SG1 Goes To The Discworld
By Perry Tratchett - quinn_dexter@hotmail.com

RATING: PG-13

WARNINGS: Low Level Violence, unless you're a chicken.

CATEGORY: humour, action, Crossover (Discworld), Challenge (#73) 

SPOILERS: None 

TIME FRAME: Three 

SUMMARY: SG1 go to the Discworld and are routed. 

DISCLAIMER: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of 
Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko 
Productions. We have written this story for entertainment purposes only 
and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement 
is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the 
property of the authors. Not to be archived without permission of the 
authors. 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: 

                         *******************

The discworld sailed through space, a slab of rock carried on the back 
of the four giant elephants that strode ponderously around the back of 
great A'tuin the turtle. The discworld was as improbable a place as it 
was possible to imagine, founded on a space time flaw of biblical 
proportions it's very existence was constantly being questioned, even by 
it's own denizens. 

Does the falling of a tree in the forest make a noise if there is no one 
there to hear it? Would the discworld exist if there were no one on 
board to conceive of it? Questions like that had entertained 
philosophers throughout the ages, and probably went a long way toward 
explaining why philosophers all seemed to give up bathing and hung 
around on the top of obscure mountains where their emaciated bodies 
gradually failed through a combination of malnutrition and exposure. 

Even on a place as obscurely improbable as the discworld, the genius of 
Leonard De Quirm took the whole concept of improbability to new levels. 
Ideas occurred to him with such frequency that he had finally forced the 
world to act against him lest he cause the downfall of whole 
civilisations. What price the liberty of one man when the lives and 
sanity of so many were at such risk? 

The extent of the danger posed by Leonard De Quirm is best illustrated 
by considering the occasion when the very nature of space and time 
occurred to him. 

The story began innocently enough. No, that is not true, there was 
nothing innocent about the way the story began at all... 

                         *******************

Something that carried the appearance of a stone ring rotated slowly 
within the confines of its stone shroud. The ring was about twenty 
centimetres thick and approximately five metres in diameter. If it was 
stone, it should have left a sizeable dent in the timber floor. 

If anyone measured its density, they would have realised that it should 
have left a sizeable dent in space-time. 

It did neither. That should have been a clue to the portentous nature of 
this new thing that had been created on the discworld. 

The ring rotated slowly to the accompaniment of a rumble like a grinding 
wheel lazily crushing cornhusks. The sound filled the otherwise 
expectantly silent room with a new and dangerous foreboding. The 
rotation continued remorselessly until a third hieroglyphic from among 
those engraved into the circumference of the giant stony toroid, dropped 
into place, forming a pattern that ancient Egyptians might have 
recognised. The key mechanism surrounding the giant circular stone 
locked with a robust click. 

There was a pregnant pause, it endured just long enough to lend an air 
of expectancy, like you would expect from any Creator who had a flair 
for the dramatic. 

A burst of cloud rocketed five metres into the room; swirled malignantly 
for a second before it retreated equally quickly to become a shimmering 
interface suspended inside the stone ring. It looked like the surface of 
a swimming pool, except it was vertical, and didn't slosh on the floor. 

"It works," said Leonard De Quirm. His face developed a self satisfied 
smirk. "My Hole-through-space-so people-can-travel-to-other-stars 
machine works." 

He clapped his hand together thoughtfully. 

"Lord Vetinari will be interested in seeing this," he said, which was a 
masterful piece of understatement. 

Leonard set off across a garden that B.S. Johnson had bequeathed to a 
previous Patrician of Anhk Morpork. It was just as well that B.S. 
Johnson died young, so that the discworld was protected from more of his 
monstrosities. It was such a pity that his death had to be accelerated 
through public necessity and the contribution of human intervention. He 
still left a legacy of brilliantly conceived, but fatally flawed 
creations throughout the Sto Plains surrounding the great city of Ankh 
Morpork. 

Leonard De Quirm strode confidently across the garden; his path pointed 
more or less straight toward the place where Haverlock Vetinari was 
playing with his scruffy old dog. 

"Fetch Wuffles," the voice of the Patrician of Ankh Morpork, arguably 
the most powerful man on the entire world, carried across the garden to 
Leonard De Quirm. 

                         *******************

"It just appeared sir," Samantha Carter craned her head around so she 
could look over her shoulder at General Hammond. Her short blonde hair 
was in disarray from the attention of fingers, that she pushed through 
it frequently during the previous few minutes. She creased her even 
features into an earnest expression. 

The commanding officer of the Stargate operation descended from his 
command position and hovered behind her chair like a stocky vulture. 
General Hammond was average height and more than average girth. His 
uniform covered his barrel like body as though it was sown together 
instead of buttoned. It probably was. 

"We were making a routine search through that quadrant," Samantha 
reported, she tapped the computer screen with one badly manicured 
finger, "and there it was. A new stargate." 

Hammond looked over her shoulder and grunted. The expression on his 
billiard ball head was serious. "We've never seen a stargate just appear 
before Doctor. Does this suggest that the Gou'ld are active in that 
region?" 

Samantha shook her head. "I don't know sir. I don't think any of us 
could answer that for you." Carter waved at the other scientific staff 
who occupied the room. 

General Hammond looked around the room and saw general confusion. All 
that sat between him and the plethora of electronic displays was the 
back of a lot of heads; no one seemed to be prepared to meet his eyes. 

"We'll have to send an investigating team," he rumbled. "Is SG1 
available?" 

"I believe so sir." 

"Get Jack O'Neill off his butt and tell him to come and see me." 

                         *******************

Lord Vetinari stood beside Leonard De Quirm. The Patrician's posture had 
much in common with a large skinny crane. He contemplated the circular 
construct that Leonard De Quirm had presented with such a flourish. 

"I'm impressed," Vetinari said carefully, "but I find it hard to 
reconcile this machine with my request for a printing engine that can 
automatically decode encrypted text." 

Vetinari had long since given up trying to keep Leonard focussed on one 
concept at a time. He brain made more leaps and changes in direction 
than pinball game. 

"Oh sorry," Leonard apologised profusely. "I finished that earlier and 
forgot to tell you. It's over there by the aerating-milk-for-making-
frothy-coffee machine." 

They both contemplated the coffee machine. A silent debate ensued. It 
was not as though another expresso wouldn't make their eyeballs float in 
their heads, but it would. Lately Vetinari had taken to visiting Leonard 
much more frequently than had been his previos want, just for the 
coffee. To think that the expresso machine might have been lost to the 
world if the death sentence had been carried out on Leonard De Quirm. 
Lord Vetinari shook his head. 

Leonard De Quirm pointed at the stargate. "This idea occurred to me 
while I was assembling the code engine. I just had to follow up on it." 

When inspiration was being handed out on the disc world, it all seemed 
to bottleneck in the head of Leonard De Quirm. Leonard could be 
dangerous if he ever turned his attention to human beings instead of 
natural science and mechanisms. 

Vetinari shook his head at that concept. If Leonard ever did turn to 
politics, then Lord Vetinari might have to reconsider his odd patronage. 

Vetinari regarded the stargate again. "What use is it?" 

"We could visit other stars, see other worlds, meet other people. The 
ideas and the culture we could exchange." 

Lord Vetinari contemplated a host of other possibilities, ones that 
Leonard would not have understood if he tried for a million years. 

                         *******************

Jack O'Neill picked three more letters from the box beside the scrabble 
board and placed them on the letter rack in front of him. The S was 
upside down. He tilted his head and then decided it made little 
difference if he left it that way. He could still tell that it was an S 
even if it was upside down. He now had S, E, R, E, N, I, and Y. The only 
opening where he could use all of those letters was a T. He shook his 
head, damn, still nothing that he could build on. 

Opposite from O'Neill, Teal'c frowned at his collection of seven 
letters. Teal'c was a huge dark man with a shaven head, a serious 
outlook and a Gou'ld embryo snuggled into his nervous system. The latter 
was a constant source of consternation to Teal'c. It greatly impeded his 
potential promotional prospects, but he was learning to live with the 
thing. He didn't have much choice really. If they tried to remove the 
thing from his nervous system he would die. The only outward signs of 
the infestation were the hole in his abdomen when the snake like head of 
the thing could occasionally come out to play. Oh and of course there 
was the subtle addition of the gold tattoo on his forehead that was used 
by the Gou'ld as his badge of identification. The embossing on his 
forehead looked like the knot in the grain of a teak log whenever he 
frowned. 

"I am still not convinced that the word "dweeb" is a legitimate word," 
Teal'c commented. 

"Of course it is, scores me thirty three," O'Neill said hurriedly. 

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c called over his shoulder. 

Daniel Jackson was a nerdish sort of man. His hair was always coffuired 
and worn just slightly too long for his current military occupation. The 
glasses he wore gave him a bookish appearance that said a great deal of 
truth about him. He looked up from the book he was reading, and glanced 
questioningly over his glasses at Teal'c. 

"You are an expert in human linguistics," Teal'c asked levelly. "The 
word "dweeb" is that...?" 

"Of course it is Jackson," O'Neill interjected. 

"Well, strictly speaking..." Jackson began. 

"Shut up Jackson," O'Neill ordered. 

The PA scratched significantly. Conversation stopped. "SG1, please 
report to General Hammond," came the voice through the public address 
system. 

"Oh, damn. Will they never leave us alone?" O'Neill asked rhetorically. 
He quickly gathered up his letters and tossed them back into the box 
while Teal'c folded the board and placed it on top of the scattered 
letters and then lowered the lid into place. 

Jackson held the door. The three of them walked out of the rec room and 
hustled to their impromptu meeting. On the table beside the now closed 
scrabble box they had left behind a piece of paper. It had been ruled 
into columns. At the head of each column, a label had been scrawled. 
They read: 'Teal'c and O'Neill. Beneath a column of crossed out numbers 
were the totals; 234 and 145 respectively. 

The book that had so engrossed Daniel Jackson's full attention fell from 
the table and landed on the floor so the cover was visible to the next 
observer. He had not placed it properly on the surface in his rush to 
leave with the rest of the team. The title was revealed; it was 'The 
adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, adapted from the screen by Alan Dean 
Foster.' 

                         *******************

Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the Ankh Morpork city watch crouched 
behind the overturned cart that formed the ersatz watch command post for 
this latest hostage siege scenario. He turned to Constable Visit-the-
infidel-with-pamphlets-praising-our-lord. 

"Visit," Carrot said. The rest of his name was too big a mouthful even 
for Carrot to bother trying to say it out loud. The constable turned 
from his rapt concentration on the building across the street from where 
they were encamped. "So what happened then?" Carrot asked mildly. 

Visit drew breath and prepared to deliver. Anything he said took on many 
of the aspects of a zealot's sermon. The Omnian school of public 
speaking had a lot to answer for. Carrot steeled himself for the stilted 
delivery. "They dashed into that building and we heard a great deal of 
screaming, the sort of ruckus one would have expected in the temple 
when..." 

"The Fool's guild," Carrot interrupted. Even Carrot interrupted the flow 
of Omnian religious quotations when Visit got into stride. Carrot hadn't 
always been like that, but lately he had discovered that there was only 
just so much time in the day and so much to do in a city where crime was 
not just rife or organised, it was Organised. "They went into the Fool's 
guild?" There was just the last hint of wonder in his voice. "The 
Assassin's guild I could have understood." The Assassin's guild was 
right next door to the Fool's guild, there had been one particularly 
nasty period in the recent city history when that proximity had been the 
cause of a great deal of confusion and trouble. "But what would have 
possessed them to go into the Fool's guild?" 

"That's what Downspout said," Visit supplied. "I have these pamphlets if 
the Captain would like to browse through them I'm sure..." 

"Perhaps later Visit. In the meantime can you get Downspout to come and 
see me?" 

The Omnian constable almost bowed and scuttled over to the building 
behind their overturned cart. 

Carrot turned to the brain's trust of his watch. Leaning against the 
cart beside Carrot was Sergeants Colon and Angua. Perhaps that should 
have been said brains and trust. Angua had brains and Fred Colon had... 
no perhaps that wasn't right either. 

"Fred, I thought Nobby was with you on traffic patrol?" Carrot asked. 

"Well he was going to be, but I was caught up with something, and Angua 
was working the vice squad and she needed back up. So Nobby obliged. You 
know how he is always ready to throw his lot in with his fellow 
officers." 

Carrot knew just how Nobby was. Corporal Nobbs was one of life's born 
quartermasters, always prepared to volunteer to look after anything 
valuable. Nobby looked after the petty cash, because whenever you opened 
the petty cash tin, you could be sure that Nobby was minding it in his 
own pocket. 'Wouldn't want anyone to come along and steal something that 
was just left around in a jar,' he would say. 

Angua looked over her shoulder at the door to the Fool's guild again. 
Things had been quiet in there for several minutes. That was never a 
good sign. Constable Dorfl and Sergeant Detritus were guarding the back 
entrance, so there was no chance that the subjects of the hostage drama 
had made their way out the back way. The sight of a troll armed with a 
siege engine and a golem armed with his own freedom were enough to stop 
anyone in their tracks. 

Angua was out of uniform, going undercover, so to speak. Perhaps that 
should have read under-covered. Her dress seemed to be short of both 
material and fasteners. 

"We were doing the bag snatch sting," Angua explained. "I've tried to 
explain to Nobby that the whole sting works better if I carry the bag, 
but Nobby insisted that was not the sort of thing that a lady should 
take the risk doing. He insisted on playing the lady role." 

"That seems to be more than a passing phase of his," Carrot commented 
charitably. Nobby and dresses was becoming synonymous lately. 

"It does appear to be a touch more serious than that," commented Angua 
vaguely. 

"Wasn't Detritus with you?" Carrot asked her. This whole operation was 
starting to make his carefully planned roster look rather superfluous. 

"He spotted Haematite doing some sort of deal in the alley over there," 
she pointed across the road. "He went to check it out. He was gone a 
while and Nobby turned up and..." 

Carrot nodded. 

Detritus was hell to the slab trade in town. It had been his great 
passion over the last few months, dealing his own form of justice to the 
dealers who were preying on the city's little pebbles. 

Carrot nodded. He always encouraged community policing. "How is 
Haematite?" Carrot wondered idly. 

"He'll recover," Colon answered. "A bit of grout and a bit of time and 
he might be walking and talking again by the end of the month." 

Carrot nodded thoughtfully. Street justice was frowned upon. Justice is 
mine sayeth Lord Vetinari the Patrician of Ankh Morpork. Somehow Carrot 
doubted that Lord Vetinari would be too upset about Detritus providing 
rough justice to a slab dealer. "So what were these men doing?" 

"We're not really sure," Angua frowned prettily. "We were over there," 
she pointed to the corner of the street, "and this cart came tearing 
around this corner. It was travelling way too fast and overturned. They 
were being followed by another cart; it stopped, barely before it ran 
into this other one. They took one look at the wreck and then just 
disappeared. That was immediately after Nobby came over to investigate. 
I was concentrating on the slab case and missed that bit." 

Carrot nodded. He didn't recognise the cart. He was better with people. 

Fred Colon almost spoke at that point. If he had he would have said 
something about an issue that had been on his mind for a while now. 

As the head of the Ankh Morpork traffic division, the investigation of 
traffic accidents and supervision of the clean up came under Fred's 
jurisdiction. Even someone with the sort of limited imagination that 
Fred Colon had been endowed would eventually begin to notice the 
increasing frequency of cart accidents in the vicinity of Angua's bag 
snatching sting. 

Crouched down beside Carrot, he was acutely aware of how distracting a 
sight young Angua could be. Dressing in that dress(?) might just have 
been the final straw. 

The only thing that stopped Colon's mouth from uttering those traitorous 
words was the presence of Carrot. While Carrot was a competent officer, 
even if life's natural sergeant Colon said so, he did so have a blind 
spot where his girlfriend was concerned. 

In Angua's defence the injury rate to women walking through the streets 
of Ankh Morpork had dropped significantly over the past few months. 
Replaced by injuries to cart drivers admittedly, but still a 
considerable improvement. The Seamstresses' Guild had been quite 
complimentary about the change in circumstances. 

"One of them was carrying a silver sword," Angua offered and then 
shuddered, violently. Werewolves' aversion to silver was legendary and 
justified. "I could smell it, even from way over there." She pointed to 
the alley way where the confrontation with Haematite had occurred. 

"They grabbed Nobby and backed straight into the Fools' guild," Visit 
concluded. He had just returned to the command cart after summonsing 
Downspout. The laborious progress of Constable Downspout from the roof 
of the building behind them continued while they spoke. 

"Obviously thought he was an old lady," Angua added as an after thought. 

"Not locals then," Carrot concluded. "Locals would know better than to 
head for that building." He thought for a moment. "They're not that 
badly informed either. If they knew to wave that silver sword at you." 
That was a pretty well formed conclusion as well. Wearing the outfit she 
had chosen for the sting Angua looked for all-the-world like the highest 
priced lady of negotiable virtue that the city might possess. The last 
thing a man would think upon seeing Angua in that guise was anything to 
do with werewolves. Someone knew who she was, obviously. Which was it, 
an ignorant local or a well-informed foreigner? 

The grinding noise made by the passage of a moving gargoyle had almost 
reached sufficient volume to obliterate any attempt at conversation. All 
eyes turned to watch the approach of a specialised species of troll. 

"Oo on'ed oo ee ee?" Constable Downspout asked Carrot. The city's 
gargoyle population had been queuing up to join the City Watch over 
recent months. They had a lot to recommend them. They made a great 
surveillance team, and after his initial hesitations the head of the 
City Watch, Commander Vimes, had found them to be extremely useful. They 
were patient, rarely becoming bored with the more tedious surveillance 
activities and they watched the one spot continuously, and for that they 
were paid all the pigeons they could eat. 

There was an obvious down-side to their employment. It had made 
something on a mockery of the carrier pigeon message dispatch system 
that the watch used when the gargoyles first came on board, but that was 
a small price to pay. (Unless you were a pigeon of course). Their one 
draw back was their inability to move their lips. You had to develop an 
ear for their accent. 

Carrot had about the best ear for accents in Ankh Morpork. 

"Was there anything else going on when they came through here?" 

"Ike ot?" 

"It just seems strange," Carrot ruminated thoughtfully, "that they would 
grab Nobby and hide like that. It's not as though we were actively 
pursuing them or anything. This just seems rather panicky to me." 

"Ey ust abbed im an an," Downspout said. 

"Nothing unusual about them at all?" Carrot asked. He waited for a 
response. 

The gargoyle shrugged. "ey ere ools." 

"They'd have to be to capture Nobby. They should have known that would 
bring down the wrath of the Watch." Carrot frowned. Something wasn't 
right about this situation. "Did anyone get a good look at them?" He 
asked. 

Most of the team shook their heads. Downspout shrugged. 

"Nobby would have," suggested Fred Colon. 

Carrot gave him a look. 

"Well he would have." 

Carrot blinked and turned away as though not believing they had just 
conducted that part of the conversation. 

"Thanks Downspout," Carrot said. "Can you watch out for us when we make 
the play for the door? I think we might need a high sight line. Just to 
be on the safe side." 

The gargoyle shrugged and lumbered painfully away. It climbed the wall 
of the building in a sort of stop-motion animation kind of way. Carrot 
watched the progress of the gargoyle intently until it settled itself 
into position atop the building. 

"Alright," Carrot said decisively. "Let's go and prod some buttock." 

                         *******************

Jack O'Neill sprawled in the last chair before the exit to the 
conference room cradling his silver and sandy haired head in his hands. 
His booted feet sat on the desk and waved back ward and forward in time 
with the cadence of his words. 

"Let me see if I've got this straight," O'Neill said. General Hammond 
sat to one side of the huge back lit television screen they were using 
for the mission briefing. He nodded for O'Neill to continue. Samantha 
Carter was pointing at a star in the middle of a cluster of stars and 
smiled encouragingly. The image on the screen might as well have been 
the night sky outside their secured compound for all it meant to 
O'Neill. "It just appeared. Right? There's how many combinations of gate 
addresses? Sixty million or something, and there's only a fraction of 
those addresses used right? So one appears all of a sudden, just like 
that. Bingo! The Gou'ld have created a new one. After being inactive for 
all this time, we get a sign that they're expanding again. And you want 
us to go through and find out what they're doing?" 

"That is correct," General Hammond answered. 

"Am I the only one here who doesn't think that this situation looks just 
a bit strange. I mean, people, what's going on here? These bastards have 
been capturing people since before Moses played full back for Jerusalem 
and then they implant them with these little parasites that eventually 
propagate their species and we want to send a tiny little team of four 
to say hello. Does any of this start to ring a bell with you people?" 

He faced four blank faces. 

"What's your point?" General Hammond finally asked when no one else 
seemed to want to take up the issue. 

"Well, it just sounds kind of dangerous, that's all." 

"Yes. It is." 

"And some more people could get killed." 

"Yes that is possible." 

"And the stargate teams are always at the pointy end of these problems." 

"That is true. For which you have everybody's thanks." 

"But most of them have no idea we exist because the whole thing is 
classified and the population of the Earth has no idea of the constant 
threat it faces." 

"True as well." 

There was silence. 

"Well," O'Neill said finally. "OK, so I've made my point now. You can 
continue the briefing. I won't interrupt again." 

"Thank you Colonel," General Hammond conceded, "Major," he gestured for 
Carter to continue. 

"As Colonel O'Neill pointed out, this is an unprecedented development in 
the stargate network and we need to be cautious in how we make the next 
few moves. We sent a probe through the new wormhole. We'll run the 
tape." 

A scene that had been recorded inside a large office or study replaced 
the star field. A few desks were arranged haphazardly around the floor. 
Each was covered with paper. The resolution of the video image was too 
poor to make out the content of the paper sheets. A few half-finished 
machines sat on desks and a few more of them were bunched up in the 
corner. 

Nothing happened. The video image ran on. More of the same nothing 
continued to happen. O'Neill started flicking balled up pieces of paper 
into the waste paper basket. 

The probe rotated about it's axis. There was a window to the outside 
world. It looked like a pleasant day, a few fluffy clouds and little 
else to mar the azure perfection of a spring day. 

"The atmosphere is predominantly Nitrogen with a combustible 
concentration of Oxygen, trace gases, Carbon Dioxide, helium, argon, 
krypton," Carter said into the lengthening silence. "It appears to be 
breathable. The temperature was temperate, say Southern States spring. 
Humidity was low. Nice place to visit." 

"The desks and chairs suggest human occupation," General Hammond said. 

O'Neill bounced one of his paper balls off the back of Teal'c's head. 
The rebound missed the basket by several metres. 

"The Gou'ld often get involved in human occupation," Daniel Jackson said 
evenly. "It's what they do, occupy humans. We are their preferred host 
after all." 

Daniel's wife had been captured and infested with a Gou'ld parasite. It 
was the reason he had been dragged back into the stargate operation from 
another world. He was not military by background; he was an 
archaeologist, or more correctly an Egyptologist. It had been his 
translation of the hieroglyphics that had decrypted the stargate for 
modern human use. For that breakthrough he received few thanks. Typical 
of the military; do a good job and your reward was a harder job. It was 
all classified. The entire stargate teams existed in a state of virtual 
missing-person status. 

"How long does that video record go on for?" O'Neill asked. 

"An hour, then we pulled it back through." 

"Why?" 

"Because it couldn't open the door and we didn't want to open our 
discussions with who ever is on the other side by blowing one of it's 
doors off it's hinges." 

"In other words the probe wasn't armed." It was the second bad pun that 
the team ignored. Things must have been serious. O'Neill exchanged a 
glance with Jackson. 

"That's right," Carter said. 

O'Neill pulled his feet off the desk and dropped his boots to the floor 
with a thump. "OK, when do we go?" 

                         *******************

His excellency, the duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes of the Ankh 
Morpork City watch looked across the desk at his second in charge. A 
load of unattended paper work marred part of the view, but even just the 
small part of Captain Carrot that was visible to Vimes, was a treat. 

Captain Carrot's hair was a mess. His face still carried traces of 
custard and charcoal. A smear marred his right eyebrow and another one 
decorated the tip of his left ear. His breast-plate was not it's normal, 
gleaming, self. He had a splotch of water smeared yellow paint on his 
side and a 'kick me' sticker hanging off his back. 

Sergeant Angua sat beside Carrot. She was similarly dishevelled. Her 
normally immaculately groomed hair was a bird's nest of tangles and had 
been speckled with blue and orange paint. She had managed to clean the 
soot and custard off her face, but someone had made a pretty substantial 
attempt to fill her decolletage with custard. Some of it still stained 
the 'neckline' (for want of a term to describe something that was closer 
to her belly button than her collar bones) of her dress. 

Vimes wasn't smiling. His long mournful face would look odd should he 
ever crack so much as a smile. With all those vertical lines it would 
look like a banana trying to squeeze through a picket fence while lying 
down. 

His finger tapped a single sheet of paper on his desk. 

The heading on top of the paper read 'Incident report.' The ink was only 
just recently dry. Carrot's signature was at the bottom. The words 
between the heading and the signature were the subject of the 
conversation. 

"It does not do the reputation of the City watch a lot of good to be 
involved in incidents like this one," Vimes said levelly. 

"No sir," said Carrot. 

"The worst part is that they got away." 

"That's true sir," said Carrot. 

"It wasn't really our fault," Angua said unwisely. 

Vimes looked her way. It was a look that made a werewolf quail. 

"Yes," Vimes said. "You had both Detritus and Dorfl outside the back 
door." His voice sampled some irony, then developed a severe case of 
irony overload. If there was much more irony in his words they'd be too 
heavy to get up his throat and out past his teeth. "It was such a pity 
they came through the front door. Now who was guarding the front door?" 
he made a show of reading from the report. "Why it was Captain Carrot, 
Sergeant Angua, Seargent Colon, Constable Visit and Constable 
Downspout." 

"We didn't know they were clowns," argued Angua and then shut up because 
she could see how stupid that sounded. It was for Fool's guild they had 
invaded after all. 

"You never thought to ask Downspout whether the people who dashed into 
the Fool's guild might have been actual fools." 

"Well the idea sort of occurred, sir," admitted Carrot. "He said they 
were fools. It's just that we took a different interpretation. It did 
seem pretty foolish of them to take a watchman hostage, so when 
Downspout said they were fools, I just thought..." 

Literal as always, thought Vimes. Carrot and the English language would 
always struggle to understand one another. For a smart lad he could be 
unbelievably dense. 

Vimes shook his head. "Get your selves cleaned up," he told them, "and 
meet me at the Patrician palace. We have a genuine emergency to attend 
to, apparently. We have to prepare for the arrival of a coach load of 
diplomats." 

After the door closed behind the bedraggled pair, Vimes placed his face 
in his hands and laughed so hard he thought he might wet himself. 

                         *******************

The team making up SG1 stepped through the newly commissioned star gate 
and then moved cautiously into the room, taking up defensive positions 
one at a time. They were all dressed in camouflaged combat fatigues, 
they each wore helmets with built in infrared and light enhancing 
goggles. On their backs they wore packs stocked with a host of measuring 
equipment and camping gear. 

They were also issued with a sub-machine gun capable of 1000 rounds per 
minute, a wickedly sharp carbon fibre knife and several ammunition belts 
that wrapped around their waists and crossed their chests. Each of the 
team's members held their guns at the ready when they appeared through 
the stargate portal. O'Neill had even made sure they had the safety's 
switched off. 

"We come in peace," O'Neill said, which is a pretty dumb thing to say 
when you are waving a semi-automatic pistol and wearing enough 
ammunition to sustain a small guerilla war, but that's just his style. 

'I don't think there's any one here," Daniel Jackson said. 

"I concur," said Teal'c 

"Yeah OK, I can see that," agreed O'Neill. He pulled his combat helmet 
off and slung it from his belt. He pulled a baseball cap from his pocket 
and stuck it on his head backwards. He pushed his sunglasses onto the 
top of his head, over his cap. 

Having made his fashion statement, he stepped further into the room and 
looked at a few of the things he found scattered over the tables, the 
benches and also piled into the corners of the room. 

"What is this place?" O'Neill said. He picked among the scattered 
drawings and drew one from amongst half finished machinery. He looked at 
it closely. It appeared to be an engineering drawing, with sections and 
enlarged views, finished with numbered parts and little manufacturing 
notations. He didn't recognise the language. "Sam. Can you make out what 
any of this stuff is?" 

Samantha picked up another sheet of paper and glanced at it quickly. "I 
think so, yes sir." She turned it through ninety degrees and then ninety 
more. She tilted her head another forty five degrees and then back to 
vertical. 

"What language is it in?" O'Neill directed the question at Daniel 
Jackson. 

"English," Daniel answered. He handled one of the scraps of paper 
himself. His tone was less than certain. 

"English?" asked O'Neill. He took another look. His head followed the 
same tilting pattern that Samantha Carter had made. 

"Written backward," Daniel explained. 

"O. K," said O'Neill very slowly. He put the piece of paper back on the 
desk and then patted it once as if to say nice doggie, just stay. "I 
guess that makes a real pleasant change from pictures and 
hieroglyphics." He turned to Samantha. "See if you can work out what 
this stuff says while we take a look around." 

She nodded. "OK." She pulled a chair from beneath a table and began 
unpacking her gear. Within seconds the top of the table looked like 
someone had disembowelled a television set and then scattered the 
entrails across the table. 

O'Neill had no idea how she managed to sort through all that crap and 
still get results out of it. Sometimes he thought that the answers she 
seemed to be able to sprout to his questions were just guesses and the 
rest of the paraphernalia was for show. He would be none the wiser if 
that were true. 

He looked around the room and tried to decide which was the best 
direction for them to head. 

The room had a single window that overlooked an ornamental garden. 
Something about the perspective of the garden didn't look right, but 
O'Neill couldn't place the problem with the scenery at that time. He had 
bigger problems to content with. 

There was only the one door. He stepped up to it. The handle moved at 
his touch. It wasn't locked. 

"We'll only be gone an hour or so. If you don't hear from us in that 
time you know what to do." 

Samantha Carter grunted something inarticulately and resumed plugging 
circuit boards and cables together. The rest of the team was already 
gone as far as she was concerned. She had more important things to do 
than worry about where the men in her team were prowling. 

The three men slipped through the door, one behind the other in a 
typical military leapfrog manoeuvre. The door shut behind them with a 
subdued click. 

Immediately after the door shut, Samantha heard a series of scrapes, 
bangs, pauses, curses and one singular twanging noise. 

For some reason, understood by narrative gods but totally opaque to mere 
mortals, a panicked chicken burst through the door, flapped once, 
squawked and then raced out into the garden. 

Samantha Carter's eyes tracked it's progress. She blinked a few times. 

"How come they get to have all the fun?" Sam asked the piece of paper 
she held in her hand. She studied a drawing of the human body executed 
in intricate detail. 

                         *******************

"One thing has always worried me about stargate travel," Jack O'Neill 
said to Daniel Jackson. Jackson, O'Neill and Teal'c walked between the 
haphazardly constructed buildings that seemed to lean on each other for 
support on either side of the street, and sometimes across it. The place 
was a testimony to a lack of town planning and an architectural 
nightmare. 

"Only one thing?" Daniel asked. His tone was distracted. His eyes 
tracked a tableau in the shadow between two slightly skewed buildings. 
It was a compelling sight; a glimpse of what he was convinced was a 
vampire just beginning to feed on a weakly struggling human victim. "No 
it couldn't be," he muttered to himself. 

"Well more than one, naturally," O'Neill said in an equally vague tone. 
He saw the vampire as well and watched closely when it raced away into 
the shadows, "but one thing worries me more often than most of the other 
things that worry me." 

Daniel puzzled that one through and then finally fell for the trap of 
asking. "What's that?" 

O'Neill stopped in the middle of the road, turned suddenly to face 
Daniel Jackson. A horse drawn cart dodged him. The driver let out a few 
colourful expletives and then was gone. "How come everyone seems to 
speak English? I mean, the first time we came through the stargate, we 
took you along because we needed an Egyptologist and the people we came 
across couldn't speak English and you had to translate for us, right?" 

"Right," Daniel was more interested in the steaming pile of organic 
fertiliser that the horse had decided use to decorate the road. 
O'Neill's feet were dangerously close to stepping in it. If he took one 
more backward pace... 

O'Neill remained in the same place with his hands firmly wedged in his 
pockets. "But since then every one we come across can speak English." 

Daniel looked at him with a question written all over his face. "Your 
point being?" 

'Well..." 

Daniel looked blank. 

"OK..." O'Neill gestured for Daniel to take up the story. 

Daniel still looked blank. "So what was it you wanted me to discuss." 

O'Neill shook his head. "Nothing." 

He turned and started walking across the road. One pace into his march 
he stopped. "Oh, sh..." 

He was right. 

                         *******************

The stargate SG1 team continued their distracted march along the street. 

"It might be Tudor era London," Daniel Jackson suggested. "We would need 
a historian rather than an archaeologist to check this place out." 

"Were the Gou'ld active on earth that recently?" O'Neill asked Teal'c. 

"Not that I'm aware," the Jaffa answered. 

"Societies' evolve," Daniel reminded O'Neill. 

"In parallel like this?" O'Neill asked bemused. 

O'Neill had given up trying to clean his boots and was reasonably 
confident that he had scraped all the manure from them. It was just that 
he could still smell it; that was all. He hoped it was a phantom odour, 
a memory of what he had endured, although he wasn't so sure. 

"I think that pile of rocks moved," Teal'c pointed toward a pile of 
rocks that someone had heaped reasonably neatly so that they almost 
filled an alley leading between two building. 

"What?" asked O'Neill. 

"In there," Teal'c said, and pointed. His eyes tracked the pile of rocks 
in case they decided to move again. 

"Is that relevant?" O'Neill asked. 

"I don't know," the Jaffa said, "but I believe it should be 
investigated." 

The three stargate officers backtracked along the road. They stopped and 
looked at the pile of rocks. They peered at it. Each of them touched it 
with their foot and then stepped back. Nothing happened. 

O'Neill reached into the alley with the barrel of his semi-automatic and 
poked the pile of rocks a couple of time. Nothing happened. He poked 
again with the same result. He was losing interest fast. 

"You're sure," he asked Teal'c. He had gone so far out through the other 
side of irony; he was bordering on sarcasm. "It moved?" 

"I am certain Colonel O'Neill." 

"Not doing it now." O'Neill peered closely at the pile of rocks. Once 
again, it repeated its lack of animation. O'Neill shook his head. 
"C'mon, we're wasting time." 

They turned away and walked toward the bend in the road. "How is it that 
a city like this can evolve so close the Tudor era on earth that you can 
recognise it?" O'Neill said. "That's what I want to know? Propagation of 
Minoan culture, or extrapolation of ancient Egyptian I could understand. 
The Gou'ld took people from those eras, but this..." he finished with a 
gesture. Then he shrugged. 

"I don't know," said Daniel. 

"It's getting sosea watchman can't even go under the covers in dis town 
before people start poking him in a rocks," muttered Detritus the troll. 
He was diguised like a pile of rocks and staking out an alley that was 
used extensively in the slab trade. 

Daniel Jackson stopped in his tracks. He turned slowly. "Those rocks 
spoke," he said. 

"It's just a pile of rocks," O'Neill said. 

"Yeah but..." 

"Rock's don't talk." 

"Yeah but..." 

"Well you can sit here and talk to them if you like..." 

"Yeah but..." 

"You coming?" A note of impatience had crept into his voice. "We need to 
find someone in authority." 

O'Neill and Teal'c strode purposefully toward the next corner in the 
road. Daniel looked after them and then back along the road toward the 
entrance to the alley, indecisively. He shook his head and then 
continued trailing along behind O'Neill and Teal'c. All the way to the 
corner, Daniel was looking over his shoulder as though daring the rocks 
to speak again. 

He lingered at the bend, reluctant to make that last movement. 

The stargate team rounded the corner and was gone from sight. 

"Dat were close," said Detritus. 

                         *******************

Samantha Carter pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear and looked at 
the data she was being fed by her mess of instrumentation and the 
spider-web of fibre-optic cabling. She pulled her radio from a pocket at 
the side of her trousers without taking her eyes off the instruments, as 
though she didn't believe the data would still be there if she looked 
away. 

"Colonel O'Neill," she called. 

There was a few seconds of scratching static and then Jack's voice came 
through. "Here, Sam." 

She pressed the transmit-button again. "I'm getting some bizarre 
readings on the fundamental constants of cosmology here." 

There ensued one of those pauses while the other end of the conversation 
waits for the nonsense to make sense. It didn't happen. No subconscious 
programming could work its way through that lot. Which left O'Neill with 
plan B. "What does that mean in English?" He asked. 

"We're obviously close to some sort of rift in space time," Samantha 
Carter transmitted. 

Same pause, different time. "That was only marginally closer to English, 
Sam. How about we pretend, hypothetically you understand, that I don't 
have any idea what it is that you're talking about? Let's start from 
there." 

Samantha took a deep breath. She was used to this sort of response for 
Jack. He was a great guy, and if they were thrown together without the 
military regulations regarding fraternisation they might have conducted 
a wholly different type of relationship, but there were times when she 
could beat his head with a blunt instrument. "Well the laws of physics 
don't seem to apply in quite the same way that I would normally expect 
them to. Things are not going to be quite the same as they are back 
home." 

"OK. That sounds bad." 

"It might be." 

"Is that a doubt I hear?" 

"Yeah, a bit. Probability is all screwed up here. You might find 
improbable things happening." 

This time there was a slightly different pause. It was the sort of pause 
you get where the other end of the conversation can't believe that they 
have been told something quite like what their ears insisted was just 
said. "You mean more improbable than the stargate and Gou'ld and Teal'c 
and some of the other stuff we've encountered?" 

"Much more so," Samantha said emphatically. 

"OK, that goes beyond bad," O'Neill decided. "That gets nearer to 
scary." 

Samantha clamped her bottom lip between her teeth. "Um, there's 
something else," she said finally. "I've been looking through the notes 
that the inventor of the new stargate left behind, and I get the feeling 
that they believe the world is carried on the back of four elephants 
that ride on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space." 

Silence answered. 

"O'Neill?" 

"Daniel here," said Daniel. "I know that legend. I think I can place 
that one when we get back to base. We're talking about an ancient 
culture here. Very primitive belief system." 

Daniel left the transmit button of the radio pressed so Samantha heard 
the discussion between the three male members of the team. 

"Daniel Jackson, I suggest that you remember that this ancient culture 
invented the stargate by themselves," Teal'c reminded Daniel. 

"There is that I suppose,' said Daniel's voice. 

"I wish you hadn't brought that up," O'Neill said. 

                         *******************

O'Neill placed his radio back in the little pocket just above his left 
knee an re-fastened the fabric cover. 

"We probably should try to find whoever's in charge here," O'Neill told 
Teal'c and Jackson. His gaze tracked from building to building. If he 
did that for too long he would get a crick in his neck from all the 
little jerky movements required to follow the building line. "These 
buildings all look the same." 

"Like they're about to fall over," Daniel Jackson offered sardonically. 

"Or catch alight," O'Neill agreed. 

"This place looks like it's been built on top of itself over and over 
again," Daniel said. Near the footpath on the opposite side of the road 
he was sure he could see the top of a door way, barely a couple of 
centimetres above the pavement line. It was being used as a doorstep 
now. "I don't know of any human culture that does that." 

"Is that important?" O'Neill asked. 

"It could be of great cultural significance." 

"Whatever," said O'Neill. "Look, if we're going to find someone in 
charge here, we need to ask somebody. I think that's the only way we're 
going to find out where the guy in-charge hides out. We'll try in a 
pub." He looked around, then pointed along the street. "That one." 

The sign above the door said "The Mended Drum." 

They pushed their way inside. 

                         *******************

Teal'c woke with a splitting headache and a bad case of full-bladder. 
When he catalogued the extent of his headache he realised that it 
extended all the way down to his little toes. 

He opened his eyes and the sight he was confronted by, very nearly cured 
the second problem, but it made the first one much worse. He closed his 
eyes quickly before he embarrassed himself. 

He opened just his right eye the second time, hoping that he could 
dilute the problem if his brain only got the information from one source 
instead of two. 

It was still there. Teal'c found himself looking at something that 
seemed to have been stitched together from a butcher's shopwindow 
display. It was shaped like a human being (well, in a sort of lopsided 
way). No attempt had been made at anything other than a loose approach 
to symmetry. 

It moved. Teal'c groaned and closed his eye again. 

"Hello," said Igor. His voice was dripping with enthusthiathm, among 
other liquids. "I wondered how long it would be before you woke up 
thir." 

The fragmented apparition pushed itself off the bench and walked over to 
take a closer look at Teal'c. 

"Where am I?" Teal'c managed to ask through carefully marshalling his 
resources, things like tongues and lips, all of which were reluctant to 
obey the call to duty. He finally bullied them into action. His tongue 
felt like it had died in his mouth and was already partially putrescent. 

The meat-man sat back on the seat and crossed his legs. One foot was no 
lower than the other one was, so the legs were obviously different 
lengths. "In the thells of the thity watch houthe, thir," Igor answered. 
"I believe that you were arrethted for dithturbing the peathe. 

"The people up thtairs found out that you were quite different to your 
friendth. Thergeant Angua can be quite pertheptive in that regard. They 
brought you down to thee me. I have been charged with informing them of 
what manner of man you are thir." 

Teal'c wiped his face and squirmed across the surface of the hard bunk, 
struggling to get as far away from the apparition as he could manage. 
His back reached the wall. He pushed but, despite his best efforts, the 
wall wouldn't give way. Perhaps now he was outside of the fall out zone. 
If he wasn't there was nothing he could do about it. 

"And who are you?" Teal'c hazarded. His head felt slightly less awful, 
perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel after all, so long as 
it wasn't an on-coming train. 

"Why, I am an Igor, thir. Pleathed to make your aquaintanth," the meat 
man shot out his hand. For a worrying moment Teal'c thought that it 
might not stop when the arm did. The stitching gave a worrying stretch 
but the hand stayed anchored. 

Teal'c wiped his face again. No, he had not moved far enough away. All 
he had left as protective options from the liquid fall-out was the 
possibility of asking questions without 's' in the answer. 

The Igor watched Teal'c carefully shaking his hand. Teal'c was worried 
that the hand would remain clasped between his own fingers when they 
finished their greeting. The patchwork hand withdrew. It remained 
attached to the arm. Teal'c breathed a sigh of relief. 

"There'th thomething I've been dying to know," Igor asked. "That thing 
inthide your head. It hath the motht amathingly thmall thtiching. Could 
you tell me how was it done?" 

                         *******************

Jack O'Neill woke with the same combination of headache and bladder-full 
as Teal'c was experiencing a score of metres below him. 

O'Neill's waking experience was somewhat less stressful that Teal'c's 
had been but he was still confronted by a questioner. He found himself 
being examined by a large man with short red hair and an earnest 
expression. He wore a gleaming breast plate and chain mail. On his hip 
was the largest, most obviously, used, sword O'Neill had ever seen in 
his life. 

"Where am I?" O'Neill croaked. 

"Office of the city watch," the big red headed man answered. "I'm 
Captain Carrot Ironfounderson for your information." Carrot pulled a 
notebook from inside his breastplate. "For the record, sir, could you 
tell me what happened to you last night?" 

"I don't remember much of it," O'Neill sat up and rubbed the back of his 
head. "I feel like I've been hit by a tonne of bricks." 

"That would have been Dolomite the bouncer, I suspect sir." 

O'Neill shrugged that one off. "The last thing I remember was walking 
into a pub called..." He stopped. What was it called? It was very nearly 
the last thing he remembered. 

"The Mended Drum," Carrot prompted. 

O'Neill nodded. Memory flooded back. A groan threatened to escape from 
his lips. "Yeah that was the one. There was a monkey at the bar." 

"The Librarian." 

"The what?" 

"He's an Orangutan, an ape if you must, but not a monkey. Never! I 
suspect the difference is going to be crucial to the rest of your story 
sir." 

O'Neill winced at the memory that kept thumping him in the head. He 
rubbed the giant lump on the back of his head and drew a breath. No ribs 
were broken then. That was small comfort; everything else felt broken. 
"I remember asking the bartender how come they had a monkey at the bar, 
and...it's blank after that." 

Carrot opened his notebook and consulted it carefully. "Ah," he licked 
his lip and placed his finger on the page to track the words, or hold 
them in place, O'Neill was uncertain which. 'You missed a great deal of 
the action then sir. The incident occurred at 11:23 antimeridian. The 
aforementioned 'monkey' (AKA, the Unseen University Librarian) used you, 
identity unknown, to knock down your companion (identity also unknown 
but herewith described as the large man with the gold embossing on his 
head). You were swung by the ankles, I believe, with great vigour 
according to many reliable witnesses. 

"We suspect that you were already unconscious by this stage since you 
had already used your face to stop the Librarian's fist moments earlier. 
After impeding that blow, you fell to the floor whereupon you remained 
immobile for several seconds before the Librarian proceeded to knock 
your companions down. 

"There ensued a substantial fight, in which seventeen chair, four 
tables, twenty nine glasses and one monocle were broken. We are unable 
to locate the owner of the monocle, but I am sure he will turn up 
eventually if we keep an eye out for him. 

"The damage's bill comes to fifty three dollars and twelve pence, 
according to the accounting firm of Rippem Off and Runn. If I were you I 
would get another assessment of the damage. R.O&R have a slightly shop-
soiled reputation in this town." 

Captain carrot flipped over another page of his notebook. 

"Two mercenary troops and three barbarian heroes were seriously injured 
in the subsequent melee. 

"Neither of the troopers is suing for the loss of income due to their 
recuperation time but there is a charge of deafness caused by being too 
close to a loud bang. The details of this suit against you will be made 
available at a later date by the bailiffs. Should you require advanced 
notification of the details they can be made available from Mr Slant. He 
is a zombie so you can feel free to drop in on his chambers at any 
time." 

"A zombie?" O'Neill muttered. "A zombie?" 

Carrot ignored O'Neill and continued his recount with undiminished 
vigour. "One of your companions will be required to answer to that one 
at a later date, both in the civil court and in the presence of the 
Patrician. That charge of causing deafness is in addition to the 
collective charge of disturbing the peace against which all of you will 
be required to answer." 

Captain Carrot closed his notebook firmly. He leant forward for 
emphasis. "Your other companion used a gonne sir," he said earnestly. 
"He fired the gonne in such a manner that it's projectile was launched 
into the air, knocking a new hole in the roof of the Drum. Its; passage 
also saw it chipping a piece from the arm of constable Downspout, who 
just so happens was watching the entire event from a vantage point above 
the Drum. 

" I think you should be aware that he is not terribly impressed with 
that sir. I think your companion should avoid any contact with Downspout 
for a few days. It would save a lot of bother." 

Carrot drew a laboured breath. He said the rest of his prepared speech 
with the obvious reluctance of a decent man who regrets the indecency in 
others. "The thing is, the thing is, I should point out that Mr Vimes 
takes a dim view on the use of gonnes in this city. A very dim view 
indeed, especially after the last time one was loose in Ankh Morpork." 
He sighed heavily, "and you people brought a great number of them into 
the city. It is with great regret that I must tell you that Mr Vimes 
will be quite put out." 

From the far corner of the room, "I think he'll go spare myself," 
suggested another voice. O'Neill turned in the direction of the new 
voice and saw... something humanoid, perhaps. Certainly advanced simian, 
and rather patchily coloured. 

"Nobby, I think you might need to tell Mr Vimes what happened last 
night," Carrot told the humanoid. 

"It's still early," The Nobby thing complained. "He might not even be 
out of bed yet." 

"Still," chided Carrot. 

"He'll go Librarian Poo," Nobby complained. "He'll go..." Nobby 
struggled to think of something worse than Librarian Poo and really 
couldn't. 

"Ah, he might," said Carrot. "But it won't be half as big a pile as 
might occur if he finds out later on." 

"Yeah, OK," said Nobby uncertainly. 

"Take Fred Colon with you," Carrot suggested. 

"Good idea," Nobby agreed and sidled through the half open door. 

                         *******************

Daniel Jackson woke to the same head ache and bladder problem as the 
rest of his team. He explored his back, legs and arms and decided that 
every bone in his body was broken. One eye fluttered reluctantly open. 
He found himself lying in a cell, resting on a hard timber bunk. It was 
dingy and damp and the smells from long departed occupants were more of 
an assault than an odour. He shoved his other eye open with a herculean 
effort and tried to find out a few details about his surroundings. 
Moving his head turned out to be a bad idea. It felt like it was going 
to fall off. 

Over the sound of hammers beating up his brain he heard something. It 
meant moving his head to see what it was and he really didn't want to do 
that. The sacrifices that we make... 

A remarkably gorgeous blond haired woman was watching him from the other 
side of the cell. She was dressed in a short chain mail skirt and a very 
well beaten breastplate. Her hair was a glowing golden mane, cascading 
most of the way down her back. Her expression went beyond serious to 
grave. Oh, well, thought Jackson, you can't have everything. 

She was leaning nonchalantly into the vee between the cell door and the 
heavily fortified brick wall. Something about her posture suggested that 
she had no doubt about her ascendancy in their relationship. 

"OK," he mumbled. The sound made his head hurt some more. "I sort of 
vaguely got the whole heaven part right. Never would have picked the 
chain mail or the bricks and the bars, or the bruises myself, but 
otherwise it's just about perfect." 

Sergeant Delphine Angua Von Uberwald of the Ankh Morpork City Watch, 
called Angua for short, pushed herself athletically away from the cell 
wall and strolled slowly across the rough cobbled floor until she stood 
with her knees almost beside Daniel's face. He watched her progress with 
interest, distracted from his own headache and bad bruises by the sight. 
Her walk was graceful, but it had the grace of a predatory animal. Her 
head tilted to one side as though she was contemplating which side of 
his throat to bite. Daniel had the vaguely uneasy feeling that she might 
use her teeth rather than her lips. Was there such a thing as blond 
vampires? 

"Technically you're here in the cells for disturbing the peace," she 
said. "It's our idiosyncratic way of protecting you from the rest of 
this town until we can find more substantial charges to lay against you. 
Carrot is working on that now." 

"I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about," Daniel groaned. 

She sat on a stool, crossed long bare legs distractingly. "Why did you 
bring a gonne into Anhk Morpork?" she asked "Everyone on the disc knows 
what Mr Vimes thinks of those things." 

"Mr Vimes...? Who might that be?" 

Angua shook her head, sending her blonde mane flying. "Oh dear," she 
sighed. 

                         *******************

Duchess Sybil Ramkin Vimes was probably the richest woman in Ankh 
Morpork. She was also one of the largest and her own delicate condition, 
as they say, was not helping her to control her girth. 

She woke to find herself in her bed, alone, again. It was at least the 
tenth time this month that her husband Samuel had been dragged from his 
bed before the day had progressed to a decent hour and he was already 
off doing whatever it was that he did with his day. She heard stories, 
second and third hand, little more than rumours really, about midnight 
chases across moonlit rooftops. She had once been witness to the way her 
Samuel conducted himself in his work-a-day role while he was acting as 
the Official Ankh Morpork representative at the Dwarfish High-King's 
coronation recently in Uberwald. 

She had been forced to concluded that the stories of his nature had not 
been exaggerated. And yet he was such a gentle man. Not a gentleman 
certainly, because that was such an ironic term, but a gentle man. The 
dichotomy was wrenching. 

She was lucky she had him. And not just for the luck of finding a man 
like him, but luck that she still had him. 

There was the small matter of the occasional, and so far unsuccessful, 
assassination attempts. 

The Vimes' had only recently repaired yet another hole in the roof of 
their sitting room. Sam had been quite upset about the loss of one of 
her tiny swamp dragons, but in the poor assassins' favour he had been 
trying to save his own skin at the time. 

Sybil gave up trying to summons her husband back home through will power 
alone and decided she had better face the day, alone, again. 

Her chambermaid had waked Sybil. The poor girl was one of the 
interchangeable Emma's, as Sam referred to them when he thought she 
could not hear him. Her maid's name happened to be Emma, to the poor 
girl's detriment. 

"What is it Emma?" 

"There's a watchman at the door, Madame." 

"Oh no," Sybil had dreaded this moment, the day when one of them came to 
give her the bad news. The nausea she felt was entirely unrelated to the 
delicacy of her condition, and more to do with the sick dread she had 
nursed for every day of the few years she had shared with Samuel Vimes. 

She gathered a pale pink robe from one of the chairs that adorned her 
bedside and made for the door. 

Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon stood in her sitting room, anxiously 
clutching their helmets in their hands. Nobby had gone to a great deal 
of trouble to spruce himself, slicking his hair and cleaning his face 
before he arrived. Sybil had an unaccountable soft spot for Nobby. 

It would be those two, she thought uncomfortably. She had always thought 
it would be Captain Carrot who brought the bad news when it came. It had 
never occurred to her that the duty might fall to his most long serving 
Watchmen. 

She steeled herself. 

Fred Colon watched her entrance anxiously, steeling himself to tell her 
what he had been charged to convey. 

She decided to brazen it out. 

"Out with it Fred," she commanded like a valkery. "It can't be any worse 
that you're making it look." 

"It's about Mr Vimes," Fred stammered. 

"Captain Carrot asked us to come up here," explained Nobby. 

"Why didn't he come himself?" Sybil demanded. 

"He was busy, so he dispatched us," Fred Colon explained. 

"How could he do that, with news as important as this." Sybil had 
replaced her dread with consternation. How dare he dismiss Samuel Vimes 
in that manner? "I'm of a mind to go down there and have a word to 
Captain Carrot about this myself. If he can't bring the news himself 
then he does not deserve to be an officer." 

"I told him we shouldn't go and wake him up Sarge," Nobby said. 

"Come on," Sybil called, "you two can escort me to..." She stopped, 
replayed the conversation in her own mind. Her lips moved. 

"Wake who up?" she asked finally. 

"Mr Vimes," Nobby explained. "I was...and Carrot said...and Fred thought 
it would be a good..." 

Sybil had an idea that the obvious momentum of the conversation and the 
follow up actions that she was planning were not going the way she had 
anticipated, and that perhaps the fault was hers. 

"Let's try that with the gaps filled in. Please Nobby," she suggested 
reasonably. 

Nobby drew a breath into the nest of ribs he called his chest. "Captain 
Carrot sent me to tell Mr Vimes that we've found another gonne in town." 

"Well he's not here," Sybil said quietly. "Isn't he with you? Working?" 

"No." 

"Then where is he? Willikins!" she called. 

The butler appeared, immaculate as usual. "Yes ma'am," he bowed. 

"Where is Sam?" 

"He is at the Patrician's palace, ma'am." 

"Oh," said Nobby and Colon in unison. "Damn." It was bad enough the news 
they were entrusted to deliver to Sam Vimes, delivering it to Lord 
Vetinari was going to be an order of magnitude worse. 

                         *******************

Samuel Vimes started out life as a street urchin who graduated to street 
gang member before he became a street cop. And now he was the Duke of 
Ankh, a progression aided by his marriage, without doubt, but seemingly 
punctuated by a series of citywide crisis that always seemed to fall 
into his lap for him to unravel. There were times when he thought his 
entire existence might be just one long alcohol induced hallucination. 
That would be one tenable conclusion in his attempts to explain how a 
drunken street cop could become the Duke of Ankh. The transition of his 
life still left him puzzled. It had seemed like only yesterday that he 
had woken up, nursing the oh-god of hang overs in the gutter outside the 
Mended Drum while the city was under siege by a mythical dragon. That 
had been the turning point of his life. And the ironic thing about the 
whole train of events that followed had been the fall from grace during 
the same route of one of his street gang rivals (for want of a term) who 
had previously risen to such mighty heights at the time. 

And now the city faced another crisis, and again Sam Vimes was at the 
centre of it. Ah the reward for a job well done: another job. 

He struck a match against Detritus's belly. It flared and then settled 
to a flickering flame. He watched it puzzled, for a moment. It seemed 
that it was being blown by a breeze that came from the stone wall behind 
the desk. Vimes lit the end of his cigar with the feeble little flame 
and regarded the wall closely. 

"Dat was me sir," Detritus chided, watching Vimes extinguish the match 
by waving it in the air. The giant troll was stooped beneath the low 
ceiling of the oblong office. The whirr of his air-cooled helmet was 
loud within the confines of the Patrician's office. Having a Silicon 
semi-conductor brain, the trolls were best suited to a climate where 
semi-conductor physics allowed the ready passage of electrons through 
their doped silicon brains. The colder the better when it came to 
trollish intellectualisation. They thrived in the mountainous regions, 
where the snow never melted. Up there, where the air was so cold it had 
teeth, the trolls were at the top of the food Chain. In the more 
temperate climate of Ankh Morpork they were more like the mineral used 
by the dwarfs when they were smelting the metal to make the links. 

The late Cuddy, one of the first dwarfs inducted into the City Watch, 
had been the first to come upon the idea of the air-cooled helmet. 
Detritus had leapt at the idea, embracing it with the sort of whole 
hearted, one tracked obsession only someone with a brain made of doped 
silicon and germanium could manage. 

"Sorry," Vimes said absently. "It's only that Sybil has stopped me from 
lighting these things with dragons." 

"I unnerstan sir," Detritus said loyally. 

Vimes and Detritus watched on while Cheri Littlebottom made busy 
examining the fixtures that made up the Patrician's office. They didn't 
amount to much. He was a man with simple tastes and this office was 
essentially undecorated. Whenever Vimes was in the oblong office he was 
always acutely aware of that lack of ornamentation. It made dealing with 
Vetinari such a challenge, with no handle for small talk. In fact when 
he wrapped his mind around the whole Vetinari conundrum, Vimes became 
more and more confused. No one was actually sure where he lived. 

Littlebottom finished examining the desk draws. She blew the fine white 
dust from the draw handles that she had taken such great care to apply. 
No fingerprints were revealed. 

The dwarf had selected a fetching floral combo today. Vimes wondered 
where you could get floral printed leather. But this was Ankh Morpork he 
reminded himself, you could get just about any thing in Ankh Morpork. 

At least now under the tutelage of Sergeant Angua, Cheri Littlebottom 
had tamed the excesses of her early attempts at make-up and reached some 
sort of happy medium in her search for femininity. It was an alien 
concept to the dwarf community. Dwarf mating rituals involved a lot of 
faith and hope, since there was no external signal among the mass of 
chain mail, leather and armour to allow one bearded gender to accurately 
assess the other. The recent appearance of dwarf 'girls', of which Cheri 
was one of the first, was the cause of serious concern among her people. 

Now if they could just do something about Nobby's experimentation along 
the same lines, Vimes thought, then things would be stable in the Watch. 

"How can he just disappear?" Vimes asked. He didn't expect an answer 
from Cheri, no, not yet, she needed time to make her forensic 
assessments. Or from Detritus, that was asking a bit much. Take him up 
into the mountains and he would probably work it out in two seconds, but 
down here...No. 

"Dunno sir," Detritus answered. He tapped his nose. It made a sound like 
a pick hammer tapping a piton into a granite cliff face, probably 
because it was not much different. "This looks like pol..it..ics to me. 
I know people say I as fick as a plank sanwich, but I can tell which 
side of da bred is buttered." 

"Which side is that Sergeant?" 

"The side with the gooey yellow stuff..." 

Vines allowed him self a cynically pleased smile, happy that some things 
never change. 

"Cheri is there anything at all?" he asked. 

"Nothing sir. No sign of anything suspicious. He was the only person in 
here. No stray hairs, no cigar ash." She looked pointedly at the one 
suspended between Vimes' fingers. He managed to look unembarrassed. 

"So where is he?" 

"Sorry Sir, I have no idea." 

Vimes looked around the room and considered the options. The guilds had 
been quiet lately. While Vimes was away in Uberwald, Carrot had been 
away chasing after Angua and Fred Colon had been in charge of the Watch. 
It had been a tense time throughout the city. The guilds had remained 
very quiet while he had been away, knowing that there was going to be a 
period of tension immediately after Vimes' return. When he found the 
state of the city and the Watch who looked after it, they knew that 
Vimes was going to undergo considerable stress. When the watch commander 
is feeling stressed he tends to share it around. 

Thankfully for the guilds that watched out for that sort of thing, 
Carrot had gotten back first. Then they found out something unexpectedly 
unpleasant. The city found out, to its chagrin, that in many things 
Carrot and Vimes were interchangeable. 

But would they still be quiet? Vimes wondered. Now that the initial over 
zealous reaction to Colon's steward-ship had subsided and the world 
watched and waited while a new agreement between Ankh Morpork and the 
giant untamed wilderness of the Uberwald slowly became obvious. There 
was a delegation coming over from Uberwald, due to arrive within the 
next couple of days. Not ambassadors as such because Uberwald was still 
a long way from being anything more advanced that a collection of feudal 
baronies, but representatives of the leading citizens of the area. They 
were going to participate in a ceremony to ratify the agreements reached 
between Ankh Morpork and the newly crowned Low King during Vimes' recent 
visit. It would be the golden opportunity for a guild leader to make a 
play for the oblong office. 

So which one would it be? Who among the squabbling factions that managed 
the city of Ankh Morpork couldn't help placing his spoon in the brew and 
stirring? 

"Normally I would suspect Lord Downey," Vimes ruminated out loud. "But 
that's too obvious. I always suspect the assassins. For some reason 
every time a high profile member of society disappears, the trail 
somehow always leads to them. Funny how that works." 

Detritus and Littlebottom watched Vimes carefully. He was a trifle scary 
in his deep thinking mode. 

"Lord Vetinari's bounty has been set temptingly high sir," Cheri 
suggested timorously. "Almost as high as yours. The assassins have been 
very quiet lately." 

Vimes tasted the idea, a concept he had picked up in Uberwald. 

"They have too much invested in the status quo," Vimes commented dryly. 

"Still, they have been quiet lately." 

Vimes smiled evilly. "I guess that's suspicious enough by itself. Let's 
talk to them shall we." He pointed to Detritus, "fetch Lord Downey for 
me. Oh and Cheri, you might want to explore the secret passage that's 
hidden behind that wall." 

He pointed. Cheri stared. "How...? Never mind." 

Detritus lurched from the room. He had to step aside to allow Fred Colon 
and Nobby to walk through the door. 

                         *******************

Fred Colon and Nobby had finally found Samuel Vimes and were far from 
happy about where they had found him. They had gone up to his house 
without success and had taken a few moments to shake off a persistent 
Sybil Ramkin Vimes who had been unaccountably insistent in her desire to 
see her husband and to make sure he was all right. 

"It's because she's expecting," Fred had confided in Nobby. 

"Ah, I see," Nobby replied gravely. 

They had walked on for a while in that characteristic shuffle of the 
beat copper that seems to involve the minimum of actual motion while 
achieving a surprisingly stead pace. 

"Expecting what Fred?" Nobby had asked. 

Fred Colon had shaken his head and walked on. 

Nobby trailed along behind shaking his head for a different reason. They 
hadn't spoken from then until they found themselves in the Patrician's 
office. 

And now they stood before Sam Vimes and if Fred was any judge of body 
language, some one was deeply embedded in the manure. It wasn't a good 
time to tell Sam Vimes about the gonne he decided. Fred pushed Nobby 
forward. "Nobby has something to tell you sir," Fred suggested. 

                         *******************

Lord Downey of the Assassin's guild watched the quorum of his management 
council from beneath heavy lidded eyes. On the desk before him was the 
morning's issue of the Anhk Morpork Times. The headlines read "Brawl in 
the Drum ended with a bang." 

"Sacharissa hasn't lost her touch with headlines I see," was the comment 
from the council. Downey looked over his council and tried to find the 
face that fitted the voice. Ah there he was at the end, Peter Mansell-
Smith. Like all the other assassins he was dressed in black. The whole 
room looked like a gap in space were light failed to escape, there was 
so much black cloth being employed. 

"Have you read it yet?" Downey asked them collectively. 

"Yes," chorused the team. It took several seconds for them all to join 
the chorus but they finally managed. 

"A gonne," Downey concluded. "It must be. More than one, if this is to 
be believed." Downey tapped the paper with his index finger. His eye 
traced the sub-title of the news sheet. It said 'the truth shall set 
your fee.' Always the way, he thought. Slant would probably see that one 
and chuckle. "We still don't know what happened to the last one." 

"There's always that rumour," said the same voice. Peter Mansell-Smith 
continued after a glance from Downey. "You know, the one that said 
Captain Carrot had it buried with Cuddy the dwarf." 

Downey rubbed his hands across this forehead. At some stage Downey was 
going to have to address the whole Mansell-Smith situation. The man's 
rise through the ranks was starting to look like it had the sort of 
momentum that might one day carry him to the same chair that Downey had 
occupied since the unfortunate events surrounding the passing of Dr 
Cruses. "That would be a comforting thought," Downey commented. He 
looked up at the gathered assassins. "We know that Cuddy is still 
buried?" For some reason he was put in mind of an undertakers 
convention. 

"It's been checked already," Mansell-Smith said. "His grave remains 
undisturbed." 

Yes, altogether too much momentum. 

"Well that is one blessing at least," Downey commented. 

"We don't have any other ideas." Well at least Mansell-Smith hadn't 
totally undermined Downey's authority. One day he was going to have to 
find out how Vimes kept Carrot from taking over the City Watch. Vimes 
had been dealing with a highly competent subordinate for a long time 
now. There had to be a trick to it. 

"Make some inquiries in the street of cunning artificers," Downey 
instructed. It was nice to make a decisive contribution to the process. 
"If anyone could reproduce that thing we would find them among the 
dwarfs that hang around down there." 

Their conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. A student 
poked his head through the door, ducked as though dodging a knife. In 
most of the doorways of the Assassin's guild that was a valuable reflex. 

"Lord Downey," the junior assassin said. "There's a watchman at the 
door. It's that troll Detritus. Apparently the Duke of Ankh has 
requested your presence, sir." 

It is always hard to say no to Detritus, unless of course it is the kind 
of no that is part of a scream of, "No, no, please don't. No!" 

"What does Vimes want this time?" Downey asked no one in particular. The 
question was intended rhetorically. Downey waved a dismissal and sent 
his council on it's way before one of them was tempted to answer. He 
gathered his cape and marched for the door. 

                         *******************

Samuel Vimes marched along the corridor, puffing on his cigar. It was 
his one remaining vice now that he had stopped drinking. He intended to 
savour it. 

Angua was leading both him and Cheri Littlebottom through the labyrinth. 
She had assumed her canine guise, and made her way by stepping lightly 
from stone to stone in what appeared to the outside world to be a 
haphazard manner. Her nose tracked the Patrician's steps. 

Vimes watched her progress carefully, matching each of her footsteps 
after she skipped from stone to stone, as though his life depended on 
it. It did. 

The hallway through which they walked was littered with dozens of 
dangling knives, embedded swords, swinging candelabras, splashed nets 
and swaying morning stars, all of them attached to springs, mechanisms 
and ropes. Each of the implements had been released by the application 
of an errant foot to the wrong stone at some time in the past few hours. 

Vimes noted the lack of blood or gore on any of them. It was that lack 
that caused him the most concern. 

Vimes and Angua were threading their way from stone to stone, careful 
how they made their way through the booby-trapped corridor because the 
previous group who passed through this corridor might have missed one of 
the traps. 

Looking around him Vimes thought it couldn't have been much more that 
one; given the number of cunningly contrived weapons hanging in the 
hallway. He handled one vicious looking blade with care and then dropped 
it back on the floor. 

Who was there, in Ankh Morpork, that the Patrician thought so badly of, 
that he would need this level of security to keep him in? 

Or keep others out? Vimes tasted that idea for a moment. After all it 
was Haverlock Vetinari they were dealing with here. 

A few steps ahead, Angua rounded a bend in the corridor and the sound of 
her padded footfalls stopped suddenly. Vimes stepped up to join her. The 
corridor opened into a room. It was littered with paper and half-
finished machinery. A window overlooked a Bloody Stupid garden. Beneath 
the clutter of paper the room was furnished with quality fixtures. 

Neither Vimes nor Angua saw the clutter of course. It all paled into 
insignificance compared to the giant stone contraption filling the 
corner of the room. 

All eyes were locked on the gaping maw contained within the stargate. 

"Oh bugger," said Samuel Vimes. He pulled his cigar from his slack lower 
lip before it fell to the floor. With the amount of paper scattered 
about, that was a wise reaction. Vimes shook his head, placed the butt 
of the cigar into his mouth, flinched at the pain with an absent 
grimace, pulled it from his mouth, reversed it and then puffed on the 
cigar a few frantic times. Then he blinked. 

A sound like someone extruding a piece of meat through a metal sheeting 
press filled the silence behind Vimes. 

"The bloody wizards," Vimes half said, or perhaps asked, even he wasn't 
sure which. "They've broken through to the dungeon dimensions again,". 

A discreet cough sounded behind him, breaking the spell. 

"Um sir," Angua asked. "If we're going to stay here for a while, 
then...Could I borrow your shirt." 

Vimes turned slowly, already certain of what he would see, and in the 
aftermath of seeing the stargate for the first time, he realised that he 
didn't care. 

Well, he thought, at least surrendering his shirt would free up her 
hands and arms to do something more useful than cover up the bits of her 
anatomy that were different to the ones that Vimes had in those same 
places. 

"Don't let any one else in here until the wizards get here," Vimes said 
to Cheri. "I think we're going to be busy today." 

                         *******************

Lord Downey seated him self in Vimes' office and regarded the pile of 
unattended paper that filled his in-tray with the supercilious air of 
someone who employed a secretary so that he didn't have to deal with 
such mundane matters. 

If Vimes hired a secretary, they would find themselves investigating 
crime scenes within a few days, so it would make no difference to the 
way the office operated, but Downey wasn't to learn that. 

Vimes and Downey exchanged pleasantries for a few moments, mouthing 
inanities that did not require either of them to pay attention. In 
Vimes' case that involved grinding his teeth and trying not to smash the 
man's face in. The number of assassins he had been forced to fish out of 
the little traps Vimes built into his home and office was a constant 
source of annoyance to Vimes. He had developed a deep-seated aversion to 
the assassins and it was firmly focussed on the head of the 
organisation. 

Politics ruled, of course, and Vimes had to deal with the man as much as 
he detested doing it. He made sure his feelings on the matter were 
known. It was more fun that way. Downey was aware of the antipathy, was 
more acutely aware of how personal it was and that made him quite 
uncomfortable. He was more accustomed to the good-old-boy mentality that 
went with the sort of education passed on from one unsuspecting 
generation to the next by such institutions as the Assassin's guild 
school. In that mode of interaction it was all part of the game. 

Raised on the streets of Ankh Morpork, Vimes had never developed the 
attitude that allowed people like Downey to hire bodyguards, whose sole 
role it was to die so that someone else, namely Downey, might survive 
the game of hired assassin. 

"The Guilds will have to be notified," Lord Downey said into the 
uncomfortable silence. "If only because we'll need to elect a new, 
acting Patrician to meet the delegation from Uberwald." 

Vimes was uncomfortably aware of how delicate that situation in Ankh 
Morpork might become. The idea of some of those delegates meeting some 
one, no matter how well qualified, other than the officially ratified 
head of state in Ankh Morpork did not bear considering. 

"I thing something like that can wait until we establish that he's 
actually dead," Vimes said cuttingly. "Let's not get ahead of 
ourselves." 

Some times it's not possible to dismiss ideas with words. Conversation 
lapsed while they considered the down side implications of that simple 
statement that had been uttered by Samuel Vimes. Despite many attempts, 
Havelock Vetinari had proved notoriously difficult to remove from 
office. Brute force had failed when the dragon that was summonsed by one 
prominent member of Ankh Morpork society had first terrorised the town, 
and then temporarily managed to unseat the Patrician but then it had 
unaccountably found other interests. Assassination using a gonne had not 
been all that successful either, although a few drops of the Vetinari 
blood had been spilled by the previous head of the Assassin's guild 
during his final moments before madness and a good man's blade had 
claimed him. Subtle poisoning hadn't worked, and neither had kidnapping 
and the substitution of a double to implicate Vetinari in the attempted 
murder of his secretary. 

The man had proved almost indestructible and remarkably duplicitous. 

The idea that someone might actually have managed to kill Vetinari was a 
difficult idea to swallow. 

"I don't normally believe in coincidence," Vimes said. He waved his 
cigar about. "But I think I can make a distinction in this case. The 
thing at the end of the secret passageway is one thing. The sudden 
appearance of gonnes in the city is another. How did they get here?" 

"Not through the Assassin's guild," Downey denied. "You have the men who 
carried them. Haven't they told you where they got them?" 

Vimes wasn't inclined to share that story with Downey, not before he had 
a chance to hear it from the horse's mouth. The appointment with the 
head of the Assassin's guild had been made before Vimes was aware that 
the stargate was hiding on the other side of the wall behind Vetinari's 
office wall. 

"Since the Wizards are responsible for this situation," Downey 
suggested, "shouldn't you be speaking with them?" 

"You're suggesting that whatever is on the other side of that portal, it 
supplied men with gonnes." 

"It's one valid theory." 

"Tentacles is what we normally expect when something like that opens up. 
Gonnes are somewhat too impersonal for the things that come through from 
the dungeon dimensions. Gonnes are a uniquely human thing." 

"The wizards are involved," Downey offered. "I'm sure of that." 

"Perhaps, it does look that way," Vimes said carefully. Ha, there, he 
thought, I've learnt one of the tricks of diplomacy. How to lie without 
actually doing it. "Mistrum Ridcully and I have an appointment. I might 
be able to come to the same conclusion that you've drawn after I've had 
a chance to speak with him, since I don't have the benefit of your 
intuition on this matter. Must have something to do with the Assassin's 
guild education I hear everyone raving about." 

                         *******************

Lord Downey had only been gone from Vime's office for only a few minutes 
before Carrot brought one of the prisoners in to replace him. 

The prisoner was an interesting sight. He carried himself with the sort 
of hard won poise that suggested either a street fighter, or a military 
man, Vimes concluded. Long term military, he decided. It was a 
conclusion that left Vimes with a chill. More politics! Which of their 
'friendly' neighbouring powers had dispatched them. The man was much the 
same age as Sam Vimes, his face was lined through worry; his hair was 
greying with the passing of hard years. 

Carrot's report listed his name as Jack O'Neill. 

"I have this problem," Vimes told Jack O'Neill. O'Neill looked around 
Vimes' office and recognised it for what it was. A pile of paper 
threatened to fall off the desk and onto the floor. Captain Carrot eyed 
the pile with wary interest from his position partially behind the desk. 
It was the same sort of office that O'Neill had. One that was only used 
to collect the mail, and fill out reports, when he remembered to do it. 

The intimidating presence of Sergeants Detritus and Angua rested either 
side of the door. 

O'Neill and Vimes might have been mirror images of each other. They both 
wore expressions like seven days of bad weather. 

"The Patrician disappears, and you appear almost simultaneously," Vimes 
suggested. He folded his hands on the desk and leant onto his elbows. 
"And in the middle of it all, I find a...thing, that looks like it's the 
short-cut to the dungeon dimensions that the wizards have always 
threatened to create since the turtle was an egg. 

"But the thing doesn't smell right. There's nothing crawling around on 
fifty foot tentacles chewing up the city. We haven't experienced the 
sudden loss of hundreds of innocent young women. Most of all, the 
University Librarian is sitting calmly in the Mended Drum drinking from 
a glass the size of a bucket as though nothing was happening. That sort 
of thing just does not happen when the creatures from dungeon dimensions 
are loose. So I'm left with the other possibility. That you are just a 
man, like you appear, and somehow you are responsible for today's 
confusion. Do you have any comments?" 

O'Neill shifted in his chair and then frowned at Vimes. "I have no idea 
what you're talking about," O'Neill said, pretending to be confused. He 
was actually wondering what had happened to Samantha since she had been 
guarding their retreat. 

"Angua," Vimes suggested. She stepped forward and placed three gonnes on 
the desk. "I believe these are yours," Vimes said to O'Neill. 

O'Neill nodded slowly. 

"That one was fired," Angua said and pointed to one of the gonnes. "It 
smelled of the one called Daniel Jackson. This one," she looked 
significantly at O'Neill. "Was yours. It has not been fired for some 
days." 

How did she know that? O'Neill wondered. She was right, but how did she 
know? 

"I have a thing about gonnes," Vimes said softly. "They kill people. 
They have no other purpose." 

"That's true of every weapon," O'Neill said. 

"No," Vimes said carefully. "Some weapons are a deterrent. They say, 'I 
have a weapon, don't try it on.' This," he said and tapped one of the 
gonnes, "is a thing that can kill from hiding, a long way away. It's not 
the same thing at all." 

Vimes climbed to his feet and walked to the window of his office. 
Beneath the window he could see the repair that was made after the last 
hole was left in the roof of Pseudopolis yard during the most recent 
failed assassination attempt. The new tiles stood out from the rest of 
the tiles by their heightened colour and lack of pigeon droppings. 

Vimes reached a decision. "Come with me," he said to O'Neill. "There's 
something that you might be able to explain to me." 

"Can I bring my team?" 

"No," Vimes said, then he thought better of his first reaction. 
"Detritus, Carrot, come with me. Angua, round up," he checked a note on 
his desk. "Bring Daniel Jackson and Teal'c along after us, give us about 
half an hour, so Carrot and I can talk with Mr O'Neill first. Then meet 
us there." 

Angua nodded as though she knew where 'there' was. 

                         *******************

Ponder Stibbons was the head of the High Energy Magic Department of 
Unseen University. He had graduated to the position immediately after 
the completion of his degree in thaumalocical science and he now headed 
up a group who tried manfully to understand the nature of the threadbare 
piece of space-time that surrounded the discworld. Beside him stood the 
towering figure of Mistrum Ridcully, the Arch-chancellor of the same 
institution. They stood shoulder to shoulder and between them, they 
contemplated the glowing maw of the stargate from their vastly differing 
perspective. 

"It certainly has the look of the dungeon dimensions about it," Ridcully 
said. "It even has runes carved into the stone. Look, they go all the 
way around." 

"Yes," agreed Stibbons carefully. It didn't pay to get too technical 
with the Arch-chancellor and he was having difficulty framing what he 
had to say in such a way that it wouldn't be misconstrued. He made his 
first try, carefully selecting his phrasing and then hazarded, "It looks 
more like something that the alchemists might make," he said. 

"Nonsense man," Ridcully said affably. "If the alchemists made this 
there'd be a colossal charcoal covered hole in the wall, and this whole 
area would be full of smoke. No this is more the sort of work that a 
sorcerer might create." 

Stibbons had to concede the truth of that. Whatever this thing was, it 
worked and that automatically suggested the alchemists weren't involved, 
except... 

"There was always that business with the moving pictures," Stibbons 
said. "That worked." 

'For a while', went unspoken between them. Until the dungeon dimensions 
had broken through and ravished the city. 

Stibbons and Ridcully regarded the stargate again. Their expression 
mirrored one another, both pensively thoughtful. If the alchemists 
weren't involved, they both seemed to be thinking, then it was a 
sorcerer, and that suggested an eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth 
son. Wizards were recruited for the eighth son of an eighth son. A 
sorcerer was a wizard squared. Something like that would have been 
obvious no matter where it occurred on the disc world. 

It had happened once before in the lifetime of the current occupants of 
the higher offices within the wizard's hierarchy, with disastrous 
results. 

You might call such a person a sorcerer, but in reality it was a 
'sourcerer', the operative part was the 'source' part. They became a 
source of magic and that could be a bad thing - a really bad thing. It 
certainly had been a really bad thing the last time it happened, and it 
was only recently that the wizards had lived that little faux par down. 

It was by far the most compelling reason for the celibacy of wizards. 
Let them breed and they'd all have eight sons and the rest of the 
discworld would be a very unhappy place. 

                         *******************

William De Worde and Sacharissa Crisplock represented the Ankh Morpork 
Times. In fact, honesty would suggest that they were the Ankh Morpork 
Times. Other's might set the type, and take the iconographs and perform 
all those administrative tasks, but when it came to copy, headlines and 
editorial work, they were the whole deal. 

They waited patiently in the lobby of Pseudopolis Yard. 

Sergeant Colon occupied the front desk and he had been the first Watch 
officer to impede their progress. 

William tapped his notebook against his left hand. He and Sacharissa 
exchanged an exasperated glance. 

Sergeant Angua had appeared, stepping elegantly down the stairs. She 
took one look at the tableau occupied by William and Fred, drew the 
correct conclusion and then blocked the entrance to the cells. 

William cursed his poor luck. Colon had almost given in under an 
onslaught of De Worde word chopping and obscure obstruction of the 
truth. William had just about convinced Colon that Mr Vimes had allowed 
William and Sacharissa to come into the watch house and assist with the 
investigations. It was only one small step from there to be allowed 
access to the prisoners, and then that woman had come down the stairs 
and suddenly he had lost all the ground he had claimed from Fred. 

"The city wants to know..." William started. 

"I don't think so," Angua said softly. It was a voice with a sub sonic 
rumble that could only signal spine-numbing terror if a carrnivore 
should happen to be the kind of animal that made it. Just as well it 
came from some one as physically harmless in appearance as Angua, 
William thought. Except there was the chain mail she was wearing. She 
didn't wear a sword. Affirmative action? He hardly thought so. Her 
bearing was much too predatory for that. 

"I need to follow up," William persisted. "The article in the Times left 
so much unanswered. 

"It said altogether too much," Angua replied laconically. 

"We need to tie up those loose ends." 

"Lord Downey and his minions have been snooping around have they?" Angua 
retorted. Perhaps a sword wasn't necessary. The words 'biting sarcasm' 
came to mind. And edged smile. 

"Well, yes, if you must know," William conceded. 

"Asking you about the article on the fight in the Drum?" Edged? William 
asked himself. Perhaps vulpine was closer to the truth. 

"Well, yes." William figured if he could keep her talking there was a 
chance that he might be able to guide the conversation his way. It 
worked so often it was worth trying every time. 

Angua folded her arms under her breastplate. "Do you know what a gonne 
is Mr De Word?" 

He tested the word with his mouth, silently. He even spelt it correctly. 
"No I can't say that I do," he conceded. 

"Well the members of the watch know just what it is, and the assassins 
guild do as well. We'd like to be sure that the alchemists and the 
cunning artificers don't ever find out. Does that make any sense to 
you?" 

Way too much for William's comfort. "Can I quote you on that?" he said, 
but in reality his mind was racing. Whatever a gonne was it was the key 
to this situation. 

"So long as you attribute the quote to Sir Samuel Vimes," Angua replied. 
Her smile widened. Were those teeth pointed? William wasn't sure, and 
that was a worry in itself. 

"Ah then perhaps not," he decided. 

"Now if you don't mind Mr De Word. I think you and I are done here." 

                         *******************

Saccharissa was once a demure, innocent girl. She had worked in her 
fathers printing business, helping him with the engraving so that he 
could print things for people who had a need for paper copies of things. 
They made a living, they were not in danger of getting rich, but they 
got by. 

Then she met William De Worde, and while he was not the most boisterous 
of rabble rousers he was something far worse, he was a terrier with a 
Uzi. His weapons were the pen and the ink and the printing press. 

The characteristics that defined William De Worde was the sort of 
combination that was necessary to release the inner Saccharissa, the one 
that had been sitting on the sidelines screaming, "Go for it!" and "What 
are ya, yellow?" and other priceless motivating mantras. 

Now, after only a few months together, they made a matched set. He was 
the man who not only saved the Patrician from the most recent plot 
against him, but had stood up to his own father at the same time. Some 
times the latter is much more difficult than the former. 

She had been one of the tools that had been instrumental in his triumph. 
She did not have the same embodied personal demons to overcome. Her 
demons were far more ephemeral, being the perception and the inertia of 
an entire society in which she was raised, one where she was constrained 
into a role that was patently unsuited to her personality, simply by an 
accident of gender. It was a far more competent villain to battle than 
the mere presence of a difficult father image. 

William and Sacharissa waited on the corner, just outside the 
Pseudopolis Yard entrance and looked back up the steps at the now closed 
front door. "I'll follow them," she offered. 

William nodded. It mirrored his thinking. "I'll send Otto along. I think 
we might need pictures." 

Saccharrisa nodded and left him so she could hide in the shadow of the 
building. William set off in the direction of the Times' offices. 

                         *******************

Daniel Jackson marched along beside Teal'c. They weren't bound in any 
way and there appeared to be no physical reason for them to walk along 
the pavement as though they were prisoners, except there remained this 
imposing presence that strolled along behind them. She looked pleasant 
enough, but there was always this underlying suspicion that there was 
something underpinned her vulpine smile. 

Angua directed them around a corner. 

A fur-ball that contained essences from most of the world's bad smells 
that had all been distilled together into one compact package stepped 
into their path. 

A larger ball of olfactory assault appeared behind the first and proved 
that the first was only a prelude, an entree, and just a lead in before 
the main event. 

Teal'c turned to face the apparition and gagged. 

Jackson turned as well, but his nose wanted to go somewhere else and 
fought for control of his neck. His first thought was, whatever it was, 
it must have been formed from upright ambulatory sewerage sludge, 
wrapped in a threadbare coat and cloaked in mind-blowing assault of 
olfactory artistry that it had a virtual life of it's own. Daniel 
Jackson knew a lot of words and was always charitable in his first 
impressions, but even he was running out of adjectives and synonyms for 
awful. 

"Millennium hand and shrimp," the apparition croaked. OK, we're dealing 
with a male here, Daniel concluded. That was one question answered. "Hi 
gorgeous," he continued more lucidly. Jackson's mind wouldn't go near 
the idea that the lucid sentence seemed to come from a slightly 
different direction. 

Foul Old Ron's breath added a new depth to the entire olfactory 
experience. It entered Daniel's nose like an assault by a SWAT team and 
took his brain prisoner. 

Angua wisely stepped back slightly. 

Daniel took an almost perverse pleasure in the utterly disgusting nature 
of his immersion in the entire olfactory experience. The smell clung 
like a malevolent cloud and the advance storm troopers that shot through 
his nostrils threatened to dissolve her brain. 

"What do you want Gaspode?" Angua asked from behind Jackson and Teal'c. 

Beside Jackson, Teal'c stepped sideways and watched the by-play between 
Angua and Foul Old Ron from a slight distance, hiding behind an 
invisible biological buffer of a few metres. The breeze shifted. He 
stepped back another metre to further avoid savouring the experience. 

"Buggerit," the grotesque pile of biological detritus continued. "Saw 
them going into the Drum, saw the whole millennium thing." 

"Did you take a good enough sniff to be able to describe them to us?" 
Angua asked. 

"Do I look bloody stupid?" He asked in return. "Buggerit." 

He needed an effort, but Daniel managed not to speak. It would have 
meant drawing breath and he wasn't sure that would be advisable. 

Foul Old Ron coughed a great hacking phlegmy bark that set off a whole 
fresh round of activity among the flees and moths that floated before 
Jackson's eyes. Jackson had an overwhelming urge to sneeze. He was sure 
a doctor could catalogued a whole medical dictionary full of diseases 
and obscure poisons from the air he was breathing, most of which he 
couldn't even pronounce, let alone know their effects. 

The apparition recovered, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, 
making one or the other dirtier than it had been. Jackson was uncertain 
which. "There was three of them though," he continued. "Buggerit." 

"We know," Angua told him. 

Jackson sneezed, and then again. 

"Get away yer germ-y bastard," the apparition said. Foul Old Ron, and 
his thinking dog Gaspode, slunk back around the corner. 

The smell made a more leisurely exit as though it had a life of it's 
own. A growing school of thought suggested that it had. 

                         *******************

The cloak of shimmering, distorted space-time that floated in the maw of 
the stargate parted and Samantha Carter stepped through. 

Ponder Stibbons and Mustrum Ridcully had tensed in anticipation of a 
battle with a tentacles monster from the dungeon dimensions and had been 
waiting with staffs raised and the first spell they could think of under 
the circumstances, half uttered when she arrived. 

They swallowed their words with an effort. After all, the denizens of 
the dungeon dimensions often took the form of beautiful young women, but 
they tended not to be armed to the teeth the way that this one was. 

Ponder Stibbons looked at Mustrum Ridcully. Women in chain mail were 
rare enough, but this? She had more metal hanging off her than an 
infantry regiment. 

"Who are you?" Samantha Carter asked. 

                         *******************

Sam Vimes led Carrot, Detritus and Jack O'Neill while they stepped 
lightly along the corridor of a thousand blades and blunt instruments, 
carefully threading their way through the selection of ironmongery that 
was now on display. O'Neill glanced at a few of them as though they were 
old friends. 

From the corner of his eye, Vimes watched O'Neill's reactions to the 
display of weaponry. He had obviously seen it all during his team's 
march through the hallway on the previous day. 

"Normally, I'd have to say your story was a pack of lies," Vimes told 
O'Neill, "but this is the disc world after all, and, damn but some weird 
stuff goes down here. Coming to visit from another star is probably the 
least implausible story I've heard over the years. 

"The guy's you're going to meet are the experts at bizarre." 

"Well, yeah you got that right," O'Neill said and eyed Detritus off. 

For his part, Detritus was getting a bit fed up with the attention. It 
was as though the guy had never seen a troll before. 

Vimes was still speaking. "It would have been nice if the thing had been 
created by the Wizards. Them I can deal with. They might break through 
to the dungeon dimensions occasionally, but at least they look after 
their own problems. This thing," he said and ushered O'Neill through the 
door and into Leonard De Quirm's study/cell, "is a whole new kettle of 
fish as far as this place is concerned. You sure you don't have any idea 
who put it here?" 

O'Neill stopped beside Vimes. The two of them filled the doorway. There 
was no need to follow Vimes' gesture. O'Neill was comfortably familiar 
with the thing that filled the far half of the room. 

"None what so ever," O'Neill said. "It's what we came through to find 
out." 

Vimes shook his head ruefully. 

"Figured it might be something like that," Vimes said with his usual 
sardonic edge. He had already figured that O'Neill was of the genus 
'guard' in one of it's otherworldly manifestations. The clues were all 
there. He didn't have the furtive spy-type approach to him. Vimes had 
actually begun to warm to the man. 

It was such a pity about the gonnes. That was the truly scary aspect of 
O'Neill's team's appearance. It said something bad about the sort of 
things O'Neill's team had to guard against. Whatever it was out there, 
the guards who watched out for it needed to carry gonnes and that 
suggested it was a really bad thing for the discworld to have 
encountered. 

Regarding the stargate they encountered a trio of people. Two of them 
were unfamiliar to O'Neill. 

"Hi Sam," O'Neill said as soon as he passed through the doorway. "I was 
wondering where you had gotten to." 

"I went back through. You were gone for a long time." 

Vimes followed O'Neill's line of sight and caught sight of the woman who 
was waiting beside the two Wizards. For some reason he was put in mind 
of his own Sergeant Angua. It probably wasn't the military uniform, or 
the blonde good looks or anything; it was more likely the look of 
restrained motion. A posture that said, as soon as no one is looking, 
I'm out of here. 

"Another of yours," Vimes said to O'Neill. "I take it." 

"Yep." 

"How many more of you are out there, blundering around in my town." 

O'Neill raised one laconic eyebrow. "That's all of them accounted for 
now." 

"Then perhaps I should introduce you to the wizards." 

                         *******************

Vimes pushed the plans for a set-type-by-the-action-of-the-fingers-so-
that-words-could-be-printed-on-the-page machine onto the floor and sat 
on the desk where the plans had been. 

O'Neill turned to Samantha Carter. "Have you been able to draw any new 
conclusions yet?" He asked. 

"Nothing concrete," She said. She frowned. "There's not enough back up 
to the design any where among this lot." She gestured to encompass the 
piles of paper scattered about the room. "You know what you would 
expect, research notes, references to other works, that sort of thing. 
There's just none of that here; nothing. The plans just appeared on the 
paper and then it was built." 

O'Neill didn't like the sound of that. "So, what does that mean to us?" 

"The plans have to have come from a Gou'ld," Samantha said earnestly. 
"The guy who invented it must have been either working with a Gou'ld, or 
at least a Jaffa." 

"So they're here then?" 

"Looks that way." 

"If you don't mind," Vimes reminded O'Neill of the reason that they had 
come to the room in the first place. 

Across the other side of the room from them, the two wizards were lost 
in their examination of the stargate. The pair crouched between the gate 
mechanism and the wall, trying to read the runes on the far side of the 
thing. They were not having much luck. 

Carter wandered away from O'Neill so she could re-join the wizards. 
O'Neill leant against the opposite wall, close by where Vimes waited to 
speak with him. Carrot and Detritus stood either side of O'Neill like 
good palace guards. 

"Here's what I know," Vimes said and chewed the end of his cigar. It had 
gone out and he wanted to light it, but he had no dragon, and he was 
reluctant to strike a match on Detritus again. "Lord Vetinari was last 
seen in his office yesterday. His secretary brought him a report from 
our ambassador in Sto Helit. I'm not sure what was in it, and the 
secretary is no help, because the thing was in code." Vimes waved a 
sheet of paper at O'Neill. "This came through the clax a few minutes 
later," Vimes continued. "It appeared to be in the same code, so the 
Secretary brought it through to Vetinari in a rush, only to find his 
office empty. 

"Ordinarily the fact that Vetinari vanished without a trace would be a 
cause for concern, because every other time it's happened in the past, 
there was something sinister going on. Now, most of the Guild leaders go 
to a great deal of trouble to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't 
happen again. So when he disappears again, I start to look for outside 
agencies, those don't know what the hell is going on in this town or 
understand how the system works." 

Vimes jabbed the stubs of his cigar in O'Neill's direction. "Imagine my 
reaction when I find you in town. You fit the bill exactly. Armed, 
trained and from out of town. I just have to be suspicious." 

He paused, waiting for O'Neill's comments. 

"Oh, yes!" said Samantha Carter. Her fist punched at thin air. She held 
something in her hand; it looked like a neatly bundled sheaf of paper. 

O'Neill looked from Vimes to the stargate. "You figure anything out 
there Sam?" 

"Sorry," said Samantha Carter. "Who were you...?" 

"I've been telling you what..." began Samuel Vimes. "Oh." 

She answered slowly, punctuating each work with a glance into the notes 
she held in her hand. "An enormous amount sir," Carter said. "I think." 
She thumbed through more of the sheets, one after another, reading 
pieces here and there, sampling really. "There's more of the drawings 
for the construction of the machine, but there's also a dissertation on 
the theory of wormhole travel and even an operators manual. Oh, and the 
operators manual has the most amazing sketched in the margin. When ever 
you look at it your sure the eyes follow you around the room. I have to 
take all this back to base. That's where I was before, when I first 
found out that the Gou'ld had been here. I tried to contact you sir, but 
you didn't answer your radio." 

"Ah that would be because we were unconscious and locked in the cells," 
O'Neill said. "Not to worry, happens all the time in this job." 

"Sorry about that sir," Carrot said. "We weren't to know." 

O'Neill flipped him a vague wave. "It's fine. Like I said, happens all 
the time in this job. Does that prove or disprove that the Gou'ld are 
here?" 

"Prove, I would say." 

O'Neill nodded slowly. 

"You're saying that some one here on the discworld created this thing," 
Vimes concluded. "But that they had help. What I need to find out is 
who, why and where they took Vetinari. These Gou'ld, they are the same 
aliens that you mentioned earlier?" 

O'Neill never had the chance to answer the question. The discussion 
broke off when footsteps sounded in the hallway. 

Angua stepped through the door, followed shortly afterward by Daniel 
Jackson and Teal'c. A scruffy little terrier like object followed them 
through the door and hung around Angua's feet. She shaped to kick at it 
once and it dodged skillfully. 

"I see you found Gaspode," Carrot commented to Angua. She grimaced in 
reply. 

"I wondered what that smell was," Vimes said. 

'Woof, bloody woof woof," Gaspode said. 

Everyone knows that dogs don't talk so they all ignored the second word. 
Vimes puzzled over the fact that the little dog appeared to speak the 
bark, rather than bark it out. He didn't let the problem use up much of 
his time. It was puzzling though. 

"So where do these things normally come from?" Vimes asked. He pointed 
at the Stargate. It was a redundant gesture; everyone knew what 'thing' 
he was referring to. 

"The Gou'ld leave the things lying around," O'Neill said. "The galaxy is 
full of the bloody things." 

"The who?" Angua asked. 

"Show her Teal'c," O'Neill said and waved the Jaffa over. 

                         *******************

"I don't see how it can work," Ponder Stibbons told Mustrum Ridcully. He 
pointed at the stargate. "It doesn't seem to tap into the local 
thaumalogical field at all. I can't see how something so obviously 
eldritch can operate without at least some sort of power source." 

Ridcully was learning how to deal with Ponder and his team of high 
powered thinkers. It involved letting them come to him. If he played 
dumb enough, they eventually had to start talking sense to get some of 
the resources they used up at such an enormous rate. 

"The alchemists are always playing with a thing they call chemical 
energy," Ridcully suggested. 

Ponder was taken aback by the validity of the statement but rallied as 
soon as the fallacy presented itself to him. It took a surprisingly long 
time to come up with the counter argument. "That's just variations on 
fire," said Ponder dismissively. 

"Forest fires seem to have a great deal of energy," Ridcully pointed out 
reasonably. 

Ponder took a moment to consider that. "This seems to use energy in the 
same sort of proportions as a lightening strike," he concluded. 

That smacked too close to the whole 'God' thing for Ridcully's taste. If 
someone was toying with the powers of the gods there might be hell to 
pay. Literally. It was a vain hope to even consider the idea that the 
denizens of Dunmanifestin weren't watching at this very moment and 
wondering how to best stuff up the lives of all concerned. The one time 
a sourcerer got loose on the discworld had been a dark day in it's 
history indeed. Ridcully was living up in the mountains, hunting birds 
and snaring trout then, and he had missed most of the real action. But 
he had heard all about it over many a large lunch. 

He said as much to Stibbons, who did not respond. Which was strange, 
Ponder Stibbons never let a conversational opening rest. Ponder was not 
all that well acquainted with the notion of a rhetorical question. 
Ridcully looked up just in time to see Ponder's eyes flick open wide, as 
though the lids were loaded with springs. 

"Oh my God," Ponder Stibbons cried. "It's come from the dungeon 
dimensions. It's been cloaking itself as a man and now the tentacles are 
coming out..." The rest was muffled by his arm that suddenly encased his 
head and it appeared to be trying desperately to burrow it's way into 
Ponder's shoulders. 

Ridcully had been through this before; confrontation with the dungeon 
dimensions was old hat now. He was a veteran of several campaigns. He 
raised his staff and uttered the first spell that came to mind. 

There was a blinding flash of octarine light. Beside O'Neill, Teal'c 
disappeared with a puff of air. 

O'Neill had been through this before; confrontation with staff wielding 
alien monstrosities was old hat now. He was a veteran of more campaigns 
against the Gou'ld than he cared to remember. He slapped at his holster 
with his right hand, but of course that was empty. It was time for plan 
B. He dived across the table that separated him from Samantha Carter, 
scattering the half-finished sketches of a rose that caught the light 
just so, and the plans for a horseless carriage powered by burning 
hydrocarbon. They drifted onto the floor to join the plans for the 
machine for setting type by the action of fingers against keys. O'Neill 
rolled onto his feet and snatched the gun from Samantha Carter's 
holster. 

"Die you Gou'ld scum," he cried and pulled the trigger. 

He cursed, released the safety and pulled the trigger again. The gun 
released a storm of lead particles that was accompanied by the sort of 
rapid fire banging and reek of burnt cordite that only a US Military 
issue fully automatic sub-machine gun can manage. Spent cartridges 
rattled to the floor, and bounced off Samantha and Ponder Stibbons. They 
were still hot and they burnt. 

"Hey," Samantha cried. 

Every one of the members of the City Watch dived behind something that 
was designed by Leonard De Quirm to make life easier for everyday man. 
They all knew from experience what a gonne was capable of and this one 
was an order of magnitude worse than even their vivid imaginings. 

For all the smoke noise and smell, Ridcully was too quick for that 
little ploy of O'Neill's. The Arch Chancellor dived head long over the 
windowsill, followed by the tiny shrapnel and splinter cloud that had 
once been the aerates-milk-to-make-frothy-coffee-machine which had taken 
the brunt of O'Neills enthusiasm. 

"Get the frog," Ridcully yelled to Stibbons before he dashed across the 
garden. 

                         *******************

Carter wasn't hanging around. She had seen Teal'c disappear. She had 
seen O'Neill take the shot at the Jaffa. She wasn't hanging around. She 
dived through the door and found herself in the corridor of dangling 
weapons. 

"Oh," she said and skidded to a halt. "Dear." 

                         *******************

O'Neill thought he saw a purple flash in the garden and let off another 
burst. The body exploded in a cloud of feathers. 

"Damn," he said. "Missed." 

"Good," Ridcully said from the cover of a large tree. "Missed." 

                         *******************

Ponder Stibbons crawled around beneath the tables and made a grab for 
the frog. The frog for its part watched his approach and hopped away at 
the last possible moment consistent with the narrative requirement that 
it maximised the amount of embarrassment for Ponder. Ponder slid across 
the floor and his face and collided with the leg of a table. 

He groaned and rubbed the top of his head, which he had just used to 
shift the table and all of it's contents several centimetres. 

Teal'c watched Ponder's plight for a moment, croaked once derisively and 
hopped again, hiding behind a suction-device-to-help-lift-all-those-
small-pieces-of-rubbish-off-the-floor machine. 

                         *******************

A seven-foot skeleton, wearing a midnight black robe, stood beside a 
giant white horse. They looked solemnly down at the pathetic smattering 
of chicken remains that Jack O'Neill had caused to spread across a dozen 
square metres of garden. 

"THAT WAS SOMETHING OF AN OVER KILL," The skeleton commented. The voice, 
if you could call it a voice, was like two tombstones rubbing together. 

The skeleton clutched a leather-bound, gold embossed book in one hand 
and an egg timer was clutched in the other. The huge white horse tossed 
its head and snorted derisively. It seemed to be having trouble finding 
the ground with its feet. Two of them were a couple of centimetres above 
the ground and the other two were embedded a couple of centimetres into 
the ground. 

"Henrietta Hen," the skeleton said significantly. "THIS IS YOUR LIFE!" 

The shade of Henrietta Hen tilted her head on one side and looked 
closely at the book. Inside, the pages had become silent for the first 
time in years. The chicken scratchings that had chronicled Henrietta's 
life had only just recently come to a scratching and abrupt halt. It 
didn't look like anything to eat, but she decided to test it any way. 
She pecked at it. She gave up on the book to look for better pickings on 
the ground. 

"THAT DIDN'T GO AT ALL WELL," Death said to his tiny black robed bony 
rodent companion. "LET'S HAVE ANOTHER LOOK AT THAT SCRIPT." A piece of 
paper rustled between the bony fingers of his hand. "MUMBLE, MUMBLE, 
INSERT NAME HERE, THIS IS YOUR LIFE... MUMBLE, MUMBLE. OH THERE'S A FOOT 
NOTE; DAMN I HATE THAT." 

He climbed aboard his Horse (which for some reason had the less than 
portentous name of Binky). Death paused for a moment, looked 
significantly at the stargate that rested malignantly on the other side 
of the window and shook his head. "BEEN HERE FOR LONGER THAN A WHOLE DAY 
AND ALL I'VE GOT TO SHOW FOR IT IS ONE DEAD CHICKEN. OK, WHERE DO I FIND 
THE NEXT HUMAN?" Death consulted whatever aspect of space-time it was 
that he used to store and process the infinite amount of information he 
had to deal with, "AH THERE'S THE NEXT ONE." 

                         *******************

O'Neill leapt over the windowsill, landed heavily on a rose bush. He 
spent a few seconds disentangling his fatigues from the thorns and 
brushing at the little dribbly cuts on his hands and neck. Then he was 
off after the other flash of purple that he saw weaving between the mis-
matched shrubbery. It was heading for the fence. 

O'Neill ran on. The fleeing figure stopped, turned aimed the staff. 

The bush beside O'Neill burst into flame. He ducked behind a stone 
bench, which like most things designed by B.S. Johnson, it was 
brilliantly conceived but lacked a certain attention to detail. It was 
eleven feet high and not equipped with stairs. 

                         *******************

A white horse snickered behind Ridcully. He blinked once and then turned 
slowly, certain of what he was going to see and far from pleased at the 
prospect. 

"What are you doing here?" Ridcully demanded. "My time is not for ages 
yet." 

"I KNOW," said Death."IT'S JUST THAT, WELL, YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY 
NEXT APPOINTMENT. SO, I THOUGHT, I'LL JUST TAG ALONG. THAT IS IF YOU 
DON'T MIND?" 

Ridcully turned away and did his best to ignore the seven-foot skeleton 
riding the giant white horse beside him. It is a testimony to the 
quantity of bizarre things that happen on the disc world that he managed 
a fair job of it. 

A small piece of fence exploded out of the brickwork behind Ridcully, 
followed by a high pitched whining noise that trailed away into the 
afternoon. Ridcully pulled his head in before it took it into its mind 
to do the same thing as the brickwork. 

"THAT WAS JOLLY CLOSE, I MUST SAY," Death said. "IT'S A WONDER I DON"T 
SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOU IF YOU GO THROUGH LIFE DOING THINGS LIKE THIS 
FOR ENTERTAINMENT." 

Ridcully wasn't having any of that line of reasoning. The subject needed 
to be changed quickly. Now what was a suitable subject? "How's your 
grand-daughter making out?" Ridcully asked Death. 

"SUSAN IS JUST FINE. WE DON"T GET TOGETHER AS OFTEN AS I MIGHT LIKE BUT 
ISN"T THAT ALWAYS THE WAY WITH ADULT CHILDREN." 

"I guess so," said Ridcully who, as a celibate Wizard, knew nothing of 
that sort of human behaviour at all. 

Another piece of brickwork exploded from the wall and in the aftermath 
it showered fine pink powder over Ridcully. The most insulting aspect of 
the dusting was the way the powder passed through Death and Binky as if 
they weren't there before it finally settling on Ridcully. 

                         *******************

"Carrot," Vimes finally said. He would really enjoy watching this sort 
of spectacle all day, but there was work to be done. 

Carrot pulled his attention away from the day's entertainment 
reluctantly. 

The humorous tableau being conducted so adroitly beneath the table had 
reached an impasse. The frog wasn't coming out and Stibbons had stopped 
banging his head on the underside of the tables. He had started to use 
his head for other things, like thinking. He decided to try the patient 
approach. He waited for the frog to make its next move. 

The frog watched him with amphibian disdain. 

The sort of inaction behind both of those decisions hardly made good 
spectator sport. 

"Yes, sir," Carrot replied. He watched Vimes expectantly. 

"Can you slip out into the garden and round those two idiots up before 
someone gets hurt?" 

Carrot reluctantly pushed himself off the wall and started heading for 
the window. "Certainly." 

Vimes scratched his match against Detritus. It burst into flame. "Sorry 
sergeant," he apologised. The smell of cigar smoke filled the air with 
its distinctive brand of aromatic assault. Vimes drew a lung full 
through his mouth and heaved a huge smoky sigh. 

"S'OK sir," said Detritus. "I know how it is." 

"Do you Sergeant? I would hope not. It's just; have one of these, or a 
drink, and you know how it is with drinking." 

The troll nodded enthusiastically. "Yessir," he agreed. Vimes watched 
the heavy air-cooled and heat-sinked helmet suspiciously. It didn't look 
like it was going to fall on his head, but you could never be too sure. 
"Two's not enough," supplied Detritus, "and one's way too many." 

"Sometimes you surprise me Sergeant." 

"It'd pretty cold in here." 

"There is that." 

                         *******************

Samantha Carter picked up the first weapon that she found lying on the 
floor and played her thumb across the edge. 

"Just follow me," a female voice said from behind her. Samantha Carter 
spun around (carefully; you never knew what unexploded traps might still 
be lurking in the not-so-innocent looking walls of that hallway). The 
knife attacked to the slender timber gantry that she had been examining 
clinked quietly against the wall. "I've worked out how to avoid the 
traps," Angua continued. 

A tallish blonde woman, who might almost have been a mirror image of 
Carter, if not for the extravagantly long hair, the chain mail and the 
gleaming armoured breastplate lurked in the doorway through which Carter 
had just alighted. "I've been asked to keep an eye on you. I'll just tag 
along. You don't mind?" 

Carter was taken aback. "Should I?" 

Angua shrugged. "Just being polite," she dismissed. "It's something new 
that Carrot suggested that I try." Angua leant against the wall and 
kicked one of the spring-loaded swords away from her foot. It moved away 
quickly and then slunk most of the way back. 

"Carrot?" Carter was trying to catch up. The conversation seemed to be 
racing away from her at a furious rate. 

"The big guy back there with the red hair," The blonde woman answered. 

Carter detected something in the tone, something wistful. "He and 
you...?" 

Angua nodded. "Yeah, although being a werewolf doesn't help." 

"Werewolf?" Samantha tasted the word, it was better than trying to 
swallow the implications. 

No, she had to think about it. She slowly drew the conclusion, while in 
a state of muddle-headed disbelief, that she could see that being a 
werewolf would not help anybody in anything related to human 
interaction. Except possibly feeding? 

"Angua," the woman said and thrust out her hand. 

Just for a moment Carter wondered which of them was the werewolf and 
then decided that it would be too impolite to ask. "Samantha," she 
answered. She took the hand and shook it briefly. "Where are we going?" 

"Where ever you want, within reason. Commander Vimes has asked me to get 
your gonnes back to the others in your team and then get you the hell 
out of this place." 

                         *******************

Vimes and Detritus leant against the wall and watched the latest in 
Ponder Stibbon's efforts to catch the frog that had once been the Jaffa, 
Teal'c. 

Patients hadn't worked. Like a wizard had a hope of out waiting 
something as brain dead and lazy as a frog. Who was he kidding? 

Teal'c croaked mockingly. 

                         *******************

O'Neill leapt over the fence and found himself once again in the streets 
of down town Morpork. Only minutes earlier he had avoided the subtly 
camouflaged trap that was the ho-ho (like a ha-ha only much deeper. B.S. 
Johnson again). 

Somewhere on the street ahead of him, the rotund form of the Arch-
chancellor of the Unseen University, Mistrum Ridcully, was racing along 
the street at the sort of speed that belied his girth. Nothing like 
being chased by a denizen of the dungeon dimension to lend urgency to 
your step. 

The street was awash with people. A crowd had gathered around a speaker 
who was hectoring the crowd from the moral high ground of being the one 
who thought to bring a soapbox and then climbed on board. The crowd 
listened to his editorial on their failings. A few critics hefted pieces 
of old fruit, ready to pass instant judgement. 

Ridcully burst into the crowd, scattering people and fruit into the air. 

Narrative convention demands a few panicked chickens, squawking away 
from the melee. So there they are, one was red and the other was white. 
They flapped a few times and managed to get themselves onto the top of 
the awnings over the entry door leading into a bakery. A cow and a pig 
lurched out of the same melee, making their characteristic noises and 
lurching into the street. 

The speaker landed on his backside after a large woman pushed him from 
his soapbox. She in turned cannoned off the ricocheting form of Mistrum 
Ridcully. In a superb piece of comic timing the speaker and the well-
processed remains of one chicken's breakfast coordinated their plummet 
to the ground. 

Wearing an appropriate frown, the speaker wiped his suddenly dirty face 
and watched the rotund form of the wizard in his frenzied retreat, now a 
long way down the street. 

A few of the more alert souls among the crowd worked out what was going 
on and panicked with more enthusiasm than they had displayed to date. 
Nothing gets the population of Ankh Morpork more excited than the sight 
of a wizard running. Inevitably there was something fundamentally nasty 
and frequently fatal following along behind him. 

The street became a busy place. 

                         *******************

O'Neill raced around the corner, barely maintaining his momentum on the 
slippery cobblestones. Damn, it was chaotic down there. He lost sight of 
the Jaffa amid the bustle of the street. He heaved a few heavy breaths 
and took stock. He thought he saw the Jaffa once again and stepped after 
him. 

The cow had been through this same patch of roadway during it's panicked 
flight. It left behind some excess baggage; all the better to take 
flight, reduce it's inertia and such. It steamed still, not yet cooling 
from body temperature to air temperature. 

O'Neill placed one foot in it and then kicked that foot at the sky. He 
landed with a thump on his backside. Managing at the last minute to 
avoid landing in the cow manure by twisting and landing painfully on his 
hip. When he hit the ground his trigger finger flinched, and a barrage 
of lead pellets burst from his gun. It raked the wall of the building 
across the road and mowed down the tread bare strapping that anchored 
the sign above the butcher's shop. 

The large woman who had bounced off the speaker was in the process of 
regaining her feet. No one seemed to be taking any notice of her plight 
or helping her to her feet so she had to do it herself. It was a 
laborious job and might have been better performed by a medium sized 
crane. 

Her efforts weren't helped by the sudden approach of a large timber 
placard advertising Gordon's prime ribs and beef cuts. The word "beef" 
caught her eye, (breaking her nose at the same time). She pitched 
backwards, and as a consequence the speaker once again found himself 
flattened against the cobblestones. 

O'Neill clambered awkwardly to his feet. He left leg was partially numb 
from the impact of his left buttock and the cobblestones. 

After a few hobbled paces along the street he concluded that there was 
no sign of the vivid purple robe. He was gone. 

"Damn," O'Neill spat. 

"Hot sausage in a bun?" inquired a man from beside him. O'Neill turned 
to see who it was that had approached him and what he wanted. The man 
was standing by a cart filled with some sort of meat like substance 
being boiled to death. A stack of cheap buttered rolls waited hopefully 
on one end of the trolley. In his hand he held one of his wares, 
supported by a soggy white thing that might have once been bread. He 
waved it about hopefully. 

"People actually buy these things?" O'Neill asked. He looked closely at 
the floating sausages. "And eat them?" 

"Genuine C.M.O.T. Dibbler's sausages," the man said. "These are the best 
that money can buy." 

O'Neill had another look. "Which part of C.M.O.T. Dibbler was cut up to 
make these sausages?" 

"No, no," the man said emphatically. "I must have got the patter wrong. 
I've only had this franchise for a few days and the patter is still a 
bit rusty." 

"Franchise?" asked O'Neill appalled. 

"Yeah it's the latest thing in town. Mr Dibbler is offering us all the 
opportunity to sell these sausages under his banner, so we can operate 
our own small business, and he looks after all the advertising for us. 
It works a treat." 

O'Neill almost asked how much the franchise cost, but decided not to 
embarrass the poor man any further, although some one who sold Dibbler's 
sausages for a living probably couldn't have any shame anyway. Instead 
O'Neill asked, "Have you seen a great big man in a purple robe and a 
pointed hat run past here? He has this long beard and..." 

"Mr Ridcully, the University Archchancellor? Yeah I saw him a couple of 
minutes ago. He was hiding under my cart for a bit and then said 
something about the smell of real food and then ran that way. You only 
just missed him, and...There he is now! If you hurry you might catch him 
before he gets around that, oh too late." 

Jack O'Neill was already running long before the sausage salesman 
finished his speech. 

From his vantage-point behind the cornerstone of the Ankh Morpork opera 
house. Ridcully caught sight of the running figure in military fatigues 
and leapt back to the flight. He hustled around a corner and avoided an 
on-rushing cart by the expedient of turning the horse into a frog. If 
you're on a good thing stick to it. The cart toppled to a clattering 
halt because the loss of the horse and then toppled nose first onto the 
road. It's momentum caused it to dig in and it toppling onto its side. 

The owner of the cart, a man with the unfortunately coincident name of 
Oliver Cartwright, fell out of the seat and landed with a thud on his 
head. This was just the first of his trials. 

After several unremarkable years of his life spent growing cabbages on 
the Sto Plains, Oliver Cartwright chose this particular day to enliven 
his existence by a trip to the Ankh Morpork markets. 

O'Neill rounded the corner and saw Ridcully lining up the shot with his 
staff. O'Neill let out a panicked yelp, ground to a sudden comical halt, 
ran on the spot and cart-wheeled his arms for a moment just like the 
best of cartoon characters. He scrambled behind the cover of the wall 
just as Ridcully let fly. 

The bolt was enough to subdue a medium sized dungeon dimension denizen. 
There was none of those available anywhere in the place to stop it. The 
bolt hit the cart amidships. Octarine fire obliterated everyone's vision 
for a few moments. The cart exploded in a shower of hay, flames, timber 
splinters and nails. O'Neill hid in the doorway of a business that 
advertised Stronginthearm swords clearance sale and waited for the 
shower of shredded cart to rain on the road. 

Comic narrative requires that a flaming wheel bounces on the pavement 
and then rolls past our baffled hero with flame licking from its 
periphery. And there it goes now. 

The cart's wheel rolled drunkenly along the road, past O'Neill and then 
toppled over; orbiting on its side for several seconds while it's 
angular momentum slowly dissipated in a crescendo of noise. 

"Hey that was my cart," Oliver Cartwright cried out. He was so angry he 
did something completely out of character. He strode confidence forth to 
confront Ridcully. 

"Here my man," Ridcully said. The man had the cheek to step between him 
and O'Neill, just when Ridcully was lining up for another bolt. He 
forestalled the spell with a visible effort. 

Cartwright's horse chose that moment to become a horse again, having 
done with being a frog. Unfortunately it was in mid leap. It landed on 
Cartwright with a thud. 

"AH, THERE HE IS, RIGHT ON TIME," Death said with a satisfied air. He 
stepped past Ridcully and stood over the body of Oliver Cartwright. He 
cleared his throat; maybe, well he made a noise like he was clearing his 
throat, if he had one. "OLIVER CARTWRIGHT THIS IS YOUR LIFE." Death 
waved the now silent copy of the man's life story before him. 

The shade of Oliver Cartwright looked at the book with a bemused 
expression on his simple face. "Is this for me?" he said. 

"YES!" 

"Wow," he opened a page and looked at the first entry. He was still 
reading when he faded from view. If you were uncharitable, you might say 
he expression was fading from wonderstruck to gobsmacked just before he 
faded from sight. That might have been for the realisation that his 
father was not the man he called dad. 

"STILL NOT QUITE RIGHT," Death told his skeletal rodent companion. 

"SQUEEK," said the death of rats. 

"THAT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY." Death said and leapt onto Binky the magic 
horse and rode along the road, which is not to say he rode along the 
pavement, just along the idea of the gap between buildings where its 
essential road-ness resided. 

Death stopped not far from where O'Neill was waiting in the doorway. The 
sapphire gleam of his eyes peered into the gloom and carefully examined 
the leader of SG1. If he could have blinked Death would have done so. He 
looked again and then once more. Death shook his head and rode on. 

O'Neill had the feeling that someone walked over his grave, but it was 
gone in a moment. He shook himself, leapt from the shelter of the 
doorway and levelled his gun in the direction of where he had last seen 
Ridcully standing. There was no sign of the Gou'ld amid the wreckage 
that filled most of the roadway. 

O'Neill pulled another clip from his belt and loaded it into the 
magazine of his gun. He was just about to set off in pursuit when he 
found him self prevented from running along the roadway by a massive 
hand gripping his upper arm. 

"Mr Vimes would like you to come back and join the fun," Carrot said. 
"Those were his very words." 

"Yeah. OK," said O'Neill. 'I've lost him any way." 

"He won't have gone far sir. The wizards always seem to finish up back 
at the University. It's the only place they can get well enough fed. I'm 
sure that if you wanted to speak with Mr Ridcully at a later date I 
could arrange it for you." 

                         *******************

Teal'c was still a frog. The horse that Ridcully had transformed only a 
few minutes later had much more body weight to hide than Teal'c did, so 
thaumalogically speaking the spell couldn't last anywhere near as long. 
Teal'c on the other hand was going to take several hours to revert back 
to sort of human again. In the mean time there was the life of a fancy 
free amphibian to experience. Now all he needed was a gullible princess. 

Ponder Stibbons had given up on being patient and made one last lurch 
after the frog. He hit his head on the leg of another of the tables. 
Nothing had changed, he realised, and he had just experienced a case of 
wishful thinking. 

Teal'c landed on top of a pile of rock and croaked judgementally at the 
supine form of Stibbons. 

"I got him," said the pile of rocks. 

"Thank god for that," muttered Stibbons. He crawled from beneath the 
table, needing three hands to rub the damage to his head and both 
shoulders. 

"I tink we need to take you to see Igor," said Detritus to Teal'c. "See 
if he can put you back right." 

"It'll wear off," Ponder said despondently. 

"I might be a troll, but I'm not fick enuff to take da word of someone 
who crawls under da table to hunt a frog. Dat's not da way ta get cre-
dib-ili-ty in dis town." 

                         *******************

Sacharissa Crisplock and Otto Chriek lurked in the shadows provided by 
the heavy velvet curtains framing the windows of the Patricians office 
while Samantha Carter and Angua walked through. Otto was a vampire by 
death, but was one of the upstanding Ankh Morpork black-ribboned 
temperance league. He had sworn off blood in the interest of not getting 
staked at regular intervals. It helped for a longer un-death. 

Angua gave one sniff as though she was searching for something illusive, 
but the smell of Gaspode overrode the smell of vampire and human, so she 
missed the lurking reporters. 

Carter and Angua chatted animatedly about the combined IQ of military 
and police males and testosterone with a sardonic air. They were both 
still laughing when the door closed behind them. 

Sacharissa tugged Otto from behind the curtains. "Come on," she said. "I 
think we'll be OK now." And together they raced toward the entrance to 
the not-so-secret-any-more passageway. Otto seemed to have no problem 
keeping up with Sacharissa despite the bulky iconograph he carried over 
his shoulder. 

"Oh," Sacharissa said when she realised what all the sharp things 
dangling from the ceiling were intended to do to anyone that happened to 
be walking along the corridor. She skidded to an abrupt halt. Otto had 
been watching behind them to be sure that the palace staff didn't spot 
them. They had been through a couple of close shaves already and he was 
starting to get a trifle worried about the consequences if they were 
found. It was one thing to be a vampire and essentially a member of the 
un-dead (or 'differently corporeal' depending on the publisher of your 
politically correct dictionary) but it was quite another to be caught 
sneaking into the Patrician's palace. He was so caught up with the whole 
paranoia thing that he missed Sacharissa's sudden stop. That was all he 
missed. 

Sacharissa made one violent lurch and very nearly somersaulted into the 
zone of weapon's deployment. Amid a wind milling of arms and the 
expelling of one huge breath she managed to right herself on the lip of 
the last cobblestone before the danger zone. 

Otto wasn't so lucky. He tripped and landed on the up turned blade of a 
broad sword. It punctured his chest. He sprawled on the floor, looking 
just like a bat that had been accidentally collected by a butterfly 
collector. 

"Otto!" Sacharissa screamed. 

"Oh," Otto said. 'It's nothing. It's not even vood. Just help me to my 
feet and I'll be as good as new." 

Sacharissa blinked a couple of times before she leapt to the vampire's 
aid. "You're sure you're OK?" she asked disbelievingly. 

"Not even a flesh wound. Vot do ve do now?" 

Sacharissa took a few moments to her mind around the events of the last 
few minutes. "OK. OK," She took one large breath and slowed her heart as 
much as she could under the circumstances. "Get an iconograph of this 
hall," she hissed at Otto. 

"I'll need za flash," Otto said warily. "You vill spot for me if I 
should over do it?" 

Sacharissa understood this one. She nodded. "Yes, but hurry." 

Otto fussily placed the iconograph in the tripod and held up the flash. 
It went zap and the room lit up more than daylight. The sound of furious 
brush strokes filled the iconograph. 

"Oh, sh...." Said Otto and fluttered to the floor, reduced to a cloud of 
fine ash particles. The tiny glass vial that had until recently been 
dangling around his neck hit the floor with a muffled thud and failed to 
break, thus not releasing the drop of blood that would have 
reconstituted the body of the vampire. The vial rolled across the floor 
directly for one of the openings through which one of the traps had left 
in the wall. 

"Oh ing hell," Sacharissa said with considerable feeling. She dived onto 
the floor and scrambled after the vial. Like all good narrative devices 
she only managed to tap the vial with the tips of her fingers so that 
instead of stopping just on the threshold of the hole, the blood filled 
vial accelerated further into the hole and disappeared from sight. 

Sacharissa climbed to her feet and cursed. She looked down at herself 
and realised that she was covered in a layer of fine powder. She dusted 
at it absently while she stared at the hole in the wall, scheming ways 
to get her hands on the little glass vial. She looked down at herself 
and realised what she was doing. 

"Arghhhh," she said and held her hands as far from herself as possible. 
"Otto..." she said weakly and looked at her left hand. The dust that was 
caked there only represented his left leg, but she wasn't to know that. 

                         *******************

"So you're the one they call Daniel Jackson," Vimes said. He drew a huge 
draft through his cigar. He pulled the thing from his mouth and hissed 
the smoke through his teeth. 

"What, oh yes," Jackson looked up from his inspection of one of Leonard 
De Quirm's papers. It was a struggle but he found he was able to read it 
with a bit of effort, provided he frowned in just the right way and bit 
his tongue. He stood up hurriedly and offered his hand to Sam Vimes. 

Vimes placed his cigar back in his mouth and shook the proffered hand. 

"Mr Sibbons isn't it?" Vimes asked the still slightly befuddled wizard. 

Ponder climbed laboriously to his feet. "Yes it is," he answered and 
stepped away from his nemesis. 

Teal'c sat in the cup of Detritus' hand and watched the wizards 
movements with the sort of superior air that only a large green bullfrog 
can conjure up. 

"Would you please go fetch Mr Ridcully? I can't see our gunman catching 
up with him, not in this town." 

Ponder stepped from the room, visibly relieved to be free of the 
influence of that malevolent frog. 

"Daniel Jackson," Vimes said with exaggerated significance. "How about 
you explain to me what this is all about? Especially this last bit. I 
don't want the same vague story that your commander fed me. I think I 
might need more detail than that. I want to know why your commanding 
officer thought it a good idea to shoot that gonne of his at one of our 
leading citizens, and why this man," he pointed at the frog, "has a 
snake in his stomach. And I want to know what we might have to do to 
protect this town from whatever it is that you people are so paranoid 
about. Take your time. I have the distinct impression that you're going 
to need it." 

"Well," said Daniel. 

                         *******************

On the way back from the Watch-house in Pseudopolis Yard, Samantha 
Carter looked around the streets of Ankh Morpork and marvelled at the 
haphazard nature of the local architecture. Angua had gotten over her 
own fascination with the variety offered by the town. Having been 
escorted through the wonders and marvels of Ankh Morpork by its one-man 
tourism-advertising department, Carrot Ironfounderson, she was quite 
immune to urban wonder. 

"I don't want to seem rude," Samantha began. Her eyes tracked a pack of 
dwarfs heading into a bar. Over their shoulders each dwarf carried a 
giant battle-axe. They were all dressed in chain mail, armour and 
leather. They were singing a song about gold. The words were simple. It 
went; "Gold, gold, gold, gold..." 

"Yes," said Angua carefully, not aiding Samantha in her attempt to say 
whatever it was she intended to say. 

"How does a human and..." How did she put this delicately? 
Morphologically challenged? 

"A werewolf," Angua supplied. Ah, that was how, Samantha realised. 

"Yes!" 

They stepped around Arnold Sideways. Carter looked at his cart closely, 
noting the absence of legs absently, noting the proffered cup even more 
absently, but paying her full attention to the smell. In his other hand 
he was proffering a newspaper. Angua stopped and bought one from him. 
The copper coin clattered in the bottom of the cup. 

"On the full moon," Angua said absently while she thumbed through the 
paper, "there's the dog basket and the doggy flap in the door and the 
rest of the...Oh damn." 

Angua read the paper from the back to the front. It was the front-page 
news that caught her eye. De Word had figured out the reference to the 
gonne and had even found the references to the previous use of the thing 
in Ankh Morpork. Damn but the man was good. 

"The excrement is really going to fly into the ventilator's impellor 
now," Angua muttered. 

"What is it?" Carter asked. Angua handed her the newspaper. Carter read 
the front-page article, but was really none the wiser. 

Angua crouched before the tiny ball of fur and ticks that had been 
following them. "Gaspode, I need you to go find Carrot and tell him what 
happened." 

"How's he going to do that?" Carter asked bewildered. Carter had 
actually expected Angua to bark at the dog and talk to it in it's own 
language, not treat it like Lassie. 

"Yeah, no problem babe," Gaspode answered. "Wonder dog to the rescue 
again," he muttered as he walked away. "Just once I'd like a bit of 
credit for what I do. Maybe I should talk to William De Worde." There 
was a pause while Gaspode thought that through. "On second thought..." 
The rest was lost because he was around the corner. 

Carter stared after the departing dog with an expression on her face 
that did not do justice to any assessment of her intelligence. 

Angua reached up and shut Carter's mouth shut with a gentle push of her 
fingers beneath Carter's chin. 

                         *******************

O'Neill accompanied Carrot while he walked along the street of cunning 
artificers. They were approaching the Hippopotamus Bridge on their way 
to Pseudopolis Yard. They were silent while the stepped onto the bridge. 
Carrot was digesting the implications of what O'Neill had to say. 

O'Neill looked over the railing and down at the river Ankh. A flock of 
ducks were walking along the surface, seeking a clean bit of river so 
they could get their feet wet. They were wasting their time. The Ankh 
was probably the only river in the universe where the site of a drowning 
could carry a chalk outline. 

"So you people troop all over the galaxy interfering in other people's 
live and cultures," Carrot was saying. 

"Well that's not exactly how it is?" O'Neill said defensively. The sight 
of the river had been enlightening. He thought he had seen rivers of 
dirt in the outback of Australia, but it was not quite the same as what 
went under this bridge. 

"And how is it then?" Carrot asked. Carrot leant against the railing 
beside O'Neill. He looked down into the river with a different king of 
eye to the one that O'Neill used. Carrot had fished the occasional body 
from off the river Ankh and was always aware that anyone who was thrown 
into the Ankh would probably bounce and then later the Watch would find 
it. 

"We trade information and ideas on how to go about defeating the 
Gou'ld," O'Neill explained. "We also exchange cultural ideas and 
artifacts, that sort of thing." 

Carrot pointed at the full holster on O'Neill's hip. "By carrying 
gonnes?" 

"Yeah. Well." 

"Lots of gonnes. More than one each in fact." 

"Yeah, well you never know when you might run into a Gou'ld." 

Carrot came across as simple, but that is not the same as unintelligent. 
"Like Mr Ridcully," He suggested. Carrot was mastering the art of 
sarcasm. It was Angua's current hobby/project, "who's only a wizard, not 
some evil alien creature that goes around enslaving people." 

O'Neill nodded slowly. "OK, so I might not have got that bit right, but 
there's still what he did to Teal'c." 

"He's only spending a few hours as a frog. It'll enhance his 
understanding of other's I'm sure," Carrot said charitably. 

"Yeah right," O'Neill said. 

Gaspode galloped along the road behind them, wheezing and panting while 
moving at barely above walking pace. He wobbled a few times and Carrot 
reached down to steady him before he fell over. 

"What is it?" Carrot asked Gaspode. 

"Huh, huh, huh," said Gaspode. Saliva dripped off his tongue in great 
dollops that landed on the pavement in virtually a continuous stream. 

"Take your time," Carrot admonished. 

O'Neill turned way in disgust. "Haven't we got to be somewhere?" he 
asked tetchily. He stared opened mouthed at the dog when it answered 
Carrot. 

"Angua sent me, huh, huh," Gaspode finally managed. "The paper is full 
of the gonne incident." 

"From the Drum?" 

"No the last time when the Assassins had the thing and Edward D'eth 
found it," Gaspode managed between gasps. He gave a hacking cough. "De 
Worde has worked it all out, D'eth, Beano the clown and the way Dr 
Cruces used the gonne to try to assassinate the Patrician and... Why is 
that man staring at me? Hasn't he ever seen a talking dog for god's 
sake?" 

"Gaspode..." Carrot reminded him. 

"Yeah OK. Anyway, she sent me to tell you that it's all over town now. 
Everybody knows." 

"Everybody knows what?" asked Carrot dangerously. 

Gaspode's cocked his head to one side. God, how did they get to the top 
of the food chain? He wondered. "That the assassins have a weapon that 
can kill from a great distance, that is much more powerful than a cross 
bow and quicker to load than a regular bow, and can be used by anybody. 
And that a bunch of them are on the street and they were used at the 
Drum last night by a bunch of guys wearing clothes just like that guy 
over there is...Oh damn." 

Gaspode cowered behind Carrot's leg. 

"Yes, Gaspode, we know." 

O'Neill looked from Carrot to Gaspode and back again. 

'And...?" O'Neill asked. 

'You keep away from me," Gaspode ordered with false bravado. 

"Did you get all that from the paper?" Carrot asked. 

Gaspode eyed O'Neill uneasily. "Nah, it's all over the street now," he 
said. "I got most of that from listening to the mob that's hanging 
around outside the Assassin's guild building." 

Gaspode began chewing on a part of his anatomy in an action that no 
human could physically ever do to himself. 

"Oh yes," said Carrot. He sounded disappointed to O'Neill's ear. "That's 
just what I would have thought the people of this town would do." 

"If it gets much worse," Gaspode agreed, "then I won't be able to sneak 
in there for dinner tonight." 

"This sounds like serious trouble," Carrot muttered. 

"Is it going to be a riot?" O'Neill asked. 

"Eventually," Carrot said. "But first it's just street theatre. They've 
all turned out to see what happens next. It's only after Lord Downey 
gets upset with them disturbing the neighbourhood and tries to do 
something about it that it will become a riot." 

                         *******************

"What's that noise?" Vimes asked. 

"Dunno sir," Detritus answered. "Do you want I should find out?" 

Detritus, Vimes and Jackson stood at the entrance to the Patrician's 
palace and watched a few stragglers marching along the road. It was 
unusual in Ankh Morpork to see a common purpose among a group of people. 
It was suspicious enough to gain the attention of the City Watch under 
even the most peaceful of circumstances. 

"Just stop one of them and find out what's going on," Vimes said to 
Detritus. The troll grabbed the first person within reach and carried 
him by the collar to speak with Vimes. 

"It's all happening at the Assassin's guild," the man explained vaguely. 
He had a copy of the Ankh Morpork Times in his hand. Vimes took it from 
his unresisting fingers and read the contents. 

"Oh bloody hell," he muttered and screwed the paper up in a trembling 
fist. "Detritus, go see if you can break that little gathering up, while 
Dr Jackson and I round up his gonnes and try to get this whole stargate 
team out of town before they get lynched." 

"Right you are sir," Detritus saluted, with a gentle clink of his stone 
fingers against the air-cooled helmet that he often wore. 

                         *******************

"I knew something was odd about this place," Samantha Carter said to 
Angua. They were running toward the Assassin's Guild House. "But I would 
never have guess that magic works here." 

"If you want to live through the next couple of hours so you can get 
home you better allow for that fact in everything that you do," Angua 
said. 

The sounds of people gathering with malice and mayhem on their minds 
drifted to them from around the next corner in the road. 

Angua was the first to see the gathering of people, animals, trolls and 
dwarfs that had gathered outside the assassin's guild. Most of them were 
there out of simple Ankh Morporkian curiosity. A riot was just another 
form of street theatre to them. 

Among those who were just curious, were few more thoughtful souls who 
had decided that the Assassins having a weapon that was less than 
personal were less than happy about the situation. A lot of the citizens 
of Ankh Morpork had developed an over-inflated paranoia over the 
presence of the assassin's guild. It was mainly those souls who made 
money by taking it off other people and not providing quite the level of 
service or performance that the customer had in mind wen they parted 
with their hard earned cash. For those members of the business 
fraternity, the presence of a team of trained and cash friendly 
assassins had always been a source of mild concern. It was not the sort 
of thing to keep you awake at night, that was the role of the creatures 
from the dungeon dimensions, but it was the sort of thing that prompted 
you to buy expensive locks and alarms and such. 

The crowd was surrounded by a flock of sausage sellers, all under the 
C.M.O.T Dibbler's banner. Dibbler himself was handling the advertising 
by shouting at the crowd through a make-shift megaphone. He was barely 
audible over the excited babble of the crowd. 

"God now what do we do?" Carter asked. 

"I have an idea," Angua said. Her tone didn't tell Samantha Carter that 
it was a good idea. 

                         *******************

Carrot and O'Neill ground to a panting halt on the periphery of the 
crowd. Somewhat in the distance behind them came the pat, pat, pat of a 
small dog, struggling to keep up. Not many people would recognise the 
sound of Gaspode complaining about the exercise over the hacking pant of 
his laboured breathing. Dogs can't talk; everyone knew that, so no one 
listened to Gaspode. 

"Mr Stronginthearm isn't it?" Carrot said affably to a small person in 
the horned helmet and leather armour standing just at the edge of the 
crowd. O'Neill saw that he was carrying a battle scared battle-axe. He 
wore a beard that would have looked at home on a member of ZZ-Top. "What 
brings you out here?" 

The dwarf turned around and reached for his axe. "Oh it's you Mr 
Carrot," he said and relaxed the hand that rested on the axe handle. 
"Those bastards who killed Cuddy have done it again," the dwarf added. 

"Done what again?" Carrot asked. O'Neill looked closely at the huge 
watchman. There was almost menace in the tone, perhaps, if you were 
uncharitable. 

"You know..." Stronginthearm tried to imply. 

"No," Carrot said carefully. "I don't. Perhaps you can tell me." 

"Same as they did last time," Stronginthearm said less certainly. 

"And what was that?" 

Stronginthearm suddenly found that he was suffering from a severe case 
of dichotomy. He dragged the toe of his boot across the ground. 

Carrot pushed his way forward, parting the crowd as thought it were the 
Red Sea parting for Moses. O'Neill followed in his wake, shaking his 
head the whole way. He found himself looking for snow white and shook 
his head to clear that bizarre notion from his mind. 

A similar bow wave was threading toward the entrance to the Assassin's 
Guild head quarters. Ploughing through the human (and non-human) sea 
like an icebreaker bashing it's way through the Arctic ice floes came a 
small flotilla that was headed up by the bulk of Detritus. 

                         *******************

"Ah I thought I might find you two here," Vimes said. 

"Ah, Mr Vimes, we were watching developments and preparing to take 
action," Fred Colon said with gathering confidence. It sounded pretty 
lame all the same, but the first word was delivered with trepidation, 
the last with caution, the rest shaded between those two 'extremes'. 

"Is that your story Nobby?" Vimes asked the slight figure that huddled 
beside and partially behind Colon's bulk. 

"It was just like Fred explained Mr Vimes," Nobby suggested 
enthusiastically. 

"So you're really not loitering in a doorway, smoking the last of your 
doggends and letting the whole mess sort itself out so you can arrest 
the unconscious." 

Fred Colon listened to that description with a growing disconnection. He 
had been a watchman for nearly thirty years and for most of that time 
the practice that Sam Vimes had just described was exactly the sort of 
action they had always taken. It was standard operating procedure, and 
for some reason it was now out of fashion. Now they were expected to 
keep the peace, not remark upon it after all the action subsided. 

"It's time to put your plan into action," Vimes suggested cautiously. 
'So what was it?" 

"Ah well sir," Colon said. Behind his eyes his brain was working 
furiously, unfortunately the furious work involved a lot of motion that 
was focussed into running in tiny circles. 

                         *******************

The head chef of the Partician's palace catering service was preparing 
the last of the day's marinades by placing a few delicate additions into 
the mixture; those little herbal finishes that separated the truly 
memorable dining experiences from the merely satisfying. 

A rapid patter of footsteps outside the door was the prelude to a 
particularly handsome young woman bursting through the kitchen door. She 
slid to halt in the middle of the room, performing a half pirouette 
before she came to rest. Her more than ample bosom heaved at the 
exertion she had made to get into the room so precipitously, which sight 
distracted the chef from his cooking for a speechless moment. 

Her head whipped every which way, trailing wisps of otherwise severely 
styled hair. Sacharissa looked around frantically, struggling to find 
the meat rack. Her eyes lit on it suddenly. She marched across 
purposefully and started sorting through the meats, looking at each one 
critically for a moment before turning to the next. 

"Here, what are you...?" demanded the head chef, now in charge of his 
mouth again. 

"Get out of my ing way," Sacharissa snarled and grabbed a haunch of lamb 
from the hanging rack. It dripped onto the floor. Throwing the lamb over 
her shoulder she bolted back through the door again. 

The chef stared after the gently swinging door and scratched his mostly 
bald head. 

                         *******************

William De Worde sat on the hard timber wheel of a cart he found 
abandoned in the street and wrote furiously in his notebook. The 
vantage-point he had chosen for himself was fifty metres from the 
periphery of the riot. It was close enough to hear what was said 
(provided it was shouted but then that's how everything was said during 
a gathering like that) but it was far enough away to avoid the worst of 
the likely missiles. He watched the action unfolding outside the 
Assassin's guild with professional intensity. 

Another prospective participant raced past William. The man wore a 
butcher's gore spattered apron. He looked blank for a second before 
skidding to a stop and strolling back to speak with William. 

"You're that De Worde guy right?" 

It was this same ritual, enacted half a dozen times a day for William. 
William put on his meet-the-public face. "Yes." 

"Nigel Pearce (56)," the man said. "I saw it all. I was in the Mended 
Drum when those three assassins came in and tried to assassinate the 
Unseen University Librarian. You should have seen the action then. It 
was marvellous. Gee I bet you wished you had your fancy iconograph in 
there when that happened." 

"Where were you when this unfolded Mr Pearce?" William asked. His pencil 
worked furiously, jotting down the details. He was only listening to the 
man's story with half an ear, concentrating the rest of his attention on 
the increasingly cohesive demands of the mob besieging the Assassin's 
guild. Is newspaperman's instinct was already discounting the story. The 
pencil was scratching away on auto-pilot. 

"I was hiding under one of the tables. The one where Hansen the Brave 
broke his arm when he crashed into it. Anyway. I saw it all. It was a 
huge fight and..." 

"Mr Pearce," William said with exaggerated patients. "I've already 
covered the brawl. I need something on this afternoon's activities." 

Nigel Pearce looked dubious for a moment. "Did you get the story about 
Cartwright's cart?" He hesitated. 

"Yes," Wiliiam answered. Over the top of Nigel Pearce's head, William 
noticed the bow wave of people flowing out of the path of Detritus while 
he pushed his way through the crowd. Ah, things were starting to look 
up; William considered, the watch had arrived in force. Of course that 
might only mean Detritus, who was a force on his own, but it still meant 
the Watch was on the job. 

William found himself wondering where Sacharissa was now. He hoped she 
and Otto had followed the Watch and were getting plenty of iconographs. 
This situation looked like it was going to be as big an issue as the 
last Patrician crisis. 

                         *******************

Mistrum Ridcully skidded to a halt at the entrance to the Unseen 
University. He stopped out of sight of the gate and organised himself a 
bit before moving on. It didn't do for the Arch-chancellor to be seen 
doing anything as undignified as running. It often carried the 
unfortunate connotation of running 'away'. 

Given some of the things that the wizards had done and seen in the past, 
that was a petty piece of image management, but that was the way 
Ridcully was wired up. 

Instead he strutted into the grounds (after one glance back over his 
shoulder to be sure that the denizen of the dungeon dimensions that had 
been following him was not in sight.) 

His pursuer had been coherently human shaped for a remarkably long time 
and Ridcully entertained a nagging doubt about the whole thing, but only 
for a brief moment. Doubts didn't survive long in the dangerous 
environment of Ridcully's mind. 

He burst through the entrance to the great hall and found most of the 
discworlds supply of Wizards involved in their primary function; eating 
a huge dinner. The smell of a coronary in production filled the room and 
threatened to induce Ridcully's tastebuds into organising a mutiny. He 
pulled himself together with a visible effort. 

"Bursar!" Ridcully bellowed. Half a dozen fat bearded faces looked up 
from the vast culinary attempt at cellulite production that lay 
scattered about the table. Each face made a troubled attempt to 
determine who had had the nerve to disturb their most solemn of rituals. 
They all saw the Arch Chancellor and the threatening expression they had 
all assumed seemed to melt. "Runes, I need you as well," Ridcully 
continued, unaware of the commotion his entrance had caused. "Hustle man 
we have work to do." 

The Lecturer in Recent Runes looked up from his plate of stuffed 
pheasant and sighed. When the Arch Chancellor got into this kind of 
mood, Recent Runes lost his appetite entirely. Inevitably it involved 
tentacles and running, neither of which ranked high in any of his 
preferred activities lists. 

The Bursar was found occupying his usual position under the table, 
cowering. He had given up locking himself in boxes and cupboards. Even 
those with their locks on the inside were not proof against Wizards who 
could teleport right through the walls. He had been this way almost from 
the time that Ridcully had taken the chair. A man best suited to the 
rigours of totting up columns of numbers and ensuring that every 
document had the appropriate signatures, was singularly unprepared for 
the rigours of battle with the dungeon dimension denizens that seemed to 
flock to Ridcully's battle cry. With the regular ingestion of dried frog 
pills the bursar could at least function, albeit badly. 

Ridcully was convinced that the man just needed the correct motivation 
to get past his hesitation, and that meant a lot of yelling in his face 
and bullying generally. So far it hadn't worked, by Ridcully was not a 
man to give up a perfectly good theory simply because someone else had 
found such inconvenient things as contradictory facts. 

The Bursar crawled from beneath the table and followed along like a man 
being led to his execution, or like a dog slinking in for the inevitable 
beating. 

"What is it this time?" The lecturer in Recent Runes demanded. "Not the 
dungeon dimensions again." It was meant as a joke. The wizards had not 
been actively experimenting with that sort of magic for weeks and the 
alchemists had been remarkably quiet lately. (Well OK, there had been a 
lot of loud bangs, but that was just chemicals.) 

"Good guess man," Ridcully replied. He was almost out the door again. 
"Some one get the Librarian. I think we need more information." 

The Lecturer in recent Runes looked at his pheasant one last time and 
then pushed it away. The things he had to put up with... 

                         *******************

Samantha Carter watched, appalled, as Angua began discarding her 
clothing. "What are you going to do?" Samantha demanded. 

"Get myself inside the assassin's guild and see what they're planning." 

"Dressed like that'll get you into all sorts of places, and all sorts of 
trouble." 

"A lot more than you could possibly know," Angua grimaced at a few 
unsavoury memories. 

"What about the mob?" Carter asked. 

"They aren't the dangerous ones," Angua replied cryptically. Her 
breastplate came unbuckled easily and joined the pile on top of her 
shoes and helmet, already keeping each other company. "Mind that lot for 
me," Angua said. "It usually goes missing if I'm not careful about it." 
She tossed her chain mail skirt aside. Carter showed some discretion by 
looking away, but not before reaching an obvious conclusion after the 
brief display of flesh she had already seen. Angua might not be human, 
but she certainly looked enough like one that she could find a place for 
herself posing for the sort of photographs that might appear in the 
centre of glossy magazines. 

There came a sound like a muffled sneeze, if you had the world's largest 
sinuses. 

A huge golden haired wolf sauntered casually up the alley and dropped to 
sit beside Carter's feet. Carter's expression could have been used to 
sell thousands of copies of horror comics to impressionable minors. 

"OK," Carter muttered to herself. "I knew it was coming. I did. I knew 
she was a werewolf. I knew all along." She reached out a tentative hand 
and patted Angua's head, and scratched her ear. "Nice doggy." 

Angua reluctantly endured scratched ears for a moment before sloping off 
down the alley that lead to the Assassin's guild kitchen. 

                         *******************

Gaspode the wonder dog was how he liked to fashion himself. He sat 
outside the tradesman's entrance to the Assassin's guild head quarters 
and waited for the Kitchen door to open. The night's leftovers were due 
to be cast away, and this was easily the best pickings available in this 
town, outside of the University kitchen of course. But hanging around 
outside the University kitchen was not an option any more. Not since the 
last time. Things happened there. Improbable things. The waste products 
from the University had an unfortunate tendency to cause bizarre 
consequences. You could be just another self effacing little mongrel dog 
one minute and the next moment you were a self aware sentient being with 
existential and philosophical leanings and a mouth full of words that 
only humans, dwarfs and some trolls could get a handle on. Even being a 
werewolf would be better than a talking dog. 

The sleek golden form of Angua in her wolf guise strolled up and sat 
beside him. 

"Hey," Gaspode said. "How's about you and me..." 

"Must we have this conversation every time we meet?" she asked. Her nose 
was threatening to mutiny. 

"Well look at you," Gaspode said in exasperation. "A dog doesn't stand a 
chance. You should smell yourself." 

"I smell like a werewolf." 

"Yeah but a mighty tasty one." 

Angua shook her head and pushed in front of Gaspode so she was closer to 
the door. 

"Hey, that's my..." He trailed off in the face of the look she cast over 
her shoulder. "Then don't eat it all," he finished lamely. 

"I don't intend eating any of it," she shuddered, as only a dog can. 

                         *******************

Sacharissa managed to skid to a halt before she scattered the pile of 
ash, that used to be Otto, any worse than she had already done earlier. 
She held the haunch of lamb over the pile and waited for the next drop 
of blood to fall. 

Nothing happened. 

"Oh ing hell," she cursed. A trail of small red spots highlighted her 
path all the way from the kitchen to the hallway, naturally. Now it 
decided not to drip. 

She shook the haunch a few times, without effect. 

She watched the base of the meat some more, and went to throw the thing 
at the wall. It bounced off the brickwork once and then hit the floor 
with a dull meaty thud. Something inside the wall went 'whoosh'. 

Sacharissa felt something pass her ear before the world went black. 

There were a lot of stars first, but only for a moment. 

                         *******************

Detritus had reached the stairs that lead up to the entrance of the 
Assassin's guild. The mood of the crowd was getting ugly and he might be 
a troll but that didn't make him indestructible. He was thankful for the 
fact that this time he had chosen to bring the piece-maker with him. 
Nothing gave a troll more self confidence than the feel of a weapon 
whose destructive potential was measured in megatons. 

The crowd waited expectantly. They had seen this part before. They had 
enjoyed it before. It was great theatre. 

In one hand Detritus held up a slim volume of words. In the other he 
waved the piece-maker. 

The citizens of Ankh Morpork were almost uniformly aware of the 
destructive power of the device. It was nothing much more than a siege 
engine that had been modified by the addition of a handle and a winch so 
that it could be hefted like a conventional cross-bow, albeit on a much 
larger and more destructive scale. Detritus armed the beast with a 
bundle of cross-bow bolts, the population of which had more in common 
with a hay bale than a quiver. 

Rumour had it that the bundled bolts disintegrated into a fireball of 
biblical proportions before the tail of the bolts cleared the stressed 
timber spring. As usual reality was more awful than rumour. 

The few occasions when the thing had gone off had seen a mushroom cloud 
rise above the area where the fireball landed. No witnesses to the 
immediate effect of the impact were ever found. There might not be any 
truth to the rumour that the fireball incinerated them. 

Detritus waved the piece-maker in the air. 

The crowd fell silent wondering what the next act of the day's street 
theatre might entail. 

"Dis is the riot act," Detritus said. "It give me da power to..." 

"Dat's not the riot act," suggested one brainless moron standing only a 
few metres in front of the giant troll. 

Detritus blinked. He waited for the next neuron to fire. A glacier 
moved. We're talking about geological time scales here. 

"OK," Detritus said finally. There was time for the villagers looking at 
the wall of ice approaching them to shift most of the village. "Dat's 
right. Dis is the riot act," Detritus said and waved the book in the 
air. 

Sure enough, embossed on the cover in gold letters were the words 'Ankh 
Morpork city statutes, riot act of 1396'. Many members of the audience 
were impressed with Detritus' ability to recognise the book for what it 
was. That had a lot to do with the latest in air-cooled helmets that 
Detritus wore. 

"Dis," said Detritus, and waved the piece-maker. 'Is da reg u la - shons 
en acted to en force da riot act." 

A few members of the audience translated Detritus' laborious 
pronunciation. Throughout the audience, lips moved; accelerated the flow 
of syllables until they could be recognised for the fundamental truths 
that they were. 

There was a concerted move away from the steps. 

Given the pressure being exerted by the crowd pushing from behind so 
they could see what was happening, and the perfectly understandable 
reluctance of the members of the crowd at the front to become part of 
what was happening, there was a serious danger that someone might get 
hurt. 

                         *******************

Corporal Nobbs, Sergeant Colon and commander Vimes sheltered in the 
shade of Detritus. It wasn't as safe as the doorway that Colon and Nobby 
occupied a few minutes earlier, but it was much better than standing in 
the crowd. 

"I think we have their attention now Sergeant," Vimes told Detritus. 

"Yeah but what do I do wid it now?" 

                         *******************

O'Neill strolled through the crowd, behind Carrot, aware of the growing 
resentment in the people behind him. More and more the mutters seemed to 
be solidifying into something that sent shivers up his spine. 

The news article that prompted this gathering had said that the 
Assassins were wearing jungle camouflage colours. And there he was, 
O'Neill, pushing through them, wearing just the sort of outfit that the 
news was saying the assassins wore. 

O'Neill felt the hair at the nape of neck standing up. 

Just when he thought he might have to look for a place to hide, the 
crowd's attention was stolen by a scream of terror that issued from 
inside the Assassin's guild building. 

It sounded nothing like either a cat or a pigeon, but it had much the 
same effect as mixing to two together. 

                         *******************

Otto awoke. He found that he was sprawled on a hard stone floor. He 
preferred to sleep on a coffin filled with dirt, so he concluded that 
his sleep had been un-scheduled, and probably unfortunate. His head hurt 
and his mouth tasted as though he had partaken a meal of fur balls and a 
dust bunnies. But as bad as that was there was one significantly worse 
aspect to this particular awakening. He was confronted with the most 
alarming moral dilemma. Lying wantonly across his chest was the supine 
form of the delightful Sacharissa. The smell of fresh blood filled his 
nostrils with a bouquet that was both rich and pure. 

The world may never know the effort that Otto expended in restraining 
himself at that moment. He endured the impulse to sink his fangs into 
that alabaster neck, just above the place where her pulse beat so 
strongly under her skin, where... 

That's enough of that, he chided himself, weakly. 

Despite the legendary vampire's strength Otto struggled with trembling 
traitorous arms to push the young woman away. Her eyes fluttered, her 
lashes batted. She drew a deep breath and the mound of her ample bosom 
rose and fell, rose and fell... 

"Argh," Otto screamed and shoved her aside roughly. He scampered over to 
the wall and leant against the brickwork, singing a tea-totalling song. 

Sacharissa's eyes flew open. She rolled half upright to find Otto 
cowering with his back pressed firmly against the wall and his eyes shut 
tight. 

                         *******************

William de Worde watched the developing riot from a relatively safe 
vantage-point outside the crush of the crowd. An expectant hush had 
fallen over what had previously been a mildly angry mob in the aftermath 
of that blood-curdling scream. 

They were waiting for the next act. This really was one of the better 
examples of Ankh Morpork street theatre and they were all fired up to 
enjoy it. Everyone was wondering what might happen next. 

"Get your sausages while they're hot," screamed a voice into the hush. 
"Just one dollar each, hot sausages in a bun, for one dollar." 

                         *******************

The scream had echoed into the night and Samantha Carter waited in the 
alleyway for the next disaster to befall the SG1 team. This whole 
expedition had degenerated into the sort of farce that only the best of 
military campaigns could manage. 

Samantha sat beside Angua's clothes and cradled the guns that she and 
Angua had collected from the watch house half an hour earlier. 

The hush of the crowd could only mean one thing, they were scared, and a 
scared crowd became a mob with so little effort. Carter frantically 
checked the level of ammunition in each gun and debated how many of the 
crowd she could take with her if things got out of hand. She wasn't 
going down without a fight. 

She slung her ammo belts across each shoulder and strapped the 
additional holsters around her waist. 

All that was needed to complete the picture was a ragged old bandanna. 
Nothing in Angua's clothes fit the bill. 

                         *******************

"What was that?" Sacharissa asked suddenly. She looked up from her 
inspection of the letter opener on the Patrician's desk. She listened 
carefully. "Some one's coming," she hissed to Otto. "Quick hide." 

She looked around quickly and he eyes lighted on the curtains again. 
Sacharissa and Otto scurried behind the heavy curtains framing the 
office window and watched the wizards passage with calculated interest. 

"Get the iconograph Otto," Sacharissa whispered. "I think we might need 
it." 

Ridcully led his rag tag team of wizards through the Patrician's oblong 
office. They came through like a blimp procession, flowing ermine and 
velvet robes of brilliant colours, towering conical hats adorned with 
occult symbology. At the rear of the procession was a shaggy threadbare 
sack of bones with far too much development in the arm department. 

"Oook," it said. 

"Yeah me too," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 

"Hee Hee," said the Bursar. 

"I always wanted to know what this place was like," The Lecturer in 
Recent Runes said affably. He turned one full circle in the middle of 
the room, not so much a pirouette as a ponder-ette. "Not half as ornate 
as I thought it would be. Quite austere as a matter of fact." 

"This is not the time to sight see man," Ridcully advised. "Come on we 
have work to do." 

Runes took a careful look at the chair that Lord Vetinari used when he 
sat at his desk. "Ha the seat of power," Runes said. 

"Hee, hee," sniggered the Bursar. 

Ridcully shook his head. Maybe things would have been better if he had 
recruited the Dean instead. At least he would make fewer bad puns. 
Although his usual chant of 'Yo!' could be just as infuriating when they 
were stalking the creatures from the dungeon dimensions. 

"Oook," agreed the librarian. He knuckled along behind Ridcully. He 
seemed to be the only one of them who was taking the whole situation 
seriously. 

Ridcully stepped through the stone portal that Cheri Littlebottom had 
left open behind the Patrician's desk and led the rest of the wizards 
along the hallway to Leonard de Quirm's study. 

Otto and Sacharissa exchanged a questioning glance and then stepped 
lightly in pursuit. 

Ridcully and The Lecturer in recent Runes stepped into Leonard De 
Quirm's study. The Librarian and the Bursar followed a little way 
behind. Sacharissa and Otto trailed along in the wake of the senior 
wizards. 

Ponder Stibbons waited by the door, anxious for the arrival of his back 
up. 

Ridcully's entry was typical of the man's style. The door thundered out 
if its niche in the doorframe and cannoned into Ponder with a force of 
similar magnitude to what would be measured if Detritus had unleashed 
his massive fist. The sudden blow caught Ponder in the shoulder and he 
fell into the table beneath which he had played tag with the frog. He 
tumbled backward over the table, scattering paper in every direction. He 
did an inelegant backward summersault and landed with a thump on the 
floor. To add the necessary insult to injury, a bookcase full of diaries 
and bound notes fell onto the table and buried Ponder in paper. 

"That's it," Ridcully said. He pointed needlessly across the room at the 
giant stone portal that filled the far corner. 

"Wow," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, always one to capture the 
moment in poetry. 'Cool." 

"Oook," said the Librarian. 

The combined might of the three wizards was marshalled when they raised 
their staves at the stargate. Thaumalogical pressure built behind them. 

                         *******************

Carrot waved to the crowd. "Stop that this instant," he chided them like 
they were a gang of rowdy school children and he was the Principal. The 
crowd dropped back slightly. Watching Carrot in action was a favourite 
pastime in Ankh Morpork. Strange improbable things happened around 
Carrot, strange entertaining and often confusing things. 

"Now is this any way to behave?" he asked the crowd. The question was 
only partially rhetorical. 

Several people in the front row murmured. "No." 

"You there Mr Ballantyne and you there Mr Ironbark. I would have 
expected better of such upright citizens as your selves." Ironbarks 
nickname was Ironbar for good reason. The scared and battered bouncer 
looked abashed under the 2000W glare of Carrots attention. 

The crowd was rapt. 

"Is this for real?" O'Neill asked Vimes. O'Neill watched the sudden 
change in the crowd with disbelief. 

"Oh yes," Vimes said sardonically. 

"It can't last." 

"It's worked in this town for years now." 

O'Neill shook his head. "He could be king." 

"We've already dealt with that." 

"Now this is not the way Ankh Morpork treats guests in this city?" 
Carrot continued. Under normal circumstances Ankh Morpork was more 
interested in taking the contents of a visitor's purse and putting it in 
their own, through one method or another. 

While the crows debated with it self what to say in answer to Carrot's 
conundrum, Carrot turned to his fellow Watchmen. 

"Detritus," Carrot hissed. "Hold them back while I find out what that 
was about." He turned back to the crowd and raised his voice. "Now I'm 
going in to find out what's been going on and I want all of you to go 
home," Carrot called out to the crowd. "And remember each and every one 
of you, I know where that home is." 

Several thousand people tasted the tone of that statement and didn't 
like the personal flavour. 

Carrot slipped past the anxious Assassin's Guild guards that stood 
hiding behind the watchmen. Their eyes tracked the crowd, waiting for 
someone to launch the first projectile that would start the avalanche of 
disaster. 

                         *******************

Lord Downey looked down at the slavering jaws that had suddenly clamped 
around his wrist. There was no sign of blood yet but the message came 
through that there could be. A silver knife would be the answer, but 
that was secreted in a pocket that could only be reached by the hand 
with the teeth marks in the wrist. 

Standing by every window in the room and in every other room on the 
upper floors of the Guild building was an armed man. Each assassin was 
pointing a weapon at the crowd below. A great deal of planning had been 
concluded that a few key people would be the best ones to shoot so that 
the ensuing panic would dissipate the crowd. 

Lord Downey had been about to deliver the order when he felt something 
muscular, furry and ferocious that seemed to appear from nowhere to 
clamp his wrist. His eyes left the sight of his tortured wrist behind so 
he could see the exquisitely groomed wolfhound teasing the tendons of 
his wrist with her teeth. 

She growled to emphasise the point, but that was just overkill. The 
point had already been made. 

"I have a silver knife," whispered Mansell-Smith. 

"Ah but how fast can you deploy it?" 

                         *******************

The wizards chanted in unison. Eldritch forces gathered. 

"No screamed," Ponder Stibbons. 

A thaumatological barometer would have gone beresk. The pressure within 
the room built to explosive proportions. 

"Oook?" said the Librarian and peered under the table. 

                         *******************

"Ah, Angua, there you are," said Carrot. He bent down and patted her 
head. "And Lord Downey, and Mr Silversmith, that is a big crossbow 
you're waving there. You should be careful other wise someone might get 
hurt." 

Downey watched it happen. One man, armed with a sword that was still in 
it's scabbard, in a room full of men armed with loaded and cocked 
crossbows, and the men with the cross bows were the ones who were 
outnumbered. 

Rumour was a wonderful thing and right at the moment Lord Downey 
recalled the rumour that the king of Ankh Morpork walked the streets in 
the humble guise of a Watchman. 

Lord Downey listened to the clatter of falling cross bows and shook his 
head, carefully. After all, his wrist remained imprisoned between the 
teeth of a wolf-hound. 

One cross bow exploded into action. The bolt rocketed out of the window 
and arched over the city. 

                         *******************

"What, may I ask, is going on here?" demanded the Patrician, Lord 
Vetinari of Ankh Morpork. He stepped from the shimmering interface in 
space time that cloaked the maw of the stargate. 

Leonard De Quirm and General Hammond of the Stargate command accompanied 
the Patrician's return to the discworld. 

The bolt from the staffs of three wizards erupted. 

A flash of octarine fire filled the room. A flash of excited salamander 
light erupted immediately afterward. 

Ponder Stibbons gave up the struggle to climb out from beneath the book 
case and its contents, and began searching frantically for something 
even more solid to hide under. 

                         *******************

Sacharissa and Otto crouched in the doorway. The iconograph blazed forth 
with the light of a dozen excited salamanders. Inside the dark confines 
of the iconograp box, the imps furiously painted the images onto the 
plates with acid, one for red, one for blue and one for yellow. 

Otto hid behind his cape. He screamed, but remained integrated this 
time. 

"Well done Otto," Sacharissa said. 

"Thank you," he said, "but it does hurt so." 

A crossbow bolt landed in Otto's chest. He burst into a fluttering of 
fine ash. 

"Oh ing hell," Sacharissa remarked. "Not again!" 

                         *******************

Angua reappeared in the room full of disarmed assassins. She was wrapped 
in a thoroughly inadequate bath towel. Her hands fought an unequal 
battle while she kept trying to pull it up and down at the same time. 
With all that movement she only managed to induce a kind of visual 
distraction that forced the eyes of on-lookers to always be looking at 
the wrong end of the towel if they were trying to catch sight of what 
part of her anatomy she was struggling to hide. 

Even with all that fuss the towel provided just marginally more covering 
than she managed with her hands and forearms, and required just as much 
work on her part. She looked around for something more substantial to 
wear and found nothing immediately obvious. 

"Carrot," she said in exasperation. "Can we get out of here now?" 

"Certainly," he said. "Our business here with Lord Downey is complete." 

Lord Downey was unsure whether to shake his head or nod it. He 
compromised with a dazed circular orbit instead. 

"Thank you," Angua said with heavy irony. 

She was very aware of the attention she was getting from the assassins, 
all of whom were the younger sons of wealthy families and consequently 
were all used to getting their own way, often with the servant girls. 
Angua didn't want to be forced into a position where she had to get 
nasty to keep them at bay. 

Carrot and Angua galloped down the stairs. They reached the entry hall. 
Carrot set off in the direction of the front door. 

"Hey," Angua called. 

Carrot skidded to a halt. He looked a question at her. 

"I'm not going out there dressed like this." 

"Oh, of course," Carrot said and searched frantically around for 
something else for her to wear. 

"I'll meet you at the watch house," she said. "I'll slip out the back 
way." 

"Well," he said dubiously. "If that's alright." 

"I promise not to hurt anyone." 

She slipped out the back door. 

Gaspode was gnawing on a bone beside a pile of trash. It was only by 
watching to see which pile moved that she was able to tell Gaspode form 
the garbage. His head came up for a moment and he watched while Angua 
ran down the alleyway. Out of sight of any prying human eyes she 
discarded the towel because it was too restricting in her flight. She 
padded to a halt where her clothes had been. There was no sign of them. 
There was no sign of Samantha Carter either. 

She stood with her hands on her hips and looked around. "Damn," said 
Angua. 

                         *******************

Ridcully and the Lecturer in recent Runes peered up at the colossal hole 
in the roof where the blast had destroyed much of Leonard De Quirms 
study. 

"You put me off my aim," Ridcully accused the Librarian. 

"Oook," the Librarian chided. 

"Yes I can see that now. Of course I couldn't before. That might have 
been dangerous." 

"Oook." 

"Well there is that too of course." 

"Bursar," Ridcully called. There was no answer. "Where is the man? You 
can never trust him to be where you expect him to be." 

A pile of books and soot moved ponderously. 

Ponder Stibbons crawled from beneath them. He coughed once or twice then 
he turned toward the sound of a pitiful moan that issued from somewhere 
beside him. 

He crouched back down and helped the partially comatose form of the 
University Bursar to clamber from beneath a pile of masonry. 

Samantha Carter burst through the door and confronted a scene from 
Armageddon. "Oh my god," she screamed. "I'm too late." 

                         *******************

Angua stood with her hands on her hips and glared around the dingy 
alley. In that pose and that lack of outfit she looked like the 
reincarnation of some sort of ancient Amazonian warrior. 

"Buggerit," said Foul Old Ron. He saw naked young women walking about in 
Ankh Morpork's alleyways all the time. Not often in the flesh, so to 
speak, but he was not really in a position to make the distinction. His 
mind had passed that point a long time ago. 

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Angua said in disgust. She turned 
on her heel and faced whoever passed such a succinct judgement on her 
circumstances. 

Foul Old Ron clutched her breastplate in one hand and her skirt in the 
other, effectively making them totally unsuitable to be worn by a person 
ever again. 

"Millennium hand and shrimp," he said. Even his alcohol abused brain 
sensed that he was in some sort of danger. He took one involuntary step 
backward. That felt so good that he took a couple more. 

Pawning the outfit should garner him enough money to buy at least one 
boot and a bottle of cheap wine, provided he stayed alive long enough to 
spend it. 

Angua toyed with the idea of tearing his throat out, but it wasn't worth 
the days she would have to spend in a sick bed afterward. 

She turned dismissively on her heel again. The sound of flexing meat 
filled the alleyway. A wolf hound marched out into the street. 

Foul Old Ron shuffled with exaggerated purpose in the opposite 
direction. He burst out from the other end of the alley and continued 
his haphazard motion for hours before exhaustion got the better of him. 
Gaspode his thinking brain dog had to seriously hustle to keep up. 

                         *******************

"How are we supposed to get home now?" Samantha Carter demanded. She 
waved a gonne at the wizards. Ridcully refused to be cowered. 

"Another of the dungeon dimension denizens?" the Lecturer in Recent 
Runes asked Ridcully. He took his lead from the Arch Chancellor and 
stood his ground. He had no idea what that thing was that the fetching 
young woman was waving at him, but she seemed pretty confident of the 
outcome of the confrontation and he had no intention of testing the 
justification behind her confidence just yet. 

"I expect so," Ridcully said confidently. "I say young lady, would you 
mind lifting your shirt?" 

"Yes please do," said the Lecturer in recent Runes completely missing 
the point of the request. 

Samantha's response was purely non-verbal. 

"Dr Carter," said General Hammond. "I think things are much less severe 
than they look" 

"Oh," she said. "Then that blast wasn't aimed at the stargate?" 

"Ah," General Hammond said and turned around to survey the damage. "I 
see. Yes I understand your concern." 

                         *******************

Carrot and Detritus stood on the step outside the Assassin's guild. 
'No," Carrot called. "I have no intention of allowing you people to take 
the law into your own hands. Now I'm sure we can all be reasonable 
people and let the Watch look after watch business." 

For most people that sort of statement would have been palpably 
ridiculous, and would have been sufficient grounds for only the faintest 
hesitation before mob rule, ruled. 

Not when Carrot Ironfounderson uttered something so trite. 

The crowd murmured and looked embarrassed. A few of them clasped their 
hands behind the their backs, eyes downcast and stirred the dirt with 
their toes. 

O'Neill watched in amazement. It was going to work, he realised. The 
extremities of the crowd were already dissolving like a sugar cube in 
hot water as people realised that the show was over and hanging around 
might actually have consequences. 

"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c asked in the short silence that had settled 
over the SG1 team. His voice carried a clearly puzzled note. "Where am 
I? And what is going on?" 

"I have no idea," Daniel answered absently. "It has all been way to 
complicated for me." 

"Me neither," O'Neill said. "Just shut up and maybe it'll keep 
happening." 

"Oh." 

O'Neill stared across the crowd for a moment. "Umm," he said after a 
delay that dragged out to become a few seconds. "Teal'c, where have you 
been?" 

"Been?" 

"You know, after you got shot by the Gou'ld?" 

"All I remember is an overwhelming urge to eat flies." 

"OK," O'Neill said. "I think I'll deal with that later." 

                         *******************

A few last flakes of plaster dropped from the ceiling. One of them 
landed softly on the top of General Hammond's cap. 

"These men have blown up the stargate," shouted Samantha Carter. 

"Would if that were true," muttered Lord Vetinari. He looked at the 
wizards, then at the hole in the study roof, the fractal scattering of 
plaster that no longer rendered the ceiling and the paper that lay 
everywhere. "Don't let me keep you, Arch Chancellor." 

"Um yes we have things that need to be attended to," Ridcully agreed. He 
wasn't sure what had happened but, whatever it was, it was not a good 
idea to hang around and ask for explanations. 

The wizards swept from the room with a lame attempt at dignity. Under 
the circumstances, carrying several kilograms of atomised plaster on 
their robes, they managed little better than the appearance of a rout. 

They brushed past Sacharissa and the pile of ash that had been Otto as 
though they weren't there. 

She picked at the scab on the back of her head and placed a drop of her 
blood int eh pile of ash. Otto reappeared, bounced a few times to savour 
being un-dead yet again. 

"I say," said Ponder. "Perhaps an explanation might be mgbble mgbble." 
With Ridcully's hand clamped around his mouth he trailed off after the 
others. 

"Oook," said the Librarian. 

"Why thank you," Sacharissa said. She blushed. Otto groaned at the 
sight. 

                         *******************

The SG1 team gathered in the debriefing room and scattered themselves 
around the conference table. 

A computerised display of the stargate map filled the wall at one end of 
the room. 

"We have an agreement from Lord Vetinari," General Hammond began, "to 
keep his end of the stargate sealed. I, for one, trust the man 
completely in this regard. I don't think it will be in any one's best 
interest if we keep that transport route open. Do we all agree on that?" 

O'Neill nodded. 

"Yes sir," chorused Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson. 

"I still don't know what happened," commented Teal'c. 

"I'm not sure any of us could tell you," O'Neill said. 

"I'm not sure I believe it myself," Jackson said. 

                         *******************

Lord Vetinari placed the copy of the Ankh Morpork times back on the desk 
and looked out the window of his office at the city outside. 

A poor quality image showing the destruction in Leonard De Quirm's study 
filled almost a quarter of the front page of the paper. The headline 
read 'Boffin's Base Blasted'. 

The outline of the stargate was not clearly visible in the iconograph 
image, it had been obscured by the octarine flash of the wizards' 
staves, reflecting off all the falling dust. 

The stargate had proved indestructible, even deflecting the combined 
might of the three wizards in concert. That sort of power was not for 
the discworld. Not now, and probably not ever, unless human nature 
changed. 

Somehow Lord Vetinari could not see that happening in the foreseeable 
future. 

A side bar on the newspaper carried the story of the riot that had 
threatened to erupt outside the Assassin's Guild. There was no 
suggestion that the two events were related. 

Lord Vetinari glanced over toward the Assassin's Guild building. There 
it stood, none the worse for last night's activities. 

Life went on. He went back to his desk and prepared to meet the leading 
citizens of Uberwald. They were due to arrive in a few hours and there 
was so much do do. 

<end>