Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

Carrot almost audibly tried to work this out.

'What . . . you mean like . . . Mr Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, sir?'

'He's not a criminal.'

'You have eaten one of his pies, sir?'

'I mean . . . yes . . . but . . . he's just geographically divergent in the financial hemisphere.'

'Sir?'

'I mean he just disagrees with other people about the position of things. Like money. He thinks it should all be in his pocket. No, I meant—' Vimes closed his eyes, and thought about cigar smoke and flowing drink and laconic voices. There were people who'd steal money from people. Fair enough. That was just theft. But there were people who, with one easy word, would steal the humanity from people. That was something else.

The point was. . . well, he didn't like dwarfs and trolls. But he didn't like anyone very much. The point was that he moved in their company every day, and he had a right to dislike them. The point was that no fat idiot had the right to say things like that.

He stared at the water. One of the piles of the bridge was right below him; the Ankh sucked and gurgled around it. Debris – baulks of timber, branches, rubbish – had piled up in a sort of sordid floating island. There was even fungus growing on it.

What he could do with right now was a bottle of Bearhugger's. The world swam into focus when you looked at it through the bottom of a bottle.

Something else swam into focus.

Doctrine of signatures, thought Vimes. That's what the herbalists call it. It's like the gods put a 'Use Me' label on plants. If a plant looks like a part of the body, it's good for ailments peculiar to that part. There's teethwort for teeth, spleenwort for . . . spleens, eyebright for eyes . . . there's even a toadstool called Phallus impudicus, and I don't know what that's for but Nobby is a big man for mushroom omelettes. Now . . . either that fungus down there is exactly the medicine for hands, or . . .

Vimes sighed.

'Carrot, can you go and get a boathook, please?'

Carrot followed his gaze.

'Just to the left of that log, Carrot.'

'Oh, no!'

'I'm afraid so. Haul it out, find out who he was, make out a report for Sergeant Colon.'

The corpse was a clown. Once Carrot had climbed down the pile and moved the debris aside, he floated face up, a big sad grin painted on his face.

'He's dead!'

'Catching, isn't it?'

Vimes looked at the grinning corpse. Don't investigate. Keep out of it. Leave it to the Assassins and bloody Quirke. These are your orders.

'Corporal Carrot?'

'Sir?'

These are your orders . . .

Well, damn that. What did Vetinari think he was? Some kind of clockwork soldier?

'We're going to find out what's been going on here.'

'Yes, sir!'

'Whatever else happens. We're going to find out.'

The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.