Maskerade (Discworld 18)

'That's very kind of him, I'm sure.' Nanny started downwards, and as the shadows danced around her she heard Walter say: 'You know she asked me a very silly question Mrs Ogg! It was a silly question any fool knows the answer!'

'Oh, yes,' said Nanny, peering at the walls. 'About houses on fire, I expect. . .'

'Yes! What would I take out of our house if it was on fire!'

'I expect you were a good boy and said you'd take your mum,' said Nanny. 'No! My mum would take herself!' Nanny ran her hands over the nearest wall. Doors had been nailed shut when the staircase had been abandoned. Someone walking up and down here, with a keen pair of ears, could hear a lot of things. . . 'What would you take out then, Walter?' she said. 'The fire!' Nanny stared unseeing at the wall, and then her face slowly broke into a grin. 'You're daft, Walter Plinge,' she said. 'Daft as a broom Mrs Ogg!' said Walter cheerfully. But you ain't insane, she thought. You're daft but you're sane. That's what Esme would say. And there's worser things. Greebo pounded along Broadway. He was suddenly not feeling very well. Muscles were twitching in odd ways. A tingling at the base of his spine indicated that his tail wanted to grow, and his ears definitely wanted to creep up the sides of his head, which is always embarrassing when it happens in company. In this case the company was about a hundred yards behind and apparently intent on moving his ears quite a long way from their current position, embarrassment or not. It was gaining, too. Greebo normally had a famous turn of speed, but not when his knees were trying to reverse direction every few seconds. His normal plan when pursued was to jump on to the water-butt behind Nanny Ogg's cottage and rake the pursuer across the nose with his claws when it came around the corner. Since this would now involve a fivehundred-mile dash, an alternative had to be sought. There was a coach waiting outside one of the houses. He lurched over to it, pulled himself up, grabbed the reins and briefly turned his attention to the driver. 'Get orffl.' Greebo's teeth shone in the moonlight. The coachman, with great presence of mind and urgent absence of body, somersaulted backwards into the night. The horses reared, and tried to break into a gallop from a standing start. Animals are less capable of being fooled than are humans; they knew that what they had behind them was a very large cat, and the fact that it was manshaped didn't make them any happier. The coach lumbered off. Greebo looked over his twitching shoulder at the torch lit crowd and waved a paw derisively. The effect pleased him so much that he clambered on to the roof of the swaying coach and continued to jeer. It is a cat-like attribute to spit defiance at the enemy from a place of safety. In the circumstances it would have been better if cat-like attributes had included the ability to steer. A wheel hit the parapet of the Brass Bridge and scraped along it, the iron rim kicking up sparks. The shock knocked Greebo from his perch in mid-gesture. He landed on his feet in the middle of the road, while the

terrified horses continued on with the coach rocking dangerously from side to side. The pursuers stopped. 'What's he doing now?'

'He's just standing there.'

'There's only one of him and there's lots of us, right? We could easily overpower him.'

'Good idea. On the count of three, we'll all rush him, right? One. . . two. . . three. . .'Pause. 'You didn't run.'

'Well, nor did you.'

'Yes, but I was the one saying “one, two, three”.'

'Remember what he did to Mr Pounder!'

'Yes, well, I never liked the man all that much. . .' Greebo snarled. Ticklish things were happening to his body. He threw his head back and roared. 'Look, at worst he'd only be able to get one or two of us'

'Oh, that's good, is it?'

'Here, why's he twisting around like that?'

'Maybe he hurt himself falling off the coach-'

'Let's get .him!' The mob closed in. Greebo, struggling against a morphogenic field swinging wildly between species, punched the first man in the face with a hand and clawed the shirt off another man with something more like a giant paw. 'Oh, shiiiooooo-' Twenty hands grabbed him. And then, in the melee and the darkness, twenty hands were holding just cloth and emptiness. Vengeful boots connected with nothing more than air. Clubs that had been swung at a snarling face whirled through empty space and returned to hit their owner on the ear. '-ooooaaawwwwl!' Quite unnoticed in the scrum, a flat-eared bullet of grey fur shot out from between the scuffling legs. The kicking and punching stopped only when it became apparent that all the mob was attacking was itself. And, since the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters, it was never very clear to anyone what had happened. Obviously they'd closed in on the Ghost, and he certainly couldn't have escaped. All that was left was a mask and some torn clothing. So, the mob reasoned, he must have ended up in the river. And good riddance, too. Happy in the knowledge of a job well done, they adjourned to the nearest pub. This left Sergeant Count de Tritus and Corporal the Count de Nobby Nobbs, who lurched to the middle of the bridge and regarded the few scraps of cloth. 'Commander Vimes isn't. . .isn't. . . isn't goin' to like dis,' said Detritus. 'You know he likes prisoners to be alive.'

'Yeah, but this one would've been hung anyway,' said Nobby, who was trying to stand upright. 'This way was just a bit more. . . democratic. A great saving in terms of rope, not to mention wear and tear on locks and keys.' Detritus scratched his head. 'Shouldn't there be some blood?' he ventured. Nobby gave him a sour look. 'He couldn't've got away,' he said. 'So don't go asking questions like that.'

'Only, if humans is hit hard enough, they leaks all over der place,' said Detritus. Nobby sighed. That was the calibre of people you got in the Watch these days. They had to make a mystery of things. In days gone by, when it had

been just the old gang and an unofficial policy of lazy fair, they'd have said a heartfelt 'Well done, lads' to the vigilantes and turned in early. But now old Vimes had been promoted to Commander he seemed to be enrolling people who asked questions all the time. It was even affecting Detritus, considered by other trolls to be as dim as a dead glowworm. Detritus reached down and picked up an eye patch. 'What d'you think, then?' said Nobby scornfully. 'You think he turned into a bat and flew away?'

'Ha! I do not t'ink that 'cos it is in. . . consist. . . ent with modern policing,' said Detritus. 'Well, I think,' said Nobby, 'that when you have ruled out the impossible, what is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink. Come on. I want to try a leg of the elephant that bit me.'

'Was dat irony?'

'That was metaphor.' Detritus, uneasy in what was technically his mind, prodded at the torn pieces of clothing. Something brushed against his leg. It was a cat. It had tattered ears, one good eye, and a face like a fist with fur on it. 'Hello, little cat,' said Detritus. The cat stretched and grinned. 'Gerrt lorssst, coppuurrrr. . .' Detritus blinked. There are no such things as troll cats, and Detritus had never seen a cat before he'd arrived in AnkhMorpork and discovered that they were very, very hard to eat. And he'd never heard of them talking. On the other hand, he was very much aware of his reputation as the most stupid person in the city, and he wasn't going to draw attention to a talking cat if it were going to turn out that everybody except him knew that they talked all the time. In the gutter, a few feet away, there was something white. He picked it up carefully. It looked like the mask the Ghost had worn. This was probably a Clue. He waved it urgently. 'Hey, Nobby-'

'Thank you.' Something dipped through the darkness, snatched the mask from the troll's hand, and soared into the night. Corporal Nobbs turned around. 'Yes?' he said. 'Er. . . how big are birds? Normally?'

'Oh, blimey, I dunno. Some are small, some are big. Who cares?' Detritus sucked his finger. 'Oh, no reason,' he said. 'I am far too smart to be taken in by perfec'ly normal t'ings.' Something squelched underfoot. 'It's pretty damp down here, Walter,' said Nanny. And the air was stale and heavy and seemed to be squeezing the light from the torch. There was a dark edge to the flame. 'Not far now Mrs Ogg!' Keys jingled in the darkness, and some hinges creaked. 'I found this Mrs Ogg! It's the Ghost's secret cave!'

'Secret cave, eh?'

'You got to shut your eyes! You got to shut your eyes!' said Walter urgently. Nanny did so, but to her shame kept a grip on the torch, just in case. She said: 'And is the Ghost in there, Walter?'

'No!' There was the rattle of a matchbox and some scuffling, and then 'You can open them now Mrs Ogg!' Nanny did so.

Colour and light blurred and then swam into focus, first in her eyes and then, eventually, in her brain. 'Oh, my,' she murmured. 'Oh, my, my. . .' There were candles, the big flat ones used to illuminate the stage, floating in shallow bowls. The light they gave was soft, and it rippled over the room like the soul of water. It glinted off the beak of a huge swan. It glittered in the eye of a vast, sagging dragon. Nanny Ogg turned slowly. Her experience of opera had not been a lengthy one but witches pick things up quickly, and there was the winged helmet worn by Hildabrun in The Ring of the Nibelungingung, and here was the striped pole from The Barber of Pseudopolis, and there was the pantomime horse with the humorous trapdoor from The Enchanted Piccolo, and here. . . . . .here was opera, all piled in a heap. Once the eye had taken it all in, it had time to notice the peeling paint and rotting plaster and the general air of gentle mouldering. The decrepit props and threadbare costumes had been dumped in here because people didn't want them anywhere else. But someone did want them here. After the eye had seen the ruin, then there was time for it to see the little patches of recent repair, the careful areas of fresh paint. There was something like a desk in the tiny area of floor not occupied by the props. And then Nanny realized that it had a keyboard and a stool, and there were neat piles of paper on top of it. Walter was watching her with a big, proud grin. Nanny ambled over to the thing. 'It's a harmonium, ain't it? A tiny organ?'

'That's right Mrs Ogg!' Nanny picked up one of the sheaves of paper. Her lips moved as she read the meticulous copperplate writing. 'An opera about cats?' she said. 'Never heard of an opera about cats. . .' She thought for a moment, and then added to herself But why not? It's a damn good idea. The lives of cats are just like operas, when you come to think about it. She leafed through the other piles. 'Guys and Trolls? Hubwards Side Story? Miserable Les? Who's he? Seven Dwarfs for Seven Other Dwarfs? What're all these, Walter?' She sat down on the stool and pressed a few of the cracked yellow keys, which moved with an audible creak. There were a couple of large pedals under the harmonium. You pedalled these and that worked the bellows and these spongy keys produced something which was to organ music what 'poot' was to cursing. So this was where Wal. . . where the Ghost sat, thought Nanny, down under the stage, among the discarded wreckage of old performances; down under the huge windowless room where, night after night, music and songs and rampant emotion echoed back and forth and never escaped or entirely died away. The Ghost worked down here, with a mind as open as a well, and it filled up with opera. Opera went in at the ears, and something else came out of the mind. Nanny pumped the pedals a few times. Air hissed from inefficient seams. She tried a few notes. They were reedy. But, she considered, sometimes the old lie was true, and size really did not matter. It really was what you did with it that counted. Walter watched her expectantly. She took down another wad of paper and peered at the first page. But Walter leaned over and snatched at the script. 'That one's not finished Mrs Ogg!'

* * * The Opera House was still in uproar. Half the audience had gone outside and the other half was hanging around in case further interesting events were going to transpire. The orchestra was in a huddle in the pit, preparing its request for a special Being Upset By A Ghost Allowance. The curtains were closed. Some of the chorus had stayed on stage; others had hurried off to take part in the chase. The air had the excited electric feel it gets when normal civilized life is temporarily short-circuited. Agnes bounced frantically from rumour to rumour. The Ghost had been caught, and it was Walter Plinge. The Ghost had been caught by Walter Plinge. The Ghost had been caught by someone else. The Ghost had escaped. The Ghost was dead. There were arguments breaking out everywhere. 'I still can't believe it was Walter! I mean, good grief. . . Walter?'