Thud! (Discworld 34)

"Mr Bashfullsson?" he said. "I can"t touch him. Please?"

The grag nodded and knelt down by the dwarf. "No pulse, no heartbeat," he announced after a few seconds. "I"m sorry, commander.!

"Then it looks as though I"m now in your hands," said Vimes.

"Indeed. In the hands of a dwarf," said the grag, standing up. "Commander Vimes, I will swear that Helmclever was treated with nothing but concern and courtesy whilst I was here. And perhaps with more kindness from you than a dwarf might have a right to expect. His death is not on your hands. The Summoning Dark called him. Dwarfs will understand."

"Well, I don"t! Why"d it kill him? What did the poor bugger do?"

"I think it"s more true to say that the fear of the Summoning Dark killed him," said the grag. "He left a miner trapped, heard his cries in the dark and did nothing. To all dwarfs, that is a terrible crime."

"As bad as wiping away a word?" said Vimes sourly. He felt more shaken up than he"d care to admit.

"Some would say it is far worse. His own guilt and fear killed Helmclever. It"s as if he had his own Summoning Dark in his head," said Bashfullsson. "In a way, perhaps, we all have, commander. Or something similar."

"You know, your religion really messes people up, "said Vimes.

"Not in comparison to what they do to one another," said Bashfullsson, calmly folding the dead dwarf"s hands across his chest. "And it is not a religion, commander. Tak wrote the World and the Laws, and then He left us. He does not require that we think of Him, only that we think."

He stood up. "I shall explain the situation to my fellows, commander. Incidentally, I would ask you to take me with you to Koom Valley."

"Did I say I was going to Koom Valley?" said Vimes.

"All right," said the grag calmly. "Let"s say, then, that should the mood take you to go to Koom Valley, you will take me? I know the place, I know the history, I even know quite a lot about mine sign, especially the Major Darknesses. I may be useful."

"You demand all that just for telling the truth?" said Vimes.

"As a matter of fact, no. J"ds hasfak "ds": I bargain with no axe in my hand. I will tell the truth whatever you decide," said Bashfullsson. "However, since you are not going to Koom Valley, commander, I will not press you. It was only an idle thought."

Fun. What is it good for?

It"s not pleasure, joy, delight, enjoyment or glee. It"s a hollow, cruel, vicious little bastard, a word for something sought with an hilarious couple of wobbly antennae on your head and the words "I want It!" on your shirt, and it tends to leave you waking up with your face stuck to the street.

Somehow, Angua had acquired a magenta feather boa. It wasn"t her. It wasn"t anyone. It had just turned up. The sheer fakery of it made her more gloomy. Something was nagging at the back of her mind, and it annoyed her that she didn"t know what it was.

They had ended up in Biers, as she knew they would. It was the undead bar, although it tolerated anyone who wasn"t too normal.

It certainly tolerated Tawneee. She just didn"t get it, did she? The reason why men never talked to her. The trouble was, thought Angua, that Nobby wasn"t actually a bad ... person. As such. As far as she knew, he"d always been faithful to Miss Pushpram, which was to say that when it came to being hit with a fish and then pelted with clams, he never thought of any other girl but her. He actually had quite a romantic soul, but it was encased in what could only be called ... Nobby Nobbs.

Sally had accompanied Tawneee to the Ladies, which always came as a shock to people who hadn"t seen it before. Now Angua was staring at yet another cocktail menu, painted on a board above the bar, in a very shaky script, by Igor. [1]

He"d done his best to flow with the zeitgeist - or would have done if he"d known what the word meant - but had totally failed to grasp the subtleties of the modern cocktail bar, so that the drinks on offer included:

HAVIN YOUR TEEF SMASHED IN BY A BIG STINKIN FIST

HEAD NAILED TO THE DOOR

KICK INNA FORK

LIKE BIG LUMP OF STEEL HAMMER FIN YOUR EARS

NECK BOLT

Actually, the Neck Bolt wasn"t too bad, Angua had to admit.

""scuse me," said Cheery, teetering on a bar stool, "but what was all that about Tawneee? I could see you and Sally nodding to each other!"

"That? Oh, it"s the jerk syndrome: Angua remembered who she was talking to, and added: "Er ... dwarfs probably don"t have that. It means ... sometimes a woman is so beautiful that any man with half a brain isn"t going to think of asking her out, okay? Because it"s obvious that she"s far too grand for the likes of him. Are you with me?"