"It will take some time, Insert Name Here, but yes! I should love to!"
"And while you"re about it, see if there were any reports of
subsidence. Walls falling down, houses cracking, that sort of thing?" "Certainly, Insert Name Here. You can rely on me, Insert Name
Here!"
"Snap to it, then!"
"Yes, Insert Name Here! Thank you, Insert Name Here. I think
much better outside the box, Insert Name Here!"
zzzzp. Paper started to fly.
Well, who"d have thought it? Vimes wondered. Maybe the
damned thing could be useful after all.
The speaking tube whistled. He unhooked it and said, "Vimes: "I"ve got the evening edition of the Times, sir," said the distant
voice of Sergeant Littlebottom. She sounded worried.
"Fine. Send it up."
"And there"s a couple of people here who want to see you, sir."
Now there was a guarded tone to her voice.
"And they can hear you?" said Vimes.
"That"s right, sir. Trolls. They insist on seeing you personally.
They say they have a message for you."
"Do they look like trouble?" "Every inch, sir." "I"m coming down."
Vimes hung up the tube. Trolls with a message. It was unlikely to
be an invitation to a literary lunch.
"Er ... Gooseberry?" he said.
Once again the faint green blur coalesced into the beaming imp. "Found the figures, Insert Name Here. Just working on them!" it
said, and saluted.
"Good, but get back in the box, will you? We"re going out." "Certainly, Insert Name Here! Thank you for choosing the-" Vimes pushed the box into his pocket and went downstairs. The main office included not only the duty officer"s desk but also
half a dozen smaller ones, where watchmen sat when they had to do
the really tricky parts of police work, like punctuating a sentence
correctly. A lot of rooms and corridors opened on to it. A useful result of all this was that any action there attracted a lot of attention very quickly.
If the two trolls very conspicuously in the middle of the room had intended trouble, they"d picked a bad time. It was between shifts. Currently, they were trying without success to swagger whilst standing still, watched with deep suspicion by seven or eight officers of various shapes.
They"d brought it on themselves. They were baaad trolls. At least, they"d like everyone to think so. But they"d got it wrong. Vimes had seen bad trolls, and these didn"t come close. They"d tried. Oh, they"d tried. Lichen covered their heads and shoulders. Clan graffiti adorned their bodies; one of them had even had his arm carved, which must have hurt, for that stone cool troll look. Since wearing the traditional belt of human or dwarf skulls would have resulted in the wearer"s heels leaving a groove all the way to the nearest nick, and monkey skulls left the wearer liable to ambush by dwarfs with no grounding in forensic anthropology, these trolls- Vimes grinned. These boys had done the best they could with, oh dear, sheep and goat skulls. Well done, boys, that"s really scary.