'Yes?'
'Why do you wear your badge on a collar round your neck?'
'What? Oh. Well... so it's always handy. You know. In any circumstances.'
'Do I need to do that?'
'I shouldn't think so.'
Mr Sock jumped. 'Dorfl, you damn stupid lump! Never sneak up behind a man on the bacon slicer! I've told you that before! Try to make some noise when you move, damn you!' The golem held up its slate, which said:
TONIGHT I CANNOT WORK.
'What's this? The bacon slicer never asks for time off!'
IT IS A HOLY DAY.
Sock looked at the red eyes. Old Fishbine had said something about this, hadn't he, when he'd sold Dorfl? Something like: 'Sometimes it'll go off for a few hours because it's a holy day. It's the words in its head. If it doesn't go and trot off to its temple or whatever it is, the words'll stop working, don't ask me why. There's no point in stopping it.'
Five hundred and thirty dollars the thing had cost. He'd thought it was a bargain - and it was a bargain, no doubt about that. The damned thing only ever stopped working when it had run out of things to do. Sometimes not even then, according to the stories. You heard about golems flooding out houses because no one told them to stop carrying water from the well, or washing the dishes until the plates were thin as paper. Stupid things. But useful if you kept your eye on them.
And yet... and yet... he could see why no one seemed to keep them for long. It was the way the damned two-handed engine just stood there, taking it all in and putting it ... where? And never complained. Or spoke at all.
A man could get worried about a bargain like that, and feel mightily relieved when he was writing out a receipt for the new owner.
'Seems to me there's been a lot of holy days lately,' Sock said.
SOME TIMES ARE MORE HOLY THAN OTHERS.
But they couldn't skive off, could they? Work was what a golem did.
'I don't know how we're going to manage...' Sock began.
IT IS A HOLY DAY.
'Oh, all right. You can have time off tomorrow.'
TONIGHT. HOLY DAY STARTS AT SUNSET.
'Be back quickly, then,' said Sock, weakly. 'Or I'll - You be back quickly, d'you hear?'
That was another thing. You couldn't threaten the creatures. You certainly couldn't withhold their pay, because they didn't get any. You couldn't frighten them. Fishbine had said that a weaver over Nap Hill way had ordered his golem to smash itself to bits with a hammer - and it had.
YES. I HEAR.
In a way, it didn't matter who they were. In fact, their anonymity was part of the whole business. They thought themselves part of the march of history, the tide of progress and the wave of the future. They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that. One said, 'At least it's clean this way. No blood.' 'And it would be for the good of the city, of course.'
They nodded gravely. No one needed to say that what was good for them was good for Ankh-Morpork.
'And he won't die?'
'Apparently he can be kept merely ... unwell. The dosage can be varied, I'm told.'
'Good. I'd rather have him unwell than dead. I wouldn't trust Vetinari to stay in a grave.'
'I've heard that he once said he'd prefer to be cremated, as a matter of fact.'
'Then I just hope they scatter the ashes really widely, that's all.'