Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [37]
“No, no, just asking,” said Vimes, cursing himself for walking right into it. “I just wondered where you trained.”
“Why?”
“The kind of people who come in by the back door are the kind of people who want results, I imagine.”
“Hah. Well, I trained in Klatch. They have some novel ideas about medicine over there. They think it’s a good idea to get patients better, for one thing.” He turned the kidneys over with a fork. “Frankly, Sergeant, I’m pretty much like you. We do what needs doing, we work in, er, unpopular areas, and I suspect we both draw the line somewhere. I’m no butcher. Rosie says you aren’t. But you do the job that’s in front of you, or people die.”
“I’ll remember that,” said Vimes.
“And when all’s said and done,” said Lawn, “there are worse things to do in the world than take the pulse of women.”
After breakfast, Sergeant-at-Arms John Keel stepped out into the first day of the rest of his life.
He stood still for a moment, shut his eyes, and swiveled both feet like a man trying to stub out two cigarettes at once. A slow, broad smile spread across his face. Snouty had found just the right kind of boots. Willikins and Sybil between them conspired to prevent him wearing old, well-worn boots these da—those days, and stole them away in the night to have the soles repaired. It was good to feel the streets with dry feet again. And after a lifetime of walking them, he did feel the streets. There were the cobblestones: catheads, trollheads, loaves, short and long setts, rounders, Morpork Sixes, and the eighty-seven types of paving brick, and the fourteen types of stone slab, and the twelve types of stone never intended for street slabs but which had got used anyway and had their own patterns of wear, and the rubbles, and the gravels, and the repairs, and the thirteen different types of cellar covers, and twenty types of drain lids—
He bounced a little, like a man testing the hardness of something. “Elm Street,” he said. He bounced again. “Junction with Twinkle. Yeah.”
He was back.
It wasn’t many steps to Treacle Mine Road, and as he turned toward the Watch House, a flash of color caught his eye.
And there it was, overhanging a garden wall. Lilac was common in the city. It was vigorous and hard to kill, and had to be.
The flower buds were noticeably swelling.
He stood and stared, as a man might stare at an old battlefield.
…they rise hands up, hands up, hands up….
How did it go, now? Think of things happening one after the other. Don’t assume that you know what’s going to happen, because it might not. Be yourself.
And, because he was himself, he made a few little purchases in little shops in dark alleys, and went to work.
The Treacle Mine Road Night Watch House was generally deserted around midday, but Vimes knew that Snouty, at least, would be there. He was a Persistent Floater, just like Nobby and Colon and Carrot and, when you got down to it, Vimes as well. Being on duty was their default state of being. They hung around the Watch House even when off duty, because that’s where their lives took place. Being a copper wasn’t something you left hanging by the door when you went home.
But I promise I’ll learn how, thought Vimes. When I get back, it’ll all be different.
He went around the back and let himself in by the stable entrance. It wasn’t even locked. Black mark right there, lads.
The iron bulk of the hurry-up wagon stood empty on the cobbles.
Behind it was what they called, now, the stables. In fact, the stables were only the bottom floor of what would have been part of Ankh-Morpork’s industrial heritage, if anyone had ever thought of it like that. In fact they thought of it as junk that was too heavy to cart away. It was part of the winding gear from one of the original treacle mines, long since abandoned. One of the original lifting buckets was still up there, glued to the floor by its last load of the heavy, sticky, unrefined treacle, which, once set, was tougher than cement and more waterproof than tar. Vimes remembered,