PC Action 1997 December/PCACTION1297.ISO/menue/POSTFACH/97120849.TXT

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Theatre of Crulity
SIMON the Sorcerer
Terry Pratchett

Hier eine Kurzgeschichte von Terry, die ich mir
aus dem Internet gezogen hab'. Sie spielt im
Discworld-Universum. Viel Spa▀


Theatre of Crulety
A short story
By Terry Pratchett





It was a fine summer morning, the kind to make a
man happy to be alive. And probably the man
would have been happier to be alive. He was, in
fact, dead. It would be hard to be deader with-
out special training.

"Well, now," said Sergeant Colon (Ankh-Morpork
City Guard, Night Watch), consulting his note-
book, "so far we have cause of death as a) being
beaten with at least one blunt instrument b)
being strangled with a string of sausages and
c) being savaged by at least two animals with
big sharp teeth. What do we do now, Nobby?"

"Arrest the suspect, Sarge," said Corporal Nobbs,
saluting smartly.

"Suspect, Nobby?"

"Him," said Nobby, prodding the corpse with his
boot. "I call it highly suspicious, being dead
like that. He's been drinking, too. We could do
him for being dead and disorderly."

Colon scratched his head. Arresting the corpse
offered, of course, certain advantages. But...

"I reckon," he said slowly, "that Captain
Vimes'll want this one sorted out. You'd better
bring it back to the Watch House, Nobby."

"And then can we eat the sausages, sarge?" said
Corporal Nobbs.

***

It wasn't easy, being the senior policeman in
Ankh-Morpork, greatest of cities of the Disc-
world [*].

There were probably worlds, captain Vimes mused
in his gloomier moments, where there weren't
wizards (who made locked room mysteries com-
monplace) or zombies (murder cases were really
strange when the victim could be the chief
witness) and where dogs could be relied on to
do nothing in the night time and not go around
chatting to people. Captain Vimes believed in
logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert
believed in ice -- i.e., it was something he
really needed, but this just wasn't the world
for it. Just once, he thought, it'd be nice to
solve something.

He looked at the blue-faced body on the slab,
and felt a tiny flicker of excitement. There
were clues. He'd never seen proper clues before.

"Couldn't have been a robber, Captain," said
Sergeant Colon. "The reason being, his pockets
were full of money. Eleven dollars."

"I wouldn't call that full," said Captain Vimes.

"It was all in pennies and ha'pennies, sir. I'm
amazed his trousers stood the strain. And I have
cunningly detected the fact that he was a show-
man, sir. He had some cards in his pocket, sir.
'Chas Slumber, Children's Entertainer'."

"I suppose no one saw anything?" said Vimes.

"Well, sir," said Sergeant Colon helpfully, "I
told young Constable Carrot to find some
witnesses."

"You asked Corporal Carrot to investigate a
murder? All by himself?" said Vimes.

The sergeant scratched his head.

"And he said to me, did I know anyone very old
and seriously ill?"

***

And on the magical Discworld, there is always
one guaranteed witness to any homicide. It's his
job.

Constable Carrot, the Watch's youngest member,
often struck people as simple. And he was. He
was incredibly simple, but in the same way that
a sword is simple, or an ambush is simple. He
was also possibly the most linear thinker in the
history of the universe.

He'd been waiting by the bedside of an old man,
who'd quite enjoyed the company. And now it was
time to take out his notebook.

"Now I know you saw something, sir," he said.
"You were there."

WELL, YES, said Death. I HAVE TO BE, YOU KNOW.
BUT THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR.

"You see, sir," said Corporal Carrot, "as I
understand the law, you are an Accessory After
The Fact. Or possibly Before The Fact."

YOUNG MAN, I AM THE FACT.

"And I am an officer of the Law," said Corporal
Carrot. "There's got to be a law, you know."

YOU WANT ME TO... ER... GRASS SOMEONE UP? DROP A
DIME ON SOMEONE? SING LIKE A PIGEON? NO. NO-ONE
KILLED MR. SLUMBER. I CAN'T HELP YOU THERE.

"Oh, I don't know, sir," said Carrot, "I think
you have."

DAMN.

Death watched Carrot leave, ducking his head as
he went down the narrow stairs of the hovel.

NOW THEN, WHERE WAS I...

"Excuse me," said the wizened old man in the
bed. "I happen to be 107, you know. I haven't
got all day."

AH, YES, CORRECT.

Death sharpened his scythe. It was the first
time he'd ever helped the police with their
enquiries. Still, everyone had a job to do.

***

Corporal Carrot strolled easily around the town.
He had a Theory. He'd read a book about
Theories. You added up all the clues, and you
got a Theory. Everything had to fit.

There were sausages. Someone had to buy sausages.
And then there were pennies. Normally only one
subsection of the human race paid for things in
pennies.

He called in at a sausage maker. He found a
group of children, and chatted to them for a
while.

Then he ambled back to the alley, where Corporal
Nobbs had chalked the outline of the corpse on
the ground (colouring it in, and adding a pipe
and a walking stick and some trees and bushes
in the background -- people had already dropped
7p in his helmet). He paid some attention to the
heap of rubbish at the far end, and then sat
down on a busted barrel.

"All right... you can come out now," he said, to
the world at large. "I didn't know there were
any gnomes left in the world."

The rubbish rustled. They trooped out -- the
little man with the red hat, the hunched back
and the hooked nose, the little woman in the
mob cap carrying the even smaller baby, the
little policeman, the dog with the ruff around
its neck, and the very small alligator.

Corporal Carrot sat and listened.

"He made us do it," said the little man. He had
a surprisingly deep voice. "He used to beat us.
Even the alligator. That was all he understood,
hitting things with sticks. And he used to take
all the money the dog Toby collected and get
drunk. And then we ran away and he caught us
in the alley and started on Judy and the baby
and he fell over and --"

"Who hit him first?" said Carrot.

"All of us!"

"But not very hard," said Carrot. "You're all
too small. You didn't kill him. I have a very
convincing statement about that. So I went and
had another look at him. He'd choked to death.
What's this?"

He held up a little leather disc.

"It's a swozzle," said the little policeman. "He
used it for the voices. He said ours weren't
funny enough."

"That's the way to do it!" said the one called
Judy.

It was stuck in his throat," said Carrot. "I
suggest you run away. Just as far as you can."

"We thought we could start a people's co-
operative," said the leading gnome.

"You know... experimental drama, street theatre,
that sort of thing. Not hitting each other with
sticks..."

"You did that for children?" said Carrot.

"He said it was a new sort of entertainment. He
said it'd catch on."

Carrot stood up, and flicked the swozzle into
the rubbish.

"People'll never stand for it," he said. "That's
not the way to do it."

[*] Which is flat and goes through space on the
back of an enormous turtle, and why not...

(c) Terry Pratchett 1993

"Theatre of Cruelty" was originally written for
the W. H. Smith "Bookcase" magazine. The ex-
panded version reproduced above was later
published in the program book for the OryCon 15
convention.

This online version of the story is made
available on the Net by kind indulgence of the
author, who reserves all reproduction and
other rights to the story. In his own words:
"I don't want to see it in distributed print
anywhere but don't mind people downloading it
for their own enjoyment."

Another Discworld short story is Troll Bridge.
It was published in After The King: Stories in
Honor of J. R. R. Tolkien by Martin H. Greenberg
published by Tor Books. See the ISBN page for
ISBN number.

Das war's,


SIMON the Sorcerer ***