Discworld - The Fifth Elephant Part 8

"Nothing more about the Scone theft?"

"Not really. Lots of accusations in the dwarf community, but no one really knows anything. Like you say, sir, we'll probably know more when it goes bad."

"Any word on the street?"

"Yes, sir. It's 'Halt,' sir. Sergeant Colon painted it at the top of Lower Broadway. The carters are a lot more careful now. Of course, someone has to shovel the manure off every hour or so."

"This whole traffic thing is not making us very popular, Captain."

"No, sir. But we aren't popular anyway. And at least it's bringing in money for the city treasury. Er...there is another thing, sir."

"Yes?"

"Have you seen Sergeant Angua, sir?"

"Me? No. I was expecting her to be here." Then Vimes noticed just the very edge of concern in Carrot's voice. "Something wrong?"

"She didn't turn up for duty last night. It wasn't full moon, so it's a bit...odd. n.o.bby said she was rather concerned about something when they were on duty the other day."

Vimes nodded. Of course, most people were concerned about something if they were on duty with n.o.bby. They tended to look at clocks a lot.

"Have you been to her lodgings?"

"Her bed hadn't been slept in," said Carrot. "Or her basket, either," he added.

"Well, I can't help you there, Carrot. She's your girlfriend."

"She's been a bit...worried about the future, I think," said Carrot.

"Um...you...she...the, er, werewolf thing...?" Vimes stopped, acutely embarra.s.sed.

"It preys on her mind," said Carrot.

"Perhaps she's just gone somewhere to think about things?" Like how on earth could she go out with a young man who, magnificent though he was, blushed at the idea of a packet of Sonkies.

"That's what I hope, sir," Carrot said. "She does that sometimes. It's really quite stressful, being a werewolf in a big city. I know know we'd have heard if she'd run into any trouble-" we'd have heard if she'd run into any trouble-"

There was the sound of harness outside, and the rattle of a coach. Vimes was relieved. Seeing Carrot worried was so unusual that it had the shock of the unfamiliar.

"Well, we'll have to go without her," he said. "I want to be kept in touch about everything, Captain. A fake Scone going missing a week or two before a big dwarf coronation-that sounds like another shoe is about to drop and it might just hit me. And while you're about it, put the word out that I'm to be sent anything about Sonky, will you? I don't like mysteries. The clacks do a skeleton service as far as Uberwald now, don't they?"

Carrot brightened up. "It's wonderful, sir, isn't it? In a few months they say we'll be able to send messages all the way from Ankh-Morpork to Genua in less than a day!"

"Yes, indeed. I wonder if by then we'll have anything sensible to say to each other?"

Lord Vetinari stood at his window, watching the semaph.o.r.e tower on the other side of the river. All eight of the big shutters facing him were blinking furiously-black, white, white, black, white...

Information was flying into the air. Twenty miles behind him, on another tower in Sto Lat, someone was looking through a telescope and shouting out numbers...

How quickly the future comes upon us, he thought.

He always suspected the poetic description of Time like an ever-rolling stream. Time, in his experience, moved more like rocks...sliding, pressing, building up force underground and then, with one jerk that shakes the crockery, a whole field of turnips has mysteriously slipped sideways by six feet.

Semaph.o.r.e had been around for centuries, and everyone knew that knowledge had a value, and everyone knew that exporting goods was a way of making money. And then, suddenly, someone realized how much much money you could make by exporting to Genua by tonight things known in Ankh-Morpork today. And some bright young man in the Street of Cunning Artificers had been unusually cunning. money you could make by exporting to Genua by tonight things known in Ankh-Morpork today. And some bright young man in the Street of Cunning Artificers had been unusually cunning.

Knowledge, information, power, words...flying through the air, invisible...

And suddenly the world was tap dancing on quicksand.

In that case, the prize went to the best dancer.

Lord Vetinari turned away, took some papers from a desk drawer, walked to a wall, touched a certain area and stepped quickly through the hidden door that noiselessly swung open.

Beyond was a corridor, lit by borrowed light from high windows and paved with small flagstones. He walked forward, hesitated, said "...no, this is Tuesday..." and moved his descending foot so that it landed on a stone that in every respect appeared to be exactly the same as its fellows.*

Anyone overhearing his progress along the pa.s.sages and stairs may have caught muttered phrases on the lines of "...the moon is...waxing..." and "yes, it is before noon." A really keen keen listener would have heard the faint whirring and ticking inside the walls. listener would have heard the faint whirring and ticking inside the walls.

A really keen and paranoid paranoid listener would have reflected that anything the Lord Vetinari said aloud even while he was alone might not be listener would have reflected that anything the Lord Vetinari said aloud even while he was alone might not be totally totally worth believing. Not, certainly, if your life depended on it. worth believing. Not, certainly, if your life depended on it.

Eventually he reached a door, which he unlocked.

There was a large attic room beyond, suddenly airy and bright and cheerful with sunlight from the windows in the roof. It seemed to be a cross between a workshop and a storeroom. Several bird skeletons hung from the ceiling and there were a few other bones on the worktables, along with coils of wire and metal springs and tubes of paint and more tools, many of them probably unique, than you normally saw in any one place. Only a narrow bed, wedged between a thing like a loom with wings and a large bronze statue, suggested that someone actually lived here. They were clearly someone who was obsessively interested in everything everything.

What interested Lord Vetinari right now was the device all by itself on a table in the middle of the room. It looked like a collection of copper b.a.l.l.s balanced on one another. Steam was hissing gently from a few rivets, and occasionally the device went blup- blup- "Your Lords.h.i.+p!"

Vetinari looked around. A hand was waving desperately at him from behind an upturned bench.

And something made him look up as well. The ceiling above him was crusted with some brownish substance, which hung from it like stalact.i.tes...

Blup With quite surprising speed the Patrician was behind the bench. Leonard of Quirm smiled at him from underneath his homemade protective helmet.

"I do do apologize," he said. "I'm afraid I wasn't expecting anyone to come in. I'm sure it will work this time, however." apologize," he said. "I'm afraid I wasn't expecting anyone to come in. I'm sure it will work this time, however."

Blup "What is it?" said Vetinari.

Blup "I'm not quite quite sure, but I sure, but I hope hope it is a-" it is a-"

And then it was, suddenly, too noisy to talk.

Leonard of Quirm never dreamed that he was a prisoner. If anything, he was grateful to Vetinari for giving him this airy work s.p.a.ce, and regular meals, and laundry, and protecting him from those people who for some reason always wanted to take his perfectly innocent inventions, designed for the betterment of mankind, and use them for despicable purposes. It was amazing how many of them there were-both the people and the inventions. It was as if all the genius of a civilization had funneled into one head which was, therefore, in a constant state of highly inventive spin. Vetinari often speculated upon the fate of mankind should Leonard keep his mind on one thing for more than an hour or so.

The rus.h.i.+ng noise died away. Blup Blup.

Leonard peered cautiously over the bench and smiled broadly.

"Ah! Happily, we appear to have achieved coffee," he said.

"Coffee?"

Leonard walked over to the table and pulled a small lever on the device. A light brown foam cascaded into a waiting cup with a noise like a clogged drain.

"Different coffee," he said. "Very coffee," he said. "Very fast fast coffee. I rather think you will like it. I'm calling this the Very-Fast-Coffee machine." coffee. I rather think you will like it. I'm calling this the Very-Fast-Coffee machine."

"And that's today's invention, is it?" said Vetinari.

"Well, yes. It would have been a scale model of a device for reaching the moon and other celestial bodies, but I was thirsty."

"How fortunate." Lord Vetinari carefully removed an experimental pedal-powered shoe polis.h.i.+ng machine from a chair and sat down. "And I have brought you some more little...messages."

Leonard almost clapped his hands.

"Oh, good! And I have finished the other ones you gave me last night."

Lord Vetinari carefully removed a mustache of frothy coffee from his upper lip. "I beg your...? All All of them? You broke the ciphers on of them? You broke the ciphers on all all those messages from Uberwald?" those messages from Uberwald?"

"Oh, they were quite easy after I had finished the new device," said Leonard, rummaging through the piles of paper on a bench and handing the Patrician several closely written sheets. "But once you realize that there are only a limited number of birth dates a person can have, and that people do tend to think the same way, ciphers are really not very hard."

"You mentioned a new device?" said the Patrician.

"Oh yes. The...thingy. It is all very crude at the moment, but it suffices for these simple codes."

Leonard pulled a sheet off something vaguely rectangular. It seemed to Vetinari to be all wooden wheels and long thin spars which, he saw when he moved closer, were inscribed thickly with letters and numbers. A number of the wheels were not round but oval or heart shaped or some other curious curve. When Leonard turned a handle, the whole thing moved with a complex oiliness quite disquieting in something merely mechanical.

"And what are you calling it?"

"Oh, you know me and names, my lord. I think of it as the Engine for the Neutralizing of Information by the Generation of Miasmic Alphabets, but I appreciate that it does not exactly roll off the tongue. Er..."

"Yes, Leonard?"

"Er...it's not...wrong, is it, reading other people's messages?"

Vetinari sighed. The worried man in front of him, who was so considerate of life that he carefully dusted around spiders, had once invented a device that fired lead pellets with tremendous speed and force. He thought it would be useful against dangerous animals. He'd designed a thing that could destroy whole mountains. He thought it would be useful in the mining industries. Here was a man who, in his tea break in his tea break, would doodle an instrument for unthinkable ma.s.s destruction in the blank s.p.a.ces around an exquisite drawing of the fragile beauty of the human smile. With a list of numbered parts. And if you taxed him with it, he'd say: Ah, but such a thing would make war completely impossible, you see? Because no one would dare use it. Because no one would dare use it.

Leonard brightened up as a thought apparently struck him. "But, on the other hand, the more we know about one another, the more we will learn to understand. Now...you asked me to construct some more ciphers for you you. I am sorry, my lord, but I must have misunderstood your requirements. What was wrong with the first ones I did?"

Vetinari sighed. "I am afraid they were unbreakable, Leonard."

"But surely-"

"It is hard to explain," said Vetinari, aware that what to him were the lucid waters of politics was so much mud to Leonard. "These new ones you have are...merely devilishly difficult?"

"You specified fiendishly fiendishly, sir," said Leonard, looking worried.

"Oh yes."

"There does not appear to be a common standard for fiends, my lord, but I did some research in the more accessible occult texts and I believe these ciphers will be considered 'difficult' by more than ninety-six percent of fiends."

"Good."

"They may perhaps verge on the diabolically difficult in places-"

"That is not a problem. I shall use them forthwith."

Leonard still seemed to have something on his mind.

"It would be so easy to make them archdemonically diff-"

"But these will suffice, Leonard," said Vetinari.

"My lord," Leonard almost wailed, "I really cannot guarantee that sufficiently clever people will be unable to read your messages!"

"Good."

"But, my lord, they will know what you are thinking!"

Vetinari patted him on the shoulder.

"No, Leonard. They will merely know what is in my messages."

"I really do not not understand, my lord." understand, my lord."

"No, but on the other hand, I cannot make exploding coffee. What would the world be like if we were all alike?"

Leonard's face clouded for a moment.

"I'm not sure," he said, "but if you would like me to work on the problem, I may be able to devise a-"

"It was merely a figure of speech, Leonard."

Vetinari shook his head ruefully. It often seemed to him that Leonard, who had pushed intellect into hitherto undiscovered uplands, had discovered there large and specialized pockets of stupidity. What would be the point of ciphering messages that very clever enemies couldn't break? You'd end up not knowing what they thought you thought they were thinking...

"There was one rather strange message from Uberwald, my lord," said Leonard. "It arrived yesterday morning, apparently."

"Strange?"

"It was not ciphered."

"Not at all all? I thought everyone used codes."

"Oh, the sender and recipent are code names, but the message is quite plain. It was a request for information about Commander Vimes, of whom you have often spoken."

Lord Vetinari went quite still.

"The return message was mostly clear, too. A certain amount of...gossip."