The Truth (Discworld 25)

'Want to make any changes before we go to press?' he said. 'Just say the word. A couple of dozen prints be enough?'

'Oh dear,' said William. This is printing, isn't it... ?'

The Bucket was a tavern, of sorts. There was no passing trade. The street was if not a dead end then seriously wounded by the area's change in fortunes. Few businesses fronted on to it. It consisted mainly of the back ends of yards and warehouses. No one even remembered why it was called Gleam Street. There was nothing very sparkling about it.

Besides, calling a tavern the Bucket was not a decision destined to feature in Great Marketing Decisions of History. Its owner was Mr Cheese, who was thin, dry and only smiled when he heard news of some serious murder. Traditionally he had sold short measure but, to make up for it, had short-changed as well. However, the pub had been taken over by the City Watch as the unofficial policemen's pub, because policemen like to drink in places where no one else goes and they don't have to be reminded that they are policemen.

This had been a benefit in some ways. Not even licensed thieves tried to rob the Bucket now. Policemen didn't like their drinking disturbed. On the other hand, Mr Cheese had never found a bigger bunch of petty criminals than those wearing the Watch uniform. He saw more dud dollars and strange pieces of foreign currency cross his bar in the first month than he'd found in ten years in the business. It made you depressed, it really did. But some of the murder descriptions were quite funny.

He made part of his living by renting out the rat's nest of old sheds and cellars that backed on to the pub. They tended to be occupied very temporarily by the kind of enthusiastic manufacturer who believed that what the world really, really needed today was an inflatable dartboard.

But there was a crowd outside the Bucket now, reading one of the' slightly misprinted posters that Goodmountain had nailed up on the door. Goodmountain followed William out and nailed up the corrected version.

'Sorry about your head,' he said. 'Looks like we made a bit of an impression on you. Have this one on the house.'

William skulked home, keeping in the shadows in case he met Mr Cripslock. But he folded his printed sheets into their envelopes and took them down to the Hubward Gate and gave them to the messengers, reflecting as he did so that he was doing this several days before he had expected to.

The messengers gave him some very odd looks.

He went back to his lodgings and had a look at himself in the mirror over the washbasin. A large R, printed in bruise colours, Occupied a lot of his forehead.

He stuck a bandage over it.

And he still had eighteen more copies. As an afterthought, and feeling rather daring, he looked through his notes for the addresses of eighteen prominent citizens who could probably afford it, wrote a short covering letter to each one offering this service for... he thought for a while and then carefully wrote '$5'... and folded the free sheets into eighteen envelopes. Of course, he could always have asked Mr Cripslock to do more copies as well, but it had never seemed right. After the old boy had spent all day chipping out the words, asking him to sully his craftsmanship by making dozens of duplicates seemed disrespectful. But you didn't have to respect lumps of metal and machines. Machines weren't alive.

That, really, was where the trouble was going to start. And there was going to be trouble. The dwarfs had seemed quite unconcerned when he'd told them how much of it there was going to be.

The coach arrived at a large house in the city. A door was opened. A door was shut. Another door was knocked on. It was opened. It shut. The carriage pulled away.

One ground-floor room was heavily curtained, and only the barest gleam of light filtered out. Only the faintest of noises filtered out, too, but any listener would have heard a murmur of conversation die down. Then a chair was knocked over and several people shouted, all at once.

'That is him!'

'It's a trick... isn't it?'

'I'll be damned!'

'If it is him, so are we all!'

The hubbub died away. And then, very calmly, someone began to talk.

'Good. Good. Take him away, gentlemen. Make him comfortable in the cellar.'

There were footsteps. A door opened and closed.

A more querulous voice said, 'We could simply replace--'

'No, we could not. I understand that our guest is, fortunately, a man of rather low intelligence.' There was this about the first speaker's voice. It spoke as if disagreeing was not simply unthinkable but impossible. It was used to being in the company of listeners.

'But he looks the spit and image--'

'Yes. Astonishing, isn't it? Let us not overcomplicate matters, though. We are a bodyguard of lies, gentlemen. We are all that stands between the city and oblivion, so let us make this one chance work. Vetinari may be quite willing to see humans become a minority in their greatest city, but frankly his death by assassination would be... unfortunate. It would cause turmoil, and turmoil is hard to steer. And we all know that there are people who take too much of an interest. No. There is a third way. A gentle slide from one condition to another.'

'And what will happen to our new friend?'

'Oh, our employees are known to be men of resource, gentlemen. I'm sure they know how to deal with a man whose face no longer fits, eh?'

There was laughter.