Snuff

how to be goblins, clever goblins! Do you know that they have only five names for colors? Even trolls have around sixty, and a lot more than that if they find a paint salesman! Does this mean goblins are stupid? No, they have a vast number of names for things that even poets haven’t come up with, for things like the way colors shift and change, the melting of one hue into another. They have single words for the most complicated of feelings; I know about two hundred of them, I think, and I’m sure there are a lot more! What you may think are grunts and growls and snarls are in fact carrying vast amounts of information! They’re like an iceberg, commander: most of them is where you can’t see or understand, and I’m teaching Tears of the Mushroom and some of her friends so that they may be able to speak to people like you, who think they are dumb. And do you know what, commander? There isn’t much time! They’re being slaughtered! It’s not called that, of course, but slaughter is how it ends, because they’re just dumb nuisances, you see. Why don’t you ask Mr. Upshot what happened to the rest of the goblins three years ago, Commander Vimes?”
    And with that Miss Beedle turned on her heel and disappeared down into the darkness of the cave with Tears of the Mushroom bobbing along behind her, leaving Vimes to walk the last few yards out into the glorious sunlight.

T he feeling that hit Samuel Vimes when he stepped into the vivid light of day was as if somebody had pushed an iron wire through his body and then, in one moment, pulled it out again. It was all he could do to keep his balance and the boy grabbed him by the arm. Full marks, Vimes thought, for being either smart enough to see how the land lay, or at least smart enough not to make a run for it just now.
    He sat down on the turf, relishing the breeze through the gorse bushes and sucking in pure fresh air. Whatever you thought about goblins, their cave had the kind of atmosphere about which people say, “I should wait two minutes before going in there, if I was you.”
    â€œI’d like to talk with you, chief constable,” he said now. “Copper to copper. About the past and maybe about the shape of things to come.”
    â€œActually, I meant to thank you, commander, for thinking that I’m a policeman.”
    â€œYour father was policeman down here three years ago, yes?”
    Feeney stared straight ahead. “Yes, sir.”
    â€œSo, what happened with the goblins, Feeney?”
    Feeney cleared his throat. “Well, Dad told me and Mum to stay indoors. He said we was not to look, but he couldn’t tell us not to listen, and there was a lot of shouting and I don’t know what, and it upset my old mum no end. I heard later that a load of goblins had been taken out of the hill, but Dad never spoke about it until much later. I think it broke him, sir, it really did. He said he watched while a bunch of men, gamekeepers and roughs mostly, came down from the cave dragging goblins behind them, sir. Lots of them. He said what was so dreadful was that the goblins were all sort of meek, you know? Like they didn’t know what to do.”
    Vimes relented a little at the sight of Feeney’s face. “Go on, lad.”
    â€œWell, sir, he told me people came out of their houses and there was a lot of running about and he started to ask questions and, well, the magistrates said it was all right because they were nothing more than vermin, and they were going to be taken down to the docks where they could earn their living for a change and not bother other people. It was all right, Dad said. They were going somewhere sunny, a long way away from here.”
    â€œJust out of interest, Mr. Feeney, how could he know that?”
    â€œDad said the magistrates were very firm about it, sir. They were just to be put to work for their living. He said that it was doing them a favor. It wasn’t as if they were going to be killed.”
    Vimes kept his expression deliberately blank. He sighed. “If it was without their consent, then that would be slavery, and if a slave doesn’t work for his living he’s dead. Do you understand?”
    Feeney looked at his boots. If eyeballs had polish on them his boots would have been gleaming. “After he told me this, my dad told me that I was a copper now and I was to look after Mum, and he gave me the truncheon and his badge. And then his