Thud! - Terry Pratchett [39]
“I’ll call you Gooseberry, then. So…Gooseberry, can you give me the same figures for every city gate? And also the numbers of timber and stone carts?”
“It will take some time, Insert Name Here, but yes! I should love to!”
“And while you’re about it, see if there were any reports of subsidence. Walls falling down, houses cracking, that sort of thing?”
“Certainly, Insert Name Here. You can rely on me, Insert Name Here!”
“Snap to it, then!”
“Yes, Insert Name Here! Thank you, Insert Name Here. I think much better outside the box, Insert Name Here!”
Zzzzp. Paper started to fly.
Well, who’d have thought it, Vimes wondered. Maybe the damned thing could be useful after all.
The speaking tube whistled. He unhooked it and said, “Vimes.”
“I’ve got the evening edition of the Times, sir,” said the distant voice of Sergeant Littlebottom. She sounded worried.
“Fine. Send it up.”
“And there’s a couple of people here who want to see you, sir.” Now there was a guarded tone to her voice.
“And they can hear you?” said Vimes.
“That’s right, sir. Trolls. They insist on seeing you personally. They say they have a message for you.”
“Do they look like trouble?”
“Every inch, sir.”
“I’m coming down.”
Vimes hung up the tube. Trolls with a message. It was unlikely to be an invitation to a literary lunch.
“Er…Gooseberry?” he said.
Once again, the faint green blur coalesced into the beaming imp.
“Found the figures, Insert Name Here. Just working on them!” it said, and saluted.
“Good, but get back in the box, will you? We’re going out.”
“Certainly, Insert Name Here! Thank you for choosing the—”
Vimes pushed the box into his pocket, and went downstairs.
The main office included not only the duty officer’s desk but also half a dozen smaller ones, where watchmen sat when they had to do the really tricky parts of police work, like punctuating a sentence correctly. A lot of rooms and corridors opened into it. A useful result of all this was that any action there attracted a lot of attention very quickly.
If the two trolls very conspicuously in the middle of the room had intended trouble, they’d picked a bad time. It was between shifts. Currently, they were trying without success to swagger whilst standing still, watched with deep suspicion by seven or eight officers of various shapes.
They’d brought it on themselves. They were baaad trolls. At least, they’d like everyone to think so. But they’d got it wrong. Vimes had seen bad trolls, and these didn’t come close. They’d tried. Oh, they’d tried. Lichen covered their heads and shoulders. Clan graffiti adorned their bodies; one of them had even had his arm carved, which must have hurt, for that stone-cool troll look. Since wearing the traditional belt of human or dwarf skulls would have resulted in the wearer’s heels leaving a groove all the way to the nearest nick, and monkey skulls left the wearer liable to ambush by dwarfs with no grounding in forensic anthropology, these trolls—
Vimes grinned. These boys had done the best they could with, oh dear, sheep and goat skulls. Well done, boys, that’s really scary.
It was depressing. The old-time bad trolls didn’t bother with all that stuff. They just beat you over the head with your own arm until you got the message.
“Well, gentlemen?” he said. “I’m Vimes.”
The trolls exchanged glances through the mats of lichen, and one of them lost.
“Midder Chrysophrase he wanna see you,” said Carved Arm sulkily.
“Is that so?” said Vimes.
“He wanna see you now,” said the troll.
“Well, he knows where I live,” said Vimes.
“Yeah. He does.”
Three words, smacking into the silence like lead. It was the way the troll said them. A suicidal kind of way.
The silence was broken by the steely sound of bolts being shot home, followed by a click. The trolls turned. Sergeant Detritus was taking the key out of the lock of the Watch house’s big, thick, double doors. Then he turned around and his heavy hands landed on the trolls’ shoulders.
He sighed. “Boys,” he said, “if dere was a Ph.D. in bein’ fick, youse wouldn’t be