the dust. 'You?' she said.

'Oh, it's you, miss,' said Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. 'Hello, boys. Am I glad to see you...'

The crew were just leaving when Gaspode arrived at the gallop. He took one look at the other dogs that were huddled around trie fire, then dived under the trailing folds of Foul Ole Ron's dreadful coat and whined.

It took some time for the whole of the crew to understand what was going on. These were, after all, people who ,'could argue and expectorate and creatively misunderstand their way through a three-hour argument after someone said 'Good morning'.

It was the Duck Man who finally got the message. 'These men are hunting terriers?' he said.

'Right! It was the bloody newspaper! You can't bloody trust people who write in newspapers!'

They threw these doggies in the river?'

'Right!' said Gaspode. 'It's all gone fruit-shaped!'

'Well, we can protect you too.'

'Yeah, but I've got to be out and about! I'm a figure in this town!

I can't lie low! I need a disguise! Look, we could be looking at fifty dollars here, right? But you need me to get it!'

The crew were impressed with this. In their cashless economy fifty dollars was a fortune.

'Blewitt,' said Foul Ole Ron.

'A dog's a dog,' said Arnold Sideways. 'On account of bein' called a dog.'

'Gaarck!' crowed Coffin Henry.

That's true,' said the Duck Man. 'A false beard isn't going to work.'

'Well, your huge brains had better come up with somethin', 'cos I'm staying put until you do,' said Gaspode. 'I've seen these men. They are not nice.'

There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews. His face flickered as the various personalities reshuffled themselves, and then settled into the waxy bulges of Lady Hermione.

'We could disguise him,' she said.

'What could you disguise a dog as?' said the Duck Man. 'A cat?'

'A dog is not just a dog,' said Lady Hermione. 'Ai think ai have an idea...'

The dwarfs were in a huddle when William got back. The epicentre of the huddle, its huddlee, turned out to be Mr Dibbler, who looked just like anyone would look if they've been harangued. William had never seen anyone to whom the word 'harangued' could be so justifiably applied. It meant someone who had been talked at by Sacharissa for twenty minutes.

'Is there a problem?' he said. 'Hello, Mr Dibbler...'

Tell me, William,' said Sacharissa, while pacing slowly around Dibbler's chair. 'If stories were food, what kind of food would Goldfish Eats Cat be?'

'What?' William stared at Dibbler. Realization dawned. 'I think it would be a sort of long, thin kind of food,' he said.

'Filled with rubbish of suspicious origin?'

'Now, there's no need for anyone to take that tone--' Dibbler began, and then subsided under Sacharissa's glare.

'Yes, but rubbish that's sort of attractive. You'd keep on eating it even though you wished you weren't,' said William. 'What's going on here?'

'Look, I didn't want to do it,' Dibbler protested.

'Do what?' said William.

'Mr Dibbler's been writing those stories for the Inquirer,' said Sacharissa.

'I mean, no one believes what they read in the paper, right?' said Dibbler.

William pulled up a chair and sat straddling it, resting his arms on the back.

'So, Mr Dibbler... when did you start pissing in the fountain of Truth?'

'William!' snapped Sacharissa.

'Look, times haven't been good, see?' said Dibbler. 'And I thought, this news business... well, people like to hear about stuff from a long way away, you know, like in the Almanacke--'

' "Plague of Giant Weasels in Hersheba"?' said William.

'That's the style. Well, I thought... it doesn't sort of matter if they're, you know, really true... I mean...' William's glassy grin was beginning to make Dibbler uncomfortable. 'I mean... they're nearly true, aren't they? Everyone knows that sort of thing happens

'You didn't come to me' said William.

'Well, of course not. Everyone knows you're a bit... a bit unimaginative about that sort of thing.'

'You mean I like to know that things have actually happened?'

'That's it, yes. Mr Carney says people won't notice the difference anyway. He doesn't like you very much, Mr de Worde.'

'He's got wandering hands,' said Sacharissa. 'You can't trust a man like that.'

William pulled the latest copy of the Inquirer towards him and picked a story at random.

'"Man Stolen by Demons",' he said. 'This refers to Mr Ronnie "Trust Me" Begholder, known to owe Chrysoprase the troll more than two thousand dollars, last seen buying a very fast horse?'

'Well?'

'Where do the demons fit in?'

'Well, he could'Ve been stolen by demons,' said Dibbler. 'It could happen to anybody.'

'What you mean, then, is that there is no evidence that he wasn 't stolen by demons?'

That way people can make up their own minds,' said Dibbler. 'That's what Mr Carney says. People should be allowed to choose, he said.'

To choose what's true?'