Feet of Clay

'The boot it was holding came off,' moaned Colon.

'How did that happen?'

'It got… lubricated …'

Wee Mad Arthur tugged at a finger. 'Up yez come, then.'

'Can't.'

'Why not? It ain't holding on to yez no more.'

'Arms tired. Another ten seconds and I'm gonna be a chalk outline …'

'Nah, no one's got that much chalk.' Wee Mad Arthur knelt down so that his head was level with Colon's eyes. 'If you gonna die, d'yez mind signing a chitty to say yez promised me a dollar?'

Down below, there was a chink of pottery shards.

'What was that?' said Colon. 'I thought the damn thing smashed up …'

Wee Mad Arthur looked down. 'D'yez believe in that reincarnation stuff, Mr Colon?' he said.

'You wouldn't get me touching that foreign muck,' said Colon.

'Well, it's putting itself together. Like one of them jiggling saw puzzles.'

'Well done, Wee Mad Arthur,' said Colon. 'But I know you're just saying that so's I'll make the effort to haul meself up, right? Statues don't go putting themselves back together when they're smashed up.'

'Please yezself. It's done nearly a whole leg already.'

Colon managed to peer down through the small and smelly space between the wall and his armpit. All he could see were shreds of fog and a faint glow.

'You sure?' he said.

'Yez run around rat holes, yez learns to see good in the dark,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'Otherwise yez dead.'

Something hissed, somewhere below Colon's feet.

With his one booted foot and his toes he scrabbled at the brickwork.

'It's having a wee bit o' trouble,' said Wee Mad Arthur conversationally. 'Looks like it's put its knees on wrong way round.'

Dorfl sat hunched in the abandoned cellar where the golems had met. Occasionally the golem raised its head and hissed. Red light spilled from its eyes. If something had streamed back down through the glow, soared through the eye-sockets into the red sky beyond, there would be …

Dorfl huddled under the glow of the universe. Its murmur was a long way off, muted, nothing to do with Dorfl.

The Words stood around the horizon, reaching all the way to the sky.

And a voice said quietly, 'You own yourself.' Dorfl saw the scene again and again, saw the concerned face, hand reaching up, filling its vision, felt the sudden icy knowledge …

'… Own yourself…’

It echoed off the Words, and then rebounded, and then rolled back and forth, increasing in volume until the little world between the Words was gripped in the sound.

Golem Must Have a Master. The letters towered against the world, but the echoes poured around them, blasting like a sandstorm. Cracks started and then ran, zigzagging across the stone, and then—

The Words exploded. Great slabs of them, mountain-sized, crashed in showers of red sand.

The universe poured in. Dorfl felt the universe pick it up and bowl it over and then lift it off its feet and up …

… and now the golem was among the universe. It could feel it all around, the purr of it, the busyness, the spinning complexity of it, the roar …

There were no Words between you and It.

You belonged to It, It belonged to you.

You couldn't turn your back on It because there It was, in front of you.

Dorfl was responsible for every tick and swerve of It.

You couldn't say, 'I had orders.' You couldn't say, 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself.

Dorfl orbited a pair of glowing suns and hurtled off again.

Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not.

Dorfl tumbled through the red sky, then saw a dark hole ahead. The golem felt it dragging at him, and streamed down through the glow and the hole grew larger and sped across the edges of Dorfl's vision …

The golem opened his eyes.

NO MASTER!

Dorfl unfolded in one movement and stood upright. He reached out one arm and extended a finger.

The golem pushed the finger easily into the wall where the argument had taken place, and then dragged it carefully through the splintering brickwork. It took him a couple of minutes but it was something Dorfl felt needed to be said.

Dorfl completed the last letter and poked a row of three dots after it. Then the golem walked away, leaving behind:

NO MASTER…

A blue overcast from the cigars hid the ceiling of the smoking-room.

'Ah, yes. Captain Carrot,' said a chair. 'Yes … indeed … but… is he the right man?'

'S got a birthmark shaped like a crown. I seen it,' said Nobby helpfully.

'But his background …'

'He was raised by dwarfs,' said Nobby. He waved his brandy glass at a waiter. 'Same again, mister.'

'I shouldn't think dwarfs could raise anyone very high,' said another chair. There was a hint of laughter.

'Rumours and folklore,' someone murmured.

'This is a large and busy and above all complex city. I'm afraid that having a sword and a birthmark are not much in the way of qualifications. We would need a king from a lineage that is used to command.'

'Like yours, my lord.'

There was a sucking, draining noise as Nobby attacked the fresh glass of brandy. 'Oh, I'm used to command, all right,' he said, lowering the glass. 'People are always orderin' me around.'

'We would need a king who had the support of the great families and major guilds of the city.'

'People like Carrot,' said Nobby.

'Oh, the people.'

'Anyway, whoever got the job'd have his work cut out,' said Nobby. 'Ole Vetinari's always pushin' paper. What kinda fun is that? 'S no life, sittin' up all hours, worryin', never a moment to yerself.' He held out the empty glass. 'Same again, my old mate. Fill it right up this time, eh? No sense in havin' a great big glass and only sloshin' a bit in the bottom, is there?'

'Many people prefer to savour the bouquet,' said a quietly horrified chair. They enjoy sniffing it.'

Nobby looked at his glass with the red-veined eyes of one who'd heard rumours about what the upper crust got up to. 'Nah,' he said. ‘I’ll go on stickin' it in my mouth, if it's all the same to you.'

'If we may get to the point,' said another chair, 'a king would not have to spend every moment running the city. He would of course have people to do that. Advisors. Counsellors. People of experience.'

'So what'd he have to do?' said Nobby.

'He'd have to reign,' said a chair.

'Wave.'

'Preside at banquets.'

'Sign things.'