I mean, if anyone (who wasn’t a wizard) was going to time travel, it was always going to be Sam Vimes.
Summary
Vimes learns from the latest assassin in the garden that he’s off the Assassin’s Guild registry entirely (she’s just a practicing student), and finds that off-putting. He then smells lilacs and remembers what day it is. Sybil is in the process of giving birth to their child, and he is off in his ducal uniform to the Watch Committee. When he gets to the Yard he finds out that Carcer has killed another cop, Sargeant Stronginthearm. Vimes puts off his meeting, writes the letter to his parents, and has a chat with Igor, who doesn’t much like that he wasn’t permitted to piece the dwarf back together and get him “up and running” again. Everyone is asking about Sybil and worried about her age. Colon and Nobby head to the cemetery of the Small Gods and look at several important graves, one specifically for John Keel. Vimes and Carrot make it to Vetinari’s office—the committee has been dismissed given the date and events of the day—only to have a message show up via the clacks that Carcer has been found. Vimes arrives on the scene and Cheery fills him in on how she’s created a perimeter, but Carcer has gone up high. Vimes wants him flushed down because he’s got a crossbow that he’s liable to start taking potshots with.
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Vimes has Detritus fire Old Tom as a warning shot, and tells Cheery that he’s going up to arrest Carcer. When he gets up there, he sees the signal indicating an officer in trouble—Carrot is getting into position at the High Energy Magic building and just the most conspicuous person alive. Vimes gets Carcer’s attention to prevent Carrot from being shot, and a huge storm begins. Vimes manages to catch Carcer on the university Library dome, knowing he’s got two knives on him, and he asks Detritus to get more officers on the dome to make sure they take him in carefully. It turns out that Carcer has three knives and something strange is happening with the weather. A lot of wild things happen across the city, and Ponder and Ridcully are pulled into the Watch’s aid to figure out what the storm has done, though Ponder thinks that with the Library in play, it’s possible that Vimes and Carcer have been displaced in time and space. Vimes wakes up with Rosie and Doctor Lawn; he was slashed across the eye and stripped of his armor in the Shades. The duo extort him for their help and Vimes heads back to the Yard to find no Watch there. Then he heads home to find a sixteen-year-old Sybil. He realizes he’s been thrown into the past and gives his name as John Keel.
Vimes tries to get into the University to fix the screwup, but it’s past curfew and he’s brought in by three Watchmen after trying to take them to task for policing wrong. He wakes up in a cell next to Carcer, who is promptly let go since he was only out after curfew. He’s brought to Captain Tilden and told that he can’t be John Keel because Keel is dead. Then he’s knocked out once more and when he comes to, he’s talking to Lu-Tze, who tells him that he can’t really explain everything to him… but he must. They’re in something of a paradox because the real Keel was killed by Carcer—he was supposed to stop an attempted mugging when he got to town, but there were three muggers instead of two this time. In a funny turn of events, Vimes now looks very similar to Keel (the scar and eye patch), and Lu-Tze can give Vimes a small period of time to catch Carcer and teach the young version of Sam Vimes what Keel originally taught him—how to be a good copper. Otherwise, the future is going to turn out very differently indeed. Lu-Tze gives Vimes time to mull it over, and talks to Qu, who says he can only hold this strange present in place for four days before they have to send Vimes back.
Vimes realize that he doesn’t have a choice and agrees to the mission, though he reminds Lu-Tze that he knows what day it is, and what will happen. He’s put back into events, tells Tilden that he is Keel and his papers were stolen, gives the references that he knows the man in Pseudopolis sent about him, then tells the captain that he wants more money, the rank of sergeant-at-arms, and his first month’s pay upfront. Tilden is mesmerized and swears him in on the spot. Vimes tasks Snouty the cell guard with getting him good gear and heads to Doctor Lawn’s in Twinkle Street. He remembers this era when the paranoid Lord Winder was in charge and his Particulars (who have a preferred name of Unmentionables) spied everywhere as a sort of secondary police force. He gets his room from Lawn and wakes up to all the items he requested. He speaks briefly to Doctor Lawn to get the measure of him, then heads to Treacle Mine Road to sit at the sergeant’s desk and thoroughly shake up the Night Watch. He tells them they’re not to take bribes anymore, or steal from the horse’s food, and that they have to get receipts for prisoners they bring to the Unmentionables. Then he fires Corporal Quirke, asks Sergeant Knock about who they should promote, and takes his younger self out for a walk.
Commentary
This book is such a stupidly easy sell for me on every front. Love a time travel story. Love a past event that you get to revisit through a different lens. Love weird closed loops and ticking clocks. Love becoming people in your own past who Taught You Everything You Know.
And I particularly love the rarity that is the story where a person starts by looking back on the past, and wistfully thinking better of the person that they used to be! And the way things were! And how much of that old self they’ve lost! Who then gets to experience the way things were and gets a thorough reminder that it wasn’t as great that they’re remembering.
Obviously there’s some fun for Vimes in getting to be his old sergeant, to shake things up, to give himself all the advice that he remembers being so essential to his formation. But the fact that he arrives in the past and immediately wishes for his good warm coat… Look, some comforts are not things that you should give up, for any measure of nostalgia, and being warm is one of them. More to the point, Sam Vimes isn’t that kid who pounded the streets anymore, and while the class issues that his marriage keep bringing up in his mind are certainly complex and screwy (and never going away), he should absolutely learn a little more appreciation for how good he has it as Sybil’s husband.
It’s understandable that Sam Vimes will never be comfortable being a nobleman—I’m with him on that—but there’s nothing wrong with having people at home who care for you, with life changing over time, with not spending most of your days physically suffering just because it’s what you’re accustomed to. It’s the Sam Vimes version of nobility: being cold, wet, and miserable, but at least your boots tell you what street you’re on. It’s just a different version of women in the Shades having “Standards,” and Vimes sees through that completely, but never clocks the impulse in himself because it’s not about cleaning the stoop or painting the shutters.
I do have to take a moment to call out the Les Misérables parallels that run through the story, mostly because they’re more subtly planted here than we’ve seen in other Discworld books, and I assume it’s down to this book being a little heavier on the subject matter front? Of course, it’s possible that it’s more intended to recount the actual historical events that Les Mis is cataloguing, but there are a few very specific twists in this one that make me assume it’s Les Mis for sure. (Which, I have to admit, is another musical that I’m less keen on. My kingdom for a Discworld book that used Little Shop of Horrors as inspiration.)
Not sure how I feel about the characterization of Carcer in that it feels a little… neat? to create a serial killer who just happens to want to kill all the cops? But I’ll see how it strikes me as we continue this time around.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Vimes’ issues with the plumes and tights of the old fancy dress uniform not looking “male” demands a comment around the fact that gendered fashions change up so frequently and wildly that we often forget that what is deemed masculine or feminine alters significantly over time. High heels were initially made to highlight men’s calves; there have been periods and areas of the world where skirts and makeup were commonly worn by men; blue and pink as baby colors used to be swapped (and before that, all baby garments were the same and not designed to denote gender at all).
- “It was gilt by association.” I am very particular about my puns, and this one is absolutely tops, so I’m making a note.
- Sybil doesn’t want Vimes around for the birth of their kid, and while I’m usually not a fan of that choice when it’s couched in such gender-essentialist terms, in this case I’m like… yeah, girl. You’re right. He is not the guy you want in the room for that. Hell, I’d have Nobby in the room over Vimes. I’d have Vetinari in the room over Vimes.
- And technically Vetinari is in the room, given that Vimes asks him how Sybil is doing, and he has an answer for him. I can’t with the three of them, they need to stop.
- Saying that Vimes isn’t comfortable around horses because he’s “one of nature’s pedestrians,” honestly, why don’t I use that one more often? It’s as useful as it is evocative.
Pratchettisms:
Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.
Among the city’s bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much.
Cursing, and shielding his face with his arms, and hammered all the time by shattering crystal balls, each one predicting a future of pain, he skidded and slid across the rolling ice.
“Haha” didn’t come close to doing it the injustice it deserved. It was more a sort of modulation to the voice, an irritatingly patronizing chortle that suggested that all this was somehow funny and you hadn’t got the joke.
Ponder and Ridcully waited a few moments, but the city stayed full of normal noise, like the collapse of masonry and distant screams.
A large blob of foam, which up until that point had been performing sterling service in the cause of essential decencies, slipped slowly to the floor.
The cluttered desk of Vimes’s memory finally unearthed the inadvertent coffee mat of recollection from under the teacup of forgetfulness.
It was going to be a corny line, but some things you had to know.
Sweeper gave him a long, thoughtful look. “Y’know,” he said, “it’s very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is.”
His glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronized Observation Team.
Next week we’ll read up to:
“Madame doesn’t like waiting, dearie,” were the last words he heard before night closed in all the way.
