Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [29]
“That’s how I like it,” said Vimes weakly, sitting down.
Sweeper took a deep, long breath. “And I like building gardens,” he said. “Life should be a garden.”
Vimes stared blankly at what was in front of them.
“Okay,” he said. “The gravel and rocks, yes, I can see that. Shame about all the rubbish. It always turns up, doesn’t it…”
“Yes,” said Lu-Tze. “It’s part of the pattern.”
“What? The old cigarette packet?”
“Certainly. That invokes the element of air,” said Sweeper.
“And the cat doings?”
“To remind us that disharmony, like a cat, gets everywhere.”
“The cabbage stalks? The used sonkie?*”
“At our peril we forget the role of the organic in the total harmony. What arrives seemingly by chance in the pattern is part of a higher organization that we can only dimly comprehend. This is a very important fact, and has a bearing on your case.”
“And the beer bottle?”
For the first time since Vimes had met him, the monk frowned.
“Y’know, some bugger always tosses one over the wall on his way back from the pub on Friday nights. If it wasn’t forbidden to do that kind of thing, he’d feel the flat to my hand and no mistake.”
“It’s not part of the higher organization?”
“Possibly. Who cares? That sort of thing gets on my thungas, it really does,” said Sweeper. He sat back with his hands on his knees. Serenity flowed once more. “Well now, Mister Vimes…you know the universe is made up of very small items?”
“Huh?”
“We’ve got to work up to things gradually, Mister Vimes. You’re a bright man. I can’t keep telling you everything is done by magic.”
“Am I really here, too? In the city? I mean, a younger me?”
“Of course. Why not? Where was I? Oh, yes. Made up of very small items, and—”
“This is not a good time to be in the Watch. I remember! There’s the curfew. And that was only the start!”
“Small items, Mister Vimes,” said Sweeper sharply. “You need to know this.”
“Oh, all right. How small?”
“Very, very small. So tiny that they have some very strange ways indeed.”
Vimes sighed. “And I ask you: what ways are these, yeah?”
“I’m glad you asked that question. For one thing, they can be in many places at once. Try to think, Mister Vimes.”
Vimes tried to concentrate on what was probably the Discarded Fish-And-Chip Wrapper of Infinity. Oddly enough, with so many horrible thoughts crowding his head, it was almost a relief to put them on one side in order to consider this. The brain did things like that. He remembered how once, when he’d been stabbed and would’ve bled to death if Sergeant Angua hadn’t caught up with him, as he lay there, he’d found himself taking a very intense interest in the pattern of the carpet. The senses say: we’ve only got a few minutes, let’s record everything, in every detail…
“That can’t be right,” he said. “If this seat is made up of lots of tiny things that can be in lots of places at once, why is it standing still?”
“Give the man a small cigar!” said Sweeper jubilantly. “That’s the big problem, Mister Vimes. And the answer, our Abbott tells us, is that it is in lots of places at once. Ah, here’s the tea. And in order for it to be in lots of places at once, the multiverse is made up of a vast number of alternative universes. An oodleplex of oodleplexes. That’s like the biggest number anyone can think of, ever. Just so’s it can accommodate all the quantum. Am I going too fast for you?”
“Oh, that,” said Vimes. “I know about that. Like, you make a decision in this universe and you made a different decision in another one. I heard the wizards talking about that at a posh reception once. They were…arguing about the Glorious 25th of May.”
“And what were they saying?”
“Oh, all the old stuff…that it would have turned out different if the rebels had properly guarded the gates and the bridges, that you can’t break a siege by a frontal attack. But they were saying that, in a way, everything happens somewhere…”
“And you believed them?”
“It sounds like complete thungas. But sometimes you can’t help wondering: what would have happened if I’d done something different—”
“Like when you killed your