Thud! - Terry Pratchett [35]
Would that be an economic use of my time? I think not.
As he put the paper back in the tray, he spotted a sheet underneath, in Cheery’s handwriting. He picked it up and read it.
Two dwarfs and one troll had handed in their badges this morning, citing “family reasons.” Damn. That was seven officers lost this week. Bloody Koom Valley, it got everywhere. Oh, it couldn’t be fun, heavens knew, being a troll holding the line against a bunch of your fellow trolls and defending a dwarf like the late Hamcrusher. It probably wasn’t any funner being a dwarf hearing that some troll street gang beat up your brother because of what that idiot had said. Some people would be asking: Whose side are you on? If you’re not with us, you’re against us. Huh. If you not an apple, you’re a banana…
Carrot came in quietly and placed a plate on the desk.
“Angua told me all about it,” he said. “Well done, sir.”
“What do you mean, well done?” said Vimes, looking at his healthy sandwich lunch. “I nearly started a war!”
“Ah, but they didn’t know you were bluffing.”
“I probably wasn’t.” Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BLT was all about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all.
“I want you to take Angua down there with you again,” he said. “And…yes, Lance Constable von Humpeding. Our little Sally. Just the job for a vampire who fortuitously has arrived in the nick of time, eh? Let’s see how good she is.”
“Just those two, sir?”
“Er, yes. They both have very good night vision, yes?” Vimes looked down at his sandwich, and mumbled: “We can’t take any artificial light down there.”
“A murder investigation in the dark, sir?”
“I had no choice!” said Vimes hotly. “I know a sticking point when I see one, Captain. No artificial light. Well, if they want to play silly buggers, I’m their boy. You know about mines, and both the ladies have got night vision built in. Well, the vampire has, and Angua can practically see with her nose. So that’s it. Do the best you can. The place is full of those damn glow beetles. They should help.”
“They’ve got vurms?” said Carrot. “Oh. Well, I know some tricks there, sir.”
“Good. They say a big troll did it and ran away. Make of that what you will.”
“There might be some protests about Sally, sir,” said Carrot.
“Why? Will they spot she’s a vampire?”
“No, sir, I don’t think they—”
“Then don’t tell ’em,” said Vimes. “You’re the…smelter, it’s up to you what, er, tools you use. Seen this?”
He waved the report about the three officers he was trying not to think of as deserters.
“Yes, sir. I was meaning to talk to you about that. It might help if we changed the patrols a bit,” said Carrot.
“How do you mean?”
“Er…it would be quite easy to arrange the patrol schedules so that trolls and dwarfs don’t have to go on the beat together, sir. Um…some of the lads say they’d be a bit happier if we could…”
Carrot let the sentence die away in the stony glare.
“We’ve never paid any attention to an officer’s species when we do the roster, Captain,” said Vimes coldly. “Except for the gnomes, of course.”
“There’s your precedent, then—” Carrot began.
“Don’t be daft. A typical gnome room is about twice the size of a shoebox, Captain! Look, you can see this idea is nuts. Dangerous nuts, too. We’d have to patrol troll with troll, dwarf, with dwarf and human with human—”
“Not necessarily, sir. Humans could patrol with either of the others.”
Vimes rocked his chair forward. “No, they couldn’t! This is not about common sense, this is about fear! If a troll sees a dwarf and a human patrolling together, he’ll think: ‘There’s the enemy, two against one.’ Can’t you see where this is going? When