Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett [93]
Rat, thought Lobsang, but said: “What’s an Auditor?”
“And they have no sense of color. They don’t understand it. Look how he’s dressed. Gray suit, gray shirt, gray shoes, gray cravat, gray everything.”
“Er…er…perhaps it was just someone trying to be very cool?”
“You think so? No loss there, then,” said Susan. “Anyway, you’re wrong. Watch.”
The body was disintegrating. It was a fast and quite ungory process, a sort of dry evaporation. It simply became floating dust, which expanded away and vanished. But the last few handfuls formed, just for a few seconds, a familiar shape. That, too, vanished, with the merest whisper of a scream.
“That was a dhlang!” he said. “An evil spirit! The peasants down in the valleys hang up charms against them! But I thought they were just a superstition!”
“No, they’re a substition,” said Susan. “I mean they’re real, but hardly anyone really believes in them. Mostly everyone believes in things that aren’t real. Something very strange is going on. These things are all over the place, and they’ve got bodies. That’s not right. We’ve got to find the person who built the clock—”
“And, er, what are you, Miss Susan?”
“Me? I’m…a schoolteacher.”
She followed his gaze to the wrench that she still held in her hand, and shrugged.
“It can get pretty rough at break time, can it?” said Lobsang.
There was an overpowering smell of milk.
Lu-Tze sat bolt upright.
It was a large room, and he had been placed on a slab in the middle of it. By the feel of the surface, it was sheeted with metal. There were churns stacked along the wall, and big metal bowls ranged beside a sink the size of a bath.
Under the milk smell were many others—disinfectant, well-scrubbed wood, and a distant odor of horses.
Footsteps approached. Lu-Tze lay back hurriedly, and shut his eyes.
He heard someone enter the room. They were whistling under their breath, and they had to be a man, because no woman in Lu-Tze’s long experience had ever whistled in that warbling, hissing way. The whistling approached the slab, stayed still for a moment, then turned away and headed for the sink. It was replaced by the sound of a pump handle being operated.
Lu-Tze half-opened one eye.
The man standing at the sink was quite short, so that the standard-issue blue-and-white striped apron he wore almost reached the floor. He appeared to be washing bottles.
Lu-Tze swung his legs off the slab, moving with a stealthiness that made the typical ninja sound like a brass band, and let his sandals gently touch the floor.
“Feeling better?” said the man, without turning his head.
“Oh, er, yes. Fine,” said Lu-Tze.
“I thought, here’s a little bald monk sort of a fellow,” said the man, holding a bottle up to the light to inspect it. “With a wind-up thing on his back, and down on his luck. Fancy a cup of tea? Kettle’s on. I’ve got yak butter.”
“Yak? Am I still in Ankh-Morpork?” Lu-Tze looked down at a rack of ladles beside him. The man still hadn’t looked around.
“Hmm. Interestin’ question,” said the bottle washer. “You could say you’re sort of in Ankh-Morpork. No to yak milk? I can get cow milk, or goat, sheep, camel, llama, horse, cat, dog, dolphin, whale, or alligator, if you prefer.”
“What? Alligators don’t give milk!” said Lu-Tze, grasping the biggest ladle. It made no noise as it came off its hook.
“I didn’t say it was easy.”
The sweeper got a good grip.
“What is this place, friend?” he said.
“You are in…the dairy.”
The man at the sink said the last word as if it was as portentous as “castle of dread,” placed another bottle on the draining board, and, still with his back to Lu-Tze, held up a hand. All the fingers were folded except for the middle digit, which was extended.
“You know what this is, monk?” he said.
“It’s not a friendly gesture, friend.” The ladle felt good and heavy. Lu-Tze had used much worse weapons