Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [100]
“Would you and your lady care to share our barricade?” he said.
“Oh, yes, thank you very—” Rutherford began, but was outgunned again.
“Some of that furniture looks very dirty,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “And aren’t those beer barrels?”
“Yes, ma’am, but they’re empty ones,” said Vimes.
“Are you sure? I refuse to cower behind alcohol! I have never approved of alcohol, and neither has Rutherford!”
“I can promise you, ma’am, that any beer barrel in the presence of my men for any length of time will be empty,” said Vimes. “You may rest assured on that score.”
“And are your men sober and clean-living?” the woman demanded.
“Whenever no alternative presents itself, ma’am,” said Vimes. This seemed acceptable. Mrs. Rutherford was like Rust in that respect. She listened to the tone of voice, not the words.
“I think perhaps it would be a good idea, dear, if we made haste to—” Rutherford began.
“Not without Father!” said his wife.
“No problem, ma’am,” said Vimes. “Where is he?”
“On our barricade, of course! Which was, let me tell you, a rather better barricade altogether.”
“Jolly good, ma’am,” said Vimes. “If he’d like to come over here, we’ll—”
“Erm, you don’t quite understand, sir,” murmured Rutherford. “He is, erm, on the barricade…”
Vimes looked at the other barricade, and then looked harder. It was just possible to see, near the top of the piled-up furniture, an overstuffed armchair. Further examination suggested that it was occupied by a sleeping figure in carpet slippers.
“He’s very attached to his armchair,” sighed Rutherford.
“It’s going to be an heirloom,” said his wife. “Be so kind as to send your young men to collect our furniture, will you? And be careful with it. Put it at the back somewhere, where it won’t get shot at.”
Vimes nodded at Sam and a couple of the other men as Mrs. Rutherford picked her way over the debris and headed for the Watch House.
“Is there going to be any fighting?” said Mr. Rutherford anxiously.
“Possibly, sir.”
“I’m not very good at that sort of thing, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t worry about that, sir.” Vimes propelled the man over the barricade and turned to the rest of the little group. He’d been aware of eyes boring into him, and now he traced the rays back to their source, a young man in black trousers, a frilly shirt, and long curly hair.
“This is a ruse, isn’t it,” said the man. “You’ll get us in your power and we’ll never be seen again, eh?”
“Stay out then, Reg,” said Vimes. He cupped his hands and turned back to the Whalebone Lane barricade.
“Anyone else wants to join us had better get a move on!” he shouted.
“You don’t know that’s my name!” said Reg Shoe.
Vimes stared into the big, protruding eyes. The only difference between Reg now and the Reg he’d left back in the future was that Corporal Shoe was rather grayer and was held together in places by stitches. Zombiehood would come naturally to Reg. He was born to be dead. He believed so strongly in things that some kind of inner spring kept him going. He’d make a good copper. He didn’t make a very good revolutionary. People as meticulously fervent as Reg got real revolutionaries worried. It was the way he stared.
“You’re Reg Shoe,” he said. “You live here, in Whalebone Lane.”
“Aha, you’ve got secret files on me, eh?” said Reg with terrifying happiness.
“Not really, no. Now if you’d be so good—”
“I bet you’ve got a big file on me a mile long,” said Reg.
“Not a whole mile, Reg, no,” said Vimes. “Listen, Reg, we—”
“I demand to see it!”
Vimes sighed. “Mr. Shoe, we don’t have a file on you. We don’t have a file on anyone, understand? Half of us can’t read without using a finger. Reg, we are not interested in you.”
Reg Shoe’s slightly worrying eyes remained fixed on Vimes’s face for a moment, and then his brain rejected the information as contrary to whatever total fantasy was going on inside.
“Well, it’s no good you torturing me because I won’t reveal any details about my comrades