‘Yes. It is vun of those ideas that are obvious ven you zink about it.’ Otto looked wistful. ‘And I zink about light all zer time. All zer … time.’
William vaguely remembered something someone had once said: the only thing more dangerous than a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open was channelled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency.
‘Er, why do you need to work in a dark room, though?’ he said. ‘The imps don’t need it, do they?’
‘Ah, zis is for my experiment,’ said Otto proudly. ‘You know zat another term for an iconographer would be “photographer”? From the old word photus in Latation, vhich means—’
‘“To prance around like a pillock ordering everyone about as if you owned the place”,’ said William.
‘Ah, you know it!’
William nodded. He’d always wondered about that word.
‘Vell, I am vorking on an obscurograph.’
William’s forehead wrinkled. It was turning into a long day. ‘Taking pictures with darkness?’ he ventured.
‘Viz true darkness, to be precise,’ said Otto, excitement entering his voice. ‘Not just absence of light. Zer light on zer ozzer side of darkness. You could call it … living darkness. Ve can’t see it, but imps can. Did you know zer Uberwaldean Deep Cave land eel emits a burst of dark light ven startled?’
William glanced at a large glass jar on the bench. A couple of ugly things were coiled up in the bottom.
‘And that will work, will it?’
‘I zink so. Hold it vun minute.’
‘I really ought to be getting back—’
‘Zis vill not take a second …’
Otto gently lifted one of the eels out of its jar and put it into the hod usually occupied by a salamander. He carefully aimed one of his iconographs at William and nodded.
‘Vun … two … three … BOO!’
There was—
— there was a soft noiseless implosion, a very brief sensation of the world being screwed up small, frozen, smashed into tiny little sharp pins and hammered through every cell of William’s body.[7] Then the gloom of the cellar flowed back.
‘That was … very strange,’ said William, blinking. ‘It was like something very cold walking through me.’
‘Much may be learnt about dark light now ve have left our disgusting past behind us and haf emerged into zer bright new future vhere ve do not zink about zer b-vord all day in any vay at all,’ said Otto, fiddling with the iconograph. He looked hard at the picture the imp had painted and then glanced up at William. ‘Oh vell, back to zer drawink board,’ he said.
‘Can I see?’
‘It vould embarrass me,’ said Otto, putting the square of cardboard down on his makeshift bench. ‘All zer time I am doing things wronk.’
‘Oh, but I’d—’
‘Mister de Worde, dere’s something happening!’
The bellow came from Rocky, whose head eclipsed the hole.
‘What is it?’
‘Something at der palace. Someone’s been killed!’
William sprang up the ladder. Sacharissa was sitting at her desk, looking pale.
‘Someone’s assassinated Vetinari?’ said William.
‘Er, no,’ said Sacharissa. ‘Not … exactly.’
Down in the cellar Otto Chriek picked up the dark light iconograph and looked at it again. Then he scratched it with a long pale finger, as if trying to remove something.
‘Strange …’ he said.
The imp hadn’t imagined it, he knew. Imps had no imagination whatsoever. They didn’t know how to lie.
He looked around the bare cellar suspiciously.
‘Is zere anyvun zere?’ he said. ‘Is anyvun playink zer silly buggers?’
Thankfully there was no answer.
Dark light. Oh dear. There were lots of theories about dark light …
‘Otto!’
He glanced up, shoving the picture into his pocket.
‘Yes, Mr Villiam?’
‘Get your stuff together and come with me! Lord Vetinari’s murdered someone! Er, it is alleged,’ William added. ‘And it can’t possibly be true.’
It sometimes seemed to William that the whole population of Ankh-Morpork was simply a mob waiting to happen. It was mostly spread thin, like some kind of great amoeba, all across the city. But when something happened somewhere it contracted around that point, like a cell around a piece of food, filling the streets with people.
It was growing around the main gates to the palace. It came together apparently at random. A knot of people would attract other people, and become a bigger, more complicated knot. Carts and sedan chairs would stop to find out what was going on. The invisible beast grew bigger.
There were watchmen on the gate instead of the palace guard. This was a problem. ‘Let me in, I’m nosy,’ was not a request likely to achieve success. It lacked a certain authority.
‘Vy are ve stoppink?’ said Otto.
‘That’s Sergeant Detritus on the gate,’ said William.
‘Ah. A troll. Very stupid,’ opined Otto.
‘But hard to fool. I’m afraid I shall have to try the truth.’
‘Vy vill zat vork?’
‘He’s a policeman. The truth usually confuses them. They don’t often hear it.’
The big troll sergeant watched William impassively as he approached. It was a proper policeman’s stare. It gave nothing away. It said: I can see you, now I’m waiting to see what you’re going to do that’s wrong.
‘Good morning, Sergeant,’ said William.
A nod from the troll indicated that he was prepared to accept, on available evidence, that it was morning and, in certain circumstances, by some people, it might be considered good.
‘I urgently need to see Commander Vimes.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Yes. Indeed.’
‘And does he urgently need to see you?’ The troll leaned closer. ‘You’re Mr de Worde, right?’
‘Yes. I work for the Times.’
‘I don’t read dat,’ said the troll.
‘Really? We’ll bring out a large-print edition,’ said William.
‘Dat was a very funny joke,’ said Detritus. ‘Fing is, fick though I am, I am der one that’s sayin’ you can stay outside, so— What’s dat vampire doing?’
‘Hold it just vun second!’ said Otto.
WHOOMPH.
‘—damndamndamn!’
Detritus watched Otto roll around on the cobbles screaming.
‘What was dat about?’ he said, eventually.
‘He’s taken a picture of you not letting me into the palace,’ said William.
Detritus, although born above the snowline on some distant mountain, a troll who had never seen a human until he was five years old, nevertheless was a policeman to his craggy, dragging fingertips and reacted accordingly.
‘He can’t do dat,’ he said.
William pulled out his notebook and poised his pencil. ‘Could you explain to my readers exactly why not?’ he said.
Detritus looked around, a little worried. ‘Where are dey?’
‘No, I mean I’m going to write down what you say.’
Basic policing rushed to Detritus’s aid once again. ‘You can’t do dat,’ he said.
‘Then can I write down why I can’t write anything down?’ William said, smiling brightly.
Detritus reached up and moved a little lever on the side of his helmet. A barely audible whirring noise became fractionally louder. The troll had a helmet with a clockwork fan, to blow air across his silicon brain when overheating threatened to reduce its operating efficiency. Right now he obviously needed a cooler head.
‘Ah. Dis is some kind of politics, right?’ he said.