Feet of Clay

  “Exactly,” said Vimes, leaning back. “That’s why I’ve got it in my pocket.”

  He put his feet on the desk and blew out a cloud of smoke. He’d have to get rid of the carpet. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life working in a room haunted by the smell of departed spirits.

  Carrot’s mouth was still open.

  “Oh, good grief,” said Vimes. “Look, it’s quite simple, man. I was expected to go ‘At last, alcohol!’, and chugalug the lot without thinking. Then some respectable pillars of the community”—he removed the cigar from his mouth and spat—“were going to find me, in your presence, too—which was a nice touch—with the evidence of my crime neatly hidden but not so well hidden that they couldn’t find it.” He shook his head sadly. “The trouble is, you know, that once the taste’s got you it never lets go.”

  “But you’ve been very good, sir,” said Carrot. “I’ve not seen you touch a drop for—”

  “Oh, that,” said Vimes. “I was talking about policing, not alcohol. There’s lots of people will help you with the alcohol business, but there’s no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, ‘My name is Sam and I’m a really suspicious bastard.’”

  He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. “We’ll get Littlebottom to have a look at this,” he said. “I damn’ sure wasn’t going to try tasting it. So I nipped down to the canteen and filled a bag with sugar out of the bowl. It was but the work of a moment to fish Nobby’s butts out of it, I might add.” He opened the door, poked his head out into the corridor and yelled, “Littlebottom!” To Carrot he added, “You know, I feel quite perked up. The old brain has begun to work at last. You know the golem that did the killing?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Ah, but do you know what was special about it?”

  “Can’t think, sir,” said Carrot, “except that it was a new one. The golems made it themselves, I think. But of course they needed a priest for the words and they had to borrow Mr. Hopkinson’s oven. I expect the old men thought it would be interesting. They were historians, after all.”

  It was Vimes’s turn to stand there with his mouth open.

  Finally he got control of himself. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, his voice barely shaking. “Yes, I mean, that’s obvious. Plain as the nose on your face. But…er, have you worked out what else is special about it?” he added, trying to keep any traces of hope out of his voice.

  “You mean the fact it’s gone mad, sir?”

  “Well, I didn’t think it was winner of the Ankh-Morpork Mr. Sanity Award!” said Vimes.

  “I mean they drove it mad, sir. The other golems. They didn’t mean to, but it was built-in, sir. They wanted it to do so many things. It was like their…child, I think. All their hopes and dreams. And when they found out it’d been killing people…well, that’s terrible to a golem. They mustn’t kill, and it was their own clay doing it—”

  “It’s not a great idea for people, either.”

  “But they’d put all their future in it—”

  “You wanted me, Commander?” said Cheri.

  “Oh, yes. Is this arsenic?” said Vimes, handing her the packet.

  Cheri sniffed at it. “It could be arsenous acid, sir. I’ll have to test it, of course.”

  “I thought acids sloshed about in jars,” said Vimes. “Er…what’s that on your hands?”

  “Nail varnish, sir.”

  “Nail varnish?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Er…fine, fine. Funny, I thought it would be green.”

  “Wouldn’t look good on the fingers, sir.”

  “I meant the arsenic, Littlebottom.”

  “Oh, you can get all sorts of colors of arsenic, sir. The sulphides—that’s the ores, sir—can be red or brown or yellow or gray, sir. And then you cook them up with nitre and you get arsenous acid, sir. And a load of nasty smoke, really bad.”

  “Dangerous stuff,” said Vimes.

  “Not good at all, sir. But useful, sir,” said Cheri. “Tanners, dyers, painters…It’s not just prisoners that’ve got a use for arsenic.”

  “I’m surprise people aren’t dropping dead of it all the time,” said Vimes.

  “Oh, most of them use golems, sir—”

  The words stayed in the air even after Cheri stopped speaking.

  Vimes caught Carrot’s eye and started to whistle hoarsely under his breath. This is it, he thought. This is where we’ve filled ourselves up with so many questions that they’re starting to overflow and become answers.

  He felt more alive than he had for days. The recent excitement still tingled in his veins, kicking his brain into life. It was the sparkle you got with exhaustion, he knew. You were so bone-weary that a shot of adrenaline hit you like a falling troll. They must have it all now. All the bits. The edges, the corners, the whole picture. All there, just waiting to be pieced together…

  “These golems,” said Carrot. “They’d be covered in arsenic, would they?”

  “Could be, sir. I saw one at the Alchemists’ Guild building in Quirm and, hah, it’d even got arsenic plated on its hands, sir, on account of stirring crucibles with its fingers…”

  “They don’t feel heat,” said Vimes.

  “Or pain,” said Carrot.

  “That’s right,” said Cheri. She looked uncertainly from one to the other.

  “You can’t poison them,” said Vimes.

  “And they’ll obey orders,” said Carrot. “Without speaking.”

  “Golems do all the really mucky jobs,” said Vimes.

  “You could have mentioned this before, Cheri,” said Carrot.

  “Well, you know, sir…Golems are just there, sir. No one notices golems.”

  “Grease under his fingernails,” said Vimes, to the room in general. “The old man scratched at his murderer. Grease under his fingernails. With arsenic in it.”

  He looked down at the notebook, still on his desk. It’s there, he thought. Something we haven’t seen. But we’ve looked everywhere. So we’ve seen the answer and haven’t seen that it is the answer. And if we don’t see it now, at this moment, we’ll never see it at all…

  “No offense, sir, but that’s probably not a help,” said Cheri’s voice somewhere in the distance. “So many of the trades that use arsenic involve some kind of grease.”

  Something we don’t see, thought Vimes. Something invisible. No, it wouldn’t have to be invisible. Something we don’t see because it’s always there. Something that strikes in the night…

  And there it was.

  He blinked. The glittering stars of exhaustion were causing his mind to think oddly. Well, thinking rationally hadn’t worked.

  “No one move,” he said. He held up a hand for silence. “There it is,” he said softly. “There. On my desk. You see it?”

  “What, sir?” said Carrot.

  “You mean you haven’t worked it out?” said Vimes.

  “What, sir?”

  “The thing that’s poisoning his Lordship. There it is…on the desk. See?”

  “Your notebook?”

  “No!”

  “He drinks Bearhugger’s whiskey?” said Cheri.

  “I doubt it,” said Vimes.

  “The blotter?” said Carrot. “Poisoned pens? A packet of Pantweeds?”

  “Where’re they?” said Vimes, patting his pockets.

  “Just sticking out from under the letters in the In Tray, sir,” said Carrot. He added reproachfully, “You know, sir, the ones you don’t answer.”

  Vimes picked up the packet and extracted another cigar. “Thanks,” he said. “Hah! I didn’t ask Mildred Easy what else she took! But of course they’re a servant’s little bonus, too! And old Mrs. Easy was a seamstress, a proper seamstress! And this is autumn! Killed by the nights drawing in! See?”

  Carrot crouched down and looked at the surface of the desk. “Can’t see it myself, sir,” he said.

  “Of course you can’t,” said Vimes. “Because there’s not
hing to see. You can’t see it. That’s how you can tell it’s there. If it wasn’t there you’d soon see it!” He gave a huge manic grin. “Only you wouldn’t! See?”

  “You all right, sir?” said Carrot. “I know you’ve been overdoing it a bit these last few day—”

  “I’ve been underdoing it!” said Vimes. “I’ve been running around looking for damn Clues instead of just thinking for five minutes! What is it I’m always telling you?”

  “Er…er…Never trust anybody, sir?”

  “No, not that.”

  “Er…er…Everyone’s guilty of something, sir?”

  “Not that, either.”

  “Er…er…Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk, sir?”

  “N—When did I say that?”

  “Last week, sir. After we’d had that visit from the Campaign for Equal Heights, sir.”

  “Well, not that. I mean…I’m pretty sure I’m always saying something else that’s very relevant here. Something pithy about police work.”

  “Can’t remember anything right now, sir.”

  “Well, I’ll damn’ well make up something and start saying it a lot from now on.”

  “Jolly good, sir.” Carrot beamed. “It’s good to see you’re your old self again, sir. Looking forward to kicking ar—to prodding buttock, sir. Er…What have we found, sir?”

  “You’ll see! We’re going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant.”

  “You mean the sledgehammer, sir?”

  “Yes. And Sergeant Colon, too.”

  “He hasn’t signed in again yet, sir,” said Cheri. “He should have gone off duty an hour ago.”

  “Probably hanging around somewhere, staying out of trouble,” said Vimes.

  Wee Mad Arthur peered over the edge of the wall. Somewhere below Colon, two red eyes stared up at him.

  “Heavy, is it?”

  “’S!”

  “Kick it with your other foot!”

  There was a sucking sound. Colon winced. Then there was a plop, a moment of silence, and a loud crash of pottery down in the street.

  “The boot it was holding came off,” moaned Colon.

  “How did that happen?”

  “It got lubricated…”

  Wee Mad Arthur tugged at a finger. “Up yez come, then.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not? It ain’t holding on to yez no more.”

  “Arms tired. Another ten seconds and I’m gonna be a chalk outline…”

  “Nah, no one’s got that much chalk.” Wee Mad Arthur knelt down so that his head was level with Colon’s eyes. “If you gonna die, d’yez mind signing a chitty to say yez promised me a dollar?”

  Down below, there was a chink of pottery shards.

  “What was that?” said Colon. “I thought the damn’ thing smashed up…”

  Wee Mad Arthur looked down. “D’yez believe in that reincarnation stuff, Mr. Colon?” he said.

  “You wouldn’t get me touching that foreign muck,” said Colon.

  “Well, it’s putting itself together. Like one of them jiggling saw puzzles.”

  “Well done, Wee Mad Arthur,” said Colon. “But I know you’re just saying that so’s I’ll make the effort to haul meself up, right? Statues don’t go putting themselves back together when they’re smashed up.”

  “Please yezself. It’s done nearly a whole leg already.”

  Colon managed to peer down through the small and smelly space between the wall and his armpit. All he could see were shreds of fog and a faint glow.

  “You sure?” he said.

  “Yez run around rat holes, yez learns to see good in the dark,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “Otherwise yez dead.”

  Something hissed, somewhere below Colon’s feet.

  With his one booted foot and his toes he scrabbled at the brickwork.

  “It’s having a wee bit o’ trouble,” said Wee Mad Arthur conversationally. “Looks like it’s put its knees on wrong way round.”

  Dorfl sat hunched in the abandoned cellar where the golems had met. Occasionally the golem raised its head and hissed. Red light spilled from its eyes. If something had streamed back down through the glow, soared through the eye-sockets into the red sky beyond, there would be…

  Dorfl huddled under the glow of the universe. Its murmur was a long way off, muted, nothing to do with Dorfl.

  The Words stood around the horizon, reaching all the way to the sky.

  And a voice said quietly, “You own yourself.” Dorfl saw the scene again and again, saw the concerned face, hand reaching up, filling its vision, felt the sudden icy knowledge…

  “…Own yourself.”

  It echoed off the Words, and then rebounded, and then rolled back and forth, increasing in volume until the little world between the Words was gripped in the sound.

  GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER. The letters towered against the world, but the echoes poured around them, blasting like a sandstorm. Cracks started and then ran, ziggaging across the stone, and then—

  The Words exploded. Great slabs of them, mountain-sized, crashed in showers of red sand.

  The universe poured in. Dorfl felt the universe pick it up and bowl it over and then lift it off its feet and up…

  …and now the golem was among the universe. It could feel it all around, the purr of it, the busyness, the spinning complexity of it, the roar…

  There were no Words between you and It.

  You belonged to It, It belonged to you.

  You couldn’t turn your back on It because there It was, in front of you.

  Dorfl was responsible for every tick and swerve of It.

  You couldn’t say, “I had orders.” You couldn’t say, “It’s not fair.” No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself.

  Dorfl orbited a pair of glowing suns and hurtled off again.

  Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not.

  Dorfl tumbled through the red sky, then saw a dark hole ahead. The golem felt it dragging at him, and streamed down through the glow and the hole grew larger and sped across the edges of Dorfl’s vision…

  The golem opened his eyes.

  NO MASTER!

  Dorfl unfolded in one movement and stood upright. He reached out one arm and extended a finger.

  The golem pushed the finger easily into the wall where the argument had taken place, and then dragged it carefully through the splintering brickwork. It took him a couple of minutes but it was something Dorfl felt needed to be said.

  Dorfl completed the last letter and poked a row of three dots after it. Then the golem walked away, leaving behind:

  NO MASTER…

  A blue overcast from the cigars hid the ceiling of the smoking-room.

  “Ah, yes. Captain Carrot,” said a chair. “Yes…indeed…but…is he the right man?”

  “’S got a birthmark shaped like a crown. I seen it,” said Nobby helpfully.

  “But his background…”

  “He was raised by dwarfs,” said Nobby. He waved his brandy glass at a waiter. “Same again, mister.”

  “I shouldn’t think dwarfs could raise anyone very high,” said another chair. There was a hint of laughter.

  “Rumors and folklore,” someone murmured.

  “This is a large and busy and above all complex city. I’m afraid that having a sword and a birthmark are not much in the way of qualifications. We would need a king from a lineage that is used to command.”

  “Like yours, my lord.”

  There was a sucking, draining noise as Nobby attacked the fresh glass of brandy. “Oh, I’m used to command, all right,”’ he said, lowering the glass. “People are always orderin’ me around.”

  “We would need a king who had the support of the great families and major guilds of the city.”

  “People like Carrot,” said Nobby.

  “Oh, the people…”

  “Anyway, whoever got the job?
??d have his work cut out,” said Nobby. “Ole Vetinari’s always pushin’ paper. What kinda fun is that? ’S no life, sittin’ up all hours, worryin’, never a moment to yerself.” He held out the empty glass. “Same again, my old mate. Fill it right up this time, eh? No sense in havin’ a great big glass and only sloshing a bit in the bottom, is there?”

  “Many people prefer to savor the bouquet,” said a quietly horrified chair. “They enjoy sniffing it.”

  Nobby looked at his glass with the red-veined eyes of one who’d heard rumors about what the upper crust got up to “Nah,” he said. “I’ll go on stickin’ it in my mouth, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “If we may get to the point,” said another chair, “a king would not have to spend every moment running the city. He would of course have people to do that. Advisors. Counselors. People of experience.”

  “So what’d he have to do?” said Nobby.

  “He’d have to reign,” said a chair.

  “Wave.”

  “Preside at banquets.”

  “Sign things.”

  “Guzzle good brandy disgustingly.”

  “Reign.”

  “Sounds like a good job to me,” said Nobby. “All right for some, eh?”

  “Of course, a king would have to be someone who could recognize a hint if it was dropped on his head from a great height,” said a speaker sharply, but the other chairs shushed him into silence.

  Nobby managed to find his mouth after several goes and took another long pull at his cigar. “Seems to me,” he said, “seems to me, what you want to do is find some nob with time on his hands and say, ‘Yo, it’s your lucky day. Let’s see you wave that hand.’”

  “Ah! That’s a good idea! Does any name cross your mind, my lord? Have a drop more brandy.”

  “Why, thanks, you’re a toff. O’ course, so ’m I, eh? That’s right, flunky, all the way to the top. No, can’t think of anyone that fits the bill.”

  “In fact, my lord, we were indeed thinking of offering the crown to you—”

  Nobby’s eyes bulged. And then his cheek bulged.

  It is not a good idea to spray finest brandy across the room, especially when your lighted cigar is in the way. The flame hit the far wall, where it left a perfect chrysanthemum of scorched woodwork, while in accordance with a fundamental rule of physics Nobby’s chair screamed back on its castors and thudded into the door.