We R Igors 7 страница

It wasn't like that with Jeremy. He was truly a man you could set your watch by. Igor had never seen a life so organized, so slimmed down, so timed. He found himself thinking of his new master as the tick-tock man.

One of Igors former masters had made a tick-tock man, all levers and gearwheels and cranks and clockwork. Instead of a brain, it had a long tape punched with holes. Instead of a heart, it had a big spring. Provided everything in the kitchen was very carefully positioned, the thing could sweep the floor and make a passable cup of tea. If everything wasn't carefully positioned, or if the ticking, clicking thing hit an unexpected bump, then it'd strip the plaster off the walls and make a furious cup of cat.

Then his master had conceived the idea of making the thing live, so that it could punch its own tapes and wind its own spring. Igor, who knew exactly when to follow instructions to the letter, dutifully rigged up the classic rising-table-and-lightning-rod arrangement on the evening of a really good storm. He didn't see exactly what happened thereafter, because he wasn't there when the lightning hit the clockwork. No, Igor was at a dead run halfway down the hill to the village, with all his possessions in a carpet bag. Even so, a white-hot cogwheel had whirred over his head and buried itself in a treetrunk.

Loyalty to a master was very important, but it took second place to loyalty to Igordom. If the world was going to be full of lurching servants, then they were damn well going to be called Igor.

It seemed to this Igor that if you could make a tick-tock man live, he'd be like Jeremy. And Jeremy was ticking faster, as the clock neared completion.

Igor didn't much like the clock. He was a people person. He preferred things that bled. And as the clock grew, with its shimmering crystal parts that didn't seem entirely all here, so Jeremy grew more absorbed and Igor grew more tense. There was definitely something new happening here, and while Igors were avid to learn new things there were limits. Igors did not believe in forbidden knowledge and “Things Man Was Not Meant to Know”, but obviously there were some things a man was not meant to know, such as what it felt like to have every single particle of your body sucked into a little hole, and that seemed to be one of the options available in the immediate future.

And then there was Lady LeJean. She gave Igor the willies, and he was a man not usually subject to even the smallest willy. She wasn't a zombie and she wasn't a vampire, because she didn't smell like one. She didn't smell like anything. In Igor's experience, everything smelled like something.

And there was the other matter.

“Her feet don't touch the ground, thur, ” he said.

“Of course they do, ” said Jeremy, buffing up part of the mechanism with his sleeve. “She'll be here again in a minute and seventeen seconds. And I'm sure her feet will be touching the ground. ”

“Oh, thometimeth they do, thur. But you watch when thee goeth up or down a thtep, thur. Thee doethn't get it egthactly right, thur. You can jutht thee the thadow under her thoeth. ”

“Thoeth? ”

“On her feet, thur, ” sighed Igor. The lisp could be a problem, and in truth any Igor could easily fix it, but it was part of being an Igor. You might as well stop limping.

“Go and get ready by the door, ” said Jeremy. “Floating in the air doesn't make you a bad person. ”

Igor shrugged. He was entertaining the idea that it didn't mean you were a person at all, and incidentally he was rather worried that Jeremy seemed to have dressed himself with a little more care this morning.

He'd decided in these circumstances not to broach the subject of his hiring, but he had been working that one out. He'd been hired before her ladyship had engaged Jeremy to do this work? Well, all that showed was that she knew her man. But she'd hired him herself in Bad Schuschein. And he'd got himself onto the mail coach that very day. And it turned out that Lady LeJean had visited Jeremy on that day, too.

The only thing faster than the mail coach between Uberwald and Ankh-Morpork was magic, unless someone had found a way to travel by semaphore. And Lady LeJean hardly looked like a witch.

The shop's clocks were putting up a barrage of noise to signal the passing of seven o'clock when Igor opened the front door. It always Did[10] to anticipate the knock. That was another part of the Code of the Igors.

He wrenched it open.

“Two pints, sir, lovely and fresh, ” said Mr Soak, handing him the bottles. “And a day like this just says fresh cream, doesn't it? ”

Igor glared at him, but took the bottles. “I prefer it when it'th going green, ” he said haughtily. “Good day to you, Mr Thoak. ”

He shut the door.

“It wasn't her? ” said Jeremy, when he arrived back in the workshop.

“It wath the milkman, thur. ”

“She's twenty-five seconds late! ” said Jeremy, looking concerned. “Do you think anything could have happened to her? ”

“Real ladieth are often fathionably late, thur, ” said Igor, putting the milk away. It was icy cold under his fingers.

“Well, I'm sure her ladyship is a real lady. ”

“I wouldn't know about that, thur, ” said Igor, who in fact had the aforesaid very strong doubts in that area. He walked back into the shop and took up position with his hand on the door handle just as the knock came.

Lady LeJean swept past Igor. The two trolls ignored him and took up their positions just inside the workshop. Igor put them down as hired rock, anyone's for two dollars a day plus walking-around money.

Her ladyship was impressed.

The big clock was nearing completion. It wasn't the squat, blocky thing that Igor's grandfather had told him about. Jeremy had, much to Igor's surprise—for there wasn't a scrap of decoration anywhere in the house—gone for the impressive look.

“Your grandfather helped to make the first one, ” Jeremy had said. “So let's build a grandfather clock, eh? ” And there it stood—a slim, long-case clock in crystal and spun glass, reflecting the light in worrying ways.

Igor had spent a fortune in the Street of Cunning Artificers. For enough money, you could buy anything in Ankh-Morpork, and that included people. He'd made sure that no crystal-cutter or glassworker had done enough of the work to give them any sort of clue about the finished clock, but he'd worried needlessly about that. Money could buy a lot of uninterest. Besides, who would believe you could measure time with crystals? Only in the workshop did it all come together.

Igor bustled around, polishing things, listening carefully as Jeremy showed off his creation.

“—no need for any metal parts; ” he was saying. “We've come up with a way of making the tamed lightning flow across glass, and we've found a workman who can make glass that bends slightly—”

“We”, Igor noticed. Well, that was always the way of it. “We” discovering things meant the master asking for them and Igor thinking them up. Anyway, the flow of lightning was a family passion. With sand and chemicals and a few secrets, you could make lightning sit up and beg.

Lady LeJean reached out with a gloved hand and touched the side of the clock.

“This is the divider mechanism—” Jeremy began, picking up a crystalline array from the workbench.

But her ladyship was still staring up at the clock. “You've given it a face and hands, ” she said. “Why? ”

“Oh, it will function very well in the measurement of traditional time, ” said Jeremy. “Glass gears throughout, of course. In theory it will never need adjusting. It will take its time from the universal tick. ”

“Ah. You found it, then? ”

“The time it takes the smallest possible thing that can happen to happen. I know it exists. ”

She looked almost impressed. “But the clock is still unfinished. ”

“There is a certain amount of trial and error, ” said Jeremy. “But we will do it. Igor says there will be a big storm on Monday. That should provide the power, he says. And then, ” Jeremy's face lit up with a smile, “I see no reason why every clock in the world shouldn't say precisely the same time! ”

Lady LeJean glanced at Igor, who bustled with renewed haste.

“The servant is satisfactory? ”

“Oh, he grumbles a bit. But he has got a good heart. And a spare, apparently. He is amazingly skilled in all crafts, too. ”

“Yes, Igors generally are, ” said the lady distantly. “They seem to have mastered the art of inheriting talents. ” She snapped her fingers and one of the trolls stepped forward and produced a couple of bags.

“Gold and invar, ” she said. “As promised. ”

“Hah, but invar will be worthless when we've finished the clock, ” said Jeremy.

“We're sorry? You want more gold? ”

“No, no! You have been very generous. ”

Right, thought Igor, dusting the workbench vigorously.

“Until next time, then, ” said Lady LeJean. The trolls were already turning towards the door.

“You'll be here for the start? ” said Jeremy, as Igor hurried into the hall to open the front door because, whatever he thought about her ladyship, there was such a thing as tradition.

“Possibly. But we have every confidence in you, Jeremy. ”

“Um…”

Igor stiffened. He hadn't heard that tone in Jeremy's voice before. In the voice of a master, it was a bad tone.

Jeremy took a deep, nervous breath, as if contemplating some minute and difficult piece of clockwork that would, without tremendous care, unwind catastrophically and spray cogwheels across the floor.

“Um… I was wondering, um, your ladyship, um… perhaps, um, you would like to take dinner with me, um, tonight, um…”

Jeremy smiled. Igor had seen a better smile on a corpse.

Lady LeJean's expression flickered. It really did. It seemed to Igor to go from one expression to another as if they were a series of still pictures, with no perceptible movement of the features between each one. It went from her usual blankness to sudden thoughtfulness and then all the way to amazement. And then, to Igor's own astonishment, it began to blush.

“Why, Mr Jeremy, I… I don't know what to say, ” her ladyship stammered, her icy composure turning into a warm puddle. “I really… I don't know… perhaps some other time? I do have an important engagement, so glad to have met you, I must be going. Goodbye. ”

Igor stood stiffly to attention, as upright as the average Igor could manage, and almost shut the door behind her ladyship as she hurried out of the building down the steps.

She ended up, just for a moment, half an inch above the street. It was only for a moment, and then she drifted downwards. No one except Igor, glaring balefully through the crack between door and frame, could possibly have noticed.

He darted back into the workshop. Jeremy still stood transfixed, blushing as pinkly as her ladyship had done.

“I'll jutht be nipping out to get that new glathwork for the multiplier, thur, ” Igor said quickly. “It thould be done by now. Yeth? ”

Jeremy spun on his heel and marched very quickly over to the workbench.

“You do that, Igor. Thank you, ” he said, his voice slightly muffled.

Lady LeJean's party were down the street when Igor slipped out and moved quickly into the shadows.

At the crossroad her ladyship waved one hand vaguely and the trolls headed off by themselves. Igor stayed with her. For all the trademark limp, Igors could move fast when they had to. They often had to, when the mob hit the windmill. [11]

Out in the open, he could see more wrong things. She didn't move quite right. It was as though she was controlling her body, rather than letting it control itself. That's what humans did. Even zombies got the hang of things after a while. The effect was subtle, but Igors had very good eyesight. She moved like someone unused to wearing skin.

The quarry headed down a narrow street, and Igor half hoped that some of the Thieves' Guild were around. He'd very much like to see what happened if one of them gave her the tap on the noggin that was their prelude to negotiations. One had tried it with Igor yesterday, and if the man had been surprised at the metallic clang he'd been astonished to have his arm grabbed and broken with anatomical exactitude.

In fact, she turned into an alleyway between a couple of the buildings.

Igor hesitated. Letting yourself be outlined in the daylight at the mouth of an alley was item one on the local checklist of death. But, on the other hand, he wasn't actually doing anything wrong, was he? And she didn't look armed.

There was no sound of footsteps in the alley. He waited a moment and stuck his head round the corner.

There was no sign of Lady LeJean. There was also no way out of the alley—it was a dead end, full of rubbish.

But there was a fading grey shape in the air, which vanished even as he stared. It was a hooded robe, grey as fog. It merged into the general gloom and disappeared.

She'd turned into an alleyway, and then she'd turned into… something else.

Igor felt his hands twitch.

Individual Igors might have their particular specialities, but they were all expert surgeons and had an inbuilt desire not to see anybody wasted. Up in the mountains, where most of the employment was for woodchoppers and miners, having an Igor living locally was considered very fortunate. There was always the risk of an axe bouncing or a sawblade running wild, and then a man was glad to have an Igor around who could lend a hand—or even an entire arm, if you were lucky.

And while they practised their skills freely and generously in the community, the Igors were even more careful to use them amongst themselves. Magnificent eyesight, a stout pair of lungs, a powerful digestive system… It was terrible to think of such wonderful workmanship going to the worms. So they made sure it didn't. They kept it in the family.

Igor really did have his grandfather's hands. And now they were bunching into fists, all by themselves.

Tick

A very small kettle burned on a fire of wood shavings and dried yak dung.

“It was… a long time ago, ” said Lu-Tze. “Exactly when doesn't matter, 'cos of what happened. In fact asking exactly ‘when’ doesn't make any sense any more. It depends where you are. In some places it was hundreds of years ago. Some other places… well, maybe it hasn't happened yet. There was this man in Uberwald. Invented a clock. An amazing clock. It measured the tick of the universe. Know what that is? ”

“No. ”

“Me neither. The abbot's your man for that kind of stuff. Lemme see… okay… think of the smallest amount of time that you can. Really small. So tiny that a second would be like a billion years. Got that? Well, the cosmic quantum tick—that's what the abbot calls it—the cosmic quantum tick is much smaller than that. It's the time it takes to go from now to then. The time it takes an atom to think of wobbling. It's—”

“It's the time it takes for the smallest thing that's possible to happen to happen? ” said Lobsang.

“Exactly. Well done, ” said Lu-Tze. He took a deep breath. “It's also the time it takes for the whole universe to be destroyed in the past and rebuilt in the future. Don't look at me like that—that's what the abbot said. ”

“Has it been happening while we've been talking? ” said Lobsang.

“Millions of times. An oodleplex of times, probably. ”

“How many's that? ”

“It's one of the abbot's words. It means more numbers than you can imagine in a yonk. ”

“What's a yonk? ”

“A very long time. ”

“And we don't feel it? The universe is destroyed and we don't feel it? ”

“They say not. The first time it was explained to me I got a bit jumpy, but it's far too quick for us to notice. ”

Lobsang stared at the snow for a while. Then he said, “All right. Go on. ”

“Someone in Uberwald built this clock out of glass. Powered by lightning, as I recall. It somehow got down to a level where it could tick with the universe. ”

“Why did he want to do that? ”

“Listen, he lived in a big old castle on a crag in Uberwald. People like that don't need a reason apart from ‘because I can’. They have a nightmare and try to make it happen. ”

“But, look, you can't make a clock like that, because it's inside the universe, so it'll… get rebuilt when the universe does, right? ”

Lu-Tze looked impressed, and said so. “I'm impressed, ” he said.

“It'd be like opening a box with the crowbar that's inside. ”

“The abbot believes that part of the clock was outside, though. ”

“You can't have something outside the—”

“Tell that to a man who has been working on the problem for nine lifetimes, ” said Lu-Tze. “You want to hear the rest of the story? ”

“Yes, Sweeper. ”

“So … we were spread pretty thin in those days, but there was this young sweeper—”

“You, ” said Lobsang. “This is going to be you, right? ”

“Yes, yes, ” said Lu-Tze testily. “I was sent to Uberwald. History hadn't diverged much in those days, and we knew something big was going to happen around Bad Schuschein. I must have spent weeks looking. You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You can't move for remote castles! ”

“That's why you didn't find the right one in time, ” said Lobsang. “I remember what you told the abbot. ”

“I was just down in the valley when the lightning struck the tower, ” said Lu-Tze. “You know it is written, ‘Big events always cast their shadows. ’ But I couldn't detect where it was happening until too late. A half-mile sprint uphill faster than a lightning bolt… No one could do that. Nearly made it, though—I was actually through the door when it all went to hell! ”

“No point in blaming yourself, then. ”

“Yes, but you know how it is—you keep thinking ‘If only I'd got up earlier, or had gone a different way…’” said Lu-Tze.

“And the clock struck, ” said Lobsang.

“No. It stuck. I told you part of it was outside the universe. It wouldn't go with the flow. It was trying to count the tick, not move with it. ”

“But the universe is huge! It can't be stopped by a piece of clock work! ”

Lu-Tze flicked the end of his cigarette into the fire.

“The abbot says the size wouldn't make any difference at all, ” he said. “Look, it's taken him nine lifetimes to know what he knows, so it's not our fault if we can't understand it, is it? History shattered. It was the only thing that could give. Very strange event. There were cracks left all over the place. The… oh, I can't remember the words… the fastenings that tell bits of the past which bits of the present they belong to, they were flapping allover the place. Some got lost for ever. ” Lu-Tze stared into the dying flames. “We stitched it up as best we could, ” he added. “Up and down history. Filling up holes with bits of time taken from somewhere else. It's a patchwork, really. ”

“Didn't people notice? ”

“Why should they? Once we'd done it, it had always been like that. You'd be amazed at what we got away with. F'r instance—”

“I'm sure they spot it somehow. ”

Lu-Tze gave Lobsang one of his sidelong glances. “Funny you should say that. I've always wondered about it. People say things like ‘Where did the time go? ’ and ‘It seems like only yesterday. ’ We had to do it, anyway. And it's healed up very nicely. ”

“But people would look in the history books and see—”

“Words, lad. That's all. Anyway, people have been messing around with time ever since there were people. Wasting it, killing it, sparing it, making it up. And they do it. People's heads were made to play with time. Just like we do, except we're better trained and have a few extra skills. And we've spent centuries working to bring it all back in line. You watch the Procrastinators even on a quiet day. Moving time, stretching it here, compressing it there… it's a big job. I'm not going to see it smashed a second time. A second time, there won't be enough left to repair. ”

He stared at the embers. “Funny thing, ” he said. “Wen himself had some very funny ideas about time, come the finish. Wrote some very strange stuff. He reckoned Time was alive. He said it acted like a living thing, anyway. Very strange ideas indeed. He said he'd met Time, and she was a woman. To him, anyway. Everyone says that was just a very complicated metaphor, and maybe I was simply hit on the head or something, but on that day I looked at the glass clock just as it exploded and—”

He stood up and grabbed his broom.

“Best foot forward, lad. Another two or three seconds and we'll be down in Bong Phut. ”

“What were you going to say? ” said Lobsang, hurrying to his feet.

“Oh, just an old man rambling, ” said Lu-Tze. “The mind wanders a bit when you get to over seven hundred. Let's get moving. ”

“Sweeper? ”

“Yes, lad? ”

“Why are we carrying spinners on our backs? ”

“All in good time, lad. I hope. ”

“We're carrying time, right? If time stops, we can keep going? Like… divers? ”

“Full marks. ”

“And—? ”

“Another question? ”

“Time is a ‘she’? None of the teachers have mentioned it and I don't recall anything in the scrolls. ”

“Don't you think about that. Wen wrote… well, the Secret Scroll, it's called. They keep it in a locked room. Only the abbots and the most senior monks ever get to see it. ”

Lobsang couldn't let that one pass. “So how did you—? ” he began.

“Well, you wouldn't expect men like that to do the sweeping up in there, would you? ” said Lu-Tze. “Terribly dusty, it got. ”

“What was it about? ”

“I didn't read much of it. Didn't feel it was right, ” said Lu-Tze.

“You? What was it about, then? ”

“It was a love poem. And it was a good one…”

Lu-Tze's image blurred as he sliced time. Then it faded and vanished. A line of footprints appeared across the snowfield. Lobsang wrapped time around himself and followed. And a memory came from nowhere at all: Wen was right.

Tick

There were lots of places like the warehouse. There always are, in every old city, no matter how valuable the building land is. Sometimes, space just gets lost.

A workshop is built, and then another beside it. Factories and storerooms and sheds and temporary lean-tos crawl towards one another, meet and merge. Spaces between outside walls are roofed with tar paper. Odd-shaped bits of ground are colonized by nailing up a bit of wall and cutting a doorway. Old doorways are masked by piles of lumber or new tool racks. The old men who know what was where move on and die, just like the flies who punctuate the thick cobwebs on the grubby windows. Young men, in this noisome world of whirring lathes and paint shops and cluttered workbenches, don't have time to explore.

And so there were spaces like this, a small warehouse with a crusted skylight that no fewer than four factory owners thought was owned by one of the other three, when they thought about it at all. In fact each of them owned one wall, and certainly no one recalled who roofed the space. Beyond the walls on all four sides men and dwarfs bent iron, sawed planks, made string and turned screws. But in here was a silence known only to rats.

The air moved, for the first time in years. Dust balls rolled across the floor. Little motes sparkled and spun in the light that forced its way down from the roof. In the surrounding area, invisible and subtle, matter began to move. It came from workmen's sandwiches and gutter dirt and pigeon feathers, an atom here, a molecule there, and streamed unheeded into the centre of the space.

It spiralled. Eventually it became, after passing through some strange, ancient and horrible shapes, Lady LeJean.

She staggered, but managed to stay upright.

Other Auditors also appeared and, as they did so, it seemed that they had never really not been there. The dead greyness of the light merely took on shapes; they emerged like ships from a fog. You stared at the fog, and suddenly part of the fog was hull that had been there all along, and now there was nothing for it but to race for the lifeboats…

Lady LeJean said: “I cannot keep doing this. It is too painful. ”

One said, Ah… can you tell us what pain is like? We have often wondered.

“No. No, I don't think I can. It is… a body thing. It is not pleasant. From now on, I will retain the body. ”

One said, That could be dangerous.

Lady LeJean shrugged.

“We have been through that before. It's only a matter of appearance, ” she said. “And it is remarkable how much easier it is to deal with humans in this form. ”

One said, You shrugged. And you are talking with your mouth. A hole for food and air.

“Yes. It is remarkable, isn't it. ” Lady LeJean's body found an old crate, pulled it over, and sat on it. She hardly had to think about muscle movements at all!

One said, You aren't eating , are you?

“As yet, no. ”

One said, As yet? That raises the whole dreadful subject of … orifices.

One said, And how did you learn to shrug?

“It comes with the body, ” said her ladyship. “We never realized this, did we? Most of the things it does it appears to do automatically. Standing upright takes no effort whatsoever. The whole business gets easier every time. ”

The body shifted position slightly, and crossed its legs. Amazing, she thought. It did it to be comfortable. I didn't have to think about it at all. We never guessed.

One said, There will be questions.

The Auditors hated questions. They hated them almost as much as they hated decisions, and they hated decisions almost as much as they hated the idea of the individual personality. But what they hated most was things moving around randomly.

“Believe me, everything will be fine, ” said Lady LeJean. “We will not be breaking any of the rules, after all. All that will happen is that time will stop. Everything thereafter will be neat. Alive, but not moving. Tidy. ”

One said, And we can get the filing finished.

“Exactly, ” said Lady LeJean. “And he wants to do it. That is the strange thing. He hardly thinks about the consequences. ”

One said, Splendid.

There was one of those pauses when no one is quite ready to speak yet. And then…

One said, Tell us … What is it like?

“What is what like? ”

One said, Being insane. Being human.

“Strange. Disorganized. Several levels of thinking go on at once. There are… things we have no word for. For example, the idea of eating seems now to have a… an attraction. The body tells me this. ”

One said, Attraction? As in gravity?

“Ye-es. One is drawn towards food. ”

One said, Food in large masses?

“Even in small amounts. ”

One said, But eating is simply a function. What is the… attraction of performing a function? Surely the knowledge that it is necessary for continued survival is sufficient?

“I cannot say, ” said Lady LeJean.

One Auditor said, You persist in using a personal pronoun.

And one added, And you have not died! To be an individual is to live, and to live is to die!

“Yes. I know. But it is essential for humans to use the personal pronoun. It divides the universe into two parts. The darkness behind the eyes, where the little voice is, and everything else. It is… a horrible feeling. It is like being… questioned, all the time. ”

One said, What is the little voice?

“Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you. ”

She could tell this disturbed the other Auditors. “I do not wish to continue in this way any longer than necessary, ” she added. And realized that she had lied.

One said, We do not blame you.

Lady LeJean nodded.

The Auditors could see into human minds. They could see the pop and sizzle of the thoughts. But they could not read them. They could see the energies flow from node to node, they could see the brain glittering like a Hogswatch decoration. What they couldn't see was what was happening.

So they'd built one.

It was the logical thing to do. They'd used human agents before, because early on they'd worked out that there were many, many humans who would do anything for sufficient gold. This was puzzling, because gold did not seem to the Auditors to hold any significant value for a human body—it needed iron and copper and zinc, but only the most minute traces of gold. Therefore, they'd reasoned, this was further evidence that the humans who required it were flawed, and this was why attempts to make use of them were doomed. But why were they flawed?

Building a human being was easy; the Auditors knew exactly how to move matter around. The trouble was that the result didn't do anything but lie there and, eventually, decompose. This was annoying, since human beings, without any special training or education, seemed to be able to make working replicas quite easily.