The Truth

settled in her hair. Around her the other dwarfs spread out on a hopeless salvage operation. “Yes, I know the paper’s important, but there’s a lot of dead time on the press and, well, I’m sure there’d be a market for something like, well, a magazine for ladies…”
    “Dead time on the press?” said Goodmountain. “The press is dead! ”
    “What about?” said William, completely ignoring him.
    “Oh…fashion. Pictures of women wearing new clothes. Knitting. That sort of thing. And don’t you go telling me it’s too dull. People will buy it.”
    “Clothes? Knitting?”
    “People are interested in that sort of thing.”
    “I don’t like that idea much,” said William. “You might as well say we should have a magazine just for men.”
    “Why not? What would you put in it?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Articles about drink. Pictures of women not wearing…anyway, we’d need more people to write for them.”
    “Excuse me?” said Goodmountain.
    “Lots of people can write well enough for that sort of thing,” said Sacharissa. “If it was clever, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”
    “That’s true.”
    “And there’s another magazine that would sell, too,” said Sacharissa. Behind her, a piece of the press collapsed.
    “Hello? Hello? I know my mouth is opening and shutting,” said Goodmountain. “Is any sound getting out?”
    “Cats,” said Sacharissa. “Lots of people like cats. Pictures of cats. Stories about cats. I’ve been thinking about it. It could be called… Completely Cats .”
    “To go with Completely Women , and Completely Men ? Completely Knitting ? Completely Cake ?”
    “I had thought of calling it something like the Ladies’ Home Companion, ” said Sacharissa, “but your title has got a certain ring, I must admit. Ring…yes. Now, that’s another thing. There’s all these dwarfs in the city. We could produce a magazine for them. I mean…what’s the modern dwarf wearing this season?”
    “Chain mail and leather,” said Goodmountain, suddenly perplexed. “What are you talking about? It’s always chain mail and leather!”
    Sacharissa ignored him. The two of them were in a world of their own, Goodmountain realized. It had nothing to do with the real one anymore.
    “Seems a bit of a waste, though,” said William. “A waste of words, I mean.”
    “Why? There’s always more of them.” Sacharissa patted him gently on the cheek. “You think you’re writing words that’ll last forever? It’s not like that. This newspaper stuff…that’s words that last for a day. Maybe a week.”
    “And then they get thrown away,” said William.
    “Perhaps a few hang on. In people’s heads.”
    “That’s not where the paper ends up,” said William. “Quite the reverse.”
    “What did you expect? These aren’t books, they’re…words that come and go. Cheer up .”
    “There’s a problem,” said William.
    “Yes?”
    “We haven’t got enough money for a new press. Our shed has been burned down. We are out of business. It’s all over. Do you understand?”
    Sacharissa looked down.
    “Yes,” she said meekly. “I just hoped you didn’t.”
    “And we were so close. So close. ” William pulled out his notebook. “We could have run with this. I’ve got nearly the whole thing. All I can do with it now is give it to Vimes—”
    “Where’s the lead?”
    William looked across the wreckage. Boddony was crouching by the smoking press, trying to see under it.
    “There’s not a sign of the lead!” he said.
    “It’s got to be somewhere, ” said Goodmountain. “In my experience, twenty tons of lead do not just get up and walk away.”
    “It must’ve melted,” said Boddony. “There’s a few blobs on the floor…”
    “The cellar,” said Goodmountain. “Give me a hand here, will you?” He grabbed a blackened beam.
    “Here, I’ll help,” said William, coming around the stricken desk. “It’s not as though I’ve got anything better to do…”
    He got a grip on a tangle of charred wood and pulled—
    Mr. Pin arose from the pit like a demon king. Smoke poured off him and he was screaming one long, incoherent scream. He rose and rose and knocked Goodmountain aside with a round-arm sweep and then his hands clamped around William’s neck and still his leap propelled him up.
    William fell backwards. He landed on the desk, and felt a stab of pain as some piece of debris went through the flesh of his arm. But there was no time to think about pain