The Truth (41 page)

“Vot vas all zat about?” said Otto, coming up as William strode out of the room.

“Oh, he’s…he’s off to see his father,” said Sacharissa, still taken aback. “Who is not a nice man, apparently. He was very…heated about him. Very upset.”

“’Scuse me,” said a voice. The girl turned, but there was no one behind her.

Now the invisible speaker sighed.

“No, down here,” it said. She looked down at the malformed pink poodle.

“Let’s not mess around, eh?” it said. “Yeah, yeah, dogs can’t talk. Got it in one, well done. So maybe you’ve got some strange ment’l power. That’s
that
sorted out, then. I couldn’t help overhearin’, ’cos I was listenin’. The lad’s heading into trouble, right? I can
smell
trouble—”

“Are you some kind of verevolf?” said Otto.

“Yeah, right, I get very hairy every full moon,” said the dog dismissively. “Imagine how much that interferes with my social life. Now, look—”

“But surely dogs can’t talk—” Sacharissa began.

“Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” said Gaspode. “Did I
say
I was talking?”

“Well, not in so many words—”

“Right. Wonderful thing, phenomenology. Now, I just seen a hundred dollars walk out the door and I want to see it walk back, right? Lord de Worde is as nasty a piece of work as you find in this town.”

“
You
know nobility?” said Sacharissa.

“A cat can look at a king, right? That’s
legal
.”

“I suppose so—”

“So it works for dogs, too. Got to work for dogs if it works for ratbag moggies. I know everyone, I do. Lord de Worde used to get his butler to put down poisoned meat for the street dogs.”

“But he wouldn’t
hurt
William, would he?”

“I’m not a betting man,” said Gaspode. “But if he does, right, we still get the hundred dollars, yes?”

“We cannot stand by and let him do zis,” said Otto. “I like Villiam. He was not brought up nice but he tries to be a nice person, vithout even cocoa and a singsong to help him. It is hard to go against your nature. Ve must…help him.”

Death placed the final hourglass back onto the air, where it faded away.

T
HERE,
he said. W
ASN’T THAT INTERESTING
? W
HAT NEXT
, M
R
. T
ULIP
? A
RE YOU READY TO GO
?

The figure sat on the cold sand, staring at nothing.

M
R
. T
ULIP
? Death repeated. The wind flapped his robe, so that it streamed out a long ribbon of darkness.

“I…got to be really sorry…?”

O
H YES
. I
T IS SUCH A SIMPLE WORD
. B
UT HERE…IT HAS MEANING
. I
T HAS
…
SUBSTANCE
.

“Yeah. I know.” Mr. Tulip looked up, his eyes redrimmed, his face puffy. “I reckon…to be that sorry, you got to take a —ing good run at it.”

Y
ES.

“So…how long have I got?”

Death looked up at the strange stars.

A
LL THE TIME IN THE WORLD.

“Yeah…well, maybe that’ll —ing do it. Maybe there won’t be no more world to go back to by then.”

I
BELIEVE IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT
. I
UNDERSTAND REINCARNATION CAN TAKE PLACE ANYWHEN
. W
HO SAYS LIVES ARE SERIAL

“You sayin’…I could be alive before I was born?”

Y
ES
.

“Maybe I can find me and kill myself,” said Mr. Tulip, staring at the sand.

N
O, BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.
. A
ND YOU MAY BE LEADING QUITE A DIFFERENT LIFE.

Death patted Mr. Tulip on the shoulder, which flinched under the touch.

I
SHALL LEAVE YOU NOW—

“That’s a good scythe you got there,” said Mr. Tulip, slowly and laboriously. “That silver work’s craftsmanship if ever I saw it.”

T
HANK YOU
, said Death. A
ND NOW
, I
REALLY MUST BE GOING
. B
UT
I
WILL PASS THROUGH HERE, SOMETIMES
. M
Y DOOR,
he added,
IS
ALWAYS
OPEN.

He strode off. The hunched figure disappeared into the darkness, but a new one appeared, running madly across the not-exactly-sand.

It was waving a potato on a string. It stopped when it saw Death and then, to Death’s amazement, turned to look behind it. This had never happened before. Most people, upon coming face-to-face with Death, ceased worrying about anything behind them.

“Is there anyone after me? Can you see anyone?”

E
R…NO
. W
HERE YOU EXPECTING ANYONE?

“Oh, right. No one, eh? Right!” said Mr. Pin, squaring his shoulders. “Yeah! Hah! Hey, look, I’ve got my potato!”

Death blinked, and then took an hourglass out of his robe.

M
R
. P
IN? AH.
T
HE OTHER ONE.
I
HAVE BEEN EXPECTING
YOU
.

“That’s me! And I’ve got my potato, look, and I’m very sorry about everything!” Mr. Pin was feeling quite calm now. The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity.

Death stared into the madly smiling face.

Y
OU ARE VERY SORRY?

“Oh, yes!”

A
BOUT EVERYTHING?

“Yep!”

A
T THIS TIME
? I
N THIS PLACE?
Y
OU DECLARE YOU ARE
SORRY
?

“That’s right. You got it. You’re bright. So if you’ll just show me how to get back—”

Y
OU WOULD NOT LIKE TO RECONSIDER?

“No arguing, I want what’s due,” said Mr. Pin. “I’ve got my potato. Look.”

A
ND
I
SEE
. Death reached into his robe and pulled out what looked to Mr. Pin, at first sight, like a miniature model of himself. But there was a rat skull looking out from under the tiny cowl.

Death grinned.

S
SY HELLO TO
MY
LITTLE FRIEND
, he said.

The Death of Rats reached out and snatched the string.

“Hey—”

D
O NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES
. W
HAT THINGS SEEM MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE
, said Death. Y
ET LET NO ONE SAY
I
DON’T HONOR THE LAW
. He snapped his fingers. R
ETURN, THEN, TO WHERE YOU SHOULD GO…

Blue light flicked for a moment around the astonished Pin, and then he vanished.

Death sighed and shook his head.

T
HE OTHER ONE…HAD SOMETHING IN HIM THAT COULD BE BETTER
, he said. B
UT THE ONE
…He sighed deeply. W
HO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?

The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato.

S
QUEAK
, he said.

Death waved a hand dismissively.

W
ELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY
ME,
he said. I
JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.

William, ducking from doorway to doorway, realized that he was taking the long way round. Otto would have said that it was because he didn’t want to arrive.

The storm had abated slightly, although stinging hail still bounced off his hat. The much bigger balls from the initial onslaught filled the gutters and covered the roads. Carts had skidded, pedestrians were hanging onto the walls.

Despite the fire in his head, he took out his notebook and wrote:
hlstns bggr than golf blls?
and made a mental note to check one against a golf ball, just in case. Part of him was beginning to understand that his readers might have a very relaxed attitude about the guilt of politicians, but were red-hot on the things like the size of weather.

He stopped on the Brass Bridge and sheltered in the lee of one of the giant hippos. Hail peppered the surface of the river with a thousand tiny sucking noises.

The rage was cooling now.

For most of William’s life Lord de Worde had been a distant figure staring out of his study window, in a room lined with books that never got read, while William stood meekly in the middle of acres of good but threadbare carpet and listened to…well, viciousness mostly, now that he thought about it, the opinions of Mr. Windling dressed up in more expensive words.

The worst part, the
worst
part, was that Lord de Worde was never wrong. It was not a position he understood in relation to his personal geography. People who took an opposing view were insane, or dangerous, or possibly even not really people. You couldn’t have an argument with Lord de Worde. Not a proper argument. An argument, from
arguer,
meant to debate and discuss and persuade by reason. What you could have with William’s father was a flaming row.

Icy water dripped off one of the statues and ran down William’s neck.

Lord de Worde used words with a tone and a volume that made them as good as fists, but he’d never used actual violence.

He had people for that.

Another drop of thawed hail coursed down William’s spine.

Surely even his father couldn’t be
this
stupid?

He wondered if he should turn over
everything
to the Watch right now. But whatever they said about Vimes, in the end the man had a handful of men and a lot of influential enemies who had families going back a thousand years and the same amount of honor that you’d find in a dogfight.

No. He was a de Worde. The Watch was for other people, who couldn’t sort out their problems their own way. And what was the worst that could happen?

So many things, he thought as he set out again, that it would be hard to decide which one
was
the worst.

A galaxy of candles burned in the middle of the floor. In the corroded mirrors around the room they looked like the lights of a shoal of deep-sea fishes.

William walked past overturned chairs. There was one upright, though, behind the candles.

He stopped.

“Ah…William,” said the chair. Then Lord de Worde slowly unfolded his lanky form from the embracing leather and stood up in the light.

“Father,” said William.

“I thought you’d come here. Your mother always liked the place, too. Of course, it was…different in those days.”

William said nothing. It had been.

“I think this nonsense has got to stop now, don’t you?” said Lord de Worde.

“I think it
is
stopping, Father.”

“But I don’t think you mean what
I
mean,” said Lord de Worde.

“I don’t know what you think you mean,” said William. “I just want to hear the truth from you.”

Lord de Worde sighed. “The truth? I had the best interests of the city at heart, you know. You’ll understand, one day. Vetinari is ruining the place.”

“Yes…well…that’s where it all becomes difficult, doesn’t it?” said William, amazed that his voice hadn’t even begun to shake yet. “I mean,
everyone
says that sort of thing, don’t they? ‘I did it for the best,’ ‘the end justifies the means’…the same words, every time.”

“Don’t you agree, then, that it’s time for a ruler who listens to the people?”

“Maybe. Which people did you have in mind?”

Lord de Worde’s mild expression changed. William was surprised it had survived this long.

“You are going to put this in your
rag
of a newspaper, aren’t you?”

William said nothing.

“You can’t prove anything. You know that.”

William stepped into the light, and Lord de Worde saw the notebook.

“I can prove enough,” said William. “That’s all that matters, really. The rest will become a matter of…inquiry. Do you know they call Vimes ‘Vetinari’s terrier’? Terriers dig and dig and don’t let go.”

Lord de Worde put his hand on the hilt of his sword.

And William heard himself think: Thank you. Thank you. Up until now, I couldn’t believe it…

“You have no honor, do you?” said his father, still in the voice of infuriating calm. “Well, publish and be damned to you,
and
to the Watch. We gave no order to—”

“I expect you didn’t,” said William. “I expect you said ‘make it so’ and left the details to people like Pin and Tulip. Bloody hands at arm’s length.”

“As your father I
order
you to cease this…this…”

“You used to order me to tell the truth,” said William.

Lord de Worde drew himself up.

“Oh, William,
William!
Don’t be so
naive.
”

William shut his notebook. The words came easier now. He’d leapt from the building and found that he could fly.

“And which one is this?” he said. “The truth that is so precious it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies? The truth that is stranger than fiction? Or the truth that is still putting on its boots when a lie is running around the world?” he went on, stepping forward. “That’s your little phrase, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter anymore. I think Mr. Pin was going to try blackmail and, you know, so am I, naive as I am. You’re going to leave the city, right now. That shouldn’t be too hard for you. And you had better hope that nothing happens to me, or anyone I work with, or anyone I know.”