Night Watch

only last week.”
    Silence ballooned. The only sound was the purr of the cylinders dotted around the room.
    Then Sweeper added: “It must have occurred to you.”
    “Why? I’ve spent most of the time here being beaten up or unconscious or trying to get home! You mean I’m out there somewhere?”
    “Oh, yes. In fact, last night you saved the day for your squad by aiming a crossbow at a dangerous miscreant who was attacking your sergeant.”
    The silence ballooned larger this time. It seemed to fill the universe.
    Eventually, Vimes said: “No. That’s not right. That never happened. I would have remembered that. And I can remember a lot about my first weeks in the job.”
    “Interesting, isn’t it,” said Sweeper. “But is it not written, ‘There’s a lot goes on we don’t get told’? Mister Vimes, you need a short spell in the Garden of Inner-City Tranquility.”

    It was indeed a garden, like a lot of other gardens you got in areas like Clay Lane. The gray soil was nothing more than old brick dust, elderly cat mess, and generalized, semirotted dross. At the far end was a three-hole privy. It was built handily by the gate to the back lane so the night-soil men didn’t have far to go, but this one had a small stone cylinder turning gently beside it.
    The garden didn’t get much proper light. Gardens like this never did. You got secondhand light once the richer folk in the taller buildings had finished with it. Some people kept pigeons or rabbits or pigs on their plots, or planted, against all experience, a few vegetables. But it’d take magic beans to reach the real sunlight in gardens like this.
    Nevertheless, someone had made an effort. Most of the spare ground had been covered with gravel of different sizes, and this had been carefully raked into swirls and curves. Here and there, some individual larger stones had been positioned, apparently with great thought.
    Vimes stared at the garden of rocks, desperate for anything to occupy his attention.
    He could see what the designer had in mind, he thought, but the effect had been spoiled. This was the big city, after all. Garbage got everywhere. The main disposal method was throwing it over a wall. Sooner or later someone would sell it or, possibly, eat it.
    A young monk was carefully raking the gravel. He gave a respectful bow as Sweeper approached.
    The old man sat down on a stone bench.
    “Push off and get us two cups of tea, lad, will you?” he said. “One green with yak butter, and Mister Vimes will have it boiled orange in a builder’s boot with two sugars and yesterday’s milk, right?”
    “That’s how I like it,” said Vimes weakly, sitting down.
    Sweeper took a deep, long breath. “And I like building gardens,” he said. “Life should be a garden.”
    Vimes stared blankly at what was in front of them.
    “Okay,” he said. “The gravel and rocks, yes, I can see that. Shame about all the rubbish. It always turns up, doesn’t it…”
    “Yes,” said Lu-Tze. “It’s part of the pattern.”
    “What? The old cigarette packet?”
    “Certainly. That invokes the element of air,” said Sweeper.
    “And the cat doings?”
    “To remind us that disharmony, like a cat, gets everywhere.”
    “The cabbage stalks? The used sonkie? * ”
    “At our peril we forget the role of the organic in the total harmony. What arrives seemingly by chance in the pattern is part of a higher organization that we can only dimly comprehend. This is a very important fact, and has a bearing on your case.”
    “And the beer bottle?”
    For the first time since Vimes had met him, the monk frowned.
    “Y’know, some bugger always tosses one over the wall on his way back from the pub on Friday nights. If it wasn’t forbidden to do that kind of thing, he’d feel the flat to my hand and no mistake.”
    “It’s not part of the higher organization?”
    “Possibly. Who cares? That sort of thing gets on my thungas , it really does,” said Sweeper. He sat back with his hands on his knees. Serenity flowed once more. “Well now, Mister Vimes…you know the universe is made up of very small items?”
    “Huh?”
    “We’ve got to work up to things gradually, Mister Vimes. You’re a bright man. I can’t keep telling you everything is done by magic.”
    “Am I really here, too? In the city? I mean, a younger me?”
    “Of course. Why not? Where was I? Oh, yes. Made up of very small items, and—”
    “This is not a good time to be in the Watch. I remember!