Vimes fumbled his way up the stairs, groped his way into his office, slumped into the primeval leather chair with its prolapsed stuffing, scrabbled at the bottom drawer, grabbed bottle, bit cork, tugged, spat out cork, drank. Began his day.
The world swam into focus.
Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and suddenly you're going to live another few hours.
Once, in the days when this had been a respectable district, some hopeful owner of the tavern next door had paid a wizard a considerable sum of money for an illuminated sign, every letter a different colour. Now it worked erratically and sometimes short-circuited in the damp. At the moment the E was a garish pink and flashed on and off at random.
Vimes had grown accustomed to it. It seemed like part of life.
He stared at the flickering play of light on the crumbling plaster for a while, and then raised one sandalled foot and thumped heavily on the floorboards, twice.
After a few minutes a distant wheezing indicated that Sergeant Colon was climbing the stairs.
Vimes counted silently. Colon always paused for six seconds at the top of the flight to get some of his breath back.
On the seventh second the door opened. The sergeant's face appeared around it like a harvest moon.
You could describe Sergeant Colon like this: he was the sort of man who, if he took up a military career, would automatically gravitate to the post of sergeant. You couldn't imagine him ever being a corporal. Or, for that matter, a captain. If he didn't take up a military career, then he looked cut out for something like, perhaps, a sausage butcher; some job where a big red face and a tendency to sweat even in frosty weather were practically part of the specification.
He saluted and, with considerable care, placed a scruffy piece of paper on Vimes's desk and smoothed it out.
"Evenin', Captain, " he said. "Yesterday's incident reports, and that. Also, you owe fourpence to the Tea Club. "
"What's
this about a dwarf, Sergeant?" said Vimes abruptly.
Colon's brow wrinkled. "What dwarf?"
"The one who's just joined the Watch. Name of," Vimes hesitated,"Carrot, or something. "
"Him?" Colon's mouth dropped open. "He's a dwarf? I always said you couldn't trust them little buggers! He fooled me all right, Captain, the little sod must of lied about his height!" Colon was a sizeist, at least when it came to people smaller than himself.
"Do you know he arrested the President of the Thieves' Guild this morning?"
"What for?"
"For being president of the Thieves' Guild, it seems. "
The sergeant looked puzzled. "Where's the crime in that?"
"I think perhaps I had better have a word with this Carrot, " said Vimes.
"Didn't you see him, sir?" said Colon. "He said he'd reported to you, sir. "
"I, uh, must have been busy at the time. Lot on my mind, " said Vimes.
"Yes, sir, " said Colon, politely. Vimes had just enough self-respect left to look away and shuffle the strata of paperwork on his desk.
"We've got to get him off the streets as soon as possible, " he muttered. "Next thing you know he'll be bringing in the chief of the Assassins' Guild for bloody well killing people! Where is he?"
"I sent him out with Corporal Nobbs, Captain. I said he'd show him the ropes, sort of thing. "
"You sent a raw recruit out with Nobby?" said Vimes wearily.
Colon stuttered. "Well, sir, experienced man, I thought, Corporal Nobbs could teach him a lot"
"Let's just hope he's a slow learner, " said Vimes, ramming his brown iron helmet on his head. "Come on. "
When they stepped out of the Watch House there was a ladder against the tavern wall. A bulky man at the top of it swore under his breath as he wrestled with the illuminated sign.
"It's the E that doesn't work properly, " Vimes called up.
"What?"
"The E. And the T sizzles when it rains. It's about time it was fixed. "
"Fixed? Oh. Yes. Fixed. That's what I'm doing all right. Fixing. "
The Watch men splashed off through the puddles.
Brother Watchtower shook his head slowly, and turned his attention once again to his screwdriver.
...
Men like Corporal Nobbs can be found in every armed force. Although their grasp of the minutiae of the Regulations is usually encyclopedic, they take good care never to be promoted beyond, perhaps, corporal. He tended to speak out of the corner of his mouth. He smoked incessantly but the weird thing, Carrot noticed, was that any cigarette smoked by Nobby became a dog-end almost instantly but remained a dog-end indefinitely or until lodged behind his ear, which was a sort of nicotine Elephant's Graveyard. On the rare occasions he took one out of his mouth he held it cupped in his hand.
He was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties.
His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.
"A cushy number, this route, " he said, as they strolled along a damp street in the merchants' quarter. He tried a door handle. It was locked. "You stick with me, " he added, "and I'll see you're all right. Now, you try the handles on the other side of the street. "