The Truth (Discworld 25)

That was the major problem with Mr Tulip, he thought, as they made their way to the ground. It wasn't that he had a drugs habit. He wanted to have a drugs habit. What he had was a stupidity habit, which cut in whenever he found anything being sold in little bags, and this had resulted in Mr Tulip seeking heaven in flour, salt, baking powder and pickled beef sandwiches. In a street where furtive people were selling Clang, Slip, Chop, Rhino, Skunk, Triplin, Floats, Honk, Double Honk, Congers and Slack, Mr Tulip had an unerring way of finding the man who was retailing curry powder at what worked out as six hundred dollars a pound. It was so --ing embarrassing.

Currently he was experimenting with the whole range of recreational chemicals available to Ankh-Morpork's troll population, because at least when dealing with trolls Mr Tulip had a moderate chance of outsmarting somebody. In theory Slab and Honk shouldn't have any effect on the human brain, apart from maybe dissolving it. Mr Tulip was hanging in there. He'd tried normality once and hadn't liked it.

Mr Pin sighed again. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's feed the geek,'

In Ankh-Morpork it is very hard to watch without being watched in turn, and the two furtive watchers were indeed under careful observation.

They were being watched by a small dog, variously coloured but mainly a rusty grey. Occasionally it scratched itself, with a noise like someone trying to shave a wire brush.

There was a piece of string around its neck. This was attached to another piece of string or, rather, to a length made up of pieces of string inexpertly knotted together.

The string was being held in the hand of a man. At least, such might be deduced from the fact that it disappeared into the same pocket of the grubby coat as one sleeve, which presumably had an arm in it, and theoretically therefore a hand on the end.

It was a strange coat. It stretched from the pavement almost to the brim of the hat above it, which was shaped rather like a sugar loaf. There was a suggestion of grey hair around the join. One arm burrowed in the suspicious depths of a pocket and produced a cold sausage.

'Two men spyin' on the Patrician,' said the dog. 'An interestin' fing.'

'Bugrem,' said the man, and broke the sausage into two democratic halves.

William wrote a short paragraph about Patrician Visits The Bucket, and examined his notebook.

Amazing, really. He'd found no less than a dozen items for his news letter in only a day. It was astonishing what people would tell you if you asked them.

Someone had stolen one of the golden fangs of the statue of Offler the Crocodile God; he'd promised Sergeant Colon a drink for telling him that, but in any case had got some way towards payment by appending to his paragraph the sentence: The Watch are Mightily in Pursuit of the Wrongdoer, and are Confident of Apprehen,'ion at an Early Juncture.'

He was not entirely sure about this, although Sergeant Colon had looked very sincere when he said it.

The nature of truth always bothered William. He had been brought up to tell it or, more correctly, to 'own up' and some habits are hard to break if they've been beaten in hard enough. And Lord de Worde had inclined to the old proverb that, as you bend the twig, so grows the tree. William had not been a particularly flexible

twig. Lord de Worde had not, himself, been a violent man. He'd merely employed them. Lord de Worde, as far as William could recall, had no great enthusiasm for anything that involved touching people.

Anyway, William always told himself, he was no good at making things up; anything that wasn't the truth simply unravelled for him. Even little white lies, like 'I shall definitely have the money by the end of the week', always ended in trouble. That was 'telling stories', a sin in the de Worde compendium that was worse than lying; it was trying to make lies interesting.

So William de Worde told the truth, out of cosmic self defence. He'd found a hard truth less hard than an easy lie.

There had been rather a good fight in the Mended Drum. William was very pleased with that one: 'Whereupon Brezock the Barbarian picked up a table and delivered a blow to Moltin the Snatcher, who in his turn seized hold of the Chandeliers and swung thereon, the while crying, "Take that, thou B*st*rd that you are!!!", at which juncture, a ruckus commenced and 5 or 6 people were hurt.'

He took it all down to the Bucket.

Gunilla read it with interest; it seemed to take very little time for the dwarfs to set it up in type.

And it was odd, but...

... once it was in type, all the letters so neat and regular...

... it looked more real.

Boddony, who seemed to be second in command of the print room, squinted at the columns of type over Goodmountain's shoulders.

'Hmm,' he said.

'What do you think?' said William.

'Looks a bit... grey,' said the dwarf. 'All the type bunched up. Looks like a book,'

'Well, that's all right, isn't it?' said William. Looking like a book sounded like a good thing.

'Maybe you want it more sort of spaced out?' said Gunilla.