Night Watch

it.
    “I pay already other copper,” he said. “One dollar, one month, no trouble. Already I pay other copper.”
    “Pay?” said Vimes.
    “Two-stripe copper already I pay. One dollar, one month, no trouble!”
    “Corporal Quirke,” muttered Vimes. “You don’t have to pay coppers, Mr. Sun. We’re here for your protection.”
    Despite his barely basic grasp of the language, Mr. Sun’s expression suggested very clearly that the three-stripe, one-crown copper in front of him had dropped in from the planet Idiot.
    “Look, I haven’t got time for this,” said Vimes. “Where’s the back door? This is Watch business!”
    “I pay! I pay protection! One month, no trouble!”
    Vimes grunted and set off along another narrow, cloth-lined tunnel.
    A glint of glass caught his eye, and he sidled crabwise up a choked aisle until he found a counter. It was piled with more hopeless merchandise, but there was a bead-curtained doorway behind it. He half-clambered, half-swam over the piles and scrambled into the tiny room beyond.
    Mr. Sun pushed his way to an ancient tailor’s dummy; it was so scratched, chipped, and battered it looked like something dug up from the volcanic ash of an ancient city.
    He pulled on an arm, and the eyes lit up.
    “Number Three here,” he said into its ear. “He’s just gone through. And boy, is he angry…”
    The back door was locked but yielded under the weight of Vimes’s body. He staggered into the yard, looked up at the wall separating this greasy space from the temple’s garden, jumped, scrabbled his boots on the brickwork, and dragged himself onto the wall, feeling a couple of bricks crumble away underneath him.
    He landed on his back, and looked up at a thin robed figure sitting on a stone seat.
    “Cup of tea, Commander?” said Sweeper cheerfully.
    “I don’t want any damn tea!” growled Vimes, struggling to his feet.
    Sweeper dropped a lump of rancid yak butter in the tea bowl beside him.
    “What do you want, then, Mister Vimes with the very helpful feet?”
    “I can’t deal with this! You know what I mean!”
    “You know, some tea really would calm you down,” said Sweeper.
    “Don’t tell me to be calm! When are you going to get me home?”
    A figure appeared next to Vimes. It was a taller, heavier man than Sweeper, white-haired and with a look of a good-natured bank manager about him. He held out a cup.
    Vimes hesitated a moment, and then took the cup and poured the tea out onto the ground.
    “I don’t trust you,” he said. “There could be anything in this.”
    “I can’t imagine what we could put in tea that would make it any worse than the way you normally drink it,” said Sweeper calmly. “Sit down, Your Grace. Please?”
    Vimes sagged onto the seat. The rage that had been driving him sank a little, too, but he could feel it bubbling. Automatically, he pulled out a half-smoked cigar and put it in his mouth.
    “Sweeper said you’d find us, some way or other,” said the other monk. “So much for secrecy.”
    “Why should you worry?” said Vimes bitterly. “You can just play around with time and it won’t have happened, right?”
    “We don’t intend to do that,” said Sweeper.
    “What could I do, anyway? Go around telling everyone that those loony monks you see in the streets are some kind of time shifters? I’d get locked up!”
    “This is Qu,” said Sweeper, nodding at the other monk. “When the time comes, he’ll get you back. But not yet.”
    Vimes sighed. The anger had drained, leaving only a hopeless, leaden feeling. He stared blankly at the strange rockery that occupied most of the garden. It looked oddly familiar. He blinked.
    “I’ve been talking to people today who are going to die ,” he said. “How do you think that makes me feel? Do you know what that feels like?”
    The monks gave him a puzzled look.
    “Er…yes,” said Qu.
    “We do,” said Sweeper. “Everyone we talk to is going to die. Everyone you talk to is going to die. Everyone dies.”
    “I’ve been changing things,” said Vimes. “Why shouldn’t I? Carcer is! I have no idea how things are going to turn out! I mean, doesn’t it change history even if you just tread on an ant?”
    “For the ant, certainly,” said Qu.
    Sweeper waved a hand. “I told you, Mister Vimes. History finds a way. It’s like a shipwreck. You’re swimming to the shore. The waves will break whatever you do. Is it not written, ‘The big sea does not care which way the little