Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards!

"Nope. Bean soup it is. I'm sorry."

The rain hissed down relentlessly in the embar­rassed silence.

"What about the caged whale?" said the soaking visitor, trying to squeeze into what little shelter the dread portal offered.

"What about it?"

"It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know."

"Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down."

"Who're you, then?"

"We're the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee."

"I thought you met over in Treacle Street,'' said the damp man, after a while.

"Yeah, well. You know how it is. The fretwork club have the room Tuesdays. There was a bit of a mix-up."

"Oh? Well, thanks anyway."

"My pleasure." The little door slammed shut.

The robed figure glared at it for a moment, and then splashed further down the street. There was indeed another portal there. The builder hadn't bothered to change the design much.

He knocked. The little barred hatch shot back.

"Yes?"

"Look, 'The significant owl hoots in the night', all right?"

" 'Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men.' "

" 'Hooray, horray for the spinster's sister's daugh­ter', okay?' "

" 'To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.' "

" 'Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.' It's piss­ing down out here. You do know that, don't you?"

"Yes," said the voice, in the tones of one who in­deed does know it, and is not the one standing in it.

The visitor sighed.

" 'The caged whale knows nothing of the mighty deeps,' " he said. "If it makes you any happier."

" 'The ill-built tower trembles mightily at a but­terfly's passage.' "

The supplicant grabbed the bars of the window, pulled himself up to it, and hissed: "Now let us in, I'm soaked."

There was another damp pause.

"These deeps ... did you say mighty or nightly?"

"Mighty, I said. Mighty deeps. On account of be­ing, you know, deep. It's me, Brother Fingers."

"It sounded like nightly to me," said the invisible doorkeeper cautiously.

"Look, do you want the bloody book or not? I don't have to do this. I could be at home in bed."

"You sure it was mighty?"

"Listen, I know how deep the bloody deeps are all right," said Brother Fingers urgently. "I knew how mighty they were when you were a perishing neo­phyte. Now will you open this door?"

"Well . . . all right."

There was the sound of bolts sliding back. Then the voice said, "Would you mind giving it a push? The Door of Knowledge Through Which the Untutored May Not Pass sticks something wicked in the damp."

Brother Fingers put his shoulder to it, forced his way through, gave Brother Doorkeeper a dirty look, and hurried within.

The others were waiting for him in the Inner Sanc­tum, standing around with the sheepish air of people not normally accustomed to wearing sinister hooded black robes. The Supreme Grand Master nodded at him.

"Brother Fingers, isn't it?"

"Yes, Supreme Grand Master."

"Do you have that which you were sent to get?"

Brother Fingers pulled a package from under his robe.

"Just where I said it would be," he said. "No prob­lem."

"Well done, Brother Fingers."

"Thank you, Supreme Grand Master."

The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for at­tention. The room shuffled into some sort of circle.

"I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elu­cidated Brethren to order," he intoned. "Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?"

"Stuck solid," said Brother Doorkeeper. "It's the damp. I'll bring my plane in next week, soon have it-"

"All right, all right," said the Supreme Grand Mas­ter testily. "Just a yes would have done. Is the triple circle well and truly traced? Art all here who Art Here? And it be well for an knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules sown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks and his figgin placed upon a spike… yes what is it?"

"Sorry, did you say Elucidated Brethren?"

The Supreme Grand Master glared at the solitary figure with its hand up.

"Yea, the Elucidated Brethren, guardian of the sa­cred knowledge since a time no man may wot of-"

"Last February," said Brother Doorkeeper help­fully. The Supreme Grand Master felt that Brother Doorkeeper had never really got the hang of things.

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry," said the worried figure. "Wrong society, I'm afraid. Must have taken a wrong turning. I'll just be going, if you'll excuse me . . ."

"And his figgin placed upon a spike," repeated the Supreme Grand Master pointedly, against a back­ground of damp wooden noises as Brother Doorkeeper tried to get the dread portal open. "Are we quite fin­ished? Any more knowlessmen happened to drop in on their way somewhere else?" he added with bitter sarcasm. "Right. Fine. So glad. I suppose it's too much to ask if the Four Watchtowers are secured? Oh, good. And the Trouser of Sanctity, has anyone both­ered to shrive it? Oh, you did. Properly? I'll check, you know ... all right. And have the windows been fastened with the Red Cords of Intellect, in accor­dance with ancient prescription? Good. Now perhaps we can get on with it."

With the slightly miffed air of one who has run their finger along a daughter-in-law's top shelf and found against all expectation that it is sparkling clean, the Grand Master got on with it.

What a shower, he told himself. A bunch of incom­petents no other secret society would touch with a ten-foot Scepter of Authority. The sort to dislocate their fingers with even the simplest secret handshake.

But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He'd take the whin­ing resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the ones who knew they could make it big if only they'd been given the chance. Give him the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia.

And stupidity, too. They've all sworn the oath, he thought, but not a man jack of 'em has even asked what a figgin is.

"Brethren," he said. "Tonight we have matters of profound importance to discuss. The good gover­nance, nay, the very future of Ankh-Morpork lies in our hands."

They leaned closer. The Supreme Grand Master felt the beginnings of the old thrill of power. They were hanging on his words. This was a feeling worth dress­ing up in bloody silly robes for.

"Do we not well know that the city is in thrall to corrupt men, who wax fat on their ill-gotten gains, while better men are held back and forced into virtual servitude?"

"We certainly do!" said Brother Doorkeeper vehe­mently, when they'd had time to translate this men­tally. "Only last week, down at the Bakers' Guild, I tried to point out to Master Critchley that-"

It wasn't eye contact, because the Supreme Grand Master had made sure the Brethren's hoods shrouded their faces in mystic darkness, but nevertheless he managed to silence Brother Doorkeeper by dint of sheer outraged silence.

"Yet it was not always thus," the Supreme Grand Master continued. "There was once a golden age, when those worthy of command and respect were justly rewarded. An age when Ankh-Morpork wasn't simply a big city but a great one. An age of chivalry. An age when…yes, Brother Watchtower?"

A bulky robed figure lowered its hand. "Are you talking about when we had kings?"

"Well done, Brother," said the Supreme Grand Master, slightly annoyed at this unusual evidence of intelligence. "And-"

"But that was all sorted out hundreds of years ago," said Brother Watchtower. "Wasn't there this great bat­tle, or something? And since then we've just had the ruling lords, like the Patrician."