EPT‘What’s this one?’
‘Day report, sir.’ Said Carrot, handing him the slip.
Vimes raised an eyebrow. Normally the day report was heftier than this. He flicked it open, then glanced over the sheet. Then he read it again more carefully. Then he put it on the desk and bent over it, staring at each word as if trying to find something amiss in Carrot’s handwriting. He looked up sharply.
‘Is this right?’
‘Yes sir!’
‘Are you sure, Carrot? Quite sure?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Carrot repeated, a hint of worry in his voice, ‘I checked myself.’
‘Is there anything in the Times? I missed this afternoon’s edition.’
‘Well, sir, there was the Dimwell vs Dolly Sisters match and the crowds got a bit mingled, you might say. There was some yelling. Old Mrs Agglewish was hit by a flying fish’
‘Ah,’ Vimes said, ‘a nasty surprise!’
‘For the fish, definitely sir. Mrs Agglewish said she’d never seen such a good one. It was still flapping about until she stabbed it with a knitting needle. The new locomotives really do bring things in quite fresh.’
‘I... see. Anything else?’
‘Not really, sir, sorry sir. Perhaps the Times is losing its edge.’
Vimes grimaced. ‘I doubt it. If that paper was any sharper I wouldn't need to keep a razor.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Vimes gazed at Carrot for a long moment. ‘What about you, captain, do you know of anything strange that’s been happening?’
Carrot considered, then nodded and said. ‘The New Geological Library opened today, sir, the one started by Dopey and Crackle Dopeson. They are… I wouldn’t say strange, sir, not strange by any means. Perhaps a bit unusual, though.’
‘That’s the dwarf and troll couple, am I right?’ Vimes said, catching Carrot’s embarrassed expression. He shook his head ‘My my, how times change. I can’t even imagine how… Well, love knows no boundaries, I suppose. I shall have to wander past and give them my regards.’
‘I’m sure they would appreciate that.’ Carrot replied hesitantly. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
Vimes sighed. ‘Yes, Carrot. That’s all for now. I need to think about this, tell whoever’s on the desk not to disturb me.’
Carrot paused for a moment, but then straightened, saluted and turned to go.
‘Carrot?’ Vimes called, making him hesitate again, the door half closed behind him.
‘Yes sir?’
‘Ah… Oh, nothing. Keep safe.’
‘Yes sir, of course, sir.’
The door clacked shut and Vimes heard Carrot walking slowly down the corridor to the landing. A gust of wind outside send a flurry of raindrops across the street down below, or perhaps it was the sound of thousands of tiny feet fading away into the distance.
He glanced at the piece of paper lying on his desk again, then opened the top drawer of his desk. Once upon a time, that drawer would have held enough hard liquor to anesthetize the whole watchhouse. Now it was empty but for three items. His badge, a long cigar and a freshly framed iconograph of Young Sam. He took all three out, propping the portrait up against a leaning pile of papers and placing the badge next to it. He rolled the cigar in his fingers, his other hand searching absently for matches. It was a Granny Slick, absolutely top quality, made by goblins right here in Ankh-Morpork. He rarely smoked these days, but he kept a cigar around for when he needed to think.
He lit the cigar and puffed on it, inhaling the fragrant smoke and staring at his son. The portrait had been taken only a few days before, right before Young Sam had boarded the Coastal Express to begin his first year the Quirm Academy of the Arts and Sciences. Sybil had suggested it and both Sams had agreed without hesitating. Young Sam agreed because it meant he would get to take music lessons from Tears of the Mushroom and, of course, cut up all sorts of dead animals. His father agreed simply out of relief that his son would be educated a long, long way from the assassin’s guild school. At first he had been devastated at the thought of not seeing Young Sam for months at a time, but when he had confessed this to Sybil, she had just laughed.
‘You haven’t taken the railroad to Quirm, Sam.’ She had said ‘It only takes half a day. He can come back every week for a day or two, if he likes, and we can visit him and you’ll never be so far away from your work that you can’t make it back in time to stop anything important from being burned down.’
And so the world turned. Every day there was something new and Ankh Morpork was just as good at solving problems as it was at creating them, even if the two seemed to look very alike sometimes to Sam Vimes. He had mentioned this to Moist Von Lipvig at a charity dinner and the man in the golden suit had nodded and said, with a straight face; ‘Yes, where I work, we call that the economy.’
It wasn’t like the old days, where the problems came in thick and fast and you could fit the available solutions in a coat pocket and a bottle. And now this. Vimes stared at the ceiling. It was getting dark quickly now, the last light fading out of the high windows. Without realising it he had put his boots on the desk and smoked his way through almost the whole length of the cigar. He blew out a ring of smoke, trailing a wispy tail. On his wrist, an old scar itched. He felt that somewhere, somehow a terrible crime must have occurred but for the first time in his life, he couldn’t think of what it might have been.
The embers of the cigar flared for a final time as he took a deep breath, washing ruddy light across the paper on the table, Carrot’s immaculate handwriting visible for a moment before the room gently slid into darkness. There was a single sentence in the middle of the sheet.
‘All quiet in Ankh-Morpork’
I really liked it, and it seemed like a great way to honour him. RIP my favourite author in the world.
