Terry Pratchett - Snuff

‘No, sir, this ain’t the high seas!’

Two barges crashed together, sending up a plume of water that succeeded in at last filling Vimes’s boots right to the top. There was no point in emptying them, but he managed to growl through the storm, ‘I’ve got news for you, lad. The water’s getting higher.’

He steeled himself for the jump on to the next erratic barge and wondered: even so, where are the people? Surely they don’t all want to die? He waited and jumped again as the barge presented itself, but fell back heavily just in time to see his sword cartwheeling roguishly into the stormy water. Cursing, and struggling to keep his balance, he awaited the next opportunity to narrowly survive and this time succeed. He leapt again and almost fell backwards between the crashing timbers but, balancing perilously, fell forward instead and fell on and right through a tarpaulin, into an indistinct face which cried, ‘Please! Please don’t kill me! I’m just a complicated chicken farmer! I’m not carrying any weapons! I don’t even like killing chickens!’

Vimes had managed to land with his arms around a plump man who would have screamed again had Vimes not clamped a hand over his mouth and hissed, ‘This is the police, sir. Sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but who the hell are you and what is going on? Come on, there’s no time to waste.’ He pushed the man further into the barge and a soggy darkness and a recognizable smell told Sam Vimes that whether the frantic speaker was complicated or not he wasn’t lying about the chickens. From the clucking, feathery gloom in the wire baskets beyond, there emanated yet another smell, announcing that a large number of chickens, never the most stoical creatures at the best of times, were now very frightened.

The vague silhouette demanded, ‘The police? Here? Pull the other leg, mate! Who do you think you are? Bloody Commander Vimes?’

The barge bucked again and an errant egg spun out of the darkness and smacked into Vimes’s face. He wiped it off, or at least spread it around a bit, and said, ‘Well, well, sir, are you always this lucky?’

His name was false; in full it was Praise and Salvation False, and inevitably, when you have a false name you will insist on explaining why, even when imminent watery death is not only staring you in the eye but also everywhere else, possibly including both your trouser legs. ‘You see, sir, my family originally came from Klatch, and our name was Thalassa but, of course, over a period of time people tend to mispronounce the way they—’

Vimes interrupted him, because that was a more acceptable alternative to throttling him. ‘Please, Mister False, can you tell me what’s been happening on the Fanny ?’

‘Oh dear, it was terrible, it really was extremely terrible! There was shouting and yelling and I’m sure I heard a woman screaming! And now we keep hitting the bank, or at least that’s what it sounds like! And the storm, sir, it’ll have us under in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, I’m certain of it!’

‘And you didn’t go forward to see, Mister False?’ said Vimes.

The man looked startled. ‘Commander, I breed complicated chickens, sir, extremely complicated chickens. I don’t know anything about fighting! Chickens never get all that aggressive! I’m really sorry, sir, but I didn’t go to see in case I saw, sir, see? And if I saw, sir, then I’m sure people would see me, sir, and since I reasoned that they would be people who were alive after other people might possibly be dead, sir, and maybe had a responsibility for said deaths, sir, I made certain that they didn’t see me, sir, if you see what I mean? Besides, I have no weapons, weak lungs and a wooden toe. And I’m alive, at the moment.’

In truth, Vimes thought there was an inescapable logic to all this, so he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Mister False, I bet you’ve got enough to do with your complicated chickens. So, no weapons at all, then?’

‘I’m very sorry to disappoint you, commander, but I’m not a strong man. It was all I could do to drag my toolbox on board!’

Vimes’s face stayed blank. ‘Toolbox? You have a toolbox?’

Mr False clutched the wall again as the barge bounced off something it shouldn’t have, and said, ‘Well, yes, of course. If we manage to get off at Quirm I’ve got a site that I must make ready for a hundred chicken houses, and if you want a job done properly these days then you have to do it yourself, right?’

‘You’re telling an expert,’ said Vimes as another crash sent them both staggering. ‘I wonder if I could take a look at this toolbox of yours?’

There are times in the symphony of the world when its aural kaleidoscope of crashes, thunderbolts, screams and storms suddenly merges into one great hallelujah! And the contents of the chicken farmer’s innocent toolbox, which contained nothing not made of ordinary iron and steel and wood, nevertheless gleamed in the eyes of Commander Sam Vimes like the hosts of heaven. Mallets, hammers, saws, oh my! There was even a large spiral awl! What could Willikins have managed with a toy like that ? Hal-le-lu-jah! Oh, and here was a crowbar! Vimes balanced it in his hand, and felt the Street rise until it touched his feet. The complicated chicken man had heard a woman screaming …

Vimes spun round as the tarpaulin was pushed aside and Feeney dropped into the barge in a flurry of spray. ‘I know you didn’t give me the signal, commander, but I thought I’d better tell you the water is going down.’

Vimes saw Mr False close his eyes and groan, but turned back to Feeney and said, ‘Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? The water? Going down?’

‘No, it isn’t, sir!’ yelled Feeney. ‘It’s still raining hard and the water level is going down , and that means that upstream of us enough broken trees and bushes and mud and other junk are piling up to make a dam which is getting bigger and bigger and growing out sideways as the water builds up behind it, sir. Can you see what I mean?’

Vimes did. ‘Damn slam?’

Feeney nodded. ‘Damn right! We have two choices: would you rather die on the river or under it? What are your orders, please, sir?’

Another collision shook the barge, and Vimes stared at darkness. In this terrible twilight somebody was managing to stop this boat from foundering. A woman had screamed and Vimes had a crowbar. Almost absent-mindedly he reached down into the open toolbox and picked up a sledgehammer, handing it to Feeney. ‘There you go, lad. I know you’ve got your official firewood, but things might get up close and personal. Chalk it up to the dreadful algebra of necessity, and try not to hit me with it.’

He heard the voice of Feeney saying, more frantically this time, ‘What are we going to do, commander?’

And Vimes blinked and said, ‘ Everything! ’

The wind caught the tarpaulin as Vimes pulled it open, and it flapped off across the river, leaving the complicated chicken farmer living in hope and broken eggs. They pulled themselves out into the darkness, their shadows dancing to the rhythm of the lightning. How the hell was the pilot navigating in all this? Lamps up front? Surely they could do nothing on a night like this except show up the darkness. But although there was a suspicion, at every bang and bounce, that the Fanny was in real trouble, Vimes could hear now the splashing of the paddle wheels like one solid dependable theme in the cacophony, a regular, reassuring sound. It was making way. There was some order in the world, but how could the pilot manage the chaos? How could you steer when you couldn’t see?

Feeney had explained in a hurry and Vimes had expressed utter disbelief even faster. ‘It’s true, sir! He knows every bend in the river, he knows the wind, he knows how fast we’re going and has a stopwatch and an hourglass in reserve. He takes a turn when it’s time to take it. Okay, he’s shaving the banks a bit with the old Fanny , but she’s pretty tough.’