"Ith he a diplomat, mithtreth?"
Lady Margolotta lay back. "No, Igor. He"s the reason for diplomats. Close the lid, vill you?"
Sam Vimes could parallel-process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases, such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I"ve invited them for dinner" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply".
Lady Sybil was aware of this. Sam could coherently carry an entire conversation while thinking about something completely different.
"I"ll tell Willikins to pack winter clothes," she said, watching him. "It"ll be pretty cold up there at this time of year."
"Yes. That"s a good idea." Vimes continued to stare at a point just above the fireplace.
"We"ll have to host a party ourselves, I expect, so we ought to take a cartload of typical Ankh-Morpork food. Show the flag, you know. Do you think I should take a cook along?"
"Yes, dear. That would be a good idea. No one outside the city knows how to make a knuckle sandwich properly."
Sybil was impressed. Ears operating entirely on
automatic had nevertheless triggered the mouth into making a small but pertinent contribution.
She said, "Do you think we ought to take the alligator with us?"
"Yes, that might be advisable."
She watched his face. Small furrows formed on Vimes"s brow as the ears nudged the brain. He blinked.
"What alligator?"
"You were miles away, Sam. In Uberwald, I expect."
"Sorry."
"Is there a problem?"
"Why"s he sending me, Sybil?"
"I"m sure Havelock shares with me a conviction that you have hidden depths, Sam."
Vimes sank gloomily into his armchair. It was, he felt, a persistent flaw in his wife"s otherwise practical and sensible character that she believed, against all evidence, that he was a man of many talents. He knew he had hidden depths. There was nothing in them that he"d like to see float to the surface. They contained things that should be left to lie.
There was also a nagging worry that he couldn"t quite pin down. Had he been able to, he might have expressed it like this: policemen didn"t go on holiday. Where you got policemen, as Lord Vetinari was wont to remark, you got crime. So if he went to Bonk, however you pronounced the damn place, there would be a crime. It was something the world always laid on for policemen.
"It"ll be nice to see Serafine again," said Sybil.
"Yes, indeed," said Vimes.
In Bonk he would not, officially, be a policeman. He did not like this at all. He liked this even less than all the other things.
On the few occasions he"d been outside Ankh-Morpork and its surrounding fiefdom he"d either been going to other local cities where the Ankh-Morpork badge carried some weight or he had been in hot pursuit, that most ancient and honourable of police procedures. From the way Carrot talked, in Bonk his badge would merely figure as extra roughage on someone"s menu.
His brow wrinkled again. "Serafine?"
"Lady Serafine von Uberwald," said Sybil. "Sergeant Angua"s mother? You remember me telling you last year? We were at finishing school together. Of course, we all knew she was a werewolf, but nobody would ever dream of talking about that sort of thing in those days. Well, you just didn"t. There was all that business over the ski instructor, of course, but I"m certain in my own mind that he must have fallen down some crevasse or other. She married the Baron, and they live just outside Beyonk. I write to her with a little news every Hogswatch. A very old Werewolf family."
"A good pedigree," said Vimes absently.
"You know you wouldn"t like Angua to hear you say that, Sam. Don"t worry so. You"ll have a chance to relax, I"m sure. It"ll be good for you."
"Yes, dear."