Jingo d-21 Read online

  Jingo

  ( Discworld - 21 )

  Terry Pratchett

  Terry Pratchett

  JINGO{1}

  It was a moonless night, which was good for the purposes of Solid Jackson.

  He fished for Curious Squid, so called because, as well as being squid, they were curious. That is to say, their curiosity was the curious thing about them.

  Shortly after they got curious about the lantern that Solid had hung over the stern of his boat, they started to become curious about the way in which various of their number suddenly vanished skywards with a splash.

  Some of them even became curious — very briefly curious — about the sharp barbed thing that was coming very quickly towards them.

  The Curious Squid were extremely curious. Unfortunately, they weren't very good at making connections.

  It was a very long way to this fishing ground, but for Solid the trip was usually well worth it. The Curious Squid were very small, harmless, difficult to find and reckoned by connoisseurs to have the foulest taste of any creature in the world. This made them very much in demand in a certain kind of restaurant where highly skilled chefs made, with great care, dishes containing no trace of the squid whatsoever.

  Solid Jackson's problem was that tonight, a moonless night in the spawning season, when the squid were especially curious about everything, the chef seemed to have been at work on the sea itself.

  There was not a single interested eyeball to be seen. There weren't any other fish either, and usually there were a few attracted to the light. He'd caught sight of one. It had been making through the water extremely fast in a straight line.

  He laid down his trident and walked to the other end of the boat, where his son Les was also gazing intently at the torchlit sea.

  “Not a thing in half an hour,” said Solid.

  “You sure we're in the right spot, Dad?”

  Solid squinted at the horizon. There was a faint glow in the sky that indicated the city of Al-Khali, on the Klatchian coast. He turned round. The other horizon glowed, too, with the lights of Ankh-Morpork. The boat bobbed gently halfway between the two.

  “'Course we are,” he said, but certainty edged away from his words.

  Because there was a hush on the sea. It didn't look right. The boat rocked a little, but that was with their movement, not from any motion of the waves.

  It felt as if there was going to be a storm. But the stars twinkled softly and there was not a cloud in the sky.

  The stars twinkled on the surface of the water, too. Now that was something you didn't often see.

  “I reckon we ought to be getting out of here,” Solid said.

  Les pointed at the slack sail. “What're we going to use for wind, Dad?”

  It was then that they heard the splash of oars.

  Solid, squinting hard, could just make out the shape of another boat, heading towards him. He grabbed his boathook.

  “I knows that's you, you thieving foreign bastard!”

  The oars stopped. A voice sang over the water.

  “May you be consumed by a thousand devils, you damned person!”

  The other boat glided closer. It looked foreign, with eyes painted on the prow.

  “Fished 'em all out, have you? I'll take my trident to you, you bottom-feedin' scum that y'are!”

  “My curvy sword at your neck, you unclean son of a dog of the female persuasion!”

  Les looked over the side. Little bubbles fizzed on the surface of the sea.

  “Dad?” he said.

  “That's Greasy Arif out there!” snapped his father, “You take a good look at him! He's been coming out here for years, stealing our squid, the evil lying little devil!”

  “Dad, there's—”

  “You get on them oars and I'll knock his black teeth out!”

  Les could hear a voice saying from the other boat, “—see, my son, how the underhanded fish thief—”

  “Row!” his father shouted.

  “To the oars!” shouted someone in the other boat.

  “Whose squid are they, Dad?”{2} said Les.

  “Ours!”

  “What, even before we've caught them?”

  “Just you shut up and row!”

  “I can't move the boat, Dad, we're stuck on something!”

  “It's a hundred fathoms deep here, boy! What's there to stick on?”

  Les tried to disentangle an oar from the thing rising slowly out of the fizzing sea.

  “Looks like a… a chicken, Dad!”

  There was a sound from below the surface. It sounded like some bell or gong, slowly swinging.

  “Chickens can't swim!”

  “It's made of iron, Dad!”

  Solid scrambled to the rear of the boat.

  It was a chicken, made of iron. Seaweed and shells covered it and water dripped off it as it rose against the stars.

  It stood on a cross-shaped perch.

  There seemed to be a letter on each of the four ends of the cross.

  Solid held the torch closer.

  “What the—”

  Then he pulled the oar free and sat down beside his son.

  “Row like the blazes, Les!”

  “What's happening, Dad?”

  “Shut up and row! Get us away from it!”

  “Is it a monster, Dad?”

  “It's worse than a monster, son!” shouted Solid, as the oars bit into the water.

  The thing was quite high now, standing on some kind of tower…

  “What is it, Dad! What is it?”

  “It's a damned weathercock!”

  There was not, on the whole, a lot of geological excitement. The sinking of continents is usually accompanied by volcanoes, earthquakes and armadas of little boats containing old men anxious to build pyramids and mystic stone circles in some new land where being the possessor of genuine ancient occult wisdom might be expected to attract girls. But the rising of this one caused barely a ripple in the purely physical scheme of things. It more or less sidled back, like a cat who's been away for a few days and knows you've been worrying.

  Around the shores of the Circle Sea a large wave, only five or six feet high by the time it reached them, caused some comment. And in some of the very low-lying swamp areas the water swamped some villages of people that no one else cared about very much. But in a purely geological sense, nothing very much happened.

  In a purely geological sense.

  “It's a city, Dad! Look, you can see all the windows and—”

  “I told you to shut up and keep rowing!”

  The seawater surged down the streets. On either side, huge, weed-encrusted buildings boiled slowly out of the surf.

  Father and son fought to keep some way on the boat as it was dragged along. And, since lesson one in the art of rowing is that you do it while looking the wrong way, they didn't see the other boat…

  “You lunatic!”

  “Foolish man!”

  “Don't you touch that building! This country belongs to Ankh-Morpork!”

  The two boats spun in a temporary whirlpool.

  “I claim this land in the name of the Seriph of Al-Khali!”

  “We saw it first! Les, you tell him we saw it first!”

  “We saw it first before you saw it first!”

  “Les, you saw him, he tried to hit me with that oar!”

  “But Dad, you're waving that trident—”

  “See the untrustworthy way he attacks us, Akhan!”

  There was a grinding noise from under the keel of both boats and they began to tip as they settled into the sea-bottom ooze.

  “Look, Father, there is an interesting statue—”

  “He has set his foot on Klatchian soil! The squid thief!”

  “Get those filthy san
dals off Ankh-Morporkian territory!”

  “Oh, Dad—”

  The two fishermen stopped screaming at each other, mainly in order to get their breath back. Crabs scuttled away. Water drained between the patches of weed, carving runnels in the grey silt.

  “Father, look, there's still coloured tiles on the—”

  “Mine!”

  “Mine!”

  Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there.

  “Dad, we don't have to—” Les began.

  “You shut up! It's your future I'm thinking about, my lad—”

  “Yes, but who cares who saw it first, Dad? We're both hundreds of miles from home! I mean, who's going to know, Dad?”{3}

  The two squid fishermen glared at one another.

  The dripping buildings rose above them. There were holes that might well have been doorways, and glassless apertures that could have been windows, but all was darkness within. Now and again, Les fancied he could hear something slithering.

  Solid Jackson coughed. “The lad's right,” he muttered. “Daft to argue. Just the four of us.”

  “Indeed,” said Arif.

  They backed away, each man carefully watching the other. Then, so closely that it was a chorus, they both yelled: “Grab the boat!”

  There was a confused couple of moments and then each pair, boat carried over their heads, ran and slithered along the muddy streets.

  They had to stop and come back, with mutual cries of “A kidnapper as well, eh?”, to get the right sons.

  As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

  The weathercocks of Ankh-Morpork creaked around in the wind.

  Very few of them were in fact representations of Avis domestica. There were various dragons, fish and miscellaneous animals. On the roof of the Assassins' Guild a silhouette of one of the members squeaked into a new position, cloak and dagger at the ready. On the Beggars' Guild a tin beggar's hand asked the wind for a quarter. On the Butchers' Guild a copper pig sniffed the air. On the roof of the Thieves' Guild a real if rather decreased unlicensed thief turned gently, which shows what you are capable of if you try, or at least if you try stealing without a licence.

  The one on the library dome of Unseen University was running slow and wouldn't show the change for half an hour yet, but the smell of the sea drifted over the city.

  There was a tradition of soap-box public speaking in Sator Square{4}. “Speaking” was stretching a point to cover the ranters, haranguers and occasional self-absorbed mumblers that spaced themselves at intervals amongst the crowds. And, traditionally, people said whatever was on their minds and at the top of their voices. The Patrician, it was said, looked kindly on the custom. He did. And very closely, too. He probably had someone make notes.

  So did the Watch.

  It wasn't spying Commander Vimes told himself. Spying was when you crept around peeking in windows. It wasn't spying when you had to stand back a bit so that you weren't deafened.

  He reached out without paying attention and struck a match on Sergeant Detritus.

  “Dat was me, sir,” said the troll reproachfully.

  “Sorry, sergeant,” said Vimes, lighting his cigar.

  “It not a problem.”

  They returned their attention to the speakers.

  It's the wind, thought Vimes. It's bringing something new…

  Usually the speakers dealt with all kinds of subjects, many of them on the cusp of sanity or somewhere in the peaceful valleys on the other side. But now they were all monomaniacs.

  “—time they were taught a lesson!” screamed the nearest one. “Why don't our so-called masters listen to the voice of the people? Ankh-Morpork has had enough of these swaggering brigands! They steal our fish, they steal our trade and now they're stealing our land!”

  It would have been better if people had cheered, Vimes thought. People generally cheered the speakers indiscriminately, to egg them on. But the crowd around this man just seemed to nod approval. He thought: they're actually thinking about what he said…

  “They stole my merchandise!” shouted a speaker opposite him. “It's a pirate bloody empire! I was boarded! In Ankh-Morpork waters!”

  There was a general self-righteous muttering.

  “What did they steal, Mr Jenkins?” said a voice from the crowd.

  “A cargo of fine silks!”

  The crowd hissed.

  “Ah? Not dried fish offal and condemned meat, then? That's your normal cargo, I believe.”

  Mr Jenkins strained to look for the speaker.

  “Fine silks!” he said. “And what does the city care about that? Nothing!”

  There were shouts of “Shame!”

  “Has the city been told?” said the enquiring voice.

  People started to crane their heads. And then the crowd opened a little, to reveal the figure of Commander Vimes of the City Watch.

  “Well, it's… I…” Jenkins began. “Er… I…”

  “I care,” said Vimes calmly. “Shouldn't be too hard to track down a cargo of fine silks that stink of fish guts.” There was laughter. Ankh-Morpork people always like some variety in their street theatre.

  Vimes apparently spoke to Sergeant Detritus, while keeping his gaze locked on Jenkins. “Detritus, just you go along with Mr Jenkins here, will you? His ship is the Milka{5}, I believe. He'll show you all the lading bills and manifests and receipts and things, and then we can sort him out in jig time.”

  There was a clang as Detritus's huge hand came to rest against his helmet.

  “Yessir!”

  “Er… er… you can't,” said Jenkins quickly. “They… er… stole the paperwork as well…”

  “Really? So they can take the stuff back to the shop if it doesn't fit?”

  “Er… anyway, the ship's sailed. Yes! Sailed! Got to try and recoup my losses, you know!”

  “Sailed? Without its captain?” said Vimes. “So Mr Scoplett is in charge? Your first officer?”

  “Yes, yes—”

  “Damn!” said Vimes, snapping his fingers theatrically. “That man we've got in the cells on a charge of being Naughtily Drunk last night… we're going to have to charge him with impersonation as well, then? I don't know, more blasted paperwork, the stuff just piles up…”

  Mr Jenkins tried to look away but Vimes's stare kept pulling him back. The occasional tremble of a lip suggested that he was preparing a riposte, but he was bright enough to spot that Vimes's grin was as funny as the one that moves very fast towards drowning men. And has a fin on top.

  Mr Jenkins made a wise decision, and got down. “I'll.… er… I'll go and sort… I'd better go and… er…” he said, and pushed his way through the mob, which waited a little while to see if anything interesting was going to happen and then, disappointed, sought out other entertainment.

  “You want I should go ad have a look at his boat?” said Detritus.

  “No, sergeant. There won't be any silk, and there won't be any paperwork. There won't be anything except a lingering aroma of fish guts.”

  “Wow, dem damn Klatchians steals everything that ain't nailed down, right?”

  Vimes shook his head and strolled on. “They don't have trolls in Klatch, do they?” he said.

  “Nossir. It's der heat. Troll brains don't work in der heat. If I was to go to Klatch,” said Detritus, his knuckles making little bink-bink noises as he dragged them over the cobbles, “I'd be really stoopid.”

  “Detritus?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Never go to Klatch.”

  “Nossir.”

  Another speaker was attracting a much larger crowd. He stood in front of a large banner that proclaimed: GREASY FORANE HANDS OF
F LESHP.

  “Leshp,” said Detritus. “Now dere's a name that ain't got its teef in.”

  “It's the land that came back up from under the sea last week,” said Vimes despondently.

  They listened while the speaker proclaimed that Ankh-Morpork had a duty to protect its kith and kin on the new land. Detritus looked puzzled.

  “How come dere's dese kiff and kin on dere when it only just come up from under der water?” he said.

  “Good question,” said Vimes.

  “Dey been holding dere breath?”

  “I doubt it.”

  There was more in the air than the salt of the sea, Vimes thought. There was some other current. He could sense it. Suddenly, the problem was Klatch.

  Ankh-Morpork had been at peace with Klatch, or at least in a state of non-war, for almost a century. It was, after all, the neighbouring country.

  Neighbours… hah! But what did that mean? The Watch could tell you a thing or two about neighbours. So could lawyers, especially the real rich ones to whom “neighbour” meant a man who'd sue for twenty years over a strip of garden two inches wide. Peopled live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.

  And now some damn rock had risen up out of the sea and everyone was acting as if Klatch had let its dog bark all night.

  “Aagragaah,” said Detritus, mournfully.

  “Don't mind me, just don't spit it on my boot,” said Vimes.

  “It mean—” Detritus waved a huge hand, “like… dem things, what only comes in…” he paused and looked at his fingers, while his lips moved “…fours. Aagragaah. It mean lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles and you jus' know dere's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run. Dat moment, dat's aagragaah.”

  Vimes's own lips moved. “Forebodings?”

  “Dat's der bunny.”

  “Where does the word come from?”

  Detritus shrugged. “Maybe it named after der soun' you make just as a t'ousand ton of rock hit you.”

  “Forebodings…” Vimes rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Well, I've got plenty of them…”