The Turtle Moves! (25 page)

And the entire premise of the Watch series is that there's one of these men who takes his job seriously, who's smart enough not to get killed, and who's stubborn enough not to run away. He refuses to fulfill his traditional role as nothing more than a minor impediment to be brushed aside by his betters; he has a job to do, and by the gods he's going to
do
it, whether anyone wants him to or not.

That man is Samuel Vimes.

There are several interesting twists on this. It's traditional that the feckless guardsmen are working for a tyrant, and Sam Vimes is indeed in the service of a tyrant—but Lord Vetinari isn't an
evil
tyrant. He's not particularly corrupt, he's not sadistic, and most of all, he's not stupid. He keeps Ankh-Morpork running more smoothly than it has in centuries. We've seen the Patrician now and then ever since the series began, but it's in the Watch stories that he really comes into his own. It was necessary for the plot of
Guards! Guards!
to work that the tyrant had to be preferable to the lost royal heir/hero; he had to be someone who
deserved
to have Sam Vimes defending him—but he still had to be a tyrant.

That's a tough role to fill, but Mr. Pratchett was up to the job, and the result makes Havelock Vetinari one of the great characters of the series, and really, one of the most entertaining characters in all of fantasy. He's a ruler so Machiavellian that he makes Niccolò Machiavelli himself look like a hot-headed fool.

Of course, Vimes himself is an even
better
character.

He, too, presented a challenge. He had to be someone who would wind up in the despised City Watch, and who would
stay
there; he couldn't be a Hero With A Destiny himself, as that would ruin the whole point of the exercise.

But he couldn't just be the standard cannon fodder, either. He couldn't be the guy who rushes into the room in Chapter Three, only to be taken out by a slash of the hero's sword. He couldn't be the guy who flings down his sword and runs when the monster appears.

There are actually several ways this could be accomplished, but the one Mr. Pratchett chose was to give us a man for whom protecting the city from itself is a vocation, a calling, not just a job—that's why he's in the Watch.

But the Watch is generally considered worthless, so he's a man sunk in despair, anger, and self-hatred, and when we first see him, he's lying in the gutter, drunk. The conspirators who want to supplant Lord Vetinari could not possibly see Vimes as a threat at that point.

They learn better.

And so does everyone else. One of the reasons Lord Vetinari deserves to rule Ankh-Morpork is that he recognizes talent when he sees it, and once Vimes comes to his attention, that talent is rewarded. Vimes is a man who can be very useful, to the Patrician and to the city, so his rise is rapid.

But Vimes is a man who was
meant
to be a copper, a man who grew up in terrible poverty and has never forgotten it, a man who sees the ruling classes as his natural enemy, a man who prefers to operate largely unnoticed, so that rise is a mixed blessing.

Which is why the Watch series is one of the longest. Rincewind and company got a healthy head-start, but the Watch has closed the gap significantly.

Once a protagonist has solved the problem at the heart of a story, that story is over and done. There's only one book about the Amazing Maurice; there's only one book about Brutha; there's only one book about Teppic; and in each case, it's because at the end, the problem that forced the character into having adventures in the first place is solved. Maurice has resolved his moral dilemmas and found himself a home, Teppic has settled matters in Djelibeybi, and Brutha has been recognized as a prophet of Om and has reformed the Omnian church. Doing anything more with those characters would feel like cheating; they're
done
.

To some extent, it seemed as if Rincewind was done at the end of
The Last Continent
; he was safely back at Unseen University, with no desire to go anywhere else. That series has only continued because Archchancellor Ridcully has no compunctions about throwing Rincewind at problems, and this sort of disruption is in keeping with the character's history.

The witches can keep going indefinitely because they're a reactive force—they respond to threats to Lancre, and threats keep turning up. There's a danger that the series might get repetitive after a while, but the witches themselves are infinitely reusable.

And Sam Vimes—well, he can keep reacting to threats to the peace of Ankh-Morpork (and he does), but on a personal level he's gone literally
from the gutter to a mansion, from being ignored or despised to being internationally renowned, the second-most-powerful man in the wealthiest and most powerful city on the Disc. From a dramatic point of view, that ought to make him less interesting—but it doesn't, because he doesn't think he
belongs
in that mansion. He doesn't like playing politics. He despises war. The methods available to him as Duke of Ankh (or Ankh-Morpork, whichever it is) are not ones he's comfortable using. He wants to be back out on the streets—but at the same time he loves his wife and son, and has no intention of giving up the wealth he's attained. So even though he's ostensibly got everything he could want, he's not
done
, in the way Maurice or Brutha is. He still has his internal conflicts. He still has the Beast in his heart that he struggles to contain. He still has a city to protect from itself. There are still serious issues in his life that remain unresolved.

And that brings us to the third important character in the Watch stories, after Vetinari and Vimes—Carrot Ironfoundersson. There's one very basic issue in his life that remains unresolved, and probably always will. He's found his place in the City Watch, he's happy there, he loves the city and its people, he's made his peace with his mixed human/dwarf heritage, his relationship with Angua is gradually straightening out, but there's still the looming issue of his birthright. He is, after all, the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork—well, as much as anyone is a “rightful king.” He not only has the bloodline and the sword, but all the other attributes that would make him a beloved and just ruler, a magnificent king.

The traditional thing for the lost heir in a fantasy story to do, of course, is to claim his inheritance, slaughter any dragons, villains, or guardsmen who get in his way, and bring about a Golden Age as king.

Carrot doesn't do that. He knows he
could
, but he doesn't. Instead of butchering the guards as they charge one by one into the room in Chapter Three, he's joined up with them, because when all's said and done, he thinks the city is better off with the tyrant Vetinari in the palace, and Vimes and himself on the streets. He refuses even to accept command of the Watch at the end of
Men at Arms
because “People should do things because an officer tells them. They shouldn't do it because Corporal Carrot says so. Just because Corporal Carrot is . . . good at being obeyed.”

He's a stock fantasy character, but one who's too smart, in his peculiar way, to act out his ordained role. Just as Sam Vimes refuses to be the
useless nobody his role calls for, Carrot refuses to be the straightforward hero-king he was born to be.

The other Watchmen also fail to live up to their stereotypes. Fred Colon is the bumbling old fool who really ought to die of his own stupidity in Chapter Three, stabbed in the back by someone he didn't mistrust enough, just a few weeks short of retirement.

But he doesn't.

Nobby Nobbs is the little weasel who should either abandon his post and flee out of the story entirely, or betray his compatriots for a handful of gold and then get killed in the ensuing melee.

But he doesn't.

These men are all stereotypes, and they even
know
they're stereotypes—but they're all just a little too human, a little too smart, a little too strong-hearted, to play out their demeaning parts in the standard fashion. The members of the Watch know the stories they're supposed to live out, they know (except for Carrot) that they aren't the heroes, they're just bit players—but they all rise above what's expected of them, even Carrot, who rises above claiming the throne because he sees that it's better for the city if he doesn't.

These are people who know the story they're in, whether it's the returning king in
Guards! Guards!
or the grand war for national pride in
Jingo
or the bitter race war in
Thud!
, but who insist on changing it to one they like better.

Mr. Pratchett has created something really wonderful in the Watch. I look forward to seeing more of them.

As for my title question, “Who watches the Watchmen?,” the answer turns out to be obvious.

They watch themselves. That's why they survive.

R
IGHT AT THE START of
The Colour of Magic
, we are informed that Ankh-Morpork is the oldest city on the Disc. It's been there for thousands of years, and the current city is mostly built atop earlier versions, so that there are mazes of tunnels and basements everywhere.

Nothing unusual about that in a fantasy novel. Where in the real world we only have maybe five thousand years of history all told, fantasy worlds regularly have tens of thousands, and often amazingly little happens in all that time. It's not particularly unusual for evil wizards to live a few centuries, for prophecies to be handed down for millennia, for royal pedigrees to matter over absurdly long times—I mean,
how
long did the Stewards rule Gondor before Aragorn showed up to reclaim the throne?
¹⁶⁴

In fact, fantasy worlds not only tend to have ridiculously long memories, they tend to be impossibly stagnant. Someone can get sent into magical exile for a century or two, come back, and see not much of anything changed except that everyone he knew is a lot older, or dead.

In real life, anyone who missed the twentieth century would be pretty lost.

Hell, anyone who missed the
fourteenth
century would be pretty lost. A Siennese nobleman who was ensorceled in 1300 and released in 1400 would have missed the Black Death and the beginnings of the Renaissance, for example, and would find that his city had gone from being a major power to little more than a village.

But we are told that Ankh-Morpork has stood there for millennia, and presumably hasn't altered all that terribly much in most of that time, but in the course of the Discworld series, that all changes. There isn't a full-blown industrial revolution or anything, but there are a few significant inventions, such as movies, newspapers, a sophisticated telegraph system, postage stamps, paper money, cameras, and personal organizers.

That's a lot to absorb.

Of course, not all of it sticks; movies turn out to be a temporary aberration caused by extradimensional entities and fade away. The rest, though, linger on.

How the people of Ankh-Morpork and their ruler, Patrician Havelock Vetinari, deal with this sudden march of progress is the subject of
Moving Pictures
,
¹⁶⁵
The Truth
,
Going Postal
, and
Making Money
. I include the short story “Troll Bridge” here as well, even though it isn't set in Ankh-Morpork and has no specific sociological innovations in it, simply because it's on the same general theme of dealing with changing times, and Cohen the Barbarian never quite got his own series.

There was no single protagonist for this series originally; Victor Tugbelbend is the star of
Moving Pictures
, while William de Worde brings us
The Truth
. However Moist von Lipwig, protagonist of
Going Postal
, returns in
Making Money
, so either he's a separate series, or he's taking over the series, or . . . well, for now, he's just a part of it.

It's not entirely clear just what's brought on these changes, and why they all happen in such a rush. Cameras, or rather iconographs, were introduced by Twoflower in
The Colour of Magic
, and may have existed for centuries in the Agatean Empire, for all we know. Moveable type had been invented before, but forbidden by the wizards of Unseen University until Archchancellor Ridcully decided it might help with his paperwork. There's no obvious reason the clacks hadn't been built sooner, nor are we ever really told much about their initial creation—they just appear.

Of course, many of these developments are based on magic, rather than the technology we use. Iconographs don't use photosensitive chemicals, for example; they use imps with paintbrushes.
¹⁶⁶
Commander Vimes's Dis-Organizer doesn't use electronics; it's another imp. The exact methods the Alchemists' Guild used in creating motion pictures aren't explained in detail, but also involve imps and demons. (Clearly, these imps and demons paint very fast.)

In fact, generally speaking, most of Discworld's “high tech” stuff is demonically based; imps serve the same roles that birds and small animals did on
The Flintstones
. For those of you unfamiliar with this ancient cartoon series,
¹⁶⁷
The Flintstones
was set in a Stone Age that greatly resembled the American suburbs of the 1950s, except that everything was made of stones, sticks, and animal hides, and critters of various sorts were substituted for machinery. Fred Flintstone was a heavy-machinery operator at a quarry, but his “machine” was a dinosaur he rode. The phonograph in the Flintstone home had a turntable driven by a small furry animal on a drive-belt, and the “needle” was a bird's beak, still attached to a live bird.
¹⁶⁸