Snuff

took hold of her hand, which was something he tended to do to any female that he met for the first time, a habit which his father considered would quite possibly open doors for him in later life. The girl tried gently to pull her hand away, but Young Sam was a ferocious holder.
    Nobby looked embarrassed. ‘I ain’t fraternizing with her, Mister Vimes, she wants to fraternize with me! She come out with the straw basket of little mushrooms and gives them to me, honestly!’
    ‘Are you sure they aren’t poisonous?’
    Nobby looked blank. ‘Don’t know, Mister Vimes. I ate them anyway, very nice, very crunchy, slightly nutty you might say, and Fred’s here now, sir. This young lady’ – and to Vimes’s surprise and approval Nobby did not put inverted commas around the word lady – ‘walked right up to him, took this weird shiny pot thing out of his hand, which was amazing because no one else could get it off of him, and there he was! Just like normal! Although I think we’re going to have to remind him about washing, and crapping only in the privy and so on.’
    Vimes gave up. It was true that every organization had to have its backbone, and therefore it stood to reason that there also would have to be some person who equated to the bits usually destined for dog food. But Nobby was loyal and lucky, and if there is anything that a policeman really needs, it’s luck. Maybe Nobby had got lucky.
    ‘What are you doing up here, Nobby?’ he said.
    Nobby looked at Vimes as if he was mad, and pointed to the wobbling temporary clacks tower. ‘Have to check the clacks messages, Mister Vimes. Actually, young Tony, who is the only one manning it, he sort of types them, and wraps them around a stone and they drops down, which is—’ There was a rattle on Nobby’s helmet and he deftly caught a stone wrapped in a strip of paper before it hit the ground. ‘Which is why I stand just here, Mister Vimes.’ Nobby unrolled the paper and announced, ‘One double stateroom and one single on the Roberta E. Biscuit , departing at 9 p.m. tomorrow! Lucky you, Mister Vimes. Clacks! What would we do without it, eh?’
    There was a shout from above: ‘Stand back, man coming down!’ and Vimes saw the whole structure of the clacks tower tremble as the young man carefully lowered himself from one spar to another, testing every one before putting his weight on it. He dropped the last few feet and held out his hand to Vimes. ‘Pleased to meet you, Sir Samuel! Sorry it’s shaky, but we were still working on it last night. A real rush job! Needs must when Lord Vetinari drives, you might say. We’ll do it properly later if that’s okay by you? I’ve got it lined up on a Grand Trunk tower, and they’ll bounce it to anywhere you want, plus a feed down to a clacks on your house, too. Of course you’ll have to have somebody manning this one to maintain the link, but from what I see that won’t be a problem.’ The young man saluted Vimes and added, ‘Best of luck to you, sir, and now I’m off to have my meal and a wash.’
    There was another clang on the helmet of Nobby Nobbs, and a wad of paper wrapped around a pebble fell at his feet.
    The young clacksman picked it up proprietorially and read the message . ‘Oh, it’s just an acknowledgement of service closure, confirming that I am standing down for a break. My assistant typed it. He didn’t really need to pass it on, but he is a conscientious little bugger and I have never seen such a quick study. Show him how to do something once and that’s enough! Reliable little devil as well. And with those big hands he has no problem with the keyboard.’
    As the man strode off whistling down the hill, Vimes jumped to a conclusion like a grasshopper. ‘Stinky! Just you come down here, you little perisher!’ he yelled.
    ‘Right here, commander!’ The little goblin was already standing almost between Vimes’s boots.
    ‘You? You! You operating a clacks ? Can you read?’
    Stinky held out both large hands. ‘No, but can look, but can remember! Green man say, “Stinky, this pointy thing it called A” and Stinky don’t need telling twice, and he say, “This one, look like bum, he called B”. Good fun!’ The cracked voice wheedled, but in a way that seemed to Vimes to be full of cynical knowingness. ‘The goblin is useful, goblin is trustworthy, goblin is helpful? Goblin isn’t dead! ’
    And it seemed to Vimes that he was the only one hearing these words. Young Sam had