Jingo (22 page)

“You’re just making this up,” said Vimes. “If you were right, then any second now—”

Someone knocked at the door. It was a polite, tentative tap.

Vimes didn’t take his eyes off the smirking demon.

“Is that you, Corporal Littlebottom?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Colon has sent a pigeon. I thought you ought to see it, sir.”

“Come in!”

A small roll of thin paper was placed on his desk. He read:

Have volunteered for a mission of Vital Importance. Nobby is here also. There will be statchoos of us when this day’s work is over. PS Someone I can’t tell you who says this note will self-destruct in five seconds, he is sorry he hasn’t got good chemicles to do it better—

The paper began to crinkle around the edges and then vanished in a small puff of acrid smoke.

Vimes stared at the little pile of ash that remained.

“I suppose it’s a mercy they didn’t blow up the pigeon, sir,” said Cheery.

“What the hell are they up to? Well, I can’t chase around after them. Thanks, Cheery.”

The dwarf saluted and departed.

“Coincidence,” said Vimes.

“All right, then,” said the demon. “Bingeley-bingeley beep! Three fifteen pee em, Emergency Meeting with Captain Carrot.”

It was a cylinder, tapering to a point at both ends. At one end the taper was quite complex, the cylinder narrowing in a succession of smaller and smaller rings, overlapping one another until they ended in a large fishtail. Oiled leather could be seen gleaming in the gaps between the metal.

At the other end, extending from the cylinder for all the world like the horn of a unicorn, was a very long and pointed screw thread.

The whole thing was mounted on a crude trolley, which was in turn riding on a pair of iron rails that disappeared into the black water at the far end of the boathouse.

“Looks like a giant fish to me,” said Colon. “Made of tin.”

“With an ’orn,” said Nobby.

“It’ll never float,” said Colon. “I can see where you’ve gone wrong there. Everyone knows metal sinks.”

“Not
entirely
true,” said Leonard, diplomatically. “In any case, this boat is
designed
to sink.”

“What?”

“Propulsion was a major headache, I’m afraid,” said Leonard, climbing up a stepladder. “I thought of paddles and oars, and even some kind of screw, and then I thought: dolphins, that’s the ticket! They move extremely fast with barely an effort. That’s out at sea, of course, we only get the shovel-nosed dolphin in our estuary here. The linkage rods are a bit complicated but I used to be able to get quite a turn of speed. The pedalling can be somewhat tiresome, but with three of us we should be able to get up to some quite satisfactory accelerations. It’s amazing what you can do when you imitate nature, I just wish my flying exp—Oh…where did you go…?”

It would be difficult to establish what part of satisfactorily accelerating nature the watchmen were trying to imitate, but it was a part which tended to get stuck in doors a lot.

They stopped struggling and began to back into the room.

“Ah, sergeant,” said Lord Vetinari, entering in front of them. “And Corporal Nobbs, too. Leonard has explained everything to you?”

“You can’t ask us to go in that thing, sir! It’ll be suicide!” said Colon.

The Patrician brought his hands together in front of his lips in the manner of someone praying, and sucked air thoughtfully.

“No. No, I think you are wrong,” he said at last, as if reaching a conclusion on some complex metaphysical conundrum. “I think that, in all probability, going into that thing would be a valiant and possibly rewarding deed. I would venture to suggest that, in fact, it is
not
going that would be suicidal. But I would appreciate your views.”

Lord Vetinari was not a heavily built man and, these days, he walked with the aid of an ebony cane. No one could remember seeing him handle a weapon, and a flash of unaccustomed insight told Sergeant Colon that this was not in fact a comforting thought at all. They said he’d been educated at the Assassins’ School, but no one remembered what weapons he’d learned. He’d studied languages. And suddenly, with him in front of you, this didn’t seem like the soft option.

Sergeant Colon saluted, always a useful thing to do in an emergency such as this, and shouted: “Corporal Nobbs, why aren’t you in the…the metal sinking fish thing?”

“Sarge?”

“Let’s see you get up them steps, lad…hup hup hup…”

Nobby scrambled up the ladder and disappeared. Colon saluted again. You could usually tell his nervousness by the smartness of his salute. You could have cut bread with this one.

“Ready to go,
sah
!” he shouted.

“Well done, sergeant,” said Vetinari. “You’re displaying exactly those special qualities I’m looking for—”

“—’
ere, sarge
,” came a metallic voice from the belly of the fish, “
there’s all chains and cogwheels in here. What’s this do
?” The big auger in front of the thing started to squeak round.

Leonard appeared from behind the fish.

“I think we should all get in,” he said. “I’ve lit the candle that’ll burn down and sever the string that’ll release the weight that’ll pull the blocks out.”

“Er…what is this thing called?” said Colon, as he followed the Patrician up the ladder.

“Well, because it is
submersed
in a
marine
environment I’ve always called it the Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device,” said Leonard, behind him.
^*
“But usually I just think of it as the Boat.”

He reached behind him and shut the lid.

After a moment any listener in the boathouse would have heard a complicated clonk as bolts slid into place.

The candle burned down and severed the string that released the weight that pulled the blocks out and, slowly at first, the Boat slid down the rails and into the dark water which, after a second or two, closed over it with a gloop.

No one took any notice of Angua as she trotted up the gangplank. The important thing, she knew, was to look at home. No one bothered a large dog that looked as though it knew where it was going.

People were milling about on deck in the manner peculiar to nonsailors on board ship, not sure of what they should be doing or where they should refrain from doing it. Some of the more stoic ones had made little camps, defining with bundles and pieces of cloth tiny areas of private property. They reminded Angua of the bicolored drainpipes and microscopically delineated household boundaries in Money Trap Lane, yet another way of drawing a line in the sand. This is Mine, and that is Yours. Trespass on Mine, and you’ll get Yours.

There were a couple of guards standing on either side of the door to the cabins. They hadn’t been told to stop dogs.

Scents led down below. She could smell the dogs and a strong odor of cloves.

At the end of the narrow passage a door was ajar. She forced it open with her nose and looked around.

The dogs were lying on a rug on one side of a large cabin. Other dogs might have barked, but these just turned their beautiful heads toward her, sighted down the length of their noses and examined her carefully.

A narrow bed beyond them was half concealed by silk hangings. 71-hour Ahmed was bending over it, but he turned when she entered.

He glanced toward the dogs and gave her a puzzled look. Then, to her amazement, he sat down on the deck in front of her.

“And who do you belong to?” he said in perfect Morporkian.

Angua wagged her tail. There was someone in the bed, she could smell them, but they wouldn’t be a problem. Jaw muscles strong enough to sever someone’s neck help you to feel relaxed in most situations.

Ahmed patted her on the head. Very few people have ever done that to a werewolf without having to get people to cut up their meals for them in future, but Angua had learned self-control.

Then he stood up and went to the door. She heard him say something to someone outside, and then he came back into the room and smiled at her.

“I go, I come back…”

He opened a small cupboard and took out a jewelled dog collar. “You shall have a collar. Oh, and here is some food,” he added, as a servant brought in some bowls. “‘Knick-knack, paddywack, give a dog a bone’ is a rhyme I hear your Ankh-Morpork children sing, but a paddywack is a ball of gristle suitable only for animal food and who knows what part of the animal is its knick-knack…”

The plate was put in front of Angua. The other dogs stirred, but Ahmed snapped a word at them and they settled back again.

The food was…dog food. In Ankh-Morpork terms, it meant something that you wouldn’t even put in a sausage, and there are very few things that a man with a big enough mincer cannot put in a sausage.

The little central human part of her was revolted, but the werewolf drooled at the sight of every glistening tube and wobbly fat bit—

It was on a silver plate
.

She looked up. Ahmed was watching her carefully.

Of course, the royal dogs were treated like kings, all those diamond collars…It didn’t have to mean he
knew
—

“Not hungry?” he said. “Your mouth says you are.”

Something snapped around her neck as she spun around to bite. Her teeth closed on a mouthful of greasy cloth but that wasn’t as important as the pain.

“His Highness has always liked fine collars on his dogs,” said 71-hour Ahmed, through the red mist. “Rubies, emeralds…and diamonds, Miss Angua.” His face came down level with hers. “Set in silver.”

“…
A crucial factor, I have always found, is NOT the size of the forces. It is the positioning and commitment of reserves, the bringing of power to a point
…”

Vimes tried to concentrate on Tacticus. But there were two distractions. One was that the grinning face of 71-hour Ahmed looked out at him from every line. The other was his watch, which he had propped up against the Dis-organizer. It was powered by actual clockwork and was much more reliable. And it never needed feeding. It ticked quietly. As far as it was concerned, he could forget his appointments. He liked it.

The second hand was just curving toward the top of the minute when he heard someone coming up the stairs.

“Come in, captain,” said Vimes. There was a snigger from the box.

Carrot’s face was pinker than normal.

“Something’s happened to Angua,” said Vimes.

The high color drained from Carrot’s face. “How did you know that?”

Vimes firmly closed the lid on the sniggering demon. “Let’s call it intuition, shall we? I’m right, am I?”

“Yes, sir! She went aboard a Klatchian boat and now it’s sailing! She hasn’t come off!”

“What the hell did she go on board for?”

“We were after Ahmed! And he looked as if he was taking someone with him, sir. Someone
ill
, sir!”

“He’s left? But the diplomats are still—”

Vimes stopped. There was, if you didn’t know Carrot, something wrong with the situation. There were people who, when their girlfriend was spirited away on a foreign ship, would have dived into the Ankh, or at least run briskly along the crust, leapt aboard and dealt out merry hell on a democratic basis. Of course, at a time like this that would be a dumb thing to do. The sensible approach
would
be to let people know, but even so—

But Carrot really did believe that personal wasn’t the same as important. Of course, Vimes believed the same thing. You had to hope that when push came to shove you’d act the right way. But there was something slightly creepy about someone who didn’t just believe it, but lived their life by it. It was as unnerving as meeting a really poor priest.

Obviously, it was a consideration that if someone had captured Angua you knew that the rescue you were going to probably wouldn’t be hers.

But…

The gods alone knew what would happen if he left now. The city had gone war mad. Big things were happening. At a time like this, every cell in his body was telling him that the Commander of the Watch had Responsibilities…

He drummed his fingers on the desk. In times like this, it was vital to make the right decision. That was what he was paid for.
Responsibility
…

He ought to stay here, and do the best he could.

But…history was full of the bones of good men who’d followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.

His eyes went from Carrot to the Dis-organizer and then to the tottering mounds of paperwork on his desk.

Blow that! He was a thief-taker! He’d
always
be a thief-taker! Why lie?

“Damned if I’ll let Ahmed get back to Klatch!” he said, standing up. “Fast boat, was it?”

“Yes, but it looked pretty heavy in the water.”

“Then maybe we can catch it up before it goes very far—”

As he hurried forward he had, just for a second, the strange sensation that he was two people. And this was because, for the merest fraction of a second, he
was
two people. They were both called Samuel Vimes.

To history, choices are merely directions. The Trousers of Time opened up and Vimes began to hurtle down one leg of them.

And, somewhere else, the Vimes who made a different choice began to drop into a different future.

They both darted back to grab their Dis-organizers. By the most outrageous of freak chances, quite uniquely, in this split second of decision, they each got the wrong one.

And sometimes the avalanche depends on one snowflake. Sometimes a pebble is allowed to find out what might have happened—if only it had bounced the other way.

The wizards of Ankh-Morpork had been very firm on the subject of printing. It’s not happening here, they said. Supposing, they said, someone printed a book on magic and then broke up the type again and used it for a book on, say, cookery? The metal would remember. Spells aren’t just words. They have extra dimensions of existence. We’d be up to here in talking soufflés. Besides, someone might print
thousands
of the damn things, many of which could well be read by unsuitable people.