Feet of Clay

slaughterhouses was chiming against her strict vegetarianism. The clash was bringing on her PLT.
    She glared at the shadowy building in front of her. “I think we’ll go round the back,” she said. “And you can knock.”
    “Me? They won’t take any notice of me!” said Cheery.
    “You show them your badge and tell them you’re the Watch.”
    “They’ll ignore me! They’ll laugh at me!”
    “You’re going to have to do it sooner or later. Go on.”
    The door was opened by a stout man in a bloody apron. He was shocked to have his belt grabbed by one dwarf hand, while another dwarf hand was thrust in front of his face, holding a badge, and a dwarf voice in the region of his navel said, “We’re the Watch, right? Oh, yes! And if you don’t let us in we’ll have your guts for starters!”
    “Good try,” murmured Angua. She lifted Cheery out of the way and smiled brightly at the butcher.
    “Mr. Sock? We’d like to speak to an employee of yours. Mr. Dorfl.”
    The man hadn’t quite got over Cheery, but he managed to rally. “ Mr . Dorfl? What’s he done now?”
    “We’d just like to talk to him. May we come in?”
    Mr. Sock looked at Cheery, who was trembling with nerves and excitement. “I have a choice?” he said.
    “Let’s say—you have a kind of choice,” said Angua.
    She tried to close her nostrils against the beguiling miasma of blood. There was even a sausage factory on the premises. It used all the bits of animals no one would ever otherwise eat, or even recognize. The odors of the abattoir turned her human stomach but, deep inside, part of her sat up and drooled and begged at the mingling smells of pork and beef and lamb and mutton and…
    “Rat?” she said, sniffing. “I didn’t know you supplied the dwarf market, Mr. Sock.”
    Mr. Sock was suddenly a man who wished to be seen to be cooperative.
    “Dorfl! Come here right now!”
    There was the sound of footsteps and a figure emerged from behind a rack of beef carcasses.
    Some people had a thing about the undead. Angua knew Commander Vimes was uneasy in their presence, although he was getting better these days. People always needed someone to feel superior to. The living hated the undead, and the undead loathed—she felt her fists clench—the unalive.
    The golem called Dorfl lurched a little because one leg was slightly shorter than the other. It didn’t wear any clothes because there was nothing whatsoever to conceal, and so she could see the mottling on it where fresh clay had been added over the years. There was so much patching that she wondered how old it could be. Originally, some attempt had been made to depict human musculature, but the repairs had nearly obscured these. The thing looked like the kind of pots Igneous despised, the ones made by people who thought that because it was hand-made it was supposed to look as if was hand-made, and that thumbprints baked in the clay were a sign of integrity.
    That was it. The thing looked hand-made. Of course, over the years it had mostly made itself, one repair at a time. Its triangular eyes glowed faintly. There were no pupils, just the dark red glow of a banked fire.
    It was holding a long, heavy cleaver. Cheery’s stare gravitated to this and remained fixed on it in terrified fascination. The other hand grasped a piece of string, on the end of which was a large, hairy and very smelly goat.
    “What are you doing, Dorfl?”
    The golem nodded towards the goat.
    “Feeding the yudasgoat?”
    Dorfl nodded again.
    “Have you got something to do, Mr. Sock?” said Angua.
    “No, I’ve…”
    “You have got something to do, Mr. Sock,” said Angua emphatically.
    “Ah. Er? Yes. Er? Yes. OK. I’ll just go and see to the offal boilers…”
    As the butcher walked away he stopped to wave a finger under the place where Dorfl’s nose would be if the golem had had a nose.
    “If you’ve been causing trouble…” he began.
    “I expect those boilers could really do with attention,” said Angua sharply.
    He hurried off.
    There was silence in the yard, although the sounds of the city drifted in over the walls. From the other side of the slaughterhouse there was the occasional bleat of a worried sheep. Dorfl stood stock-still, holding his cleaver and looking down at the ground.
    “Is it a troll made to look like a human?” whispered Cheery. “Look at those eyes! ”
    “It’s not a troll,” said Angua. “It’s a golem. A man of clay. It’s a machine.’
    “It looks like