Thud! - Terry Pratchett [110]
Vimes tapped the map. “And here, Sir Reynold, is where a troll called Brick fell through another cellar floor into their tunnel,” he said. “He also told us he saw something in the main mine, which sounds very much like the Rascal.”
“But, alas, you have not found it,” said Sir Reynold.
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s probably long gone out of the city.”
“But hwhy?” said the curator. “They could have studied it in the museum! hWe’re very interactive these days!”
“Interactive?” said Vimes. “What do you mean?”
“hWell, people can…look at the pictures as much as they hwant,” said Sir Reynold. He sounded a little annoyed. People shouldn’t ask that kind of question.
“And the pictures do what, exactly?”
“Er…hang there, Commander,” said Sir Reynold. “Of course.”
“So what you mean is, people can come and look at the pictures, and the pictures, for their part, are looked at?”
“Rather like that, yes,” said the curator. He thought for a moment, aware that this probably wasn’t sufficient, and added: “But dynamicaleah.”
“You mean the people are moved by the pictures, sir?” said Carrot.
“Yes!” said Sir Reynold, with huge relief. “hWell done! That’s just hwhat happens. And hwe’ve had the Rascal on public display for years. hWe even have a stepladder, in case people hwant to examine the mountains. Sometimes people come in hwith a bee in their bonnet that one of the hwarriors is pointing to some bareleah visible cave or something. Frankleah, if there hwas some secret, I hwould have found it by now. There hwas no point to the theft!”
“Unless someone had found the secret and didn’t want anyone else to find it,” said Vimes.
“That hwould be rather a coincidence, hwouldn’t it, Commander? It’s not that anything has just changed recentleah. Mr. Rascal didn’t turn up and paint another mountain! And, although I hate to say this, just destroying the painting hwould have been enough.”
Vimes walked around the table. All the bits, he thought, I must have all the bits by now.
Let’s start with this legend of a dwarf turning up, nearly dead, weeks after the battle, babbling about treasure.
All right, then it might have been this talking cube thing, Vimes thought. He survived the battle, hid out somewhere, and he’s got this thing and it’s important. He’s got to get it somewhere safe…no, maybe he’s got to get people to listen to it. And, of course, he doesn’t take it with him, ’cos there’s still likely to be trolls wandering the area and right now they’ll be in a mood to club first and try to think up some questions later. He needs some bodyguards.
He gets as far as some humans, but when he’s leading them back to the place where it’s hidden, he finally dies.
Forward two thousand years. Would a cube last that long? Hell, they bob up in molten lava!
So it’s lying there. Methodia Rascal comes along, looking for…a nice view, or something, and he looks down and there it is? Well, I’ll have to accept that he did, because he found it and got it talking, who knows how. But he couldn’t stop it. He drops it down the well. The dwarfs find it. They listen to the box, but hate what they hear. They hate it so much that Hamcrusher has four miners killed just because they heard it, too. So why the painting? It shows what the box is talking about? Where the box is? If you’ve got the box in your hand, isn’t that it?
Anyway, who says it was the voice of Bloodaxe doing the speaking? It could be anybody. Why would you believe what it said?
He was aware of Sir Reynold talking to Carrot…
“…said to your sergeant Colon here, the painting is set several miles from hwhere the actual battle hwas fought. It’s in entireleah the hwrong part of Koom Valley! That’s just about the one thing both sides are agreed on!”
“So why did he set it there?” said Vimes, staring at the table as if hoping