The Turtle Moves! (12 page)

T
HE ANKH-MORPORK NIGHT WATCH, under the command of Captain Samuel Vimes (at least for the moment), is back.

It hasn't been long since the end of
Guards! Guards!
, and matters are much as we left them, except that Captain Vimes is about to be wed to Lady Sybil Ramkin, and intends to retire to a life of leisure after the wedding. At least, he
thinks
that's his intention, but clearly he's not entirely in agreement with himself about the idea.

The question of who will succeed him as Captain is not settled, and is of some concern to Corporal Carrot and the other Watchmen, though not really very urgent—until dead bodies start turning up, bodies with holes through them not like the wounds left by any traditional weapons. It seems that an invention of Leonard da Quirm's, a weapon called the gonne, has been stolen, and is being used—or perhaps is using the thief. The gonne is clearly
not
simply a gun of the sort we find in our world, but something with a will of its own.

I'm sure the author's intent was that this would be a metaphor for the temptations of lethal power, but nonetheless, in the story the gonne does have its own thoughts and desires. Its exact mechanism is apparently not quite like a real gun's, either. It uses six-shot clips rather than single cartridges, and seems to have a hair-trigger trigger and remarkable range and accuracy for a device that's the first of its kind.

This doesn't appear to be a case of reality leakage, of ideas bleeding through from our world, but simply of Leonard of Quirm being a creative genius, and producing something like a gun, but adapted to the Disc. The result is a weapon that literally
wants
to be used, and which,
despite being the first of its kind, is as lethal as the guns it took our world a couple of centuries to develop.

Discworld, after all, has a very strong magical field and a shortage of reality.

The Patrician, Lord Vetinari—and now we learn that his first name is Havelock, as Lady Sybil addresses him by it—warns Vimes not to involve himself in investigating the mysterious deaths, knowing full well that such a warning will simply make Vimes more determined to find the truth. As indeed it does.

The Patrician has miscalculated matters slightly, but nonetheless, Vimes and company do find and destroy the gonne and dispose of the murderer, and all ends well—in fact,
very
well—for the Watch, as Carrot finds himself in a position to more or less blackmail the Patrician, and dictates terms that merge the Night Watch with the Day Watch and restore the result to its full establishment, rather than leaving it the pitiful, useless remnant it had been. Actual detectives will be trained. Carrot is promoted to Captain, and rather than being retired, Sir Samuel Vimes is to be the Commander of this enlarged Watch.

That's the core of the plot, but really, the more important and entertaining elements of the story are elsewhere. The man who steals the gonne intends to restore the monarchy in Ankh-Morpork and has identified Carrot as the rightful heir to the throne, which he definitely is, and part of the book's point is the realization that, contrary to literally thousands of years of storytelling, such a restoration would be a bad thing. This king is not interested in returning; he knows he does more good for the city as a Watchman than he would sitting on its golden throne.

Carrot has, in fact, learned how the city actually works in the gap between
Guards! Guards!
and
Men at Arms
. He still knows the ancient laws by heart, and uses them when it's appropriate, but he's come to understand the Patrician's system of balancing Guilds and power blocs against one another, the function of the Thieves' Guild in keeping crime under control, the rather broad local definition of “suicide,” and so on.

And he's taken to heart Vimes's total distrust of arbitrary authority, and Vimes's hatred of class distinctions.

Samuel Vimes, it turns out, is very determinedly anti-monarchist. He doesn't like the Patrician much, either, but at least Vetinari doesn't claim any sort of divine right, or put on all the pomp a king would.
Early in the book, Vimes describes to Carrot how the old kings were overthrown, how someone got fed up at the atrocities committed by the last king, Lorenzo the Kind, and led a rebellion. This rebel leader was Commander of the Guard, a man called Old Stoneface.

Toward the end of the book, the Patrician mentions that the Commander of the Guard at the time of Lorenzo's overthrow was a man named Vimes, and Carrot confirms that the present-day Vimes is his descendant. In short, anti-monarchism is a very old Vimes family tradition.

This, of course, contradicts
Guards! Guards!
, where the kings have been gone for millennia and Vimes was virtually unaware they'd ever existed, but hey, it makes a better story, and Discworld is all about stories.

And this story is the heart of the Watch series, really. Vimes believes that life ought to be fair and sensible, that everyone deserves a decent life, and the fact that this is clearly not the case has him perpetually awash in anger and despair. Anger is his driving force.

Carrot believes that life ought to be fair and sensible, that everyone deserves a decent life, and that if everyone would just
try
, then this could be made to happen, at least briefly and locally.

That's the core; the plots of the various stories in the series are elaborations on that.

Men at Arms
introduces or continues a great many other elements. The Ankh-Morpork Post Office is described in passing—still nominally functioning, after a fashion, but not well. We'll eventually see that addressed
⁹⁸
in
Going Postal
(see Chapter 41). Leonard of Quirm, first mentioned in
Wyrd Sisters
, is properly introduced; it seems that his mysterious disappearance came about when the Patrician locked him away where he wouldn't be quite so dangerous.

Bloody Stupid Johnson, the Discworld's worst landscape architect and designer,
⁹⁹
is described, and several of his creations mentioned.

Gaspode the Wonder Dog, who lost his ability to talk at the end of
Moving Pictures
, has regained it by sleeping too close to Unseen University and its intense magical field; he's back, and essential to the plot.

Mrs. Cake and her undead lodgers appear briefly; she still has a problem keeping her precognition in check.

Foul Ole Ron is introduced, mumbling to himself, saying things like “Millennium hand and shrimp”—a phrase that the Bursar of Unseen University said in
Lords and Ladies
. Having two different befuddled characters say it does leave one wondering whether it might actually
mean
something.

More likely, though, Mr. Pratchett just liked it and wanted to use it again, and Foul Ole Ron was handier than the Bursar of Unseen University. He does this, taking some bit of business and moving it from one character to another, as he's had Rincewind and Mort both looking for logic that isn't there (and will later assign this to Ponder Stibbons), and he's taken the literal-mindedness of the Zoons and transferred it to the dwarfs. Now “millennium hand and shrimp” has leapt from the Bursar to a new and permanent home in Foul Ole Ron.

An ongoing subplot that will continue throughout all future books set in Ankh-Morpork is the Patrician's decision to integrate all the city's various populations, and to use the Watch as a tool for this purpose. At the start of the book, Vimes has been ordered to recruit a dwarf and a troll, so that those species will be represented in law enforcement and become full participants in Ankh-Morpork's community, rather than considering themselves oppressed minorities in a human city.

The detail that dwarfs and trolls hate each other complicates this, but that hardly deters Lord Vetinari. There are several references to the long-ago Battle of Koom Valley, where armies of dwarfs and trolls managed to ambush each other; we'll hear more about that in books to come, especially
Thud!
, as described in Chapter 44.

Accordingly, in line with the Patrician's edict, Vimes has enlisted a dwarf named Cuddy, and the troll Detritus, previously seen working as a bouncer—well, a splatter—at the Mended Drum in
Guards! Guards!
, and as a bodyguard and gofer
¹⁰⁰
in
Moving Pictures
.

And then there's Angua, also recruited in response to the Patrician's demand for inclusion, and there's a running gag in which people say, “But she's a w—” and never finish the word, so that the unsuspecting first-time reader thinks the word is “woman.”

Actually, of course, it's “werewolf.”
¹⁰¹
Lord Vetinari wanted the undead represented, and a werewolf is considered to be close enough.

Angua and Detritus are a permanent addition to the cast of the Watch novels, and will be back many times, along with Vimes, Carrot, Sgt. Colon, Nobby Nobbs, and the rest. The trend of recruiting new varieties of watchmen will also continue in
Feet of Clay
, as described in Chapter 23, and in
Thud!
, as we'll see in Chapter 44, but first there's a multi-volume interruption, beginning with a return to the Death series.

D
EATH HAS ABANDONED HIS JOB AGAIN—this time because he's remembering something he doesn't want to. He wants to be able to forget, but as an anthropomorphic personification, that ability has been denied him.

So he goes off to join the Klatchian Foreign Legion under the name “Beau Nidle,”
¹⁰²
and his granddaughter Susan of Sto Helit inherits his duties during his absence.

We haven't met Susan before, though her parents, Mort and Ysabell, were prominently featured in
Mort
. She's sixteen, attending a school for sensible young women of good family, and is at least temporarily unaware of her curious ancestry, until the Death of Rats shows up, demanding her attention.

She has vague early-childhood memories of her grandfather, but had never really grasped what they meant, partly because her parents actively discouraged her from doing so. They expected her to live in the normal human world—well, as normal as Discworld gets, anyway—and thought her peculiar background could only make things difficult, so they encouraged her to have as little to do with the mystical as possible.

“As little as possible,” though, isn't none, for anyone on the Disc, and especially not for Death's granddaughter. Despite her relentless common sense and lack of education in matters mystical, Susan has managed to inherit some of her grandfather's nature—other people often
have trouble seeing her, or remembering that she's present, and she's able to see things and do things that ordinary mortals can't.

When she objects that adoptive children don't inherit physical characteristics, and that acquired traits aren't inherited either, Death explains that it's morphic resonance at work, rather than genetics. The Disc's magical field is presumably responsible.

Meanwhile, something's gotten loose in Ankh-Morpork, much as in
Moving Pictures
—an idea, or rather, a whole package of ideas. This time it isn't movies, though; it's Music With Rocks In. A young man named Imp y Celyn,
¹⁰³
from the nation of Llamedos,
¹⁰⁴
arrives in Ankh-Morpork, planning to make his living as a musician. Alas, he breaks his harp, and replaces it with a strange guitar from a mysterious little shop near Unseen University.
¹⁰⁵

He then falls in with a dwarf named Glod Glodsson, and a troll named Lias Bluestone, and together they form the Band With Rocks In.

When this comes to the attention of Archchancellor Ridcully, he immediately recognizes what's happening: “Stuff leakin' into the universe again, eh?” A bit later he adds, “And then there was those moving pictures,” just to make very clear that this is the same sort of reality leakage. But this time it' s not Hollywood; it's rock ‘n' roll.

The story is awash in references to, and puns based on, things from our world, far more than the Discworld norm; in particular, there are dozens of homages to scenes and dialogue in
The Blues Brothers
,
Back to the Future
, and
Terminator 2
, and several James Dean and Elvis jokes, as well as puns on and quotes from any number of band names, song titles, and lyrics, and an extended set-piece based on the teenage death songs of the 1950s. When I first decided I was going to write this book, I expected to have a lovely old time annotating them all, but then I discovered that the clever folks at
Lspace.org
had beaten me to it, so there's no point in rehashing all their work. I can, however, at least say that I e-mailed them about a couple they'd either missed or deemed unworthy of mention.

At any rate, rock ‘n' roll is loose on the Disc, and I'd think it's obvious
how this involves Death—and in his absence, his heir. Mr. Pratchett references James Dean's “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse,” but there's also the Who's “Hope I die before I get old,” and any number of other relevant quotes—some of which seem a bit quaint now that the Rolling Stones are in their sixties and still going, though plenty of rock stars
did
die young, from Buddy Holly to Kurt Cobain.

But the music itself will
never
die. That's part of the mythology, and we all know by now how powerful myths and stories are on the Discworld.

So the legend plays itself out—or maybe it doesn't. As we saw at the end of
Mort
, in a scene that we're explicitly reminded of in
Soul Music
,
¹⁰⁵
Death sometimes bends the rules. He arranges a happy result here, where certain things didn't happen after all. As he puts it, “HISTORY TENDS TO SWING BACK INTO LINE. THEY ARE ALWAYS PATCHING IT UP.”