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were two embers.
'Well? What do you want at this time of night?'
The golem handed him a slate, on which was written:
WE HEAR YOU WANT A GOLEM.
Of course, golems couldn't speak, could they?
'Hah. Want, yes. Afford, no. I've been asking around but it's wicked the
prices you're going for these days . . .'
The golem rubbed the words off the slate and wrote:
TO YOU, ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
'You're for sale?'
NO.
The golem lurched aside. Another one stepped into the light.
It was also a golem, the man could see that. But it wasn't like the usual
lumpen clay things that you occasionally saw. This one gleamed like a
newly polished statue, perfect down to the detailing of the clothes. It re-
minded him of one of the old pictures of the city's kings, all haughty stance
and imperious haircut. In fact, it even had a small coronet moulded on to
its head.
'A hundred dollars?' the man said suspiciously. 'What's wrong with it?
Who's selling it?'
NOTHING IS WRONG. PERFECT IN ALL DETAIL. NINETY
DOLLARS.
'Sounds like someone wants to get rid of it in a hurry . . .'
GOLEM MUST WORK. GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER.
'Yeah, right, but you hear stories . . . Going mad and making too many
things, and that.'
NOT MAD. EIGHTY DOLLARS.
'It looks . . . new,' said the man, tapping the gleaming chest. 'But no
one's making golems any more, that's what's keeping the price up beyond
the purse of the small business-' He stopped. 'Is someone making them
again?'
The man walked around the golem. A man can t sit by and watch his
company collapse under him because of unfair price cutting, I mean to say
...'
FORTY DOLLARS.
'Religion is all very well, but what do prophets know about profits, eh?
Hmm . . .' He looked up at the shapeless golem in the shadows. 'Was that
"thirty dollars" I just saw you write?'
YES.
'I've always liked dealing wholesale. Wait one moment.' He went back
inside and returned with a handful of coins. 'Will you be selling any to
them other bastards?'
NO.
'Good. Tell your boss it's a pleasure to do business with him. Get along
inside, Sunny Jim.'
The white golem walked into the factory. The man, glancing from side
to side, trotted in after it and shut the door.
Deeper shadows moved in the dark. There was a faint hissing. Then,
rocking slightly, the big heavy shapes moved away.
Shortly afterwards, and around the corner, a beggar holding out a hope-
ful hand for alms was amazed to find himself suddenly richer by a whole
thirty dollars.[1]
The Discworld turned against the glittering backdrop of space, spinning
very gently on the backs of the four giant elephants that perched on the
shell of Great A'Tuin the star turtle. Continents drifted slowly past, topped
by weather systems that themselves turned gently against the flow, like
waltzers spinning counter to the whirl of the dance. A billion tons of geog-
raphy rolled slowly through the sky.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not
only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They
don't look quite like real science,[2] But geography is only physics slowed
with fumes and smoke from the magical quarter and the workshops of the
alchemists until it seemed to have a thick, choking life of its own.
And time moved on.
Autumn fog pressed itself against the midnight window-panes.
Blood ran in a trickle across the pages of a rare volume of religious es-
says, which had been torn in half.
There had been no need for that, thought Father Tubelcek.
A further thought suggested that there had been no need to hit him ei-
ther. But Father Tubelcek had never been very concerned about that sort of
thing. People healed, books didn't. He reached out shakily and tried to
gather up the pages, but slumped back again.
The room was spinning.
The door swung open. Heavy footsteps creaked across the floor - one
footstep at least, and one dragging noise.
Step. Drag. Step. Drag.
Father Tubelcek tried to focus.' You?' he croaked.
Nod.
'Pick ... up the ... books.'
The old priest watched as the books were retrieved and piled carefully
with fingers not well suited to the task.
The newcomer took a quill pen from the debris, carefully wrote some-
thing on a scrap of paper, then rolled it up and placed it delicately between
Father Tubelcek's lips.
The dying priest tried to smile.
'We don't work like that,' he mumbled, the little cylinder wobbling like
a last cigarette. 'We . . . make . . . our . . . own . . . w . . .'
The kneeling figure watched him for a while and then, taking great care,
leaned forward slowly and closed his eyes.
Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Guard, frowned at
himself in the mirror and began to shave.
shaved himself in his life. He had a man for it. Vimes had protested that
he'd spent too many years trudging the night-time streets to be happy
about anyone else wielding a blade anywhere near his neck, but the real
reason, the unspoken reason, was that he hated the very idea of the world
being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the
shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw
Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge
to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man. The
razor moved calmly over the stubble of the night.
Yesterday there had been some official dinner. He couldn't recall now
what it had been for. He seemed to spend his whole life at the things. Arch,
giggling women and braying young men who'd been at the back of the line
when the chins were handed out. And, as usual, he'd come back through
the fog-bound city in a filthy temper with himself. He'd noticed a light
under the kitchen door and heard conversation and laughter, and had gone
in. Willikins was there, with the old man who stoked the boiler, and the
head gardener, and the boy who cleaned the spoons and lit the fires. They
were playing cards. There were bottles of beer on the table.
He'd pulled up a chair, and cracked a few jokes and asked to be dealt in.
They'd been . . . welcoming. In a way. But as the game progressed Vimes
had been aware of the universe crystallizing around him. It was like be-
coming a cogwheel in a glass clock. There was no laughter. They'd called
him 'sir' and kept clearing their throats. Everything was very . . . careful.
Finally he'd mumbled an excuse and stumbled out. Halfway along the
passage he'd thought he'd heard a comment followed by ... well, maybe it
was only a chuckle. But it might have been a snigger.
The razor carefully circumnavigated the nose.
Hah. A couple of years ago a man like Willikins would have allowed
him into the kitchen only on sufferance. And would have made him take
his boots off.
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