Sam Vimes opened his eyes, took one look at the world, and screamed....

....and a few feet away the older, more cynical but perhaps most fundamentally most aching Sam Vimes opened his eyes. Being much more used to the world having had over forty years more experience he merely groaned.

Yesterday had been a long day. For a start, it had been the equivalent of about a week for Sam Vimes senior, trapped thirty years in his own past. Sam junior had been being born, which sources suggest is one of the more tiring events of a person's life, although no one has ever actually said as much for obvious reasons.

Vimes sat up. He was fairly used to being woken up at a ridiculous hour of the morning- normally by someone knocking at the door to breathlessly summon their commander. At least he didn't have to walk so far now, he thought as he swung his legs out of bed.

Sybil had got there first. As Vimes sat down gingerly on the corner of the bed little Sam threw up. How he managed to completely miss his mother and instead spray Vimes with vomit was one of those mysteries of life.

"Yuk," said Vimes, rather damply. Despite it being impossible for a newborn baby to display any emotion other than need, little Sam contrived to look smug. He stopped screaming as Sybil rocked him gently, asserting Vimes' place as reserve parent.

When he returned from his bathroom having washed away the stain (but curiously as Vimes was to learn to his disadvantage, not the smell) of baby sick, Sam was lying in his crib again. Vimes scowled slightly. His attempts to build one for his child himself had not been well received. Sybil had bought this particular crib a few weeks ago and his project was now in the wood shed.

Vimes sat down again. There was silence. And the Look. It was a Look that said 'I'm not saying anything until you start explaining.' Vimes sighed inwardly.

"So.. Er.. How are you feeling?" Vimes asked.

"Fine. What about you? What happened to your face?"

For one of the first times in his life Vimes cursed the fact he had married an observant woman. Mind you, Sybil would have to have been blind to miss the livid wound running across his eye.

He opted for the truth. "Someone took a slash at me with a knife." Well, it was the truth. Just avoiding certain details.

"Yesterday?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Then how come--"

"--you really wouldn't believe me," Vimes cut in desperately.

"Try me," answered his wife.

"I'm not sure if I'm allowed..." he gave up in the face of oppressive Looking, and explained what he could.

"Is that why you were running around naked?"

Vimes stared. How on earth did she find out these things? "Yes," he answered. eventually.

"Oh. Saving our lives. Again. Or so I gather," she said and smiled. In his crib Sam gurgled. "Here," said Sybil after a moment's pause. She scooped up their son and passed him wordlessly to her husband. After a few seconds of awkwardness Vimes managed to find a comfortable position in which to cradle his son. There was a lump in his throat which he swallowed to try and clear. He wasn't an emotional man but he would be the first to admit this was probably number one on his list of unexpected scenarios. Not once had the idea of children ever crossed his mind when he had married Lady Sybil. To be honest he had rather imagined he was... they were.... well, too old to... to have a baby.

Well, that theory was shot. The evidence was gurgling in his arms quite contentedly. For the first time he took a proper look at his son, with his copper's eyes, not the eyes of a relived new-parent.

It would have been silly to say if Sam looked like either of his parents at the moment. He was the slightly bruised pink colour of all newborns everywhere, just as bald but perhaps slightly more spindly than most babies. He had bright blue eyes, but even Vimes knew that meant nothing, they could easily change colour in the coming months.

"Are you proud?" asked Sybil, in a hushed voice. Vimes merely nodded, he didn't think he could trust his voice. He cleared his throat.

"I never thought... somehow, I always imagined I'd be the last Vimes."

"I know what you mean. I thought the Ramkin estate would go to my nephews."

"It belongs to him now," said Vimes, remembering the meeting with Mr. Morecombe however many years ago it had been. He sighed. "I have to go the palace this morning. A trial."

Lady Sybil looked at her hands. "I understand," she said.

"I'll be back," Vimes added hurriedly. He looked at his son again and added: "I promise."

Until recently Vimes had been of the opinion that the most useless thing in the world was a groom before his wedding. He was learning something new. There is nothing more useless in the world than a new father when the inevitable armies of female relatives descend. Vimes was, as many people had remarked, an inherently angry man who spent his days controlling the rage that built up behind the levees of his mind. He didn't relish the prospect of day after day of these women visiting; tutting him into a corner, occasionally throwing him an amused or shameful look.

He sat glumly in his armchair as the conversation washed over him. It was the arch, braying laughter; generally at his expense, that annoyed him so much. It wasn't as if he was completely useless... he was getting quite good at changing nappies now after a few days of practise... it was the way they treated him like a non-entity, or like a small child not capable of understanding and carefully put back in his place with a sharp retort or sarcastic comment in reply to any attempt he made at communication.... and that damn laughter all the time biting into his brain....

It exploded around him now. There were some of Sybil's cousins, other women- ladies rather, some of whom he recognised but others he was sure he had never set eyes on before in his life. To hell with it, he'd had enough. He stood up. "I'm just going out for a while.. I won't be long." He couldn't meet Sybil's eyes, just nodded to the assembled multitude and slipped into the cool of the entrance hall. The laughter followed him as he strode outside and lit his cigar. He didn't dare smoke in the house any more. He stalked away down the street towards the Yard.

Sergeant Colon was dozing at his desk when he came in. Vimes blinked. In a few months he could be lighting the lamp over the door of the Treacle Mine Road Watch House... Old Fred Colon dozing at his desk... like so many memories it was almost romantic befuddled in the mists of time.... actually no. No amount of mist could ever make Fred Colon attractive in any way... but Vimes knew what he meant. The memory was linked to a time which he almost missed.

Vimes coughed loudly. When he turned around Colon was sitting bolt upright with an air of official helpfulness. "Din't know you were in today sir. How's Lady Sybil? And Sam?"

"Er, they're fine Fred. Really. I'm just... um, catching up on paper work..." he trailed off and wandered up to his office.

Carrot had set up his desk again next to the Commander's. Vimes surveyed the cleared piles almost with sorrow. It had taken him months to achieve such stacks. Now he had to start over. Ah well.

He picked up an armful of reports, stared out of the window for a while and then started walking home again. Thankfully, by the time he had let himself back in the visitors had gone. He sat down again in his armchair and read some reports. After a while there was, well, not exactly a noise. More sort of a reading on the Vimes-o-metre of someone nearby behaving suspiciously. He stood up, stretched and felt the tingle in his limbs. Something was up... he padded up the stairs. "Sybil?"

There was no answer. He pushed open the door of their bedroom. Sybil was asleep. He was certain of this because she was snoring gently. He wasn't as certain if she had meant to fall asleep as she was fully clothed and lying across most of the bed in the manner of someone who just flopped down and would be mildly surprised upon opening their eyes a few hours later to find the world had moved on without them. Despite himself Vimes smiled.

It was Sam who had drawn him away from his reports. He was awake, making those funny snuffling noises babies do when trying to decide if bawling is a viable option. Vimes looked down at him, picked him up and rocked him slightly. For once this appeared to have been the right thing to do. Sam smiled up at his father.

Vimes was nonplussed. He wasn't exactly an expert on babies, but he was vaguely aware that they weren't supposed to smile until they were a bit older. Sam was still only a few days old, and yet he was beaming up at his father his blue eyes shining. Vimes permitted himself a small amount of fatherly pride. "After all, you are my son," he muttered, offering him a finger to clutch.

Sam blew a bubble in reply, and wrapped his tiny fingers around his father's. Vimes would probably have been quite ashamed to admit it, but he did talk to Sam quite a lot. Not that ridiculous 'baby-talk' malarky that seemed to have affected everyone... for gods sake, even Angua had been fussing over him, talking rubbish when she had bought Cheery to visit. It was another sight Vimes would never have expected to witness. He had briefly wondered how it was going to affect his son mentally, having the sharp-toothed werewolf and bearded dwarf in eyeshadow cooing over him, talking nonsense. Sybil had been talking about making them godparents, something Vimes was decidedly uneasy about.

"Hey kid, at least it's going to be interesting growing up," he said. Sam appeared to consider this. Then he appeared to decide that he was fed up with smiling and was going to go back to the tried and tested entertainment of screaming his head off. He started to cry.

"Oh no," said Vimes, "Come on, don't wake up you mother. She's had a long day. She needs her sleep, you're only going to make things worse on yourself.... or possibly me."

Sam started to cry louder.

"Do you want your nappy changing? Is that it? Or are you hungry? Can't help you there, I'm afraid... Oh. Hello dear." Vimes handed over the baby, and Sam immediately stopped crying. Vimes tutted slightly. "He does that deliberately, I swear."

It was a fact that the four times Vimes had gotten up on his own to find out what was the matter with his son the only way to solve little Sam's problem, whatever it was, was to hand him over to Sybil, at which point he would stop crying and happily dribble everywhere.

Vimes sat down. "Are you alright, dear?" he asked.

Lady Sybil nodded, despite the dark circle under her eyes, synonymous with new-parenthood. "Yes, I think so. I'm just... a little fed up with all the visitors, that's all. I mean, it's not as if I'm completely stupid. They seem to think I need telling everything."

Vimes smiled grimly, "Yes, I had noticed. And the way they seem to think that either a: everything is completely my fault and I should be justly punished for inflicting such a burden on my wife or, b: I am a completely ignorant of every fact of child-raising and anything I say can be safely ignored. I mean... they seem to think that... that my presence here is of no relation to the child. Like men have no involvement in the whole process of... children."

Lady Sybil nodded a little uncertainly, suppressing the thought that if Vimes believed he had any more than a passing involvement in the whole process of childbirth he really was living on another planet.

"You're doing very well," she said after a while.

"Hhmm?"

"I said you're doing very well. That's the first time you've been to the office. And you came back within half an hour too."

Vimes frowned. "I've taken a fortnight's leave. I'm not wasting time there when I have a nursery to decorate." He coughed. The nursery was something he had very firmly stuck to his guns about decorating, having pointed out that Ramkin style had painted the rest of the house in shades of mild yellow, slight pink and nauseating green. He had as politely as possibly pointed out that his child having to sleep in a room like that was only going to happen over his dead body.

Vimes awoke with a cry and sat bolt upright in bed. He rubbed his head. What had he been dreaming about this time? Dragon's tonsils? Wolfgang? He couldn't remember, but whatever it was, it had been quite a nightmare. He was drenched in cold sweat and his half of the blankets were knotted around his legs.

What he really needed more than anything was a dr- smoke. After a few moments of indecision he swung his legs out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown and after fishing his cigar case out of the pocket of his jacket he snuck down the stairs and opened the front door. He sat on the cold stone step and eased a cigar out of the case, lit it and took a deep drag. Ahh..

He looked at the cigar case in his hand. It glinted in the moonlight. He read the inscription:

To Sam with love from your Sybil

He clicked it shut, and for a moment the world held its breath. Vimes sensed this sudden pause and started to stand up. Nothing happened for a moment and then--

"I told you as much Lu-Tze! That cigar case had got some sort of residual magic field in it from landing on that university! Look at the garden!"

Lu-Tze did indeed look at the garden. Every stone was moving, cracks were racing across it as if it was an icy lake someone had just shattered with a well aimed missile.

"He's travelled in time again?" said the old Sweeper.

"Yes!" replied Qu.

"When to?"

"I can't tell! This could take weeks of calculation!"

Lu-Tze sighed. "Can you give me an approximate date?" he said.

The panicking monk stared frantically at the garden in motion. "About... about three hundred years ago..."

"Righto," he replied and calmly walked inside the Temple. Qu followed him.

"Aren't you going to do something?" Qu asked.

"Yep," replied the Sweeper.

"I'll work out a possible date--" Qu began.

"Don't need to," replied the Sweeper, "I know where he's gone. He's an easy man to follow, his grace, once you know how his mind works..."