The Truth (Discworld 25)

Fire was always the terror in those parts of the city where wood and thatch predominated. That was why everyone had been so dead set against any form of fire brigade, reasoning -with impeccable Ankh-Morpork logic - that any bunch of men who were paid to put out fires would naturally see to it that there was a plentiful supply of fires to put out.

Golems were different. They were patient, hard-working, intensely logical, virtually indestructible and they volunteered. Everyone knew golems couldn't harm people.

There was some mystery about how the golem fire brigade had got formed. Some said the idea had come from the Watch, but the generally held theory was that golems simply would not allow people and property to be destroyed. With eerie discipline and no apparent communication they would converge on a fire from all sides, rescue any trapped people, secure and carefully pile up all portable property, form a bucket chain along which the buckets moved at a blur, trample every last ember... and then hurry back to their abandoned tasks.

These four were hurrying to a blaze in Treacle Mine Road. Tongues of fire curled out of first-floor rooms.

'Are you from the paper?' said a man in the crowd.

'Yes,' said William.

'Well, I reckon this is another case of mysterious spontaneous combustion, just like you reported yesterday,' and he craned his neck to see if William was writing this down.

William groaned. Sacharissa had reported a fire in Lobbin Clout, in which one poor soul had died, and had left it at that. But the Inquirer had called it a Mystery Fire.

I'm not sure that one was very mysterious,' he said. 'Old Mr Hardy decided to light a cigar and forgot that he was bathing his feet in turpentine.' Apparently someone had told him this was a cure for athlete's foot and, in a way, they had been right.

That's what they say,' said the man, tapping his nose. 'But there's a lot we don't get told.'

'That's true,' said William. 'I heard only the other day that giant rocks hundreds of miles across crash into the country every week, but the Patrician hushes it up.'

There you are, then,' said the man. 'It's amazing the way they treat us as if we're stupid.'

'Yes, it's a puzzle to me, too,' said William.

'Gangvay, gangvay, please!'

Otto pushed through the onlookers, struggling under the weight of a device the size and general shape of an accordion. He elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, balanced the device on its tripod and aimed it at a golem who was climbing out of a smoking window holding a small child.

'All right, boys, zis is zer big vun!' he said, and raised the flash cage. 'Vun, two, thre-- aarghaarghaarghaargh

The vampire became a cloud of gently settling dust. For a moment something hovered in the air. It looked like a small jar on a necklace made of string.

Then it fell and smashed on the cobbles.

The dust mushroomed up, took on a shape... and Otto stood blinking and running his hands over himself to check that he was all there. He caught sight of William and gave him the kind of big broad smile that only a vampire can give.

'Mr Villiam! It vorked, your idea!'

'Er... which one?' said William. A thin plume of yellow smoke was creeping out from under the lid of the big iconograph.

'You said carry a little drop of emergency b-vord,' said Otto. 'Zo I thought: if it is in a little bottle around my neck, zen if I crumble to dust, hoopla! It vill crash and smash unt here I am!'

He lifted the lid of the iconograph and waved the smoke away. There was the sound of very small coughing from within. 'And if I am not mistaken, ve have a successfully etched picture! All of vich only goes to show vot ve can achieve ven our brains are not clouded by thoughts of open vindows and bare necks, vich never cross my mind at all zese days because I am completely beetotal.'

Otto had made changes to his clothing. Away had gone the traditional black evening dress preferred by his species, to be replaced by an armless vest containing more pockets than William had ever seen on one garment. Many of them were stuffed with packets of imp food, extra paint, mysterious tools and other essentials of the iconographer's art.

In deference to tradition, though, Otto had made it black, with a red silk lining, and had added tails.

On making gentle inquiries of a family watching disconsolately as the smoke from the fire was turned to steam, William ascertained that the blaze had been mysteriously caused by mysterious spontaneous combustion in an overflowing mysterious chip pan full of boiling fat.

William left them picking through the blackened remains of their home.

'And it's just a story,' he said, putting away the notebook. It does makes me feel a bit of a vampire-- oh... sorry.'

'It is okay,' said Otto. I understand. And I should like to thank you for givink me zis job. It means a lot to me, especially since I can see how nervous you are. Vich is understandable, of course.'

'I'm not nervous! I'm very much at home with other species!' said William hotly.